Alfred Baldock & Sarah Jane Mason

1863–1922

The eldest of Alfred and Frances’s twelve children — a Kogarah printer, cricketer and Oddfellow who buried two of his four children, survived a train derailment and a bubonic plague scare, and kept his own cottage named for the small daughter he lost.

Born: 1863 · registered Bathurst
Died: 8 October 1922 · Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney · buried Rookwood, the Methodist section
Married: Sarah Jane Mason, of Kogarah, daughter of Frederick Mason, builder — married 9 June 1886, St Barnabas’ Church, by the Rev. J. Barnier
Trade: Printer, John Andrew & Co., Sydney, for thirty years; later Simpson & Mann Ltd
Lived: 59 years

Alfred was the first of Alfred and Frances’s twelve children, registered at Bathurst in 1863.¹ By his late thirties he was a compositor’s or pressman’s hand at the printing establishment of John Andrew and Co., in the city — and it was there, in March 1902, that a Sydney newspaper caught him up in that year’s bubonic plague scare, reporting “Alfred Baldock, aged 38, a resident of Kensington-street, Kogarah, employed at the printing establishment of J. Andrew and Co.,” as one of three additional cases. The age fits this Alfred, not his sixty-two-year-old father of the same name; a few months later, in October 1902, he stood witness, alongside his brother William, at his sister Alice’s wedding at Summer Hill.²³

He had married sixteen years before all that. On 9 June 1886, at St Barnabas’ Church, by the Rev. J. Barnier, Alfred — described in the notice simply as “eldest son of Alfred Baldock, of Newtown” — married Sarah Jane Mason.⁴ Sarah Jane was English-born, in Staffordshire about 1868–69, the daughter of Frederick Mason, a builder, and Elizabeth Turner; the couple made their home at Kogarah, on Kensington Street and later Regent Street, and stayed there for the rest of both their lives.⁵¹⁰

Kogarah was a printer’s world and a sportsman’s. Alfred was a member of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows, at the “Captain Cook” Lodge, and an active member of the Kogarah School of Arts. He played well enough at cricket to average .297 in the 1895–96 season and win a silver teapot from a Dr Lamrock for the district’s best batting average, and later served as vice-president of the local Baseball Association.⁹ In November 1895 the Police Gazette recorded a burglary at his own house: a “gold cricket medal, ‘Printers’ Cricket Association, won by A. Baldock,’ inscribed on it,” taken from “Eveline Cottage,” Kensington-street, Kogarah — the house named, it can hardly be doubted, for the small daughter he and Sarah Jane had buried three years before.⁶

Eveline Gertrude, their second child, had died at the Kensington Street house on 16 January 1892, aged sixteen months and two weeks; her headstone at Rookwood, shared with her parents’, was inscribed simply “dau of Alfred & Sarah Jane.”⁷ Their only son fared no better in the end. Frederick Alfred, born in 1892, drowned at the Brighton-le-Sands swimming baths on the afternoon of 9 November 1909, aged sixteen. He had gone in with a companion named Mylchreest and was missed after a time in the water; a Constable Connors, “a powerful swimmer,” brought the body up, but efforts at resuscitation failed. Both the newspaper report and the coronial inquest — held eight days later before the Kogarah magistrate S. Murphy — laid the likely cause not to misadventure alone but to the fits Frederick “has for the past three years been subject to”; a seizure, it was reasoned, had most probably taken him under. The verdict was accidental drowning.⁸ Of the couple’s four children, only two — Eliza and Ivy — would outlive their father.

By September 1922 Alfred was, as the local paper put it, “very dangerously ill” at the Prince Alfred Hospital, having undergone a serious operation for mastoid disease — an infection of the bone behind the ear — with pneumonia feared to be setting in.¹² He died there on the morning of Sunday, 8 October 1922, without recovering; he was fifty-nine. His obituary filled in the working life the record otherwise leaves blank: thirty years with John Andrew and Co., who marked his departure to start out on his own account with a gold watch from the firm and his fellow employees; a narrow escape, about twenty years before, in a train that jumped the rails at Sydenham, killing several passengers in his own compartment while he came away with nothing worse than a severe shaking; and, after his own Kogarah business, a last position with Simpson and Mann Ltd, Sydney, held until the illness that took him to hospital.⁹ He was buried the following Monday in the Methodist section at Rookwood, the Rev. C. W. Willis of Kogarah officiating; Sarah Jane, confined to her own sickbed, could not attend. Four of his five surviving sisters did, along with all three of his brothers — his sisters Ada (“Mrs A. Robins, of Ryde” in the paper’s own spelling of her married name, Ada Ellen Robens, whose marriage carries this family into Chapter Three), Violet (“Mrs V. Funnel”), Alice (“Mrs L. Healey”) and Maud, and brothers William, George and Clarence.⁹

