Chapter 8 – The Truth Seeker

William Charles Dangerfield was the first member of the Dangerfield family to become a Christadelphian.

He began to question the doctrines he had been taught in his youth as a member of the Methodist Church.

It was this questioning that brought him into contact with the Christadelphian’s and through them he learned ‘the Truth’ of the Bible.

It was under his influence that in time, most of the family of my great-grandparents, Joseph and Margaret Dangerfield, also joined the Cristadelphians.

Today on the 14th Sep 1988 I am going to visit Winnie Hancock (Dangerfield), my first cousin once removed, and daughter of William Charles Dangerfield, at her house at Tea Tree Gully.

In 1988 Winnie was 78 years of age and I was 49 years of age. Winnie is noted as the one in the Dangerfield clan who is the most reliable repository of the Dangerfield history.

I am looking forward to hearing about her father and mother, Charles and Lottie Dangerfield and how so many of the Dangerfield family became Christadelphians.

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“Hello Winnie, how are you? I am looking forward to hearing your story and some of your family’s history.”

“Good morning Fay, come into the lounge, I’ve got a box of the old family photos which I am sure will be of interest to you.”

“Oh yes! I love all the old photos.” Some of the photos in Winnie’s box I already had copies of, but there were others that looked very promising. I would get copies of those if I could. I set them aside in a small pile to go through later.

“Winnie, I am interested in learning more about your mother, Lottie Dangerfield (Cooper). Could you tell me more about your mother’s side of the family.”

“To do that I will need to go back to when William and Judith Cooper came out to Australia from Norfolk in England on the ship ‘Marmion,’ in 1849.

Their children were William, Thomas, Elizabeth, George Alfred, Joel, Jane, John, Robert and James. William and Judith Cooper’s son George Alfred Cooper married Harriet Cooper (Peverett, Place).

They had a son called Shadrach Cooper (b. Modbury, SA in 1857) and he married Sarah Cooper (Thoday) in 1882. They had seven children, four boys and three girls.

One of the girls was my mother, Esther Maude (Lottie) Cooper, (b. 26th Aug 1886 at Penwortham (Kadina)) and on 6th Mar 1909, Lottie married my father William Charles Dangerfield (b 5th Nov 1877).

“And Sarah Cooper (Thoday) was the daughter of my great-great grandparents, Henry and Maria Thoday,” I said, “and Joseph Dangerfield 2 my great-grandfather, married Sarah’s sister Margaret Thoday, and she became my great-grandmother,”  I commented. “There was quite a bit of intermarrying wasn’t there? Well, now that we have that sorted, what can you tell me about how the Dangerfield family became Christadelphians?

“It is an interesting story. When my father was about 14 years old he told his mother Margaret that he was ‘giving up’ religion because he couldn’t find the answers he wanted to questions such as: ‘What is truth?’ ‘Do we go to heaven when we die?’ and ‘Is there a devil?’ Dad’s mum and dad were very religious; probably primitive Methodist .

They were very concerned about Charles and his announcement that they had not been able to answer his questions to his satisfaction. They decided to send him along to see the minister of their church to see if he could enlighten Dad. Dad asked the minister questions such as ‘do you go to heaven when you die?’ and ‘Is there an immortal devil?’

On his return from speaking with the minister, dad reported to his Mum and Dad that the minister’s answers didn’t satisfy him either. He was most unhappy with the Minister’s final words to him,

“You don’t have to worry about such things, Charles, it is my job to worry about your immortal soul, not your’s.”

This answer made dad angry and even more determined to find out the TRUTH of things. He began to study his Bible in earnest and also learned Hebrew from a Jewish Rabbi.

“At this time, Dad was farming with his father at Bookabie near Nantabee Beach, and later, due to drought periods on the West Coast, he joined the mining fraternity at Broken Hill. When the strikes came and the economic outlook became pretty bleak, the men at the mines wanted Charles to become a Union Rep but he said,

“I don’t believe that it is right for me to become a Union rep,”

One of the workers said to him in disgust,

“All you are interested in is your Bible … so why don’t you go down to the Park on Sundays and listen to the Spruikers on their soapboxes?”

And so, that is what Charles did.

