and MINE MANAGER, SILAS GAY.
courtesy Margot Hitchcock, Historian for the Blackwood & District Historical Society.
Historical Society Museum, corner Warner Street and Greendale to Trentham Road, Blackwood.
Red, White and Blue Mine, off Mt. Blackwood road, Blackwood. c. 1893.
Red White and Blue Mine, Blackwood with Miners and Mine Manager, Silas Gay front right hand end in suit.. C.1893.
Mine Manager, Silas Gay front right hand end in suit. C. 1893..
The History of Blackwood – Newspaper reports 1898
by Margot Hitchcock, Historian for the Blackwood & District Historical Society.
Death of Silas Gay, Shift Manager, in the Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood. 1898.
Silas Gay was the Shift Manager of the Red, White and Blue Mine, at Blackwood. He was born in Tasmania in 1846. He was the youngest of four sons born to William Gay and Mary Mansfield. Mary and William Gay had another son who was stillborn, which Mary never recovered from and she died 11 months later on the 13th August 1848. This left William Gay with four sons to bring up by himself. William Gay left Hobart early in 1851, taking with him his three eldest sons and leaving the youngest Silas Gay, who was about 5 years old with Mary’s parents, William and Maria Tucker in Hobart. William Gay and his 3 oldest boys went to Portland and then in 1851 William was lured to Ballarat with stories of the Gold Rush and on the 2nd December 1851 he set off in the company of his 3 boys and 3 men to Ballarat where they arrived 9 days later. They worked claims at Golden Point and other fields for some years and in 1854, about the time of the Eureka Rebellion, William made a trip back to Hobart and collected his youngest son, Silas Gay who was about 8 years old, and William was said by a member of the family to have pushed Silas Gay in a handcart to the goldfields of Ballarat with his 3 other sons walking beside him.
Silas Gay grew up on the goldfields of Ballarat scrounging around with his brothers looking for nuggets of gold. He married age 22years in 1868 at Ballarat to Mary Elizabeth Ford from Tasmania. He and his wife had 13 children born in Ballarat between 1869 and 1892. In 1898 Silas Gay was working as a Shift Manager at the Red White and Blue Mine, in Blackwood, when he had a fatal accident when he fell down a mine shaft. The Police report was as follows;-
Victoria Police – (47). Ballarat Station. Central Police District. December 16th 1898. Report from Constable Clifford No. 3979. In relation to the death of Silas Gay at Blackwood.
“I have to report that about 3pm on the 15th inst. Silas Gay, shift boss at the Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood, fell down a 30 foot shoot, at that mine, sustaining such injuries to his head that he died about three hours after admission to the Ballarat Hospital, to which institution he was conveyed at 7.30pm by the manager, W.T.Williams. (Warren Travena Williams)
When admitted the deceased was in a collapsed condition, and died without regaining consciousness. Albert Sweet, miner, residing at Blackwood, states that he, in company with his mate William Peters were working in the stope near the shoot. About 3pm the deceased crawled through the stope where he (Sweet) was working on his hands and knees, and he (deceased) asked Sweet to stand aside, and permit him to pass through, Sweet did so, and immediately after heard a noise in the shoot and caught a glimpse of Gay falling. It is probable that when the deceased reached the shoot, he placed his hands on one of the slabs, which canted, and allowed him to fall through.
Peters went down the shoot at once, and found deceased at the bottom, with his head twisted under him. He (Peters) raised him up, with assistance got the deceased through the sliding door of the shoot.
Gay was then unconscious and did not speak; he was raised to the surface and conveyed to hospital. Mr Agnew, Inspector of Mines visited the scene of the fatality, examined the working, and informed police that a jury was not necessary.” Signed – J.W. Clifford.
(Information courtesy Robina Brown from her article in the Blackwood Newsletter Oct-Nov issue 2007 No. 97.
A letter the author received in 1979 from a Mrs. Win Jones stated she was interested in seeing the remains of the Red, White and Blue mine in Blackwood, as her grandfather, Silas Gay was killed in the mine whilst working as Shift Manager on 16th December 1898. She had read all the Ballarat newspapers of that period. The accident (?) was well publicised, and he was an extremely well respected man, and the story had always been told in her family that he was pushed by a jealous man, (who appeared in the papers as a pall bearer) who was desirous of being made the Manager.
In her letter Mrs. Jones wrote that her mother said her father’s funeral was three miles long from Heales Street Ballarat to the new cemetery. She also said the Gay family arrived in Ballarat in December 1851. William Gay had walked from Pentland where he had worked with the Henty family as a Wheelwright, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Poet and Engine Maker. On his journey to Ballarat, William pushed his son Silas Gay, all the way in a handcart, with his other three motherless boys walking beside him.
After his accident in the Red White and Blue Mine in Blackwood, Silas was taken unconscious to Ballarat by train, and then taken by a horse drawn ambulance to the hospital, but he died in the early hours of the morning. His wife Mary was a midwife in Ballarat and they had 13 children.
Details from the Gold Fields Hospital Index states that Silas Gay was 52 years old and was admitted on the 15th December 1898 to the Ballarat hospital. He was a miner and married and lived in Tress Street, and had been born in Tasmania in 1846.