The obituary named just two daughters among Alfred’s survivors — “his widow and two daughters, Mrs. G. R. Olds and Miss Ivy Baldock” — which is to say Eliza and Ivy, the only two of the four children still living; Eveline and Frederick had gone before him. Sarah Jane did not stay a widow for long. On 8 April 1925, at Christ Church, Bexley, she married Joseph Gyde, a Leichhardt saddler and fellow widower, a member of the Olds family, “G. G. Olds,” signing the register as a witness — very likely Gilbert’s own father, George G. Olds, rather than Gilbert himself.¹⁰ Sarah Jane kept the Gyde name for the rest of her long life: she was still “Sarah Jane Gyde” when her son-in-law Gilbert Olds died in 1947, and remained married to Joseph until his own death in August 1951.²¹²³ None of it marks how she is remembered in the end. When she died on 7 January 1963, aged ninety-four, she was carried back to Rookwood and laid beside her first husband, under a stone that names her only “Sarah Jane, beloved wife of Alfred.”¹¹

The next generation

Children

Eliza Jane “Dot” Baldock (1887–1926) — the elder of the two daughters who outlived their father; she married Gilbert Richardson Olds in 1910 and died young, sixteen years later. Her story, and the Olds family she married into, is told in full below.
Eveline Gertrude Baldock (c. 1890 – 16 January 1892) — died at sixteen months and two weeks old at the family home on Kensington Street, Kogarah, which her father kept afterwards under her name, “Eveline Cottage.”
Frederick Alfred Baldock (1892–1909) — the couple’s only son, drowned at Brighton-le-Sands Baths aged sixteen; the inquest heard he had suffered from fits for three years and most likely had a seizure in the water.
Ivy Leonora Baldock (1903–1966) — the “Miss Ivy Baldock” of her father’s funeral, unmarried at nineteen; she went on to a University degree and a forty-year teaching career across country New South Wales. Her story is told in full below.

A shared granite headstone inscribed "My dear husband Alfred Baldock, died 8 October 1922, aged 59 years, at rest" and "My dear mother Sarah Jane, beloved wife of Alfred, died 7th Jan 1963, aged 94 years, loved by all." — Alfred and Sarah Jane’s shared headstone, Rookwood — Old Wesleyan, Section 2D, Perimeter

The late Mr. Baldock had a fortunate escape about twenty years ago, when as a passenger in the train that jumped the rails at Sydenham, when several passengers who were in the same compartment were killed, whilst Mr. Baldock escaped with a severe shaking and it took him a long time to get over the accident.

Obituary, St George Call (Kogarah), 13 October 1922

The Elder Daughter

Eliza, Gilbert, and the Olds family

Eliza Jane Baldock — “Dot” to her family — was Alfred and Sarah Jane’s first child, born in 1887. She was twenty-two, still at home, when her little brother Frederick drowned in 1909; among the mourners at his funeral was a family friend named Gilbert Olds, a Kogarah Methodist choir member and picture-framer from Arncliffe. The two had sung together in the church choir for years, and on 25 May 1910 they married at Kogarah Methodist Church — Eliza’s seven-year-old sister Ivy one of the trainbearers, carrying a gold crook and wearing a gold brooch, gifts of the groom.¹⁵ Gilbert, eldest son of George G. and Margaret A. Olds, appears everywhere in this family’s story as “G. R. Olds” — a distinction worth holding onto, since it was very likely his father, not Gilbert, who stood witness fifteen years later at Eliza’s mother’s second wedding.¹⁰ By 1913 the young couple were living on Regent Street, Kogarah — the same street as Eliza’s own parents.¹⁹

