A BURRA MYTH

If you read Burra history, or tour around the town, (see Map of Townships) sooner or later you are likely to be told that the pioneers in the mid nineteenth century lived in groups dependent upon their place of origin. Aberdeen was apparently favoured by the Scots, Redruth (with its Cornish street names) was home to the Cornish and Llwchwr was obviously a Welsh settlement. On the same logic Hampton would have been English. No one seems to have decided on the composition of Kooringa; the Aboriginal origin of its name apparently offering no help in this regard.

I have long thought these claims to be false, but actual evidence is not so easy to get. One way of getting some data is to get a list of births in the respective towns for the mining period and then to try to discover the place of birth of the father. (Mothers pose another range of complications.) The registration of births in SA makes it reasonably easy to build the initial list. The origin of the fathers can then be obtained from family researchers through Biographical Index of South Australians 1836-85. Others sources such as family histories and newspaper obituaries may add to this information. The data has been selected for the period 1845-69 because in 1869 underground working at the mine ceased for the conversion of operations to open cut. Virtually all employment of miners ceased for this conversion.

Even where no hard information is available it seems fairly reasonable to label the German migrants on the basis of names, when they are of the nature of August Heinrich Eichler, married to Augusta Hermine Bartholomew and naming their child Adolph Carl. A few Irish and Scottish names also stand out, but they need to be treated with more caution given movements of people within the UK.

As a start the following lists have identified sufficient fathers to show that the myth about settlers’ origins is false. The evidence concerning Llwchwr is particularly striking. It would be very helpful if we could get more evidence about the fathers whose origins remain unknown or doubtful.

If you can help in this way please let us know by sending us an e-mail. Don't forget to cite the source of your information.

Thank you.

Eric Fuss