Ethel May Hill ... Gillard/Hogarth

Ethel May Hill (1885-1919) was my grandmother. She was the daughter of William Samuel Hill and married, firstly, William Edgar Gillard (1873-1906) who died very young, after fathering Ethel May's first two children, David Michael and William Robert Gillard. She found a second husband in Fletcher William Hogarth (1866-1931) gave birth to twins Keith and Ethel (31 December 1910) and then herself died young, in March 1919.

Ethel May's father, Wm Samuel Hill was born in Tasmania, but lived in at least three other states. He married Margaret Roberts in Melbourne (her home town) in 1877, but they must gone to South Australia almost immediately, as their first five children - including Ethel - were born in Adelaide, 1879-1885. They then appear to have returned to Victoria as the last two were born in Melbourne, 1888 and 1891. At the time of Ethel May's birth, in 1885, he was serving in the Water Police at Port Darwin and living - presumably without his family - in Palmerston, which was renamed Darwin in 1910. Then in about 1899 he took his wife and remaining four children (three boys having died in very early childhood) to Western Australia to make his fortune on the goldfields.

A technical note. This is a print blown up long ago from a glass plate negative which we still have. It's nailed into a frame with glass on the front, and I'm reluctant to take it apart. So, as I couldn't scan it, I took a photograph of it with a digital camera - and was not able to avoid some reflection. I hope to get my photographer daughter to do a better job some time.

When Ethel May's mother Margaret Roberts Hill died on 4 October 1901, and was buried in Yundamindera Cemetery, only four of her at least seven children were still alive: Beatrice Harriet, Leslie Lewis, Ethel Margaret (aged 16) and Elsie (whose actual name may have been Elizabeth Mary).

She married him two years later, in 1903, aged 18. According to a note my father left they were married in Perth, at St Bridget's West Perth, by Father Fagan. But an entry in the book More Lonely Graves of Western Australia says that they were married in Kookynie. The Hills were Anglican, but Ethel converted to Catholicism to marry her first husband. He got her to promise to bring their children up as Catholics. They had two sons together, and then WEG died in 1906 - basically from the poor conditions in which they were living and he was working. It's likely that he died from phthisis, that is, pulmonary tuberculosis, and was buried in Yundamindera Cemetery.

I don't know at present where Ethel May's eldest son William was born, and I'm assuming it was in Yundamindera. However, David's birth certificate says that he was born in Perth.

A note about spelling. The name of the station is spelt 'Yundamindra', but when the township was gazetted its name was spelt 'Yundamindera'. I presume the Cemetery is at the township, not the station.

This may be the photograph that records Ethel May's marriage to Fletcher William Hogarth (some time between 1906 and 1910). The man at the centre is Ethel's father, William Samuel Hill. Fletcher Hogarth is the man on our left, and so the woman next to him would be Ethel May. The two boys are David and Will. The other woman, on our right, is almost certainly Ethel's sister Beatrice, and the other man is probably their brother Leslie, who was 6'2" tall. Keith and Ethel, the Hogarth twins, are yet to be born, on 31 December 1910.

David Michael Gillard married Mary Linda Robertson and had one child, Garry Michael Gillard. David Michael Gillard died Perth 4 October 1982. His brother William had drowned in the Swan River in 1927.

Those are probably the only three photos of Ethel May Hill in existence, but here is another of Fletcher Hogarth (1866-1931) with his daughter Ethel Margaret (1910-1952), taken after the older Ethel had died in 1919, possibly about 1925, I'm guessing from the look of the younger Ethel. Many thanks to Val Jasper for sending this - on 28 December 2010, just three days before the centenary of the birth of the twins, Ethel Margaret and Keith Bernard.

A later photo of Ethel Hogarth, daughter of Ethel May Hill and Fletcher Hogarth. There is a photo of her with one of her daughters - and me and my mother - here.

Keith Hogarth, Ethel's twin, in 1941 before he embarked for service overseas. He survived the War and died, aged 80, in 1991.

In the Cemetery records, the 'grantee' of the original plot (which expired 29 Nov 1962) is one Elizabeth Mary Lynch. I believe that this was Ethel's younger sister, whom we knew in our family as 'Elsie', and that the first burial in the plot was that of her son Thomas Mathew [sic] Lynch, aged 0 years, having died 5 November 1912. Elizabeth Mary (b. 1891) married one T. [Thomas?] M. Lynch, so prolly she provided the gravesite (she bought for her son) for Ethel in 1919 and then again for Will in 1927.

It's very striking that tho Ethel May Hill is buried in the RC section (having converted to Catholicism to marry WEG) her second husband's - Fletcher Hogarth's - remains are something like half a kilometre away, in the Presbyterian section. His grave (shown left, in the bottom of the photo) is also unmarked, at FA 585.

Not only that, but her father's grave is also far away, as he was C of E and she converted to Catholicism to marry her first husband.

Ethel Hogarth (daughter of Fletcher and Ethel) married Karl Lothringer and had two daughters, May and Alma. The younger Ethel died in November 1952.

Keith Hogarth married Ruby May Herridge, known in the family as Bonnie, and they had four children, including Ian and Peter Hogarth, Delys Perry, and Valerie Jasper.