Lancaster is a tiny locality without any shops. There is a small school that opened in 1876 that is still operating. It is also the first home of Harold Lilja's father, Lechard Charlemir Lilja, when he immigrated from Sweden on SS Chimborazo in 1881 with his brother Gunnar.
I found this out by chance from a Swedish genealogist who had helped me reconnect with the descendants of Lechard & Gunnar's sister Charlotte. Lechard had written a letter home from the Lancaster post office where he lived to his old employer in Linkoping Sweden that the genealogist came across.
The letter was full of a young man's dreams of finding a nice girl and getting married. He and his brother were doing manual farming work but Lechard went on to work for the NSW railways as a draughtsman. He did marry in Sydney to Mary Eliza and have two boys, Harold and Norman. After his wife died he married again to Ida Florence but had no more children. I don't know what happened to Gunnar yet, but Charlotte's family in Sweden has grown and the family name is now Lilieblad. I met young Antonia Lilieblad here in Sydney briefly in 2013 when she visited her boyfriend Karl who was working and travelling around Australia. And I am in contact with Antonia's brother Nicolas.
The town of Lancaster is known as Karlsruhe country, named after the property Karlsruhe built by Baron von Swaine in 1893. It was impounded during WWI and sold to an orchardist. The post office where, according to his letter, young Lechard and Gunnar lived with the post master has long since closed.
Lancaster is a rural village and irrigated farming district in northern Victoria between Kyabram and Mooroopna. It is 7 km east of Kyabram and has been known as Kybram East and Mooroopna West. When it was known as Kyabram East its name was changed, probably in 1881 or 1883, as a compliment to the settler and postmaster, Thomas Lancaster. Well....I know from the letter that it was called Lancaster in 1881.
When around the same age as his father when he arrived to live in Australia, Harold enlists and goes off to fight on the Western Front in WWI. A very different reason for moving half way around the world so far from the only home he had known. Lechard must have worried about his son in those long war years. Harold had only just married his young bride, Dorothy Beryl, my grandmother.
I found this out by chance from a Swedish genealogist who had helped me reconnect with the descendants of Lechard & Gunnar's sister Charlotte. Lechard had written a letter home from the Lancaster post office where he lived to his old employer in Linkoping Sweden that the genealogist came across.
The letter was full of a young man's dreams of finding a nice girl and getting married. He and his brother were doing manual farming work but Lechard went on to work for the NSW railways as a draughtsman. He did marry in Sydney to Mary Eliza and have two boys, Harold and Norman. After his wife died he married again to Ida Florence but had no more children. I don't know what happened to Gunnar yet, but Charlotte's family in Sweden has grown and the family name is now Lilieblad. I met young Antonia Lilieblad here in Sydney briefly in 2013 when she visited her boyfriend Karl who was working and travelling around Australia. And I am in contact with Antonia's brother Nicolas.
The town of Lancaster is known as Karlsruhe country, named after the property Karlsruhe built by Baron von Swaine in 1893. It was impounded during WWI and sold to an orchardist. The post office where, according to his letter, young Lechard and Gunnar lived with the post master has long since closed.
Lancaster is a rural village and irrigated farming district in northern Victoria between Kyabram and Mooroopna. It is 7 km east of Kyabram and has been known as Kybram East and Mooroopna West. When it was known as Kyabram East its name was changed, probably in 1881 or 1883, as a compliment to the settler and postmaster, Thomas Lancaster. Well....I know from the letter that it was called Lancaster in 1881.
When around the same age as his father when he arrived to live in Australia, Harold enlists and goes off to fight on the Western Front in WWI. A very different reason for moving half way around the world so far from the only home he had known. Lechard must have worried about his son in those long war years. Harold had only just married his young bride, Dorothy Beryl, my grandmother.
Harold did survive or I wouldn't be here. Around the outbreak of WWII Harold's father died and he scattered his ashes in the circular rose garden behind the chapels at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, where Harold's son Anthony Lilja, my mother's half brother, eventually interred Harold's ashes also.
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