Digging through my mother's side of the family, and bringing certain things into light, one thing in particular has really struck me. In 1997, I moved to La Trobe University and lived on campus for three years, before ultimately settling in the northern suburbs of Melbourne (with a hiatis back in the south-east for as long as I could bear it). I have never lived on my Arrernte homelands, though they have formed a massive part of my life. Despite this, somehow, for the past 28 years, I have managed to lob myself in the middle of a number of family addresses related to my mum's side. Every day, I have been walking on streets they walked on, yet until I dug through their birth, death and marriage certificates, I had no idea this was the case.
Mum has mainly tied herself to Clifton Hill. This is where she spent her childhood, and where her grandparents lived. Yet there are numerous addresses in Collingwood, Northcote, Preston, Thornbury and Reservoir where her forebears lived. Indeed, with the exception of her Waller and Amor ancestors who were based around Prahran, every single other one of them lived in these suburbs at some point. They may have been born in Campbellfield, or Panton Hill, but they ended up here. And I have, in turn, lived in numerous rentals that have been a stone-throw away from some of these old addresses listed in the directories.
There is one address though that stands alone as a site of significance: 19 Parslow Street, Clifton Hill. This place saw more comings and goings of my mum's family than any other. It was a modest house, in a then-dodgy part of the suburb, yet it features continuously in multiple family records for about 60 years.
I have already introduced the first person I found linked to this address: my great-great-great grandmother Mary Purser died at 19 Parslow St, Clifton Hill, in 1915. I do not know when she moved there, though can hazard a guess: if you look at this property website, the house is listed as being built in 1910, so there's a good chance that's when she became an occupant. I know from her death certificate, that she was living with family, because her daughter-in-law Annie is listed as the witness to Mary's passing. Annie was married to Mary's son John, and John was interred with his mother and father at the Strathallen Cemetery - the old part of Preston General - when he himself passed away in 1947. Annie and John lived in nearby Walker Street, but digging around in the Sands and McDowell directory of 1910, I soon found out that the owner of 19 Parslow was Alfred Brown - Mary's youngest living son - and his wife Frances.
19 Parslow Street was also the birthplace, and childhood home, of my grandfather Ernest, and his siblings. Ernie was born there a year after his great grandmother passed away, so some time in 1915 or 1916, the house changed hands from Alfred Brown, to his nephew (and my great-grandfather), Cyril Purser Tuttleby. Given Ernie was the youngest of four children, that means there was a four generation span moving under the same roof in short succession.
When he married my grandmother Lorna in 1940, Ernest lived at 111 Westgarth Street in Northcote. Both his parents had passed away by that point, and I could not find who was in 19 Parslow following their deaths, so it would be reasonable to assume that the house had been sold and people had moved on. This wasn't the case - on grabbing the Sands and McDougall's Directory of 1945 and having a flick through, by then 19 Parslow Street was my grandfather Ern's listed address, and thus it was where my two uncles spent their early childhood years. I therefore believe it stayed in Brown-Tuttleby family hands in the intervening years.
Some time after my mother was born, the family had moved into a place in Spensley Street, Clifton Hill. On the selling of 19 Parslow Street, it could be assumed that this was the end of the line for five generations of my family in that one address. Instead though, an unusual twist happened. The next owner of this address was a Mrs Avis Turnbull, formerly Waller, born McVeigh - my great-grandmother - so the house changed hands to the in-laws.
Despite being remarried, Avis was the sole owner of this property, and as stated, her life and antics were colourful enough that she is going to get her own entry. A key thing to note about Avis though was that she was fiercely independent. Her death certificate in 1969 lists this property as her address still at that time, her second husband had predeceased her, and given she only had one child, her sole inheritor of 19 Parslow Street was my grandmother Lorna. Avis' will though was, in short, a work of art, and will be examined later. Therefore, the final owner of 19 Parslow Street, after four generations, and a change-in-hands from one side of the family to the other, was the wife of the man who was born in it just over 50 years earlier.
I am not sure when my grandmother Lorna finally sold this property and after such a long history with us lot, it moved on to house a new family. I do know that it would have been before 1976, according to the property history websites. The last time it was sold, this modest house, purchased on a single income, in a formerly undesirable factory-worker pocket of Clifton Hill, fetched over $2M. When I think of that, and the other places members of my family have lived in all over this rapidly gentrifying area, it does make me wish we had sat on even just one of these houses for a wee bit longer.
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