Johanna Bath
Contents
Background
Johanna (Joanna) Vaughan was born to Thomas Vaughan and Mary Whent. Her mother died at her birth, her father remarrying to Susannah, who cared for Johanna and whose name appears on Johanna’s death certificate.
Johanna Vaughan emigrated from England on the barque Benecia landing with her father, step-mother and brother and sisters in November 1850. In the following September this family settled at Ballarat.
Reverend Lewis celebrated the marriage of Johanna and Thomas Bath on 6th February 1851 at Geelong.[1] They went to Ballarat on 1 September 1851 the day that digging for gold commenced on the Golden Point Number One Diggings. They lived in a tent for three months and Johanna was said to be the first white woman on those goldfields. They then went to Sandhurst and Fryer's Creek before returning to Ballarat in 1852 and built a property in Errard Street called Bava a combination of the names Bath and Vaughan.[2]
The Bath’s established The Ballarat Hotel on 1 July 1853 which by 1854 had changed its name to Bath’s Hotel. The name was again changed, to Craig’s Hotel and Craig’s Royal Hotel.[3] Around 1857 Johanna and Thomas Bath moved to a farm near Learmonth which was called Ceres. They made the voyage back to England departing on the Northam in March 1860.
Johanna’s husband, Thomas Bath, was born on 29 January 1825 at Penair near Truro, Cornwall. He worked as a butcher before serving aboard the H.M. troopship Belle Isle. As a sailor he was well travelled having visited Malta, Corfu, Gibralter, West Indies, Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In May 1849 he arrived in Australia on the Sir George Seymour, and started a butchering business in Geelong. In 1851 Bath heard of the goldrushes and travelled to Hiscock’s Gully, near Buninyong. Early in the 1850s he established a butcher’s shop at the gold diggings at Ballarat. He did not stay on the Ballarat diggings but went to Fryer’s Creek in 1852, then to Colac and Bendigo where the Eaglehawk Diggings were opening up. By 1853 he had ceased mining and came to Little Bendigo, near Ballarat East. He bought land in Ballarat (west) and owned the Saxon Paddock on which some of the earliest cricket and football matches were played, and which was given to the Ballarat City Council. It is now known as the Ballarat City Oval. ‘Together they shared in all that conceived of the well being and progress of the Town. The church, the hospital, the art gallery … all benefitted by their thoughtful generosity and their private benefactions as well as their hospitality at both of their houses, Bara at Ballarat and Ceres at Learmonth.’ A vestry was added to the Learmonth Church of England church in memory of Thomas and Johanna Bath in appreciation of their kindness and goodness.[4]
Reportedly both Johanna and Thomas were in Ballarat at the time of the Eureka Affair but it is thought they took no part in the uprising.
Johanna Bath died on 19 September 1900 and was buried on 21 September in the Ballaarat Old Cemetery in grave F1 34R2. Her name is spelt Joanna on the cemetery listings. Thomas died 27 July 1901 aged 76 years and was buried at the Ballaarat Old Cemetery on 30 July 1900, reunited alongside his wife in grave F1 33R2. They had both been living at 15 Errard Street North at the time of their respective deaths.
Goldfields Involvement, 1854
Post 1854 Experiences
Johanna's husband, Thomas Bath, was a creditor as the result of the burning of James Bentley's Eureka Hotel, and listed as a claimant by by the Select Committee reporting Upon Ballaarat i.e. Ballarat riots - Bentley's Hotel.[5]
Thomas Bath also signed the Benden Hassell Petition for Compensation for being shot by the military on 28 November 1854. He gave his occupation as Hotel Keeper, residing in Ballarat. [6]
Mrs Bath exhibited a pike used at the Eureka Stockade, found by her on the morning after the battle. It was exhibited during the 1876 Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute Fine Arts Exhibition.[7]
Her husband's obituary was recorded in the Ballarat Star. Death of Mr Thomas Bath.
DEATH OF MR. THOMAS BATH. Mr. Thomas Bath, a native of Truro, Cornwall, and a resident, except for two or three small intervals, of the Ballarat district from the earliest days of its history in 1851, died at Ballarat on Monday morning from general break-up of the system. Mr. Bath, who was 76 years of age, landed in Victoria in 1849, and was one of the first to reach Golden Point before the great rush set in. What is how known as Craig's Royal Hotel was originally kept by Mr Bath as far back as 1854, and when he disposed of the business to Mr. Craig a few years later Mr. Bath, who had acquired considerable properly in the neighbourhood of the town-hall, which is still in the estate, turned his attention to agricultural pursuits. Ceres, his station at Learmonth, is noted throughout the state for the quality of the stock raised upon it. Mr. Bath was a very old member of the agricultural and pastoral society, and held the position of treasurer for a period of 20 years.[8]
In The News
Bath's Hotel
- HISTORIC HOTEL SOLD: - FAMOUS BALLARAT PROPERTY.
- BALLARAT, Sunday.—Craig's Hotel, the oldest and best known establishment of the kind in Ballarat, has been sold by private treaty for £30,000. Mrs. T. Newton, who has been licensee for several years, was the purchaser. The property, which has been improved on up-to-date lines, belonged to Mr. Frank Herman, of the firm of Messrs. J. J. Goller and Co., merchants, Lydiard street. The price realised for the hotel, which has a historic reputation, shows a substantial advance on the price paid for the property when it was last sold some years ago.
- In the early gold digging days the old original wooden building was known as Bath's Hotel, and was the first public house to obtain a license in Ballarat. The late Mr. Thomas Bath, in later years a well known grazier, was the owner and licensee, and the contractor for its erection was the late Mr. James Malcolm, a pioneer builder of Ballarat. The poet Adam Lindsay Gordon conducted the livery stables at the rear portion of the hotel premises, and occupied a small cottage abutting. His favourite horse Cadger, whom lie rode to victory in several steeplechases, was stabled near the cottage. Reference to this racehorse is made by Gordon in his poem "How We Beat the Favourite."? In this humble little dwelling in the hotel ground was born the only child of the poet, a girl whose early death he continuously mourned. The little girl was buried in the Ballarat old cemetery."[9]
Also See
Further Reading
Corfield, J., Wickham, D., & Gervasoni, C. The Eureka Encyclopaedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.
Dorothy Wickham, Women of the Diggings: Ballarat 1854, BHSPublishing, 2009.
Dorothy Wickham, Women of Substance, BHSPublishing, 2021.
References
- ↑ Notes Mary Wright 2003
- ↑ Notes Mary Wright 2003
- ↑ John Hargreaves, Ballarat Hotels Past and Present, p.2, 1943, Ballarat
- ↑ Dorothy Wickham, Women of Substance, BHSPublishing, 2021.
- ↑ Select Committee Upon Ballaarat [i.e. Ballarat] riots - Bentley's Hotel, accessed 09 February 2106.
- ↑ Dorothy Wickham, Shot in the Dark, BHS Publishing, 1998
- ↑ Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute Fine Arts Exhibition 1876 Catalogue.
- ↑ Ballarat Star, 13 September 1901.
- ↑ Northern Star, 22 October 1923.
External links
https://bih.federation.edu.au/index.php/Ballarat_School_of_Mines
https://bih.federation.edu.au/index.php/Thomas_Bath
