The Story of Susan Mary McCane

This week I'm telling what I know about my maternal grand aunt, Susan Mary McCane  1891 - 1974.  
*Common Ancestors:  Owen McCane (Muckian) and Margaret Farrell.

Susan was my grandmother's only sister and according to family connections, they were very close throughout their entire lives.  There were many parallels in their lives, and while I've told my grandmother's story before, I've never posted about Susan, so I think it's time.

Just this past year, I received a batch of photos of Susan and her family, from a second cousin.  I've never seen any of these photos before, and this prompted me to look a little more deeply at Susan's life. There was one particular shot which quickly became a favourite out of all the photos sent to me.

Photo shared by my second cousin Therese Olsen

Here's my grand aunt Susan trying to pose with all her grandchildren at a birthday party, sometime in the 1950s.  I just love the informality of this photo and the fact that Susan is not even looking at the camera at all, while most of the children are, apart from a couple of what appear to be upset babies at the back who are the focus of Susan's attention!   I'm sure the point of getting all the kids together was to have a record of this special day with their grandmother and it looks like the photographer just gave up on getting Susan looking the right way.  I wonder if the occasion was her birthday?  I was also left wondering where this photo was taken, as that looks like an old wooden bridge that they're all standing beside!  Where were they celebrating?  It looks like most of the grandchildren are wearing swimmers, so perhaps they're all near a great swimming spot, like a creek or river.  I want to know more!

Not long after my second cousin sent her collection of photos, I was sent a digital version of a book celebrating the 100th anniversary of Gumlu State School by a third cousin, in which Susan was mentioned as one of the very first teachers at the school.  As I am now coming to the end of a 40-year career in education myself, it always peaks my interest when I find out that particular relatives were also teachers, so this was an extra prompt to delve further into the events of Susan's life.

So, here I go with my attempt to tell my grand aunt's story ...  (if any of Susan's descendants read this post and have more information, I would very much appreciate it if you would share this with me)

Susan Mary McCane was born in November of 1892 in Charters Towers, Queensland, Australia.  Her parents were Owen McCane (Muckian), an Irish immigrant, and Margaret Farrell, an English immigrant.  

Susan was the eldest of seven children, who were all born in Charters Towers.  After Susan's birth in 1892,

Sarah Mary Josephine (my grandmother) was born in 1894, when Susan was aged 1.

Edward William came along in 1896, when Susan was 4.

Thomas Owen (known as Tom) was born in 1899, when Susan was 6.

John Michael (known as Jack) was born in 1901, when Susan was 8 years old.

James Patrick (known as Jim) came along in 1904, when Susan was 11.

Sadly, the eldest son, Edward William, died in 1905.  Susan was 12 years old at the time. (I have told the tragic story of Edward in a previous post).

The last of her brothers, Edward Joseph, was born in 1907, when Susan was 14. 

Photo shared by my 1st cousin 1x removed, Lawrence (Lawrie) McCane

This photo shows Susan with her mother and father and all her siblings on the occasion of her sister's wedding in 1921. 

Back row L to R:  James Patrick McCane (known as Jim), Thomas Owen McCane (known as Tom), John Michael McCane (known as Jack), and Edward Joseph (known as Eddie).

Front row L to R:  Sarah Mary Josephine McCane, father Owen McCane, mother Margaret McCane nee Farrell, and Susan McCane.  (Susan was 28 years of age in this photo, married and the mother of a young son).

Map showing the location of the Pumping Station, the workers' cottages and the provisional school.

Susan and her siblings grew up in the small community that lived at the site of the steam powered water pumping station, on the south bank of the Burdekin River, about nine miles north of the town of Charters Towers.  The pumping station, with its boilers, engines, pumps and inlet shaft, had opened in 1889 as the first phase of a water scheme planned by the Charters Towers Water Board.

There were several cottages also built at the pumping station for the twenty or so men employed there, along with a 'provisional school'.  Susan and her family lived in one of the small cottages, and the children attended the school when they reached the appropriate age.

Provisional schools were a means of providing education in areas where the expense of building a full State School was unjustified (primarily because the population in the area was small, unstable and/or itinerant).  As the name implies, provisional schools were intended as a temporary solution that would eventually be replaced by a standard State School, if deemed necessary.  Quite often the provisional school buildings were often of a very low standard in terms of the building materials and limited furniture provided.

