The Kidd Family A Family History
The Cadden Family · William & Christina Cadden

Mary Jane Keller Cadden

1855–1925

The eldest of the seven — baptised at Newtown as simply ‘Mary Kellar,’ she married a Dalmorton miner whose own brother-in-law, William Poole, would end up his mine manager, his employer in a wages dispute, and a name in her own family’s Dalmorton story all over again.

Born
17 June 1855 · Rocky Point, NSW
Died
12 May 1925 · North Sydney, NSW
Married
David Alexander Knox
Lived
~70 years

Mary Jane Keller Cadden was born on 17 June 1855 at Rocky Point, on the Georges River south of Sydney, and baptised at Newtown that August as ‘Mary Kellar’ — the family’s fuller ‘Jane Keller’ form is presumably a later expansion of the same name. The baptismal register gives her father’s occupation as ‘farmer,’ a trade recorded nowhere else in his own long working life, which otherwise ran through mariner, tobacconist, upholsterer and miner.1

She married David Alexander Knox, most likely in 1873 or 1874 — a marriage index entry survives (reg. no. 002878), though the certificate itself has not yet been ordered. Their first child, Christina Matilda, arrived at Wallsend, near Newcastle, in 1875, very likely named for Mary’s own mother; ten more children followed over the next twenty years as the family moved steadily up the New England line with David’s work — Murrurundi (1877, 1880), Gunnedah (1882, 1884, 1885), Grafton (1887, 1889), Glen Innes (1890) and finally Maclean (1892, 1895).23

That trail runs straight back through the same goldfield at the centre of this whole family’s story. By December 1886 David Knox was working ‘at the reef’ for the Union mine at Dalmorton — managed, as it happened, by his own brother-in-law William Frederick Poole, husband of Mary’s sister Frances Helen — and sued him for £28 10s. 10d. in unpaid wages, winning a judgment of £8 3s. 3d. with costs. Four years later Knox was back at Dalmorton, successfully defending a mining tenement, the Mountain Maid, against a rival claim, and settling a related trespass action by arbitration for £20.4

Mary died at North Sydney on 12 May 1925, aged sixty-nine, and was buried at Rookwood — Presbyterian section 5E, row 18 — under a headstone reading simply ‘our mother.’5

The Record

Sources & References

  1. 1

    Baptism, 1855

    Wesleyan baptismal register, Circuit of Newtown, County of Cumberland (State Records NSW, AO5020, Vol. 56, No. 2893): Mary Kellar, parents William & Christina Cadden, abode Rocky Point, father’s profession ‘farmer,’ born 17 June 1855, baptised 22 August 1855.

  2. 2

    Marriage to David Alexander Knox

    NSW BDM marriage index, registration no. 002878: Mary Keber [Cadden] and David Alexander Knox; certificate not yet ordered, so the exact date and place of marriage remain to be confirmed.

  3. 3

    Eleven children, 1875–1895

    NSW BDM birth registrations, father David / David Alexander Knox, mother Mary / Mary K. / Mary Keller:

    • Christina Matilda Knox, 16786/1875, Wallsend
    • William John Knox, 16135/1877, Murrurundi
    • David Alexander Knox, 19234/1880, Murrurundi
    • David F. Knox, 17533/1882, Gunnedah
    • Elsie M. Knox, 20583/1884, Gunnedah
    • Frances E. Knox, 21222/1885, Gunnedah
    • Lilly Knox, 21837/1887, Grafton
    • Percy C. Knox, 21320/1889, Grafton
    • Beatrice Knox, 13699/1890, Glen Innes
    • Alison J. Knox, 20749/1892, Maclean
    • George E. Knox, 4722/1895, Maclean
  4. 4

    Knox v. Poole, and the Mountain Maid dispute

    Glen Innes Examiner and General Advertiser, 21 December 1886 (Glen Innes Police Court): David Knox sued W. F. Poole, manager of the Union mine at Dalmorton, for £28 10s. 10d. in wages; verdict for plaintiff, £8 3s. 3d. with costs. Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 19 July 1890 (Warden’s Court at Dalmorton): David Knox and party successfully defended mining tenement No. 64, Mountain Maid, against S. J. Smith and party; a related trespass action settled by arbitration, Smith and party to pay Knox and party £20.

  5. 5

    Death and burial, 1925

    NSW BDM death registration 5560/1925: Mary K. Knox, died 12 May 1925, North Sydney; father William, mother Christina. Rookwood General Cemetery burial record: Mary Kellar Knox, aged 69, Presbyterian, Section 5E, Row 18, inscription ‘our mother.’