From the death records for Silas Gay his father’s name was William Gay and his mother was Mary Mansfield and he died in the Ballarat Hospital 1898, age 53 yrs, birth place – Tasmania.
Cert No. Reg. Number: 14813.
Silas Gay and his wife Mary Mansfield.
The story of the Gay’s family’s arrival in Ballarat – William Gay 1812-1889.
Of interest too is the story of how the Gay family came and settled in Australia. Silas Gay was one of four boys, and born in 1846 to his mother, Mary Mansfield and his father William Gay. Silas Gay’s father, William Gay was born in Bratton, Devonshire on the 25th February 1812. William Gay joined the crew of the ship ‘Medway’ as a carpenter and worked his way to Hobart arriving there on the 21st July 1835. For the next 18 months he worked on the ship as it sailed between Hobart and Sydney with supplies and passengers. William then married Mary Ann Elizabeth Mansfield on the 1st May 1838 at St. John’s, Newtown in Tasmania.
Mary was the daughter of William Mansfield, a convict who came out on the convict ship ‘Calcutta’. William Mansfield had married Maria Tucker, daughter of Elizabeth Cole, a First Fleeter, and James Tucker, a Second Fleeter, and hangman of Norfolk Island. Mary and William Gay had 5 sons, and the last son was stillborn, which Mary never recovered from and she died 11 months later on the 13th August 1848. This left William Gay with four sons to bring up himself.
William left Hobart early in 1851, taking with him his three eldest sons and leaving the youngest Silas Gay who was about 5 years old with Mary’s parents, William and Maria Tucker in Hobart.
For 5 months William Gay got whatever work he could in Melbourne and then set sail for Portland on the ‘Red Rover’. He worked in Portland for 5 months.
(Information on William Gay and his family courtesy of the Gay family and the web page – www.ballaratgenealogy.org.au of the Ballarat Genealogical Society.)
By the end of 1851 William was lured to Ballarat with stories of the Gold Rush and on the 2nd December 1851 he set off in the company of his 3 boys and 3 men to Ballarat where they arrived 9 days later. They worked claims at Golden Point and other fields for some years and were present in 1854 at the meeting at Bakery Hill when the diggers burnt their licenses in defiance of the authorities, an act which preceded the Eureka Stockade Rebellion. During this time William made a trip back to Hobart and collected his youngest son, Silas Gay who was about 8 years old. From records it appears that William and his four sons stayed around Ballarat for some years, and later William spent some time in Gippsland, possibly as a contractor for the railways. William Gay’s last few years were spent in the Armidale area of N.S.W where his son John Wesley Gay lived. William Gay indulged in some prospecting and getting involved in political comments in newspapers and writing poetry which he also did during his time in the Colonies. His sympathies lay with the workers and he had little time for the ‘Establishment’. He never re-married and was proud of his achievement in rearing his four sons single handed. He died in 1889 and was buried at Puddledock in the Oban district N.S.W.
The eldest of William Gay’s sons was named John Wesley Gay who was born in Tasmania in 1839. He went to live in Ballarat during the goldrush in 1851 when he was 12 years old with his widowed father, and his two brothers, William age 10 years, James aged 7 years
No doubt John Wesley Gay had the job of looking after his 3 younger brothers when they lived on the goldfields after the Eureka Rebellion in 1854, while his father tried to find gold so they had money to live on. John Gay went to live in N.S.W. in 1862 aged 23 years and lived at Puddledock and the Oban district. He married a widow, Maria Rebekah Jones in 1868 or 1869 and did not have any children. He lived there up to the time of his death on the 11th February 1913. He was buried next to his father William Gay who had died in 1889.
William Gay’s next son was William Gay, born in Tasmania in 1841. His obituary stated he came to Portland in 1851 aged about 10 years shortly after the Henty family settled there. Then he went with his father, William, and brothers, John, and James to Ballarat in December 1851 and they all found gold. When his youngest brother Silas joined them in 1854 they all helped to find gold in what were the crowded goldfields of Ballarat. William Gay 2nd lived in Ballarat most of his life, and had a vivid recollection of the Eureka Rebellion and other historical events. He was the Mining Manager of Victoria United Mine, the South Star Mine, the Dalzell-cum-Prince Regent Mine, Dry Diggings and the famous Egerton Mine at Egerton and was connected with many other mines in the district of Ballarat. His great delight was of speaking of his early days in Ballarat. (see his written article)
He had a large family of children. His six sons were the coffin bearers at his funeral – Jack Gay, Walter Gay, Albert Gay, Leonard Gay, Arthur Gay and Hector Gay.
William Gay 2nd died age 85 years on the 13th July 1926, and was buried in the Ballarat cemetery.
The 3rd son of William Gay was James Gay who was born in Tasmania in 1844, and went with his father to Ballarat about age 7 years in 1851. He married Jane Elizabeth Thompson in 1868 when he was 24 years old. He died in Ballarat East on the 23rd March 1899 age 55 years, the year after Silas Gay had died in 1898.
