John Mccrae

📖 The Scoop

John McCrae (1833-1869) was born and raised in the Canadian province of Ontario, known at the time as the British colony of Upper Canada, but little is known of his early life. He emigrated to Australia in the early 1850s not long after the discovery of gold in Victoria and soon joined the tens of thousands seeking their fortune on the Victorian goldfields. In this tale of the remainder of John McCrae's life, we come across him first in mid-1855 near Maryborough in central Victoria where he almost got himself hung after jumping a claim, the flashpoint for the so-called Alma Riots.After next trying his luck on the Bendigo goldfields, John joined the rush to Havelock in 1858 where he met and married Irish lass Margaret Sweetman. Within a year they had joined the new rush to Back Creek (Talbot) and had a son, but were off again early in 1860 to Inglewood where gold had recently been discovered. The Great Fire of Inglewood at the end of 1862 led to them joining the rush to Raywood late in 1863, but with the mining population there in sharp decline by early 1865, the McCraes returned to Inglewood where John set up shop in the main street as a bootmaker.By 1867 Inglewood was in recession and had a surplus of bootmakers which made it increasingly difficult for John to earn enough to keep his family. His worsening financial situation over the next few years was compounded by frequent episodes of excessive drinking, culminating in his tragic death in 1869 at the young age of 36. His widow Margaret was left to raise son John, daughters Jane and Maria, and baby Robert. Three other children had earlier died in infancy.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / General (fancy, right?)