PITTARD, Ann and Annie

Ann Pittard

Just a wife and mother the two Mrs James Pittard’s buried in Ballarat Cemetery. The first is Ann who died in 1875 she was buried on 16 June in the Church of England A section 1 grave 3, two of her grandchildren were buried with her in July 1876. 

At Walcott Bath in 1833, Ann Warr married James Pittard a bootmaker, the first three of their twelve children were born in Bath, in 1836 the family moved to Bristol. Sadly four of the children died young. Ann’s two eldest children married in Bristol, both had young children when they embarked in 1856 on different ships following their father to Victoria. In 1857 the next two children, daughters Jane and Ellen, arrived in Sydney on the Beejapore were they both met and married their husbands. In 1859, Ann was thirty-nine when she embarked for Australia with her four youngest children. We wonder how Ann managed on her own in Bristol while she waited for James to arrange the fare for her and the younger children.

The family story is that James walked from Geelong to Ballarat and set up his business in a tent selling and repairing boots for the miners. In 1866, all of the family are in Geelong, Ellen and her family have travelled from Queensland while Jane and her family have come from New South Wales. James and Ann are living in Bond Street Chilwell when in February the family celebrate the marriage of their second son James Alfred Pittard to Annie Drew.

Annie Drew the second Mrs James Pittard was born at Tiverton in Devon, and she arrived in Australia in 1863 on the Golden Land with her mother and five younger siblings, her father and two brothers had come to Geelong in 1862 on the Elizabeth Ann Bright.

Four months after James Alfred and Annie married in February 1866 the Pittard family mourned the death of eldest son William; he drowned in the Barwon River in June 1866. Ellen and her family returned to Queensland, and Jane and her family moved to Donald in Victoria.

James business prospered he had boot shops in Ballarat and in Maryborough and he, Ann with the three youngest children settled in Ascot Street Ballarat. Following the birth of James Alfred and Annie Pittard’s first child in Geelong, they then moved to Ballarat and James joined the family Shoe and Boot Business.

Ann would have had her days full with establishing her home and being on hand still for her youngest children as they began their families. While once again she spent time, waiting for her husband to return from business trips in Victoria. It was during one of James times in Maryborough that Ann died at her home, she had been in Ballarat barely eight years. James later moved to Donald and lived near his daughter Jane; he died in Donald in 1903.

The Pittard shoe and boot business continued to prosper with the two shops in Ballarat under the care of James Alfred Pittard. Like her mother-in-law Annie established her home and had twelve children, two of the boys died before their fifth birthdays. In 1891, Annie signed the Women’s Suffrage Petition, as did five of her daughters and countless other women. Annie was a regular member of St Peter’s congregation and encouraged her daughters to live full lives. In 1903, she was devastated when her beloved husband James died at the age of just fifty-seven; she wore black or dark clothing for the rest of her life. She was proud of all her children particularly when eldest son Alfred James Pittard became Mayor of Ballarat East in 1913 serving twice more as Mayor and eighteen years as a Member of the Legislative Assembly. She coped with her daughters marrying and moving to South Africa, she raised a loved grandchild for a number of years while her youngest daughter struggled with a health issue and she kept an immaculate home and productive garden. One of her granddaughters asked her once if she could change her life what would it be. She said she would have stopped wearing the heavy English clothing in summer.

Annie was eighty-four when she died in July 1930; she was buried with her husband and two young sons (George & Walter) in the Church of England A Section 9 Grave 26 at the Ballarat New Cemetery. Ann died in 1875 and is buried with her children Edwin and Alice.  She is buried in the Ballarat New Cemetery Church of England A Section 1 Grave 3.