The Pumping Station Provisional School was built as a temporary solution to provide education not just for the children of the pumping station workers, but also for the children of local farmers around that area, and the children of the woodcutters' families who lived in temporary accommodation in the bush.  The school opened with an enrolment of 22 students, and had an average of around 27 students in any given year. 

Susan's father, Owen McCane (Muckian) worked at the pumping station as a 'fireman', which meant he worked as part of a team of men who kept the steam powered engines working.  He worked there from around 1892 to 1912.  

At this time, it was compulsory for children to attend school from the age of 6 until the age of 12. Susan attended this provisional school from 1899, when she turned 6, until 1904 when she reached the leaving age of 12.

I found an item in the newspaper Northern Miner that listed Susan's achievement when she was in Class V in 1904.  She had won a prize for coming first in her class for "general proficiency".  It seems she was a bright student. 

At the end of seven years of compulsory attendance, students did not have the opportunity for further education unless they came from quite wealthy families.  Given that Susan grew up in a small community outside a regional town in northern Queensland, her options were limited.  Becoming a teacher was one of these limited choices for women at the time, and that's what she did.

It's highly likely that she became what was then known as a 'pupil teacher' and worked alongside the teacher of the provisional school as a sort of apprentice. The pupil-teacher system was the main method of recruiting and training teachers  during the late 1880s to early 1900s in Queensland.  It was not until 1914 that a teacher training college was established, and that was in Brisbane, in southern Queensland.  Eventually the pupil-teacher system was phased out between 1923 and 1935.

I'm assuming Susan became a pupil-teacher for a number of years at the Pumping Station Provisional School, as that is where her parents and siblings were still living until around 1914.  After that, her father and mother moved to a farm on the banks of Molongle Creek, near Guru, which was about 70 miles away from Charters Towers, nearer to the coast.

Usually it's hard to find records for women during the 19th and early 20th century, apart from birth, marriage and death certificates, and you have to engage in a lot of guesswork about their lives.  In Susan's case however, I found her name in a few places. 

I found Susan's name in the Queensland Education Office Gazette in both 1914 and 1919.

The primary role of the Education Office Gazette was to provide instructions and information to the staff of government schools.  As the Queensland Education Department was quite a large organisation and had schools spread across the state from the most remote settlements to the inner city of Brisbane, this gazette was the most effective line of communication at the time.

It was a monthly publication that covered all the necessary items of interest for teachers, including admissions, promotions, transfers and resignations.

The 1914 gazette listed her admission to the teaching profession.

Susan was appointed as head teacher at the Molongle Creek Provisional School in May of 1914.

Her appointment was also mentioned in a local Charters Towers newspaper at the time as well.

Northern Miner, Friday 1 May, 1914, p 7.

The Molongle Creek Provisional School had only just opened in October of 1913, after the local residents had "erected a tent near the railway station, about 24ft long by 12ft wide, (which is) is cool and airy, and will do excellently as a temporary building"  (excerpt from the North Queensland Register, dated Wed 7 May, 1913) and a teacher named "Miss Dean, from the Burdekin Bridge tent school has been transferred here as school teacher"  (excerpt from the North Queensland Register, dated Tues 4 Nov, 1913).  The enrolment at the time was 9 pupils.

School broke up for the holidays on December 20th 1913, and Miss Dean went home to Charters Towers.  Unfortunately, Miss Dean fell ill and never returned.  She passed away in May of 1914, and Susan then took over.

I am in absolute awe of these women!  Teaching under tents, during the excruciatingly long, hot and humid summers, with almost no teaching materials or resources, apart from a few slates and books.  Susan's teaching career was relatively short, from 1914 to August of 1919, when she married.  At that time married women were not allowed to continue teaching and had to resign, and this is what Susan did.

 This was recorded in the 1919 edition of the Education Officer Gazette.

An outbreak of bubonic plague at the time forced the continued closure of the Molongle Creek Provisional School, after Susan's resignation.  Good reason to keep the school closed, I think!

During Susan's time as teacher, the school remained a provisional school until 1915, when it then became a State School.  Its name was eventually changed to Gumlu State School in 1920, the year after Susan had left.

There were some notable improvements during Susan's time.  The original tent building was replaced in 1916 and the new school was built "on blocks, 24 by 18 feet, boarded up to 4 feet with blinds on three sides" (excerpt from the 100th Anniversary of Gumlu State School book)!

This photo (taken from the book mentioned above) shows that newer building as it looked in 1921.

