Rookwood Cemetery Discoveries

 As it is Remembrance Day, I am paying homage to an artist you probably haven't heard of. A man who had a prolific career as an illustrator and landscape painter, later becoming an official war artist with many paintings held by the Australian War Memorial. ALBERT HENRY FULLWOOD Albert was born on the 15th of March 1863 at Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, the son of Frederick John Fullwood, jeweller, and his wife Emma. He was the middle child of six. From the age of 15, Henry, as he was better known, attended Birmingham Institute on a scholarship. The census in 1881 shows most of the children living together, Henry as a jeweller and artist. Upon completing his studies and soon after his father had died, he migrated to Sydney arriving in December 1883 on the Rialto. He was listed as a lithographer (printmaker). Henry soon found work at John Sands Ltd and became a black and white illustrator for the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and travelled extensively to Thur

 Melbourne Cup was to be the theme of my Rookwood blog this week, but I received a call for help via a Facebook message from the person who set up a group I have joined - Australian Headstone Images - regarding clarification. The name on the headstone in Rookwood came up with another alias and she wanted to know who this person actually was, so I decided to have a quick look. Well, what a find this man turned out to be. I've always maintained that Rookwood is full of wonderful people, many of whom lie under unassuming standard issue headstones - this man is one of them. WILLIAM "FIGHTING BILL SPARKES" PARKES William was born in April 1818 at the Cooks River in an area known at the time as Parkes Run. He was one of 12 children born to John Parkes and his wife Margaret Southern, both convicts. John had been granted 50 acres of land in October 1831 and the land was known with several versions of the name Parkes until it was renamed Earlwood which it is known by today.

 I joined the Friends of Rookwood over 10 years ago after undertaking a couple of tours of the Cemetery and promptly fell in love with its fascinating history and that of the inhabitants. The Friends use all the funds raised from those tours, talks etc. to go towards funding restoration programs within the Cemetery and I have seen many headstones and monuments restored. The big passion project of the Friends since its inception decades ago was to restore the largest mausoleum within the Cemetery that had been gifted to the authorities to do as they thought best. The restoration was constantly brought up in meetings and talks but as the years went by and costs blew out it seemed an impossibility that the Mausoleum would be brought back to any of its original magnificence. Last Tuesday I attended the official reopening of the Frazer Mausoleum recently restored with major funding from the NSW Government and input from the Rookwood General Cemetery now part of the Metropolitan Memorial P

 When I heard Queen Camilla would be attending a library in Sydney (she is a great advocator for reading) I thought this is the perfect segue for writing about a truly great man whose obsession has benefitted us all in NSW and in fact Australia, if not the world. DAVID SCOTT MITCHELL David was born on the 19th of March 1836 in Sydney, the only son of Dr James Mitchell, a physician of Scottish origin, and his wife Augusta, nee Scott. He had two sisters. He was in the first intake of 24 undergraduates at the newly established University of Sydney in 1