THE McCULLOUGHS
Updated: Oct 21, 2022
In this post:
Charles and Olive Martha McCullough lived at Corio Bay Villa for just a year or so in 1926. It was a just step on their very long journey together.
Olive Martha McCullough was born Olive Martha Veale to John Veale (1859-1939) and Elizabeth Sarah Suters (1858-1946) in Kew. Not much is known about her childhood other than she was one of six siblings.
Like many women, she had multiple surnames over her life. She married her first husband Stanley Victor Barlow in 1915 when she was 23 years old and become Olive Martha Barlow. It was a shotgun wedding, after which Stanley abandoned Olive and never returned. Olive gave birth to a son the following year, David John (1916–1942) and lived with in her father's house.
Stanley Barlow who was a shady character and was already married to another woman under the alias Joseph John Hewitt. According to Ancestry, Stanley joined the military when he was 18 and then went AWOL. This was before he met Olive. Stanley was unable to use his name again once he left Olive as he was avoiding the warrant for his arrest for child desertion, so we went with the name Joseph John Hewitt and had further children with is first wife. Olive apparently never heard from Stanley again and filed for divorce in the courts which was granted in 1919.
Image: excerpt from the Victorian Police Gazette 7 August 1919, p. 389
Surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly to some), Olive was not the first woman who lived at Corio Bay Villa who had been previously been deserted by a feckless husband. Emily Henry was the first and Margaret Farney came later. You can read about their stories on the site elsewhere.
Image: Olive Martha and her son David John c. 1918, courtesy of AncestryLibrary.
Image: Charles McCullough's Australian Military Forces application dated 23 January 1915. Source: National Archives of Australia.
After divorcing Stanley, Olive met Charles McCullough who was ten years older than her. Charles’ had joined the military in 1915. We can see from his application that Charles was born in Adelaide to Reverend Robert McCullough. Charle's father Robert was an Irish born Baptist preacher who arrived in Tasmania in 1979 and spent some years at the Longford Tabernacle, where Charles was born. According to the Hobart Baptist Church, Robert's "preaching was a clear, straight-forward atonement theology."[1]
We know Charles was a cook and that he had a brother in Adelaide. After leaving the military he ended up in Victoria where he married Olive in 1920, when he was 38 years old and she was 28. Charles seems like a good catch, firstly because he could cook, and more importantly, because he took young David on as his own. He officially adopted David who, along with Olive, was now a McCullough.
Olive and Charles initially lived in Diamond Creek where Charles worked as a farm labourer. They went on to have three more sons: Donald Suters (1921-1990), Leonard (1923-2003) and Ralph Murray (1924-1979). So by the time they arrived at Corio Bay Villa in 1926 they were a family of six. The boys were aged between two years up to ten years old and no doubt kept Olive on her toes.
Image: Olive Martha McCullough, courtesy of AncestryLibrary.
After their brief sojourn in Surrey Hills the family moved on to Seymour in Echuca, Victoria, where Charles again worked as a farm labourer. By this stage Olive was in her mid-thirties and Charles was in his mid-forties. Olive and Charles must have liked Seymour as they lived there together for the rest of their lives. Together until the end, they ended up dying within months of each other. Although Charles was ten years older, it was Olive who passed away first in March 1972, at the age of 79. Charles lived to the ripe old of age of 90, and died seven months after Olive in October 1972. They are buried together in Seymour cemetery: together forever in live and death.
Image: Olive and Charles headstone at Seymour Cemetery, care of Findagrave.com. Viewed 28 April 2022, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/234105199/olive-martha-mccullough.
REFERENCE:
[1] Hobart Baptist Church, History, viewed 29 April 2022, https://hobartbaptist.org.au/about-us/history/