#52 ANCESTORS WEEK 10 - STRONG WOMAN

March is Women's History Month, so what better way to start than with the prompt of "Strong Woman." 

With this week's prompt we are asked...

What female in your family tree has shown remarkable strength (either physical or emotional)? Tell her story.

STRONG WOMAN

I have struggled with this prompt this week as I have been writing about two strong women on my blog for about a year now. I feel that I need to do more research on both of them and also on the social history of their times, before I write more. 

So I am going to write ad-lib on what I know from memory about just one, Louisa Brandt nee Barker. 

Louisa Barker was born circa 1850. She gave birth to her first son in 1870 in Launceston, Tasmania. 

Sometime after the birth she moved to Gulgong NSW,( a distance of approximately 1638kls) with her partner Alfred Brandt, where she had another three sons, in 1872, 1874 and 1876.

Records then show another two sons were born in Gunnedah NSW in 1878 and 1880. A daughter arrived in 1882 in Gunnedah.

If seven children in twelve years doesn’t rate a title of strong woman, I invite you to read further. 

After the birth of her seventh child, Louisa is then found in records as marrying her partner Alfred. Nothing of note there, I hear you say. 

Except the marriage took place back in Launceston Tasmania, in January 1883. This is a distance of approximately 1638 kilometres which equates to approximately 766 miles and 250 nautical miles, in those days. A trip through one and a half states in Australia and over the Bass Strait, which separates the mainland of Australia from the state of Tasmania. 

I have no idea why she agreed to this journey. But her strength must have been tested in many ways, both physically and emotionally. 

I have wondered many times as to her reason for travelling back to Tasmania for her wedding. But my wonderings are just assumptions after all, and as a Family Historian, I have been taught, I should not make assumptions! 

I often wonder as she had been living as a wife for nearly thirteen years did she make the decision to save face in her small community where she was known as Mrs? 

Was it easier to make the trip back where she could marry in relative obscurity, than acknowledged that she and Alfred were living in sin? I may never know! 

Anyway there is still more to read on my strong Louisa. After her marriage she is then found back in Gunnedah with her now husband Alfred, where they ran an Inn. 

In July 1883 just six months after her marriage, my Louisa’s strength was tested again, with the death of her husband by falling down a well at the back of their Inn. 

Now she was left a widow with seven children. But records show that she took on the Publican role and obtained her licence to run the Sugarloaf Inn after Alfred’s death. 

It was probably here that she met her second husband August Engstrom, whom she married in 1886. They then went on to have another daughter in 1887. 

But her strength was put to the test with the death of her husband August, in 1888. She seemed determined to live a difficult life! 

In 1890  tragedy was sent to test her again with the death of her fourteen year old son John in  a tragic accident.

Louisa continued to run the Public Houses and Inns until her death in 1915. 

She is in my mind a “Strong Woman”. 


For further readings on Louisa, I have written 28 creative non-fiction stories that you will find on the side bar to the right, under Louisa BARKER Circa 1849-1915 (Creative Non-Fiction)