Topic: Taking Care of Business.
My GG Uncle Charles Johnston 1854-1933 was born in Airth, Stirlingshire. He was just two years old when he emigrated to Tasmania with his parents on the ‘Storm Cloud’.
He grew up in Launceston, Tasmania but must have moved to Sydney about six years before marrying Charlotte Jane Newsom, daughter of William and Ann Elizabeth Newsom, in 1891 when he was 37. They had one son born in 1894.
Charles was a draper rather than a carpenter, the latter being both his father’s and his son’s occupation. His father later became a Librarian, but that didn’t rub off on Charles either.
Charles had a small haberdashery shop in Falcon Street Crows Nest, North Sydney, only 100 yards from a major shopping centre and road junction . Charles’ cousin Walter Louis Huxtable was to say two decades later that Charles’ shop was “100 yards from a fortune”. Five roads converged at the junction and in the middle was a tram centre for trams from all parts of Sydney, then a burgeoning city. Nevertheless the business continued for many years, until Charles retired about 1920. He died aged 79. It is not known if Charlotte assisted her husband in the business.