Mrs. S. Starr, Senr.                                                                                                                           “The residence of Mrs. S. Starr, senr., of West Molong, was the scene of a happy gathering on Wednesday, the 12th instant, when the members of her family attended to celebrate her 83rd birthday. Needless to say, all the family were pleased to see the old lady looking so well and hearty and as active as one many years her junior. Amongst the members present were — Richard (Copper Hill), William and David (Molong), Mrs. Pearsall (Sydney), and Mrs. W. Crook (Exchange Hotel, Orange), who each presented Mrs. Starr with a memento of the occasion, which was heartily appreciated by the venerable recipient Mrs. Starr, who has resided in the Molong district for upward of 60 years, is highly respected. She has living seven children, 27 grandchildren, and 20 great grandchildren. Amongst the grandchildren, seven are doing their duty for their country at the front and one, Gordon Starr, has made the supreme sacrifice.”                                                                                                                                          – Molong Argus (NSW, 1896-1921), Friday 21 June 1918, Page 1.

The article above relates to my great, great, great grandmother Betsey Starr nee Edwards and Betsey is the subject of my ‘B’ post. On the surface, Betsey led a fairly regular life but she also led quite a long life and saw a lot of changes in that lifetime.

Betsey was born 12 June 1835 in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England to parents Richard Edwards and Elisabeth Catley. Her father Richard was a shepherd and the family consisted of five children, of which Betsey was the youngest. By the time Betsey was 6 year old, her mother Elizabeth had died. To date, I have not managed to pinpoint the death of Betsey’s mother but she is absent from both the 184 and 1851 census. Betsey’s father, Richard, never remarried so one can presume that Betsey was left to be raised by her elder sister Edith who was ten years older than Betsey. By 1844, Edith had married and left the family home to start her own family.

Betsey continued to love at home with her father and brothers, with just one brother remaining at home in the 1851 census. The rest of the family also appear in the 1851 census, at different addresses. However, in 1852 Betsey’s sister Edith and her family emigrated to Australia as Assisted Immigrants. Perhaps it was the fact that her sister, who had presumably been a mother figure to Betsey, was a prompt for more  of the family to emigrate to Australia in 1856.

In August of 1856, Betsey arrived in Australia with her father Richard and her brother David. After arriving in Sydney, the family travelled to the township of Molong in central western NSW. For a long time, I wondered why Molong? Why did they choose the town of Molong to settle in? Molong was and still is a farming area and Richard was a shepherd so I figured that was a major reason behind the decision to settle in Molong. Maybe this was part of the reason, however I recently discovered that Betsey’s elder sister and her family had settled in Molong so this was probably the deciding factor behind the move to Molong.

The next 13 years of Betsey’s life saw her give birth to her first child, Phoebe, in 1858; marry Samuel Starr (my 3x great grandfather) in 1860; and give birth to a further six children between 1860 and 1872. Over this time, Betsey settled into the small community of Molong and raised her family with her sister Edith also raising her family in Molong over the same period. The two families were close, with Betsey’s son William marrying Edith’s daughter Hannah Whitley. It seems strange to us in modern times to even consider marrying our first cousins, but in small rural communities it happened quite often in the past.

Now, all of this is very ordinary for a woman of Betsey’s time but Betsey was to live a long life and major world events were just around the corner. First, Betsey was to witness the birth of a new century: the 19th Century. Now, I don’t know what people would have been feeling in 1899 as they thought about the start of a new century but I do know that when we were approaching the start of the 21st Century there were all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around and people just didn’t know what a new century would bring. I have ton assume that perhaps people back in the late 1800s are feeling some similar feelings as they contemplated the start of a new century. And not far into the new century, a major world event was to occur with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.

For much of the British Empire, this was a major shock and many people could remember no other monarch before Queen Victoria as she had been on the throne for so long. Betsey would have been one of these, as she was born well into Queen Victoria’s reign. But the changes didn’t end there for Betsey. In 1914, World War I broke out and it’s effects would be felt worldwide. At the time of the war breaking out, Betsey had a total of 27 grandchildren living. Of these 27, nine were within the age range to serve their country and seven of these grandchildren enlisted and served overseas. As mentioned in the newspaper article at the start of the post, one of these grandchildren paid the ultimate price: Private (William) Gordon Starr was killed in action 20 July 1916 on the battlefields of France.

I can only imagine what Betsey would have felt at the loss of her grandson, and the continued worry of the other 6 grandchildren that she had serving overseas during WWI. I can only imagine the relief she felt when the remaining 6 grandchildren returned home to Australia with end of the war. Betsey was to have only a few more years with her family, dying in 1923 at the advanced age of 87 years.

In her long life, Betsey had gone from living in rural England to travelling to the other side of the world to a new country. She celebrated the expected events for a woman of her era, marrying and raising a family; but she also witnessed tremendous change in the latter part of her life with the death of a monarch and the outbreak of the First World War. She would have also been around to witness the beginnings of the Roaring Twenties. As her legacy, Betsey left behind a family of six children; twenty-six grandchildren; and 20 great-grandchildren.