Four children followed. James Frederick Gilbert Olds (1912–1995) married Muriel Pinnington (1912–2013) and had two children, Valerie Eveline (1938–2023) and Raymond Gilbert — two of the four grandchildren, “Margaret, Valerie, David, and Raymond,” named in Gilbert’s own death notice in 1947.²⁵ Jean Norma Olds (1914–1977) married Frederick Adolphus Rodgers (1910–2011) and had two children, Margaret and David — the other two grandchildren of the 1947 notice.²⁵ Eunice Valerie Olds (1920–2014) married Donald William Reay (1921–1979); their children were Bruce and Elizabeth, and Eunice lived to see grandchildren of her own — Mitchell, Bradley, Luke and Elicia.²⁶ The youngest, Norman Alfred Olds (1925–2010), was born the same year his grandmother Sarah Jane remarried. Eliza did not live to see any of them grow up. She died on 7 September 1926, not yet forty, and was buried at Woronora Memorial Park; her mother and sister placed a joint notice of thanks in the Hurstville Propeller, still signing themselves “Mrs S. J. Gyde and daughter, Ivy Baldock.”²⁰ Gilbert outlived her by twenty-one years, dying at his daughter’s home in Bexley on 25 January 1947 — remembered in his own death notice as “son-in-law of Sarah Jane Gyde and brother-in-law of Ivy Baldock,” the family by then entirely rearranged around the two remarriages of the intervening decades.²¹ His and Eliza’s youngest son, Norman Alfred Olds, would in time be the one to settle his aunt Ivy’s estate, forty years later.²⁴

Mrs. S. J. Gyde and daughter, Ivy Baldock, of Carlton, wish to thank relatives and kind friends for letters, cards, telegrams, floral tributes, and personal expressions of sympathy in their recent sad bereavement — the loss of her daughter and her sister, E. J. Olds (Dot).

Return Thanks notice, Propeller (Hurstville), 1 October 1926

A 2014 death notice for Eunice Valerie Reay, late of North Epping, loving wife of Don (dec.), mum of Bruce and Elizabeth, grandmother of Mitchell, Bradley, Luke, Elicia and their families. — Eunice Valerie (Olds) Reay’s death notice, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 2014

The Youngest Daughter

Forty years in the classroom

Ivy Leonora Baldock was not yet nineteen when her father died in 1922 — the youngest of his four children and, after Eliza’s marriage and the two earlier deaths, the only one still carrying the Baldock name. She had already shown the ability that would define her life: a gifted child pianist and singer, she passed a London College of Music primary examination with 86 out of 100 marks at the age of eight, won a duet-playing prize at the Rockdale Eisteddfod at twelve, and turned up as a matter of course at the Kogarah School of Arts euchre nights her father and mother both frequented.¹⁶ At school she was dux of Kogarah Superior Public School and then of St George Girls’ High School, matriculating with honours in English and French and winning both a University Exhibition and a four-year Teachers’ College Scholarship — she chose the College place over the Exhibition. At Sydney University she gained distinction in English and credits in Geology and French in her first year, credits in English and French in her second, completed her B.A. in December 1922, and gained Honours in English the following March — the youngest graduate of her year, at nineteen.¹⁶

Her singing career kept pace with her teaching. Posted to Grafton High School in 1924 as a junior secondary assistant, she won the Grand Vocal Championship of the North Coast Districts at that September’s Lismore festival — 362 aggregate points across four solo sections, a ruby-and-pearl medal, and cash prizes for each item — and directed the school choir in a performance before the Governor.¹⁷ Through 1925 she toured the Clarence Valley giving benefit concerts for the Grafton Hospital alongside touring Sydney Conservatorium artists, billed simply as “the winner of the championship at the recent Lismore Eisteddfod.”¹⁷ Later postings carried her through the Newcastle district, to Young in 1928, and by 1933 to Armidale — teaching the length of country New South Wales — before she came home to Sydney, singing by 1931 and 1932 as a soloist at Kogarah’s Presbyterian church, a few streets from where she grew up.¹⁸

She never married. She lived on with her mother for the rest of both their lives — at “Allambi,” High Street, Carlton, and later at 32 Kitchener Street, West Kogarah — recognised in her stepfather Joseph Gyde’s own death notice, in 1951, simply as “Ivy Baldock.”²³ Over four decades in the Department of Education she rose to a headship, retiring on 27 January 1964. When she died at Kogarah on 23 November 1966, the probate notice recorded her, in the end, by a title the record never gave her mother or her sister: “Ivy Leonora Baldock … retired head mistress.” Her nephew Norman Olds, Eliza’s youngest son, settled her estate.²⁴

