This is the Hughan who breaks my heart...her life began with tragedy and ended the same way, and the life led in between certainly had more sadness than joy.
Marion Ellen Hughan was born on a hot, oppressive day in the Melbourne summer of 1867. Bushfires were raging in the mountain ranges around Melbourne, and the local newspaper reported that the air itself was "very heavy".
In her home in Inkerman Street, St. Kilda, 37 year old Phoebe Hughan was in the full throes of her third labour. Hot and most likely exhausted from caring for her desperately ill second daughter Marion for the past four weeks, Phoebe would have been distraught as she laboured to give birth to this third child. The family doctor, Dr. Arnold, would have been moving from patient to patient, giving encouragement to Phoebe whilst using all of his skills to save the life of the 15 month old Marion.
I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like in that household...what should have been joyous would have been tainted with utter despair. So February 11, 1867, was to mark the ending of one Hughan life, and the beginning of another.
The new child was named Marion Ellen for her sister's memory- a very big load for a little girl to carry through life. She was known to everyone as 'Minnie', and despite losing one sister on the day of her birth, she still had an older sister to share her first years with- seven year old Ruth Madeleine.
In 1869 , despite having not even turned two, Minnie was taken with Ruth and her parents on a nine month excursion on her father's schooner, the Pilot. They sailed right up the northern coast of Western Australia, looking for pearl shells amongst other activities. Also with the family was the girls' cousin, Gilbert McCallum, who was 14 or 15 years old. He was the son of Allan Hughan's sister, Jessie, who had died in 1865. In November of 1868 he wrote to his little sister Ivy, who was back in Ballarat staying with her Aunt and Uncle, Bertha and Henry Bishop. He wrote:
"My Dear Ivy,
I was very delighted to receive your nice long letter but very sorry you and Roland have been so ill and I trust you both will get strong again. I need not say that I hope Roland is a good boy for I never knew him to be otherwise and such a contrast between his size and little Marion’s but I wish you could hear her sing nearly any tune if you once commence it and she will beat time with her hands."
Marion/Minnie was 21 months old at this time, and clearly already displaying signs of being very musical like her mother.
When she was three and a half years old,the Pilot was wrecked on a reef near New Caledonia, and Minnie's father decided to make the Island home for his wife and daughters.With sister Ruth, and younger sister Aline who was born in Noumea in 1871, Minnie received her schooling at the St. Joseph of Cluny School with the other daughters of European settlers and French administrative staff.
Minnie and her sisters were taught piano and other instruments by their mother, who, being a trained music teacher, also took other girls for lessons. When they were old enough they participated with their parents and others in concerts and other musical occasions, and Minnie in particular was considered an exceptional musician.
In 1881, Minnie's elder sister Ruth was married to a friend of their father's, 44 year old Francis Charles Holworthy. Another sister, Rose Isabelle, had died in March of 1874, aged only four months, so after Ruth's marriage there was only 14 year old Minnie and ten year old Aline left living at home with their photographer father and music teacher mother.
The year 1883 was to prove very tragic for the Hughan women, for they not only lost their daughter and sister, Ruth Hughan Holworthy, in May of 1883, but also their husband and father Allan Hughan the following November.
Here was Minnie at the age of sixteen years...fatherless and having had three of her four sisters die before her.By all accounts Phoebe Hughan was a "nervy" creature, and most likley even more so after losing her daughter and husband within months of each other.She and her daughters remained in Noumea for some years after Allan's death, with shipping records showing that they had occasional trips to Sydney.
Like her mother, Minnie also taught music as she got older, and between the two of them they must have earned enough to make a livelihood in Noumea.
Phoebe Hughan's mood changes and mental health issues must have worsened as the decade progressed, because on November 16,1889, she was admitted as a permanent resident of Bayview House in Tempe, Sydney, where she remained until her death in 1900.
Shipping records usually didn't differentiate between Minnie and Aline Hughan, referring to both as "Miss Hughan", so in references made to voyages between Noumea and Sydney by "Miss Hughan" we don't know which of the two sisters the entries were referring to.
The ship 'Birksdale' arrived in Sydney on November 14, 1889, with Mrs Hughan and Miss Hughan on board- presumably this was eldest survivng daughter, Minnie, aged 22, taking her ill mother to Sydney for treatment, as Phoebe was institutionalised two days later.
Minnie and Aline continued to live in Noumea, and records of them making trips to Sydney exist for the years 1894, 1895, 1896,1897,1898 and two trips in 1901, then 1905, 1908 and 1909.The latter trip was definitely by Aline Hughan, as in 1908 Minnie was married, at the age of 41, to a man from Noumea!
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