Chapter 10 – The Minstrel Boy

Yesterday I visited my grandma to keep her company and talk to her about her family and her growing up in South Australia. My grandmother was born in Yacka, South Australia in 1879 and spent her early years traveling from place to place wherever her father Joseph Dangerfield could find work. They moved from Yacka

to Port Broughton, to Bookabie near Fowler’s Bay on the Great Australian Bight, then back to Port Broughton, to Carey’s Gully, to Kadina, to Broken Hill, to Koppio, then to a farm out from Murray Bridge and finally to Pinnaroo.

In 1914 Maud married Richard Pryor Williams at Pinnaroo and bore him three children. Today I am returning to ask her about her marriage in 1914 to my grandfather, Richard Pryor Williams.

Once again I entered the little room on the side of the Williams’ house on the outskirts of the township of Pinnaroo. My mother Jean has given grandma her daily sponge bath, fed her breakfast and has returned to the main house to continue with her chores. I pulled up a chair beside my grandma’s bed and took her small hand in mine. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at me and smiled.

“Good morning , grandma, how are you today.” I ask.

“I am feeling quite well. Are you going to keep me company again this morning? I am so glad, I did enjoy your visit yesterday. I told Jean all about you but she thought I must have been dreaming, but I wasn’t was I? because here you are again?’

“Yes, I am here, grandma. Grandma, today, if you are feeling up to it, I would really like to know all about how you met and married my grandpa, Richard Pryor Williams.”

“I don’t know that I really want to talk about that,” grandma said, turning her head away from me.

“Why not, grandma? I would really like to know your story,”I pleaded.

“It is not a good story, dear. When I told my daughter Jean about how and why I married her father, it upset her and I don’t want to upset you.”

“Grandma, I know some of it already from Mum, from Jean, but I’d like to hear the story from you, so that I can make sense of it all. I want to know the truth of things, please, Grandma dear?”’

Maud sighed. “You are right. It is part of history and it doesn’t matter so much any more, though it did at the time.

It all began in 1911. Life on the farm in Pinnaroo was very busy during 1911 to 1913. My brother Harry and Emma and his wife were at that time living in an iron shed next to our home whilst their house was being built.

My brother Howard and Fred Arthur, my sister Bessie’s husband. were helping to build dad and mum’s house. I was doing dressmaking at home in those days, making all the family’s clothes as well as taking on work for other people in the district. I also had to do my share of the chores on the farm. No-one could be idle in those days.

“1914 brought the worst drought ever known in South Australia and my brother Howard had to go and work on a railway being built between Pinnaroo and Murrayville and many local farmers were forced to do the same.

“Dad stayed on the farm and reaped the harvest. It was a very poor harvest, only 19 bags of wheat from that 600 acres that had been sown. That meant there was not enough grain to sow the next crop, so more had to be bought to supply the lack.

“To help out I took a job in a hotel in the Pinnaroo township as a barmaid. I rented a room in the township during the week, only going home when I could manage it in between my shifts. It was while I was working at the hotel that I met Richard Pryor Williams.”

“And what was he like, grandma, what sort of person was he?’

Grandma sighed.

“Richard…. well, he was a very charming man, but in a boastful sort of way. He was about 5ft 9” tall, slim and wiry, with dark hair and blue eyes and very fine chiseled features. He was a real entertainer, full of stories about his travels ‘up north’ and about his work ‘on the railways.’

“I used to say that he was full of ‘blarney.’ He worked away from Pinnaroo quite a lot, anywhere he could pick up a few days work. Sometimes he had to go quite a long way away to get work and when he did he used to travel free on the Cobb and Co coaches. In exchange for the ride, Richard would sing to entertain the passengers. He had a beautiful tenor voice and when he wasn’t singing he would amuse them with his stories.

“They used to call him ‘the Minstrel Boy.’ Cobb and Co coaches went everywhere throughout Victoria, NSW and Queensland in those days. Richard would hear of work ‘up north’ somewhere and catch a coach and off he would go.

“So when did you first meet him?’ I questioned.

