The latest acquisitions list by Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne, included the rare invitation to mark the 80th anniversary of American Independence on the fourth of July 1856 in the Alliance Hotel, Woolshed, Victoria . It sold quickly.
Isaac Burnham Kirby (1830-1914), whose name appears as the invitee on this Fourth of July celebration invitation issued by the Alliance Hotel in the gold rush township of Woolshed, near Beechworth in northeast Victoria, was an American citizen
The bookshop says he was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in New London, Connecticut. After joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a young man, he accompanied the Mormon pioneers who made their way out west to settle in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, arriving there prior to the end of 1850. He was re-baptised in Salt Lake City in June 1851 (LDS Church History Biographical Database).
Not long after this, Isaac emigrated to Australia with his young wife Mary Betsey (Cornell) (b.1837) to join the gold rush in Victoria. Evidently his older brother, John Kirby (1828-1900) emigrated as well, as he is probably the ‘J. B. Kirby’ that appears on the invitation card as a member of the organising committee for the Fourth of July event in Woolshed.
By 1855 Isaac had become the licensee of the Eureka Hotel in Yackandandah, east of Beechworth. (This was a highly unusual occupation for Isaac, since the Mormon faith encourages abstinence). No trace of this hotel remains, but it stood on a private allotment on the Yackandandah Creek known as Kirby’s Flat, where alluvial gold had been sluiced from as early as 1853 (Victorian Heritage Database Report).
Presumably, Isaac had initially enjoyed some success at alluvial prospecting which would have helped finance his business activities. He continued to run the hotel until 1858, when it was briefly taken over by George Rowe; he then resumed as licensee in 1859, staying on until 1862. He and Mary had a daughter, Mary Elizabeth (1855-1857), who died in infancy; their son, John Adams (1857-1913), was born around the time of his sister’s death; and a second son – Isaac’s namesake – was born in 1860.
Isaac returned with his family to the United States in 1862. With the Civil War still raging, they settled in Providence, Rhode Island. At the time this was one of the most prosperous cities in the Union, destined to soon become one of the wealthiest in the United States, so it is tempting to speculate that Isaac had perhaps returned to the land of his birth with a small fortune made on the Yackandandah Creek at Kirby’s Flat. Mary gave birth to two more children, Henry Arra (1862-1920) and Mary Elizabeth (II) (1867-1934). After Mary’s death, Isaac married Hannah Marshall Maxfield in 1886. He died in Providence in 1914 at the age of 83.
Although now virtually a ghost town, the gold rush township of Woolshed, situated a little to the north of Beechworth, was a boomtown in the 1850s which boasted its own theatre and racecourse.
There were large numbers of American diggers in the area, and at various sites right across the Ovens goldfield; for example, Joshua Cushman Bigelow, the Woolshed storekeeper whose name (incorrectly spelled “Biglow”) appears as one of the organising committee on the invitation card, hailed from Maine, and he was the first to discover gold a little to the south-east of Beechworth in the district known as Snake Valley (later Upper Nine Mile).
We believe it likely that most, if not all of the other Fourth of July celebration organisers at the Alliance Hotel were Americans, and we can imagine that they circulated their attractive invitations as far and wide as possible amongst the American community in the Beechworth district. For Isaac Kirby, well-known American publican at Yackandandah, to make the trip across to Woolshed to attend the event would have meant a full day’s journey on horseback.
(Americans .Goldfield. Victoria.)