Biography

Deceased for some time past had been working at Pig Well but arrived in Malcolm about a week prior to his demise. On Monday he complained of feeling ill and was conveyed to the hospital but expired immediately after admission, the cause of death being infarction of the heart. Samuel had emigrated from the UK with his mother and four siblings in 1866, at the age of 12. He was 24 when he married an old family friend, Mary Susan, a widow aged 41, with four surviving children from a total of nine. The couple had a son of their own the following year and then moved to Queensland, where the child died, aged 10 years, on 22 December 1888. Samuel and Mary Susan moved to Western Australia by 1900, where, on 2 December 1901, Samuel was granted a publican's general licence for the well-known Marvel Bar Hotel, Bayley Street, Coolgardie. At the same time, he sought to sell his Elvira lease (near Red Bluff Hotel), described as a splendid five-roomed iron house, together with furniture and effects. A series of family events took over when Samuel's father died at Clunes, Victoria, in 1908, aged 84 years and his mother died in Victoria in 1909, aged 80 years. In 1910 he applied for a gold mining lease. His wife, Mary Susan, died 13 November 1911 at the Claremont Mental Asylum, aged about 75 years.