The Spruikers turned out to be Christadelphians come up from Adelaide and from these men Charles finally found the answers to his questions that he was looking for. For some time after that he spent a number of nights sitting up talking with these brethren about Bible truth.

“Dad was baptized in 1902 at Broken Hill.

Dad’s family became very concerned about,

“the sect that Dad has got himself mixed up with”

and so they all decided to go with Charles to hear what the Christadelphians had to say so that they could ‘talk him out of it.’

The outcome was that they didn’t manage to ‘talk him out of it,’ but rather they themselves became convinced of the truth of what they heard from the Christadelphians.

In 1903, Margaret, Alice Maud and Bessie were all baptized.

“So that is how it all happened?”

“My mother, Jean O’Connor (Williams) told me that her mother Alice Maude Dangerfield, Charles sister learned the truth in Pinnaroo and was baptized there, but she obviously got it wrong. The Dangerfields moved to Pinnaroo around 1904 and so it was easy enough for Mum to think it all happened in Pinnaroo and not in Broken Hill. I’m so glad I have that straight now,” I said with satisfaction.

“What happened in the Dangerfield family after that?” I asked.

At this time, Dad married Lottie Cooper and then took up building houses in Victoria at Rutherglen. After this he returned to South Australia and began working as a carpenter and cabinet maker. Later he was joined by his brother Henry and together they built some splendid homes from cement blocks, all made by hand. The cement mixture was tamped in a machine with different patterned plates being used to give character to the front of each block to be used on outside walls of the houses. Lottie and Charles went on to have children Winifred (b 1st Aug 1910 at Brighton) and Mervin (b 23rd Apr 1902).

With war approaching there was another slump in the building trade and Dad and his family moved once again to Broken Hill where Dad obtained employment in the mines. While in ‘the Hill,’ the family experienced some dreadful dust storms and electrical storms, also extreme heat during the summer. Shortage of water was a common occurrence as the only water storage was from the Umberumber Reservoir – a very small reservoir according to today’s standards. Often water was only turned on to the houses for two hours a day. At the children’s school all drinking water had to pass through a charcoal filter before it was fit to drink.

It was while they were living in Broken Hill that Allan and Lloyd were born; Allan on 13th Apr 1915 and Leslie Lloyd on 21st May 1921.

“During 1921-1922 there was a big strike that lasted about a year and Dad heard that there was building work available in South Australia and so he decided that it would be best for his family to move there. If he stayed in Broken Hill he probably would have had to ‘go on the dole,’ and he was too proud to do that. The family had a few lean times during this period, but Lottie was a wonderful manager.

Dad and brother Harry began to build houses in the Pinnaroo and Lamaroo area and so began our family’s wondrous journey from Broken Hill to Pinnaroo by train. We spent a few days in Adelaide and while we were there we went to the beach, where Allan, who was about 7 years old and Lloyd, 10 months old, saw the sea for the first time.

Mum was only a young mother at the time but she had arranged the selling of what furniture could not be taken with us, and did all the packing of everything with the help of some very good friends, but with four young children, one of them a baby, it was a mammoth task.Times were so bad that Mum was unable to sell the little house that Dad had purchased in Broken Hill and I really don’t know to this day what happened about that house.

The family arrived in Pinnaroo in March, 1922 where we all enjoyed the companionship of relatives and cousins we had not seen before. Our grandmother, Margaret Dangerfield died on 1st August 1922 at 66 years of age and on my 12th birthday. She never got to live in the home she and Joseph had purchased in which to retire. We were all so sad and Grandpa decided to let Dad have the house. He knew that Dad wanted to live somewhere where his children could get a good education and so grandpa offered him the house for the same price he had paid for it.Grandpa was a very kind and generous man and so for Dad, this was an offer too good to refuse.

In July 1923 he moved his family from Pinnaroo to the little house at 74 Albert Street Goodwood where we lived until the family had all grown up and married. Mum lived there for 17 more years after Dad died, and he died on 10th Nov 1947 aged 70 years.

In July 1964 Mum came to live with us, the Hancock family, in our house at Tea Tree Gully. The house at 74 Albert street, Goodwood had been our family home for 41 years and held many happy memories for us all. Both Mum and Dad (Esther Maude and William Charles Dangerfield)  are buried in the Centennial Park Cemetery in Adelaide.