Ellen (Nell) Grace (1875-1960)

‘Pioneer history does not sell’ – the frustrating writing life of local historian Nell Grace.

Local historians everywhere will empathise with Wentworth historian Nell Grace who was unable to find a mainstream publisher for her magnum opus, her ‘History of Wentworth’. They might be surprised to know, though, that her words were written in the late 1920s, almost a hundred years ago, when the events she was writing about had just slipped from living memory. For years she had been gathering memories, letters, diaries, other documents and photographs lest they disappear from view.

In December 1933, frustrated that her own work, based on those precious original documents she had painstakingly collected, was in danger of also disappearing from view, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, published on 18 December 1933, that ended ‘I have spent 12 years and a lot of money in gathering material for such a record, not only of Wentworth, but of the great mid-Murray and Darling districts from their beginning. And, having compiled and checked this work without bias or contentious matter (adding many early portraits and maps), I find Sydney publishers unwilling to publish this ‘fine piece of work’ – to quote – except at my expense, on the plea that ‘pioneer history does not sell’. My effort, therefore, has proved merely a waste of years and material.’ Her frustration and bitterness at the rejection is palpable.

But now, thanks to the availability of newspapers online through the marvels of TROVE and an unexpected find in 2015, it is possible to experience Nell Grace’s reconstruction of the early years of white settlement in the Darling region. It is clear that she did not give up on making her historical writing public. It is also clear that she was a fine writer.

In 1925, around the time she started to publish her work, she joined the Historical Society of Victoria and in the following year her paper on the ‘Pioneer wheat growers at Euston, NSW’ was presented to the Society. She was only the seventh woman to present a paper in the HSV’s sixteen year history. The paper was published in the Victorian Historical Magazine in March 1927. She remained a member of the Society until 1950, long after she had stopped writing and publishing her work.

Between 1927 and 1934 at least a dozen of her well-written, well-researched articles appeared in the pages of the Australasian and the Sydney Morning Herald, most with a focus on her local area of south-west New South Wales, but with occasional digressions (on Caroline Chisholm in Kyneton, Victoria and in 1932 in support of Dame Mary Gilmore’s stance on ‘aboriginal sanctuaries’).

Nell Grace always signed herself N Grace, to disguise the fact that her articles were written by a woman, in order to be taken more seriously, perhaps. Behind the façade of that name was a busy mother of ten, married in 1893 aged eighteen, first child born the following year and last child in 1918. It was around the time of the birth of her last child that she began her historical collecting. Although she still had several young children at home, most had left home, carving out their own places in the world. And so she pursued her historical interests until her husband’s death in 1936, after which she moved away from the family property at Tara Downs, Anabranch, Wentworth to live quietly in nearby Mildura until her death in 1960 aged 85.

How was it, then, that this busy farmer’s wife from Wentworth not only came to be interested in history, but chose to pursue that interest, producing numerous written accounts of early white settlement in the areas she knew and clearly loved? Where did she hone her history writing skills? How did she manage to juggle her responsibilities as wife and mother with the task of collecting, organising and writing local history? Frustratingly, it is unlikely that these questions can ever be answered.

Little is known of the early life of Nell Grace, born Ellen Haines in Tamworth, NSW in 1875. She was an only child. Her father William Haines appears to be absent from the family scene, her mother Bridget Ellen Walton appears in the public record only at the time of Nell’s marriage in 1893 and when she, Bridget, died at Bendigo in 1911. We are told that Nell was educated at Wilcannia Convent and that she was living with friends when she married, but beyond that, her personal history has been lost. It is interesting to note, though, that when she died in February 1960, Nell Grace was buried with her mother at Bendigo Remembrance Park.

So much absence. Yet in the past decade, Nell Grace’s place as a local historian has been felt once more with the availability of newspapers online through the National Library of Australia’s TROVE collection. And in 2015, her history of Wentworth was found. The circumstances, related by Maud Crang on the Wentworth Historical Society website, speak to the precarious nature of the survival of personal archives: ‘An old white-anted shed on Milpara Station, still owned by the Grace family, was under demolition, when a small tin trunk, the bottom rusting through, was found. Inside was the missing typed manuscript of Nell Grace’s history of Wentworth. This was the second edited version, after the first had been rejected by publishers as ‘too long’. It was saved just in time, minutes before the remains of the shed were burnt.’

Nell Grace wrote in 1933 that ‘pioneer history does not sell’. Her story shows that it can so easily disappear and that we have a responsibility to find, retrieve, record, curate and publish as much of our early history as we can, just as Nell Grace did almost a hundred years ago.

Cheryl Griffin, December 2024.

Sources:
Mrs Nell Grace, first Wentworth historian, Maud Crang, Wentworth Historical Society, 2015, https://wentworthhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/49/
Victorian and NSW birth, death, marriage indexes.
Victorian electoral rolls
RHSV archives
Victorian Historical Magazine, vol XI, number 2, September 1926; vol XI, number 3, March 1927.