“He came into the hotel one evening when I was working at the bar. He started a conversation with me. I asked him how long he would be staying in Pinnaroo and he said that he would stay as long as he had a job.

“From then on he used to come into the hotel almost every evening while he had work in the town or the outlying farms. He asked me to go walking with him or have a meal, but I always said “No,” because I didn’t trust him very much – I didn’t think he was a…. a gentleman, not someone you could trust.

“He continued to pursue me until one day against my better judgment I agreed to go with him on a picnic. He could be very persuasive. He picked me up in a borrowed sulky one Saturday. He took me out along the dirt tracks into the back blocks beyond Pinnaroo. He was being very charming and pleasant and I had no warning that there was anything I should worry about.

“He stopped the horse along the track and we walked into the scrub to a clearing he knew of and we had our picnic that the hotel had packed for us. Then Richard began to press his attention on me in a way I didn’t like. He kept saying that he loved me and wanted to marry me. I told him I was not interested in him in that way, but he wouldn’t stop. I begged him to let me alone and I struggled but to no avail.

“Afterwards he said “Now you will have to marry me,” and I said, “Never!”

“Did he actually want to marry you, or was he just saying that?”

“I don’t know, but at that stage I just knew I didn’t want anything to do with him again, ever! I told him how much I despised him. He was angry at what I said and told me he was going to leave me to find my own way home. He said that if I didn’t know how to get home then chances were that no-one would ever find me. I didn’t believe he would do that. I thought he would come back, but when he didn’t come back I began to be really scared because I had absolutely no idea which way to go. I didn’t want to move from where I was because I might be going even further away from Pinnaroo. I knew I could easily become really lost.

“Eventually I began to walk hoping I might cross the dirt track we had come in on and be able to follow that home. After a while I just sat down on the ground and began to cry. That was when Richard suddenly appeared again. He must have been watching me all the time to see what I would do. In the end he took me to the sulky and we drove towards home. When we got close to where I lived, I jumped down from the sulky and told him I never wanted to lay eyes on him again. I made up my mind not to tell anyone what had happened, especially not my parents. They had enough to worry about and besides I felt so ashamed of my stupidity for trusting Richard.”

“Grandma. How could he have done such a thing? And you married him! Why?”

“Well, at that stage I had no intention of marrying Richard but then a month later I found I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it, that it could happen from just one time. It was January 1914 when I went into the scrub with Richard and it was in February that I missed a period.

“I waited another month and again I missed my period. I was pregnant!

“I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell my parents but things were not so good at home because in 1914 we were just entering what was to be the worst drought the Mallee has ever known. The farm was not prospering. Mum and Dad were quite distressed about the economics of it all. At such a time I didn’t want to bring shame on the family. I found that my love for my parents was greater than my hatred for Richard. Before I had told him how much I hated him he had said he wanted to marry and I decided that now he would have to marry me!

He had been away from Pinnaroo on other work for a while. I waited until he returned and told him that I was pregnant and he just laughed and said, ‘And what’s that to me?’

“I was really angry with him and I threatened him. I said that if I told my parents what he had done then my father and brothers would most certainly deal with him as he deserved. ‘Have you heard of shotgun weddings?’ I asked. ‘Then this will be one if you don’t agree to marry me.’

He knew I was serious, and he knew my brothers and in particular, my brother Howard, that it would be a brave man that crossed him!

“I also said that he had better not tell anyone else about the whole sordid story. So on 20th May 1914 when I was 34 years old and Richard was 30 yrs old I married him in the Methodist Parsonage Wallaroo.

“Our daughter Jean Mavis Williams was born on 1st Nov 1914 a little over 5 months after we married and so began our very unloving marriage. Later after we were married, Richard did have some redeeming features. He was hard working and could turn his hand to anything, and he did have a lovely singing voice.”

“Grandma, that is such a terribly sad story.”

“Yes, it is, but it will soon be over now for me at least, but I am so sorry to leave my three daughters to Richard’s care.”

“Don’t worry grandma, it will all turn out all right in the end.”

“What happened then, grandma. How did you manage to live with Richard after that?’

