Granny: Sarah

Sarah Freeman was known by several names during her life. They included: Jane Beckenham, Jane Beckingham, Jane Beckham, Jane Freeman, Sarah Jane Simons and Sarah Jane Beckman.

Sarah was born out of wedlock to an Irish mother, Mary Jane Price (formerly Moffatt), and English father, Simon Beckenham (aka Beckingham), in Armidale on the third of July 1866 (view birth certificate). The pair were presumably defacto after Simon’s first wife went missing some years earlier.

Sarah was a 23-year-old servant at the time she became pregnant to Abraham Freeman. They married at her home in September 1889 but the child, James, is believed to have been stillborn.

Abraham and Sarah had eight children, of which four died. James was stillborn in 1889 in Armidale, James R was stillborn in 1896 in Moree, Bessie died in Queensland in 1898 aged about one and Joseph died an infant in 1901 in Queensland.

Of the surviving children, Bertha knew of her two aunts, Lucy ‘Pip’ and Sarah ‘Girlie’ Ann. Bertha’s mother Ethel was born in 1891, Lucy was born a year later in 1892 and a brother, John, was born in 1895, all in Armidale before the family started a 600 kilometre journey to Warwick, Queensland via Moree in 1895 or 1896.

The trip took between one and two years and Abraham got jobs along the way to earned enough money to continue the next leg. It was on this protracted trip that James R Freeman was stillborn in Moree.

The pair made it to Queensland and set up home in the Warwick district. Abraham again got work as a labourer. Bessie Freeman was born in 1897, however she died the next year. Sarah Ann was born a year later. Two years after that, Joseph Freeman was born but died the same year.

Sometime between 1903 and 1913, the Freeman family moved to a home on Stanthorpe Road, Warwick, where she lived until at least 1930.

Sarah’s husband, Abraham, became senile and was moved to the Home of Rest in Toowoomba in 1934. He died three years later at the Dunwich Benevolent Society on Stradbroke Island, shortly after being transferred.

Sarah was a widow of ten years when she died on the tenth of September 1947 (view her obituary). She is buried in the Warwick cemetery.