Sarah Ellen (Sadie) Jones : Short Biography

My great-grandmother Sarah Ellen Jones was born in Ashfield, Upper Canada.

Her parents, Robert Disney Jones and Sarah Ellen Cooke had emigrated to Canada by the birth of their first son, also Robert Disney Jones, in1846. They had another daughter, Jane Spencer Jones in 1848 and a son, John Cooke Jones, in 1851.

The family returned to Ireland where a third son, Henry Joseph Jones was born in1861 in County Wexford. Two more sons and twin daughter were born following their return to County Wexford. Charles Edward Jones in 1865, twin daughters Edith Francis Jones and Emma Florence Jones in 1868, and finally Sheppard Jones in 1871. The parents, Sarah Ellen Cooke died in 1890 and Robert Disney Jones died in 1895 respectively. They are remembered on a family monument in the churchyard of St. John's Church, Ballybuckly, Wexford, Ireland.

My great-grandmother Sarah Ellen Jones emigrated to Australia in 1886 apparently travelling as a companion to a Miss Bartholomew on the ship Potosi. After their arrival in Sydney, New South Wales, they travelled via Brisbane to Rockhampton in Queensland on the steamer Rodondo.

In 1892 Sarah Ellen Jones married my great-grandfather John Francis White, a goldminer, in Bright, Victoria. Following their marriage the couple moved to Mildura, Victoria, which was being developed as an irrigation settlement by the Chaffey brothers. My grandfather had a position there as a bandmaster. They had two sons there, my grandfather, Oscar John Alfred White in 1893 and Eric Hunter Disney White in 1894. A daughter Sadie Elizabeth White was born in Bairnsdale , Victoria in 1897. John Francis White had returned to mining at Bullumwaal in the hills inland from Bairnsdale and was also bandmaster for a number of brass bands in the area.

Following the death of her husband in Bullumwaal in 1922 Sarah Ellen (Sadie) Jones moved to Bairnsdale where she died in 1924.