Follett Family

Thomas Follett Senior, 1831-1881

Thomas and Mary Follett with their daughters Elizabeth (4) and Mary (an infant), arrived at Moreton Bay on the barque ‘Ramilies’ on 22 November 1855, after an arduous four-month voyage from England. They were country folk from the small ancient village of South Petherton, Somerset, in an area that was noted at that time for rope-making and glove making.  Thomas’ ancestors had lived there for centuries as the records of the village church dating back to 1574 testify. Shortly after their arrival they moved to Ipswich, where Thomas found work on the cotton plantations which prospered in the area until after the end of the American Civil War. Their first employer, George Faircloth, owned Booval Estate with 260 acres of cotton fields and this was where they commenced their life in Ipswich.

Faircloth had a mansion built around 1857 called Booval House which still stands today. In 1857 they suffered the tragic loss of their 2 year old daughter, Mary, who was accidently scalded to death with boiling water. On 24 May 1858 they were blessed with the birth of a son, Thomas, the first of their four Ipswich born children, the others being Henry (1860), Fanny (1865) and William (1866). In the 1860s they left Booval Estate and Thomas took up employment with Joshua Peter Bell, a prominent figure in early Ipswich and a member of the local squattocracy who owned the Grange Estate at Raceview, another large cotton plantation of that time. Here Thomas’ work was mainly connected with the horses and driving drays. Bell’s horses, well-bred animals, some imported, were the pride of the district and their harnesses had to be kept immaculate, with the brasses highly polished.

One of Thomas’ duties was the delivery of the bales of cotton to the wharves in Brisbane and he eventually became a familiar figure on the Ipswich-Brisbane Road, which incidentally followed much the same route as the present day road. In the words of his daughter in-law, Sarah, reminiscing in the 1920s, ‘with a team of six to ten horses, and Mr Bell kept beautiful horses, he would start for Brisbane just after moonrise with a load of six or seven bales of cotton and arrive in the metropolis just before daybreak.” Bell had his own cotton ginnery at Raceview to where the cotton was taken, ginned and packed into bales by being placed in a press built in the earth and rammed down by a heavy log suspended on wooden levers, resulting in a bale of cotton as hard as a board. With the decline of the cotton industry in the 1870s, Thomas became a coal carter, using his dray to transport the coal from the mine at Blackstone to chutes on bank of the Bremer River at Ipswich, where it was loaded onto barges which were towed to Brisbane by the paddle steamers. Thomas Junior also became a drayman and they both worked for the man who was to become the ‘Coal King’, Lewis Thomas. Thomas Senior was working around the Blackstone mine on 12 November 1881 when he suffered a stroke or heart attack. Taken home, a doctor was called but he could do nothing for him and he died the following day aged fifty. By coincidence, his old employer, Sir Joshua Peter Bell died around five weeks later from the same cause.

Mary Follett (nee Druce)

Mary Follett (nee Druce) died in 1894 from heart failure.

Thomas Follett Junior, 1858-1934

Thomas junior was born on 24 Mary 1858 in Ipswich, Queensland.

The Follett children, including Thomas Junior, were expected to help in the fields at Bell’s property as soon as they were big enough to be able to pick the bolls. Picking was paid for at the rate of one and a half pence per pound of cotton. Thomas junior’s duties eventually were to comprise ploughing, preparing the land for crops, cotton picking and bringing in the cotton at the end of the day’s work. The girl he would one day marry, Sarah Frances Marsh, also worked these same fields and at the age of fourteen was earning three shillings per week picking cotton or working in the ginnery. In 1877, Thomas Junior married his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances Marsh. He continued on in the mines, working at Lewis Thomas’ Coolgardie mine and when that closed, at the Walkers Extended mine until he retired around 1924. Subsequent generations of the Follett’s have been coalminers. Thomas and Sarah Follett were to rear eight children in the slab cottage on Station Road, Silkstone, adding another section joined by a walk-way around 1893. This old house was home to four generations of Follett’s until it passed from family ownership in 1946, it was demolished to make way for a brick bungalow at that time.

Thomas junior died on 5 November 1934 at the Ipswich General Hospital and was buried at the Ipswich General Cemetery.

Sarah Frances Follett (nee Marsh), 1856-1926

On 16 June 1877, Sarah married Thomas Follett junior at St Paul's Church. They had nine children: Thomas, John, William, George, Henry, James, Mary, Sarah Frances and Elizabeth.

Sarah’s obituary in the Queensland times claims that she may have been the oldest native born resident of Silkstone, being born ion 3 June 1856, on what was then known as the ‘Ploughed Station’, Limestone, which was part of the original convict establishment of the late 1820s. Sarah was the daughter of William Marsh and Lucy (nee Wallis).

She spent her last years in a wheelchair after falling from a chair in a local grocery store and injuring her spine. She had been well known and respected as a midwife over many years in the local area. Sarah was the daughter of a pioneer family of Raceview – William and Lucy Marsh who arrived in Ipswich in early 1856.  Thomas and Sarah were married at the old slab cottage belonging to his parents on Station Road, Silkstone. They lived there all their married lives, eventually buying the property in 1890. Six of Thomas Junior and Sarah’s children remained in Ipswich to establish their own homes and families. Tom at Raceview, Henry at Silkstone, Jim who had a shop at Dinmore and who was well known as a poultry judge around the shows, Mary Smith at Silkstone, Elizabeth George at Silkstone, Sarah Pysden whose husband was the proprietor of a large boot factory in East Street and John whose family were raised at Raceview.

Sarah died on 18 September 1926.