The Hirons Family
Mary Hirons, with children Annie (13), Jane (4), Thomas (5) and Jesse (1), followed her husband William, already established in Mornington as a Brick maker, to Australia aboard "Blackheath" via South Africa in 1853.
William had a brickworks, making bricks from the clay holes that were in Gordon Street down behind the Grand Hotel. Thomas Allchin later owned and operated these brickworks.
It seems that Jesse who was a baby had a serious accident while being carried up a companionway by his mother during a storm at sea.
His eardrums were punctured which caused him to become totally deaf, in those days he was classed as deaf and dumb though his son Horace later wrote that Jesse was able to communicate with his family by speech. He was a boarder at the newly established Deaf School in Melbourne for several years and learned the trade of carpenter. Returning to Mornington he was employed as a carpenter and in 1886 became the first verger at St. Peters Church of England.
He received a salary of £20 a year, which was reduced to £15 during the lean year of 1891, but he was supplied with a gown! He was paid an additional four shillings for ringing the bell for four hours to mark the passing of Queen Victoria in 1901.
He married Alice Victoria Booth in 1888 and built a house in
Main Street which was still standing up until 2008 and had a family of six.
When he retired in 1906/7 he was given a mantelpiece clock inscribed "To Mr. Hirons from the Congregation of St. Peters".
Jesse Hirons died in 1912.
The Hirons home in Main Street was sold in 1916 to Mr. Connell of Tuerong.
It was said that Jesse Hirons tried unsuccessfully to restrain Mrs. Gillett from evicting the Governor of Victoria and his friends from her pew one Sunday Service.
James Johnston, Quarryman and Brickmaker, married Jesse’s sister Ann Irons (Hirons) in 1859. Their son William Gully Johnston died in 1860 and was buried on Mr. Hirons land in 1860.
James and Ann Johnston left for New Zealand in 1864, with three sons Joseph Davey 4, James 2, and John 1.
Mornington Brick Works
L-R: Thomas Allchin and his two children, William Hirons (leaning on spade), Thomas Hirons, Thomas Coxhell and
James Johnstone (William Hiron’s son in law)