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"THOMAS FROM KENT" -
among first British families to arrive
Thomas
was the founding father of all North American Flewins. It
was he who, at 19, married his sweetheart, Jane Caselton,
just days before they were among the first family units to
emigrate from England to Vancouver Island, leaving the UK in
1852. He was working the land on a big estate in the
hop-growing county of Kent, when he heard that the Hudson's
Bay Company were promising good money to entice farming
skills to what was later to become British Columbia. The
Company had signed a deal with the British Government to
rent the Island of Vancouver for seven shillings a year for
ten years -- but they had to make it pay, and that meant
making the most out of the land.
Thomas was the youngest of the
seven children of John Flewin and his wife Phillis (nee
Shaves) who lived in a tied cottage on the Village Green at
Wilmington, Kent. John had worked for Lord Russell most of
his life (according to Thomas' son, John, in a 1927
newspaper article) and was by now his estate manager.
Thomas' new wife, Jane, worked locally s a servant and lived
in the neighbouring village of Wilmington, where they
married in July 1852 in a double wedding with Jane's
brother, Richard.
A year earlier, in the UK Census of
1851, Richard, like his new brother-in-law, had decribed
himself as a "farm labourer." They had seen offers of farm
work for settlers on Vancouver Island being made by the
Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and had travelled together to
London to sign up.
The brothers-in-law, sisters in law
and Richard's father-in law, John Williams, with his family,
all made the
five-month journey to Vancouver Island aboard the Sailing
Ship Norman Morison. On arrival, all the men worked for the
HBC -- Thomas was employee 223 (see HBC employee records
extract, left) and Richard Caselton was number 135.
 The
Flewins set up home inside Fort Victoria, the HBC's
fortified headquarters at the southerly point of Vancouver
Island. It was there, two months after they arrived, that
their first son, Goegre, was born. Sady he was dead within
two years, but in1857 their second son, named John after his
grandfather, was born.
Thomas stayed farming for HBC for
another year. The Company then chose to sell off a number of
its farms and lands to employees and Thomas and Jane set up
their own farm. But in 1862, the year his second and third
sons, James and William, arrived, disaster struck. Their
cattle, which roamed the parklands, all perished in a severe
winter, unable to get back to the farm which had ample hay
to feed them. They starved and froze to death, and the
Flewins were broke.
The five-strong Flewin family moved
from the farm into the fledgling town of Victoria. Thomas
became Head Gardener for Sir James Douglas, the first
Governor of British Columbia. In his diary, Douglas'
son-in-law, John Helmcken wrote: "The Governor had a
gardener, an Englishman named Thomas - a pretty rough sort
of gardener, but knew more in his own opinion than anyone
else..... the Company's men from Kent were decent gardeners
too and "Tom" Flewin had charge ....... Thomas said the best
of all flowers was the cauliflower! Anyhow Governor Douglas'
garden was laid out by the aforesaid Thomas."
But Thomas was not to stay a
gardener. For some 20 years he worked on the shipping wharfs
of Victoria, first as a warehouseman then in the Custom
House as a customs officer.
In 1858 gold had been discovered in
the Fraser River. The rush of miners who had travelled to
California now made their way north. Victoria was the last
stop for many people before they began gold exploration and,
over the next twenty years, the population of Victoria
swelled out of control. Thomas using what money he had saved
and sharing the investment with his long-time friend, Jarvis
Longhurst, he went into  what
he thought would be a lucrative business -- running saloons
in Victoria. At one time there were more than 60 saloons in
the small city, and Thomas had a stake in two of them.
One, the Capital Saloon in Yates
Street (signs in picture, right, show "Thos.Flewin" above
the door), where he was the sole proprietor, and the other,
the Belmont Saloon (pictured below). A newspaper article
reported about the Belmont: "It was a popular place and the
host there was Thos. Flewin, a quiet man, who ran a quiet
place. No rowdiness for him as sometimes went on in the
waterfront saloons."
By 1890, Flewin family had made
their home in a smart cottage with wide bay windows on what
was then  South
Park Street in Beacon Hill Park. It was said he had become
"one of Victoria's oldtimers" and he loved to "yarn with his
friends" about his journey on the Norman Morison. In
addition to running the saloon, Thomas had a small nursery
garden business run from greenhouses behind his cottage and
on land nearby.
In 1894, Thomas' wife died and the
Victoria newspaper, The Colonist, reported: "Mrs. Jane T.
Flewin, wife of Mr. Thos. Flewin and herself one of the
narrowing circle of lady pioneers died at the family
residence on South Park Street, esteemed and widely mourned
by all who had known her. The family left to mourn the
passing away of a good wife and mother consists of Mr.
Flewin and three sons, all grown to manhood and residents of
the province."
Entries in the 1901 census of
British Columbia show Thomas was living with Albert and
Mary, his son and daughter-in-law. He reported annual
earnings of $1,000, twice as much as his son. In the same
house, as lodgers, were Jarvis Longhurst, his former
partner, and his wife.
Later in 1901, the obituary columns
of The Colonist reported Thomas' death, aged 68: "The
deceased had spent close on half a century in Victoria and
had been ill for several months. While a man who never took
an active part in the affairs of the community, he
nevertheless took a keen interest in the advancement of his
adopted city. He enjoyed the friendship of all the
oldtimers, among whom he was very popular."
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