Susan's name also appeared in Pugh's Almanac & Queensland Directory in 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 and 1919.

This publication covered everything from events on that year, to shipping and railway information and obituaries.  

It also contained a country towns directory with details about the services and trades in those towns together with the names of those who ran or conducted the service/trade.  This included the name of the local school teacher.

Susan's name was listed as the teacher for the Gumlu area in ....

1915

1917

1918

Of course, during Susan's appointment to Molongle Creek Provisional School, World War 1 was raging and this impacted on the lives of the pupils and their families, as well as the teacher.

A newspaper item published in 1917 mentions the contributions made by Susan and her pupils to the Red Cross Society.

The article printed in the Bowen Independent, dated Saturday 10 November 1917, mentions that the Red Cross Society group which met in Bowen every fortnight

"resolved that a letter of thanks be sent to Miss McCane and the pupils of Gumlu School for their donation of tinned goods."

Further down in the article there is mention of the separate items donated by Miss McCane herself, as well as the items donated by the pupils.

"12 pillow slips, 4 tins tobacco, 2 tins jam" were donated by Miss McCane.

"School children:

L. Bradshaw, 2 tins jam, 1 tin cocoa;

Ethel Sibson, 1 tin tobacco;

Willie Sibson, 1 tin milk;

Harold Sibson, 1 tin fruit;

Jack Sibson, 3 tins ham and chicken paste;

Ashley Read, 2 lbs load sugar, 1tin sardines;

Eddie Northwood, 2 tins sardines;

Denis McLean, 1 tin cigarettes;

Pat McLean, 1 tin tobacco;

Jack Savage, 1 tin sardines."

Those 10 pupils must have been so impressed that their efforts were reported in the local newspaper!

Susan had met a young man named Frank Bidgood soon after she had moved to the area. Frank had taken up a small farm in the area near Wakala, not far from Gumlu.  He and five other young men from the area had enlisted and gone off to fight in the great war.  I wonder if Susan and Frank wrote to each other during the war?  

Frank had enlisted at Bowen in June of 1916, at the age of 32 and was shipped off to fight in France.  He was reported missing in April of 1917.  Imagine the agony Susan must have suffered worrying whether or not he would return, and return alive!  I imagine when she was organising donations for the Red Cross Society, she was thinking particularly of Frank!

As it turned out Frank had been captured by the German Army near Reincourt, and he then spent nearly 2 years as a prisoner of war in Germany.  He arrived back home to Australia in May of 1919, but the other five young men who had enlisted with him had all been killed in action.  Frank was the only one of the Gumlu group who survived the war.  Susan must have experienced sheer joy when she found out Frank was coming home!

Photo originally shared by T Bidgood on Ancestry.com

Susan McCane married Frank Alexander Bidgood in 1919 when she was 26 years old, and he was 36. Frank had only just returned from war four months previously.  

A newspaper item, published in the Bowen Independent in September of 1919, gave lovely details of the wedding, and the previous celebrations attended by residents of Gumlu and Susan's pupils:

"On 13th August, a wedding of much interest was celebrated at "El Rita", Gumlu, the residence of the bride's parents, when Miss Susan McCane was united in the bonds of holy matrimony to Mr. Frank A. Bidgood, Toowoomba (late A.I.F.)  (says the Townsville Daily Bulletin).

The bride wore an exquisite frock of ivory crepe de chene, beautifully hand embroidered and trimmed with orange blossoms.  She also wore a lovely veil, which was kindly lent by Mrs. W. Gorden, Proserpine (a recent bride).

The bride was attended by her sister Sarah, as bridesmaid.  The bridegroom was supported by Mr. John Lenanne, late A.I.F., as best man.  The bride's present to the groom was a handsome gold Albert.  The bridegroom presented the bride with a diamond and pearl pendant, and the bridesmaid with a pearl and emerald brooch.

The happy couple received many congratulatory telegrams and the presents, which included many cheques, were numerous and costly.  After the ceremony a reception was held at the residence of the bride's parents.

Previous to her marriage, Miss McCane, who has been head teacher of the Molongle Creek State School, Gumlu, for over five years, was entertained at a social evening, and presented with a beautiful silky oak duchess by the Gumlu residents.  The school children, at an afternoon tea, presented their teacher with a handsome eight-day clock, suitably inscribed."