“Although we were married, there was no love between us so neither of us intended to spend much time with each other. We moved into this house where we are right now but almost immediately Richard accepted work ‘up north’ on the railways. He didn’t want to be here with me and I was not sorry to see him go, but I’ll say this for him, he did send me money pretty regularly.

“One day whilst working on the railways up north, Richard had a serious accident and damaged his spine. He didn’t get proper treatment and the bed that he lay on sagged in the middle and his back healed crooked and from then on he was never able to straighten his back. He always used to walk with his hands clasped behind his back for balance and his head and shoulders bent forward. He came home so that I could care for him. I think that was the only time he was glad he had married me because it meant he had someone to nurse him while he was recovering from the accident.”

“Do you think he would have come home otherwise?’

“I don’t really know, but he did come home and he managed to find work here and there and eventually set up the dairy. We have been married about 16 years and I have the children and they are a consolation. I had Jean, Connie and Ronda and two miscarriages, both boys. It seems I could not carry boys. I was not sorry about that because I didn’t want to have boys if they turned out like their father.

“That is so sad that you felt that way, but it is perfectly understandable. Tell me about your Tuberculosis. Do you know how you contracted that?’

“My brother ‘Lige’ caught it first when we were living in Fowler’s Bay. ‘Lige’ died of it in 1906 when we were on the farm at Koppio. Bessie contracted it as well, and she died in 1917. Poor Bessie, leaving all those young children to be brought up by someone else. Then I got it too. I just hope I don’t pass it on to my girls. I know Jean already has a spot on her lungs, but the Doctor thinks she will be okay.

“What was happening on the Dangerfield’s farm at this time. Did they have to sell the farm because of the drought in 1914?

“No they didn’t sell at that time. From 1916 to 1917 the farm was let out on shares. There were occasional bumper years in the Mallee and 1915 was one of those years. They reaped 5,000 bags of wheat and 3,000 bags of oats that year. But from the end of 1916 to 1917 the farm was let on shares and Howard and family moved back to Adelaide. In 1920 they did sell and the family all went to Caltowie to spend time with all their cousins.

“After resting at Caltowie my brother Harry and father Joseph decided to again take up farming and at the end of 1920 they purchased a farm of about 205 acres on the north side of the Gawler river, opposite the town of Angle Vale.

“In 1922 Geoff Dangerfield, Harry’s son had a serious accident and so my Dad, Joseph, sold the farm. He purchased a home at 74 Albert Street Goodwood intending that he and Mum should retire there, but on 1st Aug 1922 my mother Margaret died aged 66 years without getting to live in their new home at Goodwood.

“Dad knew that my brother Charles wanted to live somewhere where his children could get a reasonably good education so he gave Charles the opportunity to buy the house for the same price as he had paid for it. It was too good an offer to refuse so in July 1923 Charles purchased the house at Goodwood.

“In the meantime, in 1927 my Tuberculosis became so advanced that I could no longer look after my family. That was when Dad, after having sold his home at Goodwood to Charles, came to live with us at Pinnaroo. He helped me manage the children and the dairy until I could not work at all. That was when I was sent to Kalyra which is a Sanitarium for Tuberculosis sufferers. Dad stayed behind and looked after the family. “

“What was Richard doing at this time?”

“Everyone worked and there was so much to do and Jean and Connie had to help with the dairy and it made life difficult for them.

“My father, Joseph, was the most wonderful man, I don’t know how I would have managed without him. He lives with us still and is such a wonderful help and comfort to me. I have had some happy times and some sad times in my life. The happiest times were mostly when I was younger traveling around with my family. All I hope and pray for now is that my family will manage when I am gone and that my children have happy lives. I wish that they could learn about God and the Kingdom so that we could all meet again when Jesus returns. ‘

“Don’t worry, grandma, your daughters will all do very well after you are gone,” I promised her. “So close your eyes now and rest. I will not see you tomorrow, my dear, but “remember me,” my darling grandma, when you come into the kingdom. I love you very dearly.”

I kissed her on the forehead and touched her silken hair and quietly walked out of the room, back to my own time in 2012.