Jane Jennings

Robert Quick Mitchell & Jane Mitchell Grave

• General Notes
  • Been in Australia 71 years  - Religion - Church of England
    
    On 23rd June, 1853, John Jennings a shoemaker of Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall, escorted his daughter Jane to the Parish Church for her marriage to Robert Quick Mitchell, son of John Mitchell, a mine agent, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Quick).
    
    A year later, both aged 23, they stepped aboard the "Geelong" in Plymouth and sailed to Melbourne where they docked on the 11 August 1854.
    
    Trained as a shipwright and engineer, Robert was to find work in this trade as various stages of his life until his death in 1885. But it was a miner that he went to Ballarat and purchased a Miner's Right in 1856. He later worked on the Streiglitz goldfields from 1868 to 1870.
    
    In 1857 their third child, Robert Quick was born and a year later John was born at Eureka. Jane and Robert lost six children in infancy and early childhood, with the last two of their ten children, Henry and Elizabeth, being born in 1871 and 1872.
    
    In 1875 Robert was farming at Creswick and in 1877 gave his occupation as shipwright and address as Mount Rowan (8km from Ballarat), when he applied for a selection of 316 acres on the Wakiti Crees at Koputna. The license was signed by Governor Bowen on 01/02/1878 and by April 1879 he was able to claim that he had erected a two room dwelling, had sown 8 acres in wheat and peas and had fenced 74 chains of his property - Allotments 35a, 36, 38 on the Parish Map of Kotupna.
    
    When he applied for a 14 year lease in 1883, he was able to report that his home was now a four roomed weatherboard house where the family lived for most of the year, except in the hot months. He stated that he had resided there continuously for the first three years. Since then (I) have been forced to occaisionally for want of means to leave home to provide money to carry on the selection.
    
    Taking up his former trade for this purpose, he became a machinery contractor and leasing his property to his son John, he left for the Ballarat District. Jane and the youngest children resided in Ballarat with her eldest son (also Robert Quick) a bachelor school teacher, while her husband carried our contracts in that area. He was working on the Carisbrook Road at Majorca when he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 54 on 28/04/1885.
    
    Of his family, John remained at Kotupna, while Robert continued his teaching career, although he did own some land in the Goulbourn River, which he leased to Kotupna farmers.
    
    Henry was to become a Senior Official in the State Rivers Water Supply Commission and named his Kew residence "Kotupna". Elizabeth married Arthur Sheldon and lived in Ballarat.
    
    Source - Pioneers of Nathalia and district - Compiled by Nathalia Genealogical Group, 1 January, 2000