I am often asked where the business name came from, so I thought this post would fill you in on a few details ... As many of you know I am a New Zealander with a strong Australian connection.
My grandmother Elsie is a descendant of John Hill, who was a bo'sun on the ship Buffalo, which landed at South Australia under the captaincy of John Hindmarsh in 1836 (who later went on to set up the settlement in Adelaide). Elsie was John Hill's great granddaughter, her father (also named John Hill) was a blacksmith in Hawker, later moving to Gilgandra, NSW. When Elsie and her twin Eva were 12 their mother died. Her father could not cope, so her two brothers left home. The girls went with their father to Bulli, NSW to live with their paternal grandmother while their father went to work in the mines. Eva married young and in 1931, Elsie accepted the offer of being a "companion" to a widowed aunt who was returning to New Zealand.
Elsie took up nursing in Hamilton, NZ and on a chance trip to Wellington with a friend, she met the infamous and persistent George who was the youngest son of Bethia and Thomas Tutty, formerly of Reading, England When George was 4, his father who had worked as a driver for the Phoenix Drink Company died in the Influenza Epidemic of 1918. The funeral of his eldest stepson had occurred the day before and Thomas being too ill to attend the funeral, insisted on standing on the street to pay his respects as the cortege passed by the house, not a wise move as it turned out. His death left his wife to raise her brood of 5 on her own. Life was not easy and the family depended on their mother's hard work as a char' woman and the charity of Church and friends.
Elsie and
George were married in 1940. As a young man, George worked as a credit manager
for a variety of companies, he served briefly in the NZ Army in Fiji and New
Caledonia in WWII, only to be sent home with a broken arm, hence missing active
service in the Islands, and ended his days as a produce procurer for one of the
largest produce markets in Auckland.
Elsie raised two
children and supplemented the family income by sewing men’s trousers at home
while the children were small and then later worked as a machinist in a coat
manufacturing and later clothing business, until ill health became an
issue in her 60s. As a child, she and her sister had suffered from rheumatic
fever, a scourge which was going to affect their hearts later in life. She was
one of the first recipients of an artificial heart valve in the early 1970s and
had a replacement valve 1981. She survived the operation only to be still in
hospital recovering when George died from lung cancer, having been a long-term
smoker. Before their
deaths, only a few weeks apart in 1981, they were the proud grandparents of
three grandchildren, the eldest who now runs the “Elsie George” store in Cessnock!
