William BASTER

   General Notes:

Occupation: Butcher

***************** From The NOBLE Family History Site http://website.lineone.net/~jcn/Baster/pioneers.htm Extract from: Victoria and its Metropolis Past and Present Vol. 2: The Colony and its People in 1888 Past and Present:

"William Baster, North Melbourne, is a native of London who arrived in Melbourne in 1851. He was first employed as a butcher's assistant but soon started for the Goldfields and worked as a digger for several years. He returned to Melbourne and commenced business on his own account in 1855 at Collingwood where he was married, and then revisited the diggings.

In 1867 he came back to Melbourne and started again as a butcher at South Melbourne. Carrying on a business there until 1879, when he removed to Swanston Street, but the following year he went to Sydney, and afterwards to New Zealand, and was in the butchering trade in both places. Finally he returned to Melbourne and purchased, and is now conducting the old-established business of a chopping butcher to the trade, at 2 O'Connell Street."

Peter Baster, a descendant of William Baster, and his wife Dorothy, of Maldon, Victoria, Australia wrote a few details giving rather more colour to events. Much of what follows is extracted from these writings. William went to Beechworth, a lovely area and Peter says the Shire Museum historians and government officials were most eager to help him uncover a few more details.

Australia was a Crown Colony then and under continual civil administration with miners having to be licensed and businesses licensed and registered, and it all went down on paper which is in existence today.

William lived in the Spring Creek settlement, which no longer exists, and his second child, William Edwin was born there. The settlement was a mile upstream from Beechworth on a creek of the same name which still runs through Beechworth. James Samuel, William's first child, was born at the Woolshed diggings two years before and was baptised at the same time as William Edwin. Harriet was born at a place known colloquially as 'Indi' meaning the Indigo Diggings near Chiltern.

Gold had been found at Woolshed Creek in 1854 and it developed into a rich field. The diggings were a couple of miles downstream from Beechworth and began at the falls and a gorge. They took their name from a woolshed of rough timber and bark which stood at a place where now stands a cattle yard at a curve in the track. It was built by a drover who over-landed sheep to New South Wales. When the rush began one of the early diggers, an American, demolished the shed to timber his claim. The creek area, with a simple bridge crossing the ford, has largely returned to nature now, and all the old bridges have disappeared. The township which served the diggings once had 16 hotels and in 1855, seven butchers and two slaughtering butchers, not to mention a 'Professor of Music'.

In 1880 the Woolshed was the site of some of the activities of the bushranger Ned Kelly. A height nearby is called 'Kelly Lookout' and Sherritt's hut under 'Long Range' was where Aaron Sherritt was shot by his boyhood friend Joe Byrne from a house across the creek in the unfounded belief that he had informed on the Kelly gang. Ned Kelly and his mother were held in Beechworth gaol for a while.

All this, however, occurred some years after William and his family had moved from the diggings. The creek is still prospected and is noted for its gemstones but the Woolshed is no longer a gold rush area, having returned to more pastoral pursuits.

A local paper known as the Ovens and Murray Advertiser was searched by Peter and Mary and they discovered that a William Baster's name was listed in the regular monthly post office column concerning uncollected mail. Also listed were the names 'William Baxter' and 'John Bastie' which, it is suggested, might also have been for him. If so, it will not be the first time that we have discovered variations in the spelling of the name Baster and, no doubt, it will not be the last either.

(Note: A William BASTER arrived in Port Melbourne on board the 'Gibson Craig' in March 1851 and appears to have travelled with a James and Mary Baster. )

William married Harriet HORNER, daughter of James LEEK and Eliza HORNER, on 4 Jun 1855 in St Peters, Melbourne, Australia ²³⁵.^,492 (Harriet HORNER was born in Otley, Yorkshire, England, christened on 26 Dec 1841 in Otley, Yorkshire, England ⁴⁹⁴ and died in 1878 in Victoria, Australia ⁴⁹⁵.)

   Marriage Notes:

From The NOBLE Family History Site http://website.lineone.net/~jcn/Baster/pioneers.htm Marriage certificate: St Peter's, Melbourne: 4 June 1855 William Baster, bachelor, born
Stepney, Middlesex, butcher, aged 22 of Collingwood, parents: Samuel Baster, Maltster and
Rachel Cooper, and Harriet Horner Branker, spinster, born Ottely, Yorkshire, aged 16 of
Collingwood, parents: John Horner Branker, Joiner, and Eliza Horner.