Mary Jean (Cameron) Gilmore DBE (1865 - 1962)

Born 16 Aug 1865 in Crookwell, New South Wales, Australia

Ancestors

Wife of William Alexander Gilmore — married 29 May 1897 in Colonia Cosme, Guair, Paraguay

Descendants

Died 3 Dec 1962 at age 97 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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Biography

Mary (Cameron) Gilmore DBE is Notable.

Dame Mary Gilmore DBE was a prominent Australian socialist poet and journalist. Mary Jean Cameron was born on 16 August 1865 at the Cotta Walla (modern day Roslyn) settlement in Crookwell, New South Wales. When she was one year old her parents, Donald and Mary, decided to move to Wagga Wagga to join her maternal grandparents, the Beatties, who had moved there from Penrith, New South Wales in 1866. After completing her teaching exams in 1882, she accepted a position as a teacher at Wagga Wagga Public School, where she worked until December 1885. After a short teaching spell at Illabo she took up a teaching position at Silverton near the mining town of Broken Hill. There Gilmore developed her socialist views and began writing poetry.

In 1890, she moved to Sydney, where she became part of the "Bulletin school" of radical writers. Although the greatest influence on her work was Henry Lawson it was Alfred "A. G." Stephens, literary editor of The Bulletin, who published her verse and established her reputation as a fiery radical poet, champion of the workers and the oppressed.

She followed William Lane and other socialist idealists to Paraguay in 1896, where they had established a communal settlement called New Australia two years earlier. At Lane's breakaway settlement Cosme she married William Gilmore in 1897. By 1900 the socialist experiment had clearly failed. Will left to work as a shearer in Argentina and Mary and her two-year-old son Billy soon followed, living separately in Buenos Aires for about six months, and then the family moved to Patagonia until they saved enough for a return passage, via England, in 1902 to Australia, where they took up farming near Casterton, Victoria.

Gilmore's first volume of poetry was published in 1910, and for the ensuing half-century she was regarded as one of Australia's most popular and widely read poets.[citation needed] In 1908 she became women's editor of The Worker.

By 1931 Gilmore's views had become too radical for the AWU, but she soon found other outlets for her writing. She later wrote a regular column for the Communist Party's newspaper Tribune, although she was never a party member herself. In spite of her somewhat controversial politics, Gilmore accepted appointment as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1937, becoming Dame Mary Gilmore.[4] She was the first person to be granted this award for services to literature. During World War II she wrote stirring patriotic verse such as No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest.

In her later years, Gilmore, separated from her husband, moved to Sydney, and enjoyed her growing status as a national literary icon. Before 1940 she published six volumes of verse and three editions of prose. After the war, Gilmore published volumes of memoirs and reminiscences of colonial Australia and the literary giants of 1890s Sydney.

Gilmore's image appears on the Australian $10 note. The background of the illustration features a portrait of Gilmore by the well-known Australian artist Sir William Dobell.

In 1973 she was honoured on a postage stamp bearing her.

The Canberra suburb of Gilmore and the federal electorate of Gilmore are named after her. (1)

Birth and Parentage

She was the eldest child of Donald Cameron, a farmer, born in Inverness-shire, Scotland, and his native-born wife Mary Ann, née Beattie. Her father had migrated to Australia in 1838 from Fort William, and her mother's family had come from County Armagh, Ireland, in 1842. The Camerons and Beatties owned adjoining properties.(2)

Marriage

She married fellow colonist, a Victorian shearer, William Alexander Gilmore (1866-1945), at Cosme on 25 May 1897 . (2)

Children

Their only child William Dysart Cameron Gilmore (1898-1945) was born on 21 August 1898 at Villarica, near Cosme. (2)

Death

Dame Mary Gilmore died in 1962, aged 97, and was accorded (a ) state funeral. (1)

Sources

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Gilmore#Later_life

(2) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gilmore-dame-mary-jean-6391

(3) http://www.clan-cameron.org.au/

Comment

I put up this biography of Dame Mary Gilmore because my g grandmother, Margaret Schofield (1876-1965) always said that she was a 'cousin'. Margaret's grandmother was Mary Tole (nee Cameron) b 1819 Strontian, ARG SCT and both her parents were Camerons, (Margaret and Duncan), who were married in Aharacle in 1811. My Mary Cameron came to Australia as a free woman in 1849 on 'The Blonde' with several MacDonald cousins from Fort William. She married ex-convict Arthur Tole in 1850 in Wollombi.