My Genealogical Journey

When I was a child my Nana (grandmother) used to take me to the Rock Room in the Australian Museum. We would walk around the narrow mezzanine that overlooked the skeleton of the man on the rearing horse in the Bone Room below, past the glass cabinets filled with hundreds of mineral samples, crystals and gems from around the country until we reached the display of replicas of gold nuggets. Nana would ignore the Welcome Stranger and Hand of Faith and point to a misshapen lump of painted gold plaster: “My grandfather found that!” She would tell me proudly. All I could think about was ice cream.

More than three decades later I found myself in the offices of Geoscience Australia in Canberra with an hour to spare. The family legend of the gold nugget came into my mind. The receptionist directed me to the library but I had scant details. I couldn’t remember the name of the nugget or the men who had found it. Despite this, within 5 minutes, the librarians helped me identify them and their find.

The Viscount Canterbury was unearthed at German Fields in Rheola on May 31st 1870 by Mssrs S Schlossman and J Davis. It weighed 1115oz. According to the 1930 Geological Survey of Victoria, the Viscount Canterbury was the 9th largest nugget found on the Victorian Goldfields.

Armed with this information I launched into my genealogical research, and eventually traced the amazing life story of my 3 times great grandfather Solomon Schlossman from his birth in Jaroslaw, Galicia around 1822 to his death in Coolgardie, Western Australia, in 1895. He migrated to England in 1846, collecting a wife, Harriet Moses (b ~1822, Witkowo, Posen) on the way. The growing family – his two daughters were born in England – is recorded in the 1851 and 1861 UK Census.

In the mid-1860s the family migrate to Victoria, where his older daughter, Caroline (b. ~1846), married John Davis (b. ~1845 Gollub, Prussia; he also appears in the 1861 UK Census), in 1867. They all moved to Sandhurst (now Bendigo), John and Solomon strike gold, buy a pub and are active in the Jewish community. They are recorded in the donor list to build the first synagogue in Sandhurst.

John and Caroline eventually relocated to the thriving port town of Echuca, on the NSW/ Victoria border. Solomon, who remained in Sandhurst, continued working as a publican and invested in more gold ventures. He was declared bankrupt within the decade. Solomon returned to Melbourne to run another pub, and then one in Balranald, Western NSW, before relocating to Sydney where, after another stint as a publican, he starts a Kosher butchery with John, who has moved from Echuca to Sydney with his growing family.

When both Solomon’s wife, Harriet, and son-in-law John die within a few months of each other, a heartbroken Solomon married his wife’s sister, Rachel Chaya Moses (b. 1828 Witkowo, Posen), sold the butcher shop and relocated to Coolgardie in Western Australia, where another gold rush was in full swing. Living with his younger daughter, Pauline (b. 1854, London) and her second husband, Solomon passes away in 1895, aged in his early 70s. A newspaper report in The Western Australian Goldfields Courier on April 13 1895, vividly describes his funeral, which had both Jewish and Masonic rights.

Since first uncovering the details of the Viscount Canterbury I have traced the main branches of my tree to Poland, Prussia, Galicia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Egypt. These are stories of triumph and tragedy, voluntary and forced displacement, entrepreneurial success and bitter business failure. These characters have come alive as I have uncovered their stories, put faces to names with exquisite old photographs and understood the circumstances that precipitated life-changing decisions.

The lesson I have learned from this ongoing, never completed mission is that no one has a boring family. No matter how banal you may think your family background is, there is always a tale to tell.