The last son was Silas Gay born 1854 in Tasmania and he went to Ballarat with his father and brothers age 8 years. (Obituaries on the Gay family courtesy of the Gay family members and the web page – www.ballaratgenealogy.org.au of the Ballarat Genealogical Society.)
BALLARAT RECOLLECTIONS 1851-1854 BY WILLIAM GAY
“Before the rush in the Flat started, a party of diggers was leaving, and my father bought their Bark Hut, that was situated a little north of the N.W. corner of Grant St Bridge, on a bit of a rise. The first flood in 1852, covered all the flat, from where the Gas works are, to the foot of Golden Point, it washed most of the heaps of dirt into the holes, so that the diggers could not tell their own claims from other peoples. The water also surrounded our hut, and there was a depression in the ground between our hut and the gaol hill, the hut being on a slight rise. My father woke us boys up about 2 o’clock in the morning and we had to wade through 3 ft of running water, to reach a store at the foot of goal hill, where we stayed the remainder of the night. The next morning the water receded enough for us to get back to the hut, and as the water got lower to where the heaps of dirt were washed away we could see little patches of gold in the small crevices in the surface, where it has been washed clean.
My brothers and I got pannikins and spoons, and gathered up what gold we could see. I don’t remember how much we got, but I think it must have been 2 or 3 ozs. After it was proved that gold could be got in the flats and gullies, the digger prospected all the low lying ground both north south east and west, so that Black Hill Flat, and several gullies south of Golden Point was discovered, some of them being very rich.
Some-time after the flood in 1852, we shifted our camp to the Northern slope of Pennyweight Hill, which, in fact, is two hills, with a shallow gully between them, (which can be seen yet). The western hill, had been prospected on the west side, but only on the surface, this was not very rich, hence the name Pennyweight. We worked on this for a while, but did not get much gold.
One day, I took a walk on the eastern hill, and among the trees and scrub, I came across a large quartz boulder, that being considered a good indication of gold, my brother and I went the next day, and got the boulder out, (which was about 200 cwt). We looked in the hole it came out of, and seen several rough specks of gold. The bed rock (or Pipeclay) was just under the surface at that point, but deepened to the north, to 10 & 15 ft and proved to be very rich. The hill has all been sluiced off to the bed rock. Most of which was done by Mr. Kirk, after he erected Kirks dam, and brought the water in by an open race, shortly after the rush was over at Pennyweight Hill. We shifted our camp further south on the flat, at the south end of Westley Hill, this flat was afterwards named Gays Gully.
My father and us boys being the prospectors of that also, that was about the middle of 1854. It was shortly after that, the Eureka Stockade fight occurred. On the day of the last public meeting before the stockade fight, my father took some gold to the police camp, it being the practice then to deposit gold at the camp. For safety my father carried the gold and I carried a double barrel gun fully loaded. After we had left the gold at the camp, we went to the meeting, it was held on Bakery Hill. There was a platform erected, and several of the leading men spoke from it, including Peter Lalor.
There was a large crowd there, also a lot of mounted troopers around the mob. We being in about the middle of the mob, after some wild spouting had been going on for some time, some-one from the platform called for all diggers to burn their licences. In a couple of minutes the licences were held above the heads of the crowd, and set fire to, making a little flame all over the crowd, then there was cheering, and guns and pistols fired all round and in the crowd.
I thought the riot had started, we got out of the crowd as quickly as we could, not knowing whether it was Troopers firing, or the diggers firing to show what they meant. After that the press gangs came round, pressing those able to fight, to go to the stockade, and taking all firearms from those unable to fight. They took weapons enough from our hut, to fire over twenty shots, some of them being paper box revolvers, (that is revolvers with all the barrels revolve, and all the same length) it would take a good shot to hit a haystack with them at 20 yards. It was not long after that, that the soldiers came, and the riot was fought. I think most people now know the result.”
With the death of Silas Gay, the point to ponder is, if it was true and what the family believe in that he was deliberately – “pushed to his death in the Red, White and Blue mine at Blackwood, by a jealous man, (who appeared in the papers as a pall bearer) who was desirous of being made the Manager.” One wonders how such a person could cause the death of another man who had 13 children. Hopefully further contact with the Gay family can add some light to this story.
The Inquest has been recorded in the PRO records and seen by some of the descendants of the Gay family.
Year – 1898 Reference – 1573 – Inquest courtesy Val Pratt – of Rosanna (in records)
Another Inquest record was of John Silas Gay died 1927-217. Reference 209- Accidently drowned.
Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood showing stone wall after bush fires on Ash Wednesday 1983 with the late Bruce Hitchcock. Photos courtesy Margot Hitchcock.
Miners sitting on stone wall of the Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood c. 1893.
Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood showing stone wall in 1982 before bush fires in 1983.
Photos courtesy Margot Hitchcock.
Bruce and Philip Hitchcock in burn out bush near the Red White and Blue Mine 1983.
Sign on side of Mount Blackwood Road near the Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood after bush fires in 1983.
Photos courtesy Margot Hitchcock.
Mount Blackwood Road near the Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood after bush fires in 1983.
Philip Hitchcock in the Adit of the Red, White and Blue Mine, Blackwood. 1981
Photos courtesy Margot Hitchcock.