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth registration, 1863

NSW BDM birth registration 5319/1863, Bathurst — Alfred Baldock, father Alfred, mother Frances E. (Bawn). The eldest of the twelve children; see the chapter reference list above for the full set of registrations.
2
Bubonic plague case, 1902 — identified as the son, not the father

“Bubonic Plague — Three Additional Cases,” Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1902, p. 6: “The first case was that of Alfred Baldock, aged 38, a resident of Kensington-street, Kogarah, and employed at the printing establishment of J. Andrew and Co., Bridge-street.” The patriarch Alfred Baldock, born 1840, would have been about 62 in 1902; the age of 38 matches his eldest son.
3
Marriage of Alice Lilla May Baldock, 1902

NSW Register of Marriages, 1902: Henry Percival Healey married Alice Lilla May Baldock at St Andrew’s Church, Summer Hill, 2 October 1902; witnesses Alfred Baldock and William Baldock.
4
Marriage, 1886

“Baldock—Mason,” The Sydney Mail, 26 June 1886, p. 1348: “June 9, at St. Barnabas’ Church, by the Rev. J. Barnier, Alfred Baldock, eldest son of Alfred Baldock, of Newtown, to Sarah Jane Mason.” NSW BDM marriage registration 1113/1886, Sydney district.
5
Sarah Jane’s parents

NSW Register of Marriages, 1925 (Christ Church, Bexley, 8 April), entry for Joseph Gyde and Sarah Jane Baldock: Sarah Jane given as a 56-year-old widow, born Staffordshire, England; father Frederick Mason (deceased), builder; mother Elizabeth Turner. Consistent with the “Mr. F. Mason (father-in-law)” who attended Alfred’s funeral in 1922.
6
Stolen cricket medal, 1895

“Watches and Jewellery Reported Stolen,” New South Wales Police Gazette, 4 December 1895, p. 416: “27 [November] … Alfred Baldock, Eveline Cottage, Kensington-street, Kogarah. Gold cricket medal, ‘Printers’ Cricket Association, won by A. Baldock’ inscribed on it.”
7
Death of Eveline Gertrude Baldock, 1892

Findagrave/cemetery transcription, Rookwood General Cemetery, Old Wesleyan section: Eveline Gertrude Baldock, died 16 January 1892, inscription “dau of Alfred & Sarah Jane. 16 mths 2 weeks.” NSW BDM death registration 6882/1892, Kogarah district, father Alfred, mother Sarah J. (An earlier online index gives conflicting birth/death years of 1880/1882; these are not consistent with her parents’ 1886 marriage and are taken to be transcription errors for 1890/1892.)
8
Drowning of Frederick Alfred Baldock, 1909

“Youth Drowned at Brighton,” Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 1909, p. 11: Frederick Baldock, of Montgomery-street, Kogarah, drowned at Brighton Baths on 9 November, aged about seventeen; “the deceased youth has for the past three years been subject to fits, and the only accountable reason for the fatality is that a seizure had taken place whilst in the water.” NSW BDM birth registration 18788/1893 (Kogarah, father Alfred, mother Sarah J.); Coroners’ Inquest Register, 1909, No. 6, held 17 November before S. Murphy, P.M., Kogarah, verdict “accidentally drowned,” age given as 16 years 11 months, medical attendant J. J. O’Keefe.
9
Death, obituary and funeral of Alfred Baldock, 1922