I think it's fitting that the Gumlu residents recognised Susan's contribution to the community.  While technically she wasn't the first teacher of the provisional school (Miss Dean was there first, but only for 3 months), Susan really was the person who put in all the hard work in establishing the school and ensuring all children in that community received the education they deserved.

Susan and Frank set up home on their farm at Wakala, near Gumlu.  It was a mixed farm, where several different crops were grown, including sugar cane.

This photo would have been taken in 1921, and shows Susan's husband Frank standing amongst the cane on his farm.  He's the moustached man mid-shot. 

To his right stands Susan's father, Owen McCane, holding Susan and Frank's first born, Leonard.  On the far left of the photo stands one of Susan's brothers, John Michael McCane (known as Jack), and standing beside Frank in the middle of the photo is the youngest of Susan's brothers, Edward Joseph (known as Eddie).

Susan and Frank went on to have seven children over a period of eleven years.

Leonard Ashley (known as Lenny) was born in 1920.

Ernest Alfred (known as Ernie) was born in 1922.

c.1927 
Irene on the left, Lorna on the right.
Photo shared by Therese Olsen.

Susan then gave birth to two daughters, two years apart, just as her own  mother had done.

Lorna Margaret Alice came along in 1924.

Irene Alma (known as Bon) was born in 1926.

Frank Alexander (Junior) was born in 1930.

Neville Edward came along in 1931.

Alfred Owen (known as Fred) was born in 1932. 

Tragically, Susan became a widow that same year.  Frank died in February of 1932, at the age of 48.   

Photo shared by my second cousin Therese Olsen

This family photo was actually taken after Frank's death.  His likeness was taken from the wedding photo and superimposed on the family photo, which was taken at the end of 1932. 

Susan was left widowed at the age of  39, with seven small children, ranging in ages from 11 to a few months old.  She continued to work hard to keep the farm for nearly 15 years following the death of her husband..  

She was listed on the City Directories for Queensland as a "farmer" living and working at Gumlu for the years:

1936

1937

1938

1941

  and 1942.

By this time, Susan was aged 50.

War had touched her life once again, with her two eldest sons, Leonard (Lenny) and Ernest (Ernie), enlisting in the CMF - Citizen Military Forces. 

Leonard enlisted in December of 1940, and was discharged in July of 1942.  His posting at discharge was with 31 Battalion D Company.  

Ernest enlisted in September of 1942 and was discharged in June of 1944.  His posting at discharge was with the 22 Battalion Volunteer Defence Corps.

Susan's children were now grown up and starting married lives and families of their own.  Leonard married in 1942, Ernest in 1943.  Lorna married in 1945, and Irene married in 1947.  Neville married in 1951 and both Frank Jnr. and Alfred married in late 1953.

By 1949 electoral rolls showed that Susan had left the Gumlu area, and had moved into a new home on Poole Street, in Bowen.  She was now 57 years old.

Photo shared by my second cousin Therese Olsen

This photo shows Susan surrounded by her children at Christmas time in Bowen, in the early 1960s.

Photo shared by my second cousin Therese Olsen

This photo was taken on the same day, but this time Susan is surrounded by her seven children and their wives or husbands.  Again, I love the informality of these shots and everyone seems so happy to be together.

Susan lived to the ripe old age of 81.  She had by that time moved to live with one of her daughters in Rockhampton, on the central coast of Queensland.  That is where she passed away, on the 30th of June, 1974.

She was however buried in the Home Hill Cemetery, south of Gumlu, beside her husband Frank.

Photos of Susan in the latter part of her life:

All photos kindly shared by my second cousin Therese Olsen

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that there were a number of parallels in the lives of Susan and her sister Sarah (my grandmother).  I'll finish this post by sharing a few of these:

Sisters Sarah (left) and Susan (right) McCane

Both sisters became teachers.

Susan's career lasted five years, while Sarah's lasted for ten.

Both sisters married when they were 26 years old.

Both sisters married farmers, and worked on these farms.

Both sisters only had 2 daughters in their large families, as their mother did.

Both sisters gave birth to their last child when they were in their early 40s.

Both sisters ended up living in Bowen after moving from the Gumlu area.

They both adored their families and remained close until the younger Sarah passed away in April of 1970.

Susan passed away, four years later, in 1974, which coincidentally was the same year that Sarah's husband (my grandfather) passed.

Special Note to any family members:  If you have memories to add, photos or information to share, can I graciously ask that you do so.  Please use the comments box below or email me.  It may prove to be invaluable to the story and provide future generations with something to truly treasure.