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JOHN
EMIGRATED AGED NINE
- followed his father to a new life
John
Flewin shares with his father George the title of forefather
of all Australian Flewins. He left his home in the English
county of Kent at the age of nine together with his mother
to follow his father  who
had emigrated to Australia three years earlier.
John was a
honeymoon baby arriving to George Flewin and his wife, Jane
(nee Blackman), at their home on The Common at Wilmington,
Kent, just nine months after their wedding at the church of
St Michael and All Angels, Wilmington, on Christmas Day
1845. His was named after his grandfather who still lived in
the same village.
With his mother
John travelled to Victoria on the sail ship Clasmerden in
1856 and the family set up home on farmland near the mining
town of Ballarat. As John grew up, he learned more and more
about his father's new-found skill of brickmaking and when
it was time for him to leave home, John and his new wife,
Margaret (nee Watson),  established
a brickworks on their farm at Gippsland, where he was one of
the first settlers. As railways opened up into the area,
John's brickworks profited from the ability to draw clay,
the raw material of bricks, from the railway
diggings.
FIRST
BRICKYARD
Later, as the
trade increased John opened the first brickyard with
brickworks and pottery in Morwell. In 1878, when John was
32, he and Margaret settled down at North Hazelwood,
creating a brickworks and yard. The Flewin family was one of
the first settlers at North Hazelwood and one of the few who
stayed in the area, still living on the land in 1918 when he
and Margaret (together,
picture right)
celebrated their Golden Wedding.
John and Margaret
had four sons and five daughters who, with one exception,
outlived them. They had twenty-seven grand children and
numerous great grand children.
Further
reading: Newspaper report of
Golden
Wedding celebrations
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