“Death of Mr. Alfred Baldock,” obituary, St George Call (Kogarah), 13 October 1922, p. 1 (Trove nla.news-article163239192): died Prince Alfred Hospital, Sunday 8 October 1922, aged 59; thirty years with John Andrew & Co., printers, presented a gold watch on leaving to start his own business; member of the Manchester Unity Friendly Society (“Captain Cook” Lodge) and the Kogarah School of Arts; vice-president of the Baseball Association, silver teapot for best batting average 1895–96 (.297) presented by Dr Lamrock; escaped a train derailment at Sydenham about 1902; later with Simpson & Mann Ltd; buried Rookwood, Methodist portion, Rev. C. W. Willis officiating; survived by his widow and two daughters, Mrs G. R. Olds and Miss Ivy Baldock; mourners included sisters Mrs A. Robins (Ryde), Mrs V. Funnel, Mrs L. Healey and Miss M. Baldock, and brothers W., G. and C. Baldock, and father-in-law Mr F. Mason; wreaths included one from “Mr and Mrs G. G. Olds.” Funeral notice, same date: to leave 810 George-street, City, for the Methodist Cemetery, Rookwood; F. W. Hartley, undertaker, 208 King-street, Newtown — the same undertaker who had buried Alfred’s father in 1916.
10
Remarriage of Sarah Jane Baldock, 1925

NSW Register of Marriages, District of St George, 1925, entry 496: Joseph Gyde, saddler, of Leichhardt, widower, aged 46, born Bridgewood [Braidwood?], son of John Samuel Gyde (storeman) and Caroline Loveland, married Sarah Jane Baldock, home duties, of Bexley, widow, aged 56, born Staffordshire, England, daughter of Frederick Mason (builder, deceased) and Elizabeth Turner; married 8 April 1925 at Christ Church, Bexley, by the Rev. Robert Lyle Houston; witnesses G. G. Olds and W. Cullen. Gilbert Richardson Olds’s own father is independently recorded as George G. Olds (reference 21 below), making him — rather than Gilbert — the likelier “G. G. Olds” of this register.
11
Headstone and burial, Rookwood

Findagrave/cemetery transcription, Rookwood General Cemetery, Old Wesleyan section, 2D Perimeter: Alfred Baldock, died 8 October 1922, aged 59, “my husb[and]” — footstone “Dad, Mum”; Sarah Jane Baldock, née Mason, died 7 January 1963, aged 94, “wife of Alfred.” Both memorials give Alfred’s occupation implicitly through the shared plot; neither mentions Sarah Jane’s intervening marriage to Joseph Gyde.
12
Illness before death, 1922

“The Eclipse” (correspondence column, with a short news item appended), St George Call, 8 September 1922, p. 3 (Trove nla.news-article163235147): “The Friends of Mr. Alfred Baldock will be sorry to hear that he is very dangerously ill in Prince Alfred Hospital. He underwent a serious operation for Mastoid (trouble of the head). It is feared that pneumonia is setting in. Mr. Baldock has resided in Kogarah for 37 years. Much sympathy is extended to his wife and two daughters, Mrs. G. R. Olds and Miss Ivy Baldock.”
13
Drowning of Frederick Alfred Baldock — the funeral

“Drowning Fatality,” St George Call, 13 November 1909, p. 5 (Trove nla.news-article209175931): full account of the funeral at Rookwood, Rev. J. A. Waddell officiating, with a long list of mourners including “Mr. and Mrs. A. Baldock, Misses Dotty and Ivy Baldock, Mr. Gilbert Olds, Mrs. F. Mason, senr. (grandmother) … Mr. A. Baldock, senr. (grandfather)” and numerous Mason relatives of Beecroft; floral tributes from, among others, the Kogarah Methodist Sunday School and the employees of J. Andrew & Co.
14
Marriage of Gilbert Richardson Olds and Eliza Jane Baldock, 1910

“Weddings,” St George Call, 11 June 1910, p. 4 (Trove nla.news-article209176868): “Gilbert R. Olds, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. G. G. Olds, of Arncliffe, and Eliza Jane (Dot) Baldock, elder [daughter] of Mr. and Mrs. Baldock of Kogarah,” married at Kogarah Methodist Church by Rev. J. A. Waddell, assisted by Rev. P. O. Davis; bridesmaids the Misses Lizzie and Mabel Olds; trainbearers the Misses Ivy Baldock and Esme Olds; reception at Brett’s Hall, Kogarah, 130 guests; honeymoon at Katoomba. NSW BDM marriage registration 5222/1910, Hurstville district.
15
Ivy’s childhood and youth, 1912–1920

“Musical Honors,” St George Call, 13 July 1912, p. 4: Ivy Baldock, aged 8, passed the London College of Music primary grade practical examination with 86/100. “Musical Examinations,” St George Call, 30 December 1916, p. 7: Ivy Baldock and Florence Porter, second prize (duet playing), Rockdale Eisteddfod. “Euchre Evenings,” St George Call, 8 and 15 July 1916: Alfred, Sarah Jane and Ivy Baldock all placing at the St George Club’s card evenings, Kogarah School of Arts. “Intermediate Examinations,” St George Call, 6 March 1920, p. 6: Ivy Baldock, Leaving Certificate honours in English and French, dux-equal; awarded a University Exhibition and a Teachers’ Training College Scholarship.
16
University career and B.A., 1921–1923

“The University — Honours List,” Sydney Morning Herald, 25 March 1921, p. 6: Ivy L. Baldock, distinction in English I. “The University — Conferring of Degrees,” Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 1923, p. 5: Ivy Leonora Baldock, Bachelor of Arts, Honours Class II in English. “A Credit to Kogarah — Miss Ivy Baldock Honored,” St George Call, 25 May 1923, p. 3 (Trove nla.news-article163233950), and, substantially the same text, “A Clever Student,” Propeller (Hurstville), 1 June 1923, p. 1 (Trove nla.news-article234932285): dux of Kogarah Superior Public School and St George Girls’ High School; gave up her University Exhibition in favour of the Training College Scholarship; distinction in English, credit in Geology and French (first year), credit in English and French (second year); B.A. completed December 1922, Honours in English March 1923; youngest B.A. graduate of her year, aged 19; youngest daughter of Mrs S. J. Baldock, of High Street, Carlton, and the late Mr Alfred Baldock, granddaughter of Mr and Mrs F. Mason of Beecroft. “St. George Girls’ High School — Speech Day,” St George Call, 14 December 1923, p. 1: confirms Ivy Baldock and Emily Belschner “took their degrees last Christmas.”
17
The Lismore championship and the Grafton concerts, 1923–1925

“Farewell Party,” St George Call, 19 January 1923, p. 5: Ivy Baldock among the vocal artists, with Mrs G. Olds and Miss Jean Olds also performing. “Red Cross Allen Benefit Concert,” St George Call, 7 December 1923, p. 6. “Miss Ivy Baldock’s Success,” St George Call, 26 September 1924, p. 1, and “Carlton Singer’s Success,” Propeller (Hurstville), 26 September 1924, p. 3 (Trove nla.news-article237006649): winner, Grand Vocal Championship of the North Coast Districts, Lismore festival, September 1924 — 362 aggregate points, medal set with rubies and pearls, cash prizes; “at present teaching at Grafton High School”; directed the school choir before the Governor. “Miss Bassetti’s Concert,” Daily Examiner (Grafton), 14 February 1925, p. 5; “South Grafton Concert,” Daily Examiner, 19 November 1925, p. 4; “Hospital Benefit — Mrs. Alda Orr Morris’ Concert,” Daily Examiner, 10 December 1925, p. 6: Ivy Baldock among the soloists at a series of Grafton Hospital benefit concerts, billed as winner of the recent Lismore Eisteddfod championship.
18
Teaching postings, 1924–1933

Government Gazette of NSW, 24 October 1924 (Special Gazette under the Public Service Act, 1902), p. 4925: Ivy Baldock appointed to the Junior Staff (Secondary Schools), Grafton High School. “New Teachers for Young,” Young Chronicle, 24 January 1928, p. 2: “Miss Jamieson has been transferred to Neutral Bay, and in her place Miss Ivy Baldock is coming from Cook’s Hill” [Newcastle]. “Festival Concert,” Young Chronicle, 13 November 1928, p. 4: Ivy Baldock (soprano) among the artists at a Young Town Hall concert. “Kogarah Presbyterians,” Propeller (Hurstville), 30 October 1931, p. 2, and “Kogarah Pres. Church,” St George Call, 25 March 1932, p. 2: Ivy Baldock singing as soloist/duettist at the Kogarah Presbyterian Church. NSW Electoral Roll, Commonwealth Division of New England, State Electoral District of Armidale, Supplemental Roll (made up to 11 April 1933), Subdivision of Armidale, entry 6415: Baldock, Ivy Leonora, 277 Beardy-street, teacher, F.
19
Eliza and Gilbert Olds, 1913

NSW Electoral Roll, St George division, Kogarah polling place, 1913, entries 639–640: Olds, Eliza Jane, domestic duties, and Olds, Gilbert Richardson, picture-framer, both of Regent-street, Kogarah — the same street as Alfred and Sarah Jane Baldock (entries 88–89 of the same roll).
20
Death of Eliza Jane “Dot” Olds, 1926

“Return Thanks,” Propeller (Hurstville), 1 October 1926, p. 5: “Mrs. S. J. Gyde and Daughter, Ivy Baldock, of Carlton, wish to thank relatives and kind friends … in their recent sad bereavement — the loss of her daughter and her sister, E. J. Olds (Dot), especially to thank Rev. C. Olver, of Bexley.” Findagrave/cemetery transcription, Woronora Memorial Park, Sutherland: Elizabeth Jane Olds, died 7 September 1926, buried 12 September 1926, Methodist Monumental, Section 2, Position 0115.
21
Death of Gilbert Richardson Olds, 1947

Death and funeral notices, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 1947, p. 12: Gilbert Richardson Olds died 25 January 1947 at his daughter’s residence, 344 Bexley Road, Bexley, aged 58; “dearly loved husband of the late Eliza Jane Olds,” father of James, Jean (Mrs P. Rogers — family records give her husband as Frederick Adolphus Rodgers; the notice’s initial and surname spelling do not match, likely a typesetting error), Eunice and Norman, grandfather of Margaret, Valerie, David and Raymond; brother of Mabel (Mrs Noble), Vera (Mrs Mitchell) and Esme (Mrs Wilson); “dear son-in-law of Sarah Jane Gyde and dear brother-in-law of Ivy Baldock”; funeral to the Methodist Cemetery, Woronora, from the private chapel, Seven Ways, Rockdale, J. and C. Hardy, undertakers.
22
Ivy Leonora Baldock, birth and death registrations

NSW BDM birth registration 21966/1903, Kogarah district, father Alfred, mother Sarah J. Findagrave/cemetery transcription: Ivy Leonora Baldock, born 1903, Kogarah, died 23 November 1966, Kogarah; buried Woronora Memorial Park, Sutherland.
23
Death of Joseph Gyde, 1951

Death and funeral notices, Sun (Sydney), 24 August 1951, p. 13: Joseph Gyde died 23 August 1951 at a private hospital, of 32 Kitchener Street, West Kogarah, “beloved husband of Sarah Jane Gyde, loved father of Hessell (Roy), Enid (Mrs J. Forwood), and step-father of Ivy Baldock”; funeral to the Crematorium, Woronora, from the private chapel, Seven Ways, Rockdale, J. and C. Hardy, undertakers.
24
Ivy’s retirement, death and probate

Government Gazette of NSW, 7 February 1964 (Supplement), p. 402: retirements from the Public Service, Department of Education, effective 27 January 1964 — “Miss Ivy Leonora Baldock” among them. Government Gazette of NSW, 21 July 1967, p. 2671: probate notice, “In the Will of Ivy Leonora Baldock, late of Kogarah … retired head mistress, deceased … who died on the 23rd November, 1966”; executor Norman Alfred Olds — Eliza and Gilbert’s youngest son, and Ivy’s nephew.
25
The Olds children and grandchildren

Family records (Jenny Kidd): James Frederick Gilbert Olds (1912–1995) m. Muriel Pinnington (1912–2013), children Valerie Eveline Olds (1938–2023) and Raymond Gilbert Olds; Jean Norma Olds (1914–1977) m. Frederick Adolphus Rodgers (1910–2011), children Margaret and David Rodgers; Eunice Valerie Olds (1920–2014) m. Donald William Reay (1921–1979); Norman Alfred Olds (1925–2010). Reconciles with the four grandchildren — “Margaret, Valerie, David, and Raymond” — named in Gilbert Richardson Olds’s 1947 death notice (reference 21): Valerie and Raymond are James and Muriel’s children, Margaret and David are Jean and Frederick’s.
26
Death notice of Eunice Valerie Reay, 2014

Tributes Online, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 2014: “REAY, Eunice Valerie. Late of North Epping. Loving wife of Don (dec). Loving mum of Bruce and Elizabeth and mother-in-law to Geoff. Adored grandmother of Mitchell, Bradley, Luke, Elicia and their families. Eunice was cremated following a private service surrounded by her family.” Gregory & Carr, Traditional Funeral Directors, Gordon.