veale.com.au/genealogy
• Home • My Ancestors • e-Reports • Stories •		• phd • genealogy • personal •

William Hammond Raines and Emma Elizabeth Bean were married according to Wesleyan rites at the Wesleyan Church in Geelong, Victoria, Australia on Tuesday, June 17, 1856.  He is my 2nd Great Grand-Uncle.

Below are some articles on the couple, celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary on June 17, 1921.

William Hammond and Emma (Bean) Raines -- 65th Wedding Anniversary newspaper articles on their life in Australia during the mid-late 1800's.

THE ARGUS TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1921 JOURNEY BAREFOOT OLD COLONIST'S REMINISCENCES
A Meal for Two Kicks

A Melbourne of another day is described by Mr. and Mrs W.H. Raines, of North Carlton, who celebrated the 65th anniversary of their wedding last week. "The bush came down to the site of Parliament House, and there was a blackfellow's camp where the Fitzroy Gardens are," said Mr. Raines. He has a fund of anecdotes of the early days. A Kent man, he came out to Tasmania in a barque in 1846, the voyage occupying nearly six months. After three years in Tasmania he decided to come to Victoria, and crossed the straits in a small sailing vessel. There was very little water in the Yarra, and they waited three weeks before wind and tide enabled them to come up stream. Mr. Raines went to sea on a variety of enterprises, but in 1851 he heard the call of the diggings, and with seven others he tramped inland.

His next venture was an original scheme for oyster catching at Westernport. The shopkeepers rushed the oysters, and paid him 2/6 a dozen for them. His partner was a Norwegian sailor, who had been sent out to Australia many years previously for having killed a man in a fight, but owing to some useful work in diving for bullion in a sunken ship he had received a free pardon. For a time the oyster catching flourished. Then there came a calm of three weeks, and their little boat was unable to sail around to Melbourne. Provisions began to to give out, and the situation became serious. "We had nothing to eat except oysters." said Mr. Raines, "and we became very tired of them." So he and "Tom," the Norwegian, decided to tramp to Melbourne. They had no idea what rivers or mountains lay in their way on the overland route: however, they took a compass and set out.

"The first night out we came to a grog-shanty," says Mr. Raines in telling the story. "We were cold, and muddy, and hungry, and neither of us had a shilling. 'Leave it to me," said Tom, and we went in. Tom ordered two loaves of bread, some cheese, and some rum, and we had a great feed. Then he went to the landlord. "The boy and I haf no money.' he said in his broken English. 'But I tell you vot to do. I can see that you are very angry, so you may kick me twice. But only twice, and not too hard.' And with that he bends down in front of the landlord.

The two set out again dark, and disaster soon overtook them. They got into a swamp, where young Raines lost first his way, and then his Wellington boots, which were pulled off in the mud. Daylight came, and there was no trace of them.. With strips of material torn from a sack, wrapped around his feet, he set off with the burly sailor again. It was a long and painful journey. At last they heard a cock crowing in the distance. "Ha! That will be St.Kilda," said the sailor. It proved to be Dandenong.

Melbourne was reached at last, and Mr. Raines has amusing recollections in "bluffing" hotel keepers until he borrowed enough money to go down to Geelong, where his sister lived. He has a distinct recollection of the ball held to celebrate the opening of the Melbourne-Geelong railway. Governor La Trobe was on the dais, wearing a uniform and a long sword. An alderman walking close behind tripped over the sword, grabbed at the Governor's arm for support, the Governor clutched at the town clerk, and the three of them fell off the dais through a curtain, and into the supper-room at the back.

At Geelong he met Mrs Raines, and married her when she was only 16. "People married younger in those days than they do now," Mrs Raines said reflectively. Her father came to Australia in 1836. He was a tailor, but when he arrived in Adelaide he found that there was little to do, and he joined the survey party which laid out the town. Both Mr. and Mrs Raines have vivid memories of the fine theatrical performances seen in the old days. "We may not have had moving pictures" he said "but we had Shakespeare!" He knew G.V. Brooke - afterwards drowned in the wreck of the London - and used to take the actor out fishing. Both Mr. and Mrs Raines are enthusiastic patrons of picture shows. "We go once a week," says Mr. Raines. "We have season tickets and reserved seats, but 'Mother' is so keen that if I didn't stop her she'd be there before the doors open at half past 6!" Mrs Raines indignantly described this as an exaggeration.

The old couple take a pathetic pride in the photograph of five grandsons, who were killed in the war. In spite of his old age Mr. Raines braved the crowds in the city to see the Prince of Wales when he was in Melbourne.

MARITAL MARATHON TEST OF 66 YEARS - OLD COUPLE'S DURABLE BLISS

Moderation in all things, and a cheery optimism seems to have been the chief ingredients in the making of the durable married bliss of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Raines of 598 Canning St. Carlton.

This wedded felicity has stood the test of 66 years, and is still bright and shining as the wedding ring was on the day it was slipped upon the finger of the 17 year old bride in 1856.

RADIUM WEDDING

Mr. and Mrs. Raines have just recently celebrated their radium wedding, as the 65th. anniversary is termed, and both look fit and hearty enough to establish an Australian record for martial longevity.

William Hammond Raines, who was born in 1836, arrived in Australia from Kent, England, when he was only ten, by the Psyche (..left London 17 March 1846, arrived Hobart 9 August 1846..), so feels himself to be practically an Australian native. His wife, whose maiden name is Emma Elizabeth Bean was born in Sydney in 1840.

Mr. Raines came out with his mother (Martha nee Horton) and two sisters (Fanny 14 yrs, Kitty 7 yrs), to join his father (Thomas), who had come out some years earlier to try his luck in Australia, and was at the time of the Psyche's arrival in Tasmania. When only 14 (about 1850), young William joined in the gold rush to Fryer's Creek. Before he had time to pick up many nuggets, however his sister's husband (she (Fanny) had married (in Tasmania) a sailor (Robert Johnston) on the Psyche soon after her arrival) begged him to join in an oyster dredging enterprise at Geelong. They shared a small ketch and did well with their fishing till the brother-in-law was recalled to his ship. For the sake of his sister who was heart-broken at the idea of parting with her sailor husband, young William Hammond made himself a substitute and went to sea on a voyage to Chatham Islands.

THE ONLY GIRL

Upon his return to Geelong he devoted himself again to the adventurous life of a fisherman. Soon, however, he met the only girl who ever mattered in his life, pretty little Emma Bean. Her father was a tailor, and had his business establishment, at the time little Emma was born, on the site that is now Hordern's in Sydney. Emma Elizabeth went to stay with her aunt (Jane, wife of Cornelius Bean) in Geelong, and it was not long after their first meeting that she said her blushing "I will" to sailor William Raines at the Wesleyan Church, Malop Street (Married on the 17th June, 1856 by the Rev. Mr. Hill who was subsequently murdered by a convict at Pentridge Goal).

After a life of varied vicissitudes, in which the vital, eager young hero changed from one career to another, always on impulse and out of sheer love of adventure, he settled down eventually with a butcher business in Fitzroy. Here they lived until they moved into their present home in North Carlton where they have dwelt for the last 20 years.

MOTHERING MANY

Mr. and Mrs. Raines are the proud parents of 14 children, 8 girls and 6 boys. Some have died, and most of the others are married. The war took its toll of sons and grandsons; and Mrs. Raines has scarcely ever been quite free from some kind of anxiety, grief and care which are the inevitable lot of the mother of many. She reared 5 grandchildren in addition to her own family. These were the orphaned children of a daughter (Amelia Hannah) who married a son (Reginal) of Dr. Thompson, Bishop of York. Provision was made in their grandfathers will for these children, but it was indefatigable Grannie Raines who reared and brought them up.

Both bride and bridegroom of this wonderful wedding pair are alert, bright eyed and smiling. There is a merry twinkle in the quiet blue eyes of William Hammond as he chats of the past, with never a blur in his reminiscence picture, and scarcely a fumble for a date or a name.

"Don't you listen to his fairy tales" says the soft-voiced little 83 year old bride, with a tender glance at her wonderful "Bill". Bill just smiles back into the eyes of his Little Woman, twinkles at her raillery, and continues his tale.