John Francis

Story

There is no recorded birthplace or birth date for John Frederick Francis. He was an illegal immigrant who jumped ship in Urangan, Hervey Bay, Queensland in 1856 when he was about 14 years of age. John was a cabin boy who left home to go to sea at the age of 12. His father, John Henry Francis was a joiner from Hull in the North of England who decended from a long line of mariners. His mother, Mary Ann Ziezman, was Prussian who came from Kolberg, in the Koszalin region of Prussia which is now part of Poland. As a child, John was reared in Danish Territory, on Bornholm Island in the Baltic Sea not far off the coast from his mother’s home town.

After jumping ship, he made his way, with other immigrants, to Ipswich where he soon found work on a farm owned by a former Irish convict, Kyren Walsh. He lived and worked there for many years, and on the 16th of May 1871 he married Mary Ann Walsh the second daughter of Kyren and Mary Ann (McCabe). They were married in St Mary’s Catholic Church, Ipswich.

By now, John was working for the Queensland Railways as a sleeper cutter, cutting sleepers for the construction of the Western Line being built from Ipswich to Chinchilla. He and his new bride, like many other married couples, lived in the camps beside the rail tracks as they were laid. Some four years later, in 1875, when they were in the Warra district of the western Darling Downs, land was being offered for selection. These blocks were formerly part of huge holdings like “Jimbour” and Warra Warra” Stations held by the squatocracy. Thus John and Mary became one of that district’s first selectors when they took up a piece of land called “Scrubby Bend”.

Over the years, they developed this property and, not long before the Boer War, took up more land in the district and called it “Hillgrove”. This property was where some 13000 horses were handled and broken in to be used in that war. This mammoth task was undertaken by some of the oldest Francis sons and many other renown horsemen of the time like “Greenhide” Jim Alexander and the future first Australian Aboriginal Boxing Champion, Jerry Jerome.

John and Mary had 11 children, 8 sons and 3 daughters. They were, Frank, Kyren, John, Richard, William, Thomas, James, Elizabeth, Annie, Mabel and Herbert. In those days, there were 6 properties in the Warra District held in the Francis Name. They were “Scrubby Bend”, “Hillgrove”, “Helenslea”, “Gracevale”, “Kyogle” and “Quail Plains”.

John passed away on 26th May 1921. His wife Mary died on 20th March 1936. They are both buried in the Warra Cemetery among many of their relatives and other early district pioneers.

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