The Martins:
 Fortunes of Gold

Emma May Martin
(1894-1979)

Emma May Martin, pictured below in about 1914, was the grandmother of Edwardia's  current owner.  this photo was a black and white  to which Emma May has  skillfully added colour, as she was taught in her art training.
Picture of Emma May Martin, circa , 1914Emma May Martin, Circa 1914
To the right of the Drawing Room entry door you will see a pencil drawing done by 16 year old Emma May when she was a student of art at the Stawell School of Mines, in about 1910. She also learned Music, Poetry and dress making.

  Emma May married John Herbert Willmett. in  1921.   Their wedding photo  is in the middle of three levels of photographs on the left side of the pump organ.  Behind the organ are two of her later oil paintings, in the classic pre-impressionistic style of Edwardian Art Schools.

James (1828-1897) & Emma  (1834-1918) Martin
 Gold Rush Immigrants

Emma May's grandmother, Emma Bennett's photo is  the top one next to the pump organ in Edwardia's Drawing Room.   She came to the Victorian goldfields with her husband,  James Martin, from Tavistock/ Cadbury in Devon.    They may have brought some capital to Australia as their wedding certificate states that James' father was an engineer and both signed their names, suggesting they had some education.    James was listed as a husbandman but the 1851 census lists him as a tin miner so he also came to the Victorian goldfields with mining experience.

 Their first son was born two days before their 1856 arrival and the birth places of their other six sons show they moved from strike to  strike on the Victorian goldfields and eventually settled on a sheep farm at Wal wal, near Stawell.

 1859: Campbell's Creek
 1861: Newstead
 1864-7: Dunolly
 1886- Pleasant Creek/ Stawell
 1893 -Wal wal sheep farm.
Picture of Obituary of Emma Martin, Victorian Gold rush pioneer
Obituary of Emma Martin, Victorian Gold rush pioneer
A Post office address from Castlemaine lists a James Martin as a tentmaker.  During the 1870's and 80's he lived in Stawell, then known as Pleasant Creek.   Historical records at Stawell lists James as  holding Miner's right number  663 in 1882 and  as transferring 25 feet in claims 562 & 563,  Germaine Reef-Albion Co, to Mark Stanton in 1871.  In 1873 he held 300 shares in the Germaine Quartz Gold Mining Co Ltd and 100 shares in the Southern Cross Reefing Company.

 In the 1880's  there are records of James winning extensive contracts  for pipe channelling in Stawell and he also owned a sheep farm.

 Thus, he seems to have made money via providing essentials to the goldfields as well as  through mining shares.   This made some of his seven sons rich enough to live entirely on the proceeds of shares in mining companies.

 In 1893, one son, George Frederick Martin, filed a patent for improvements in the extraction of gold from tailings and quartz but he died in  a mine collapse  five years later.

Joseph Emmanuel (1869-1952) & Sarah-Ann (1868-1902) Martin

Emma May's father's photo and her mother's portrait are under that of her grandmother.   In 1893, her father, Joseph Emmanuel Martin shifted to the dry Mallee country of Hopetoun, probably after plans for extensive pipe trenching  were gazetted. He was known as Tin Joe because of his profession as a tinsmith/plumber, in which he followed  the lead of his Cornish tin mining father and the Stawell pipe trenching contracts. 

 In the 1890's Hopetoun was  the service town for a vast, low rainfall belt that was being opened up amid great expectation.   Alas,  the planned for closed pipes  are only now being installed after nearly 130 years.
Picture of Tin Joe Martin's Hopetoun store
Tin Joe Martin's Hopetoun store
Undeterred, Joe  built this double shop  and adjacent shed in Hopetoun  and ran a lucrative plumbing business building much needed water-tanks,   tin-trunks and  other metal goods from one  of the shops.
  Joe advertised for a wife and quickly married an unrelated Martin, Sarah-Ann.  She was clearly an enterprising match for Joe and opened a green grocery and refreshments store in his other shop.   She also won a medal for the best cow at the Hopetoun agricultural show, aided no doubt  by the fact that her father had been a dairyman.
Picture of an Advertisement for Sarah-Ann Martins Hopetoun shop
Advertisement for Sarah-Ann Martins Hopetoun shop
Sarah-Ann's portrait is next to the photograph of Joe. The artist is unknown but has painted in the modern French Impressionist style.  That there is a  portrait rather than a photograph of Sarah-Ann  suggests the family photos may have been taken after she died, when Emma May and her twin sister were just seven years old and their brother Clem was four.
Picture of Emma May, Ruby & Clem Martin, Circa 1900
Emma May, Ruby & Clem Martin, Circa 1900

Edward & Mary-Ann
1849- Martin

Emma-May's Maternal Grandparents
Picture
In this very early photograph Sarah-Ann Martin is a child  with her family outside their house at Lake Londsdale  between Stawell and The Grampians.
Her father, Edward Martin, was a dairyman, bullock team driver and contract timber cutter.   One evening he did not return home and his body was eventually found in a flood-swollen creek  on Ledcourt Station,  where he had been swept off his horse while searching for  missing bullocks.
Picture of the Newspaper report of the drowning of Edward Martin in 1874
Newspaper report of the drowning of Edward Martin in 1874
Picture of the Report of inquest into Edward Martin's death
Report of inquest into Edward Martin's death
Further tragedy struck on the day of his funeral when one of his young boys  also died. Their graves are amongst the earliest in Stawell cemetery.

Clement Martin
Emma May's Maverick Brother

After their mother died Emma May and her twin were split up. May went to live with her grandmother and her sister Ruby grew up with a minister of religion.   Their younger brother, Clement stayed with Tin Joe, who soon  re-married and had two more girls. 

  The step-mother was stern and very hard on Sarah-Ann's children. Clem was often tied to the clothes line or locked in the shed.   Before joining the army in 1916 he was convicted of soliciting money to aid wounded soldiers and pocketing the proceeds.   After joining up he was was  shipped to France  but his war  record documents repeated absences without leave and he may have seen little action other than his ship being bombed en route from Australia.
Picture
He returned to Australia with a new identity as Louis De Chateau, thereafter shortened by his relatives to Deshatta.
He was both eccentric and a talented entertainer, who travelled Victoria playing virtuoso violin with a pianist, business partner, performing magic tricks  and a ventriloquist routine with a self-made mechanical monkey who played a tiny grand  piano. 

When he was not on the road Deshatta lived above his workshop in Prahan, where he repaired pianos and violins and invented all sorts of oddments that did not make his fortune. When he died his identity as Clement Martin or Louis de Chateau was unknown till a relative saw his description in the newspaper.

Tin Joe's
End of Empire

Picture of Joseph Emmanuel Martin in old ageJoseph Emmanuel Martin in old age
In the arid Mallee making water tanks, tin trunks and plumbinq fixtures was a lucrative business but having been a young man when the banks failed in the Great Depression of the 1890's, Joe stashed his sovereigns  in cubby holes in the foundations of his house.

 He was known as a miser. In the year before his death he described the stash locations to his power-of -attorney but  many were empty and only some thirty sovereigns could be found.   Of these only four stayed in the family. The rest were stolen by gypsies in Italy as they were being taken to be sold for a better price than would have been available in Australia.

 Such are the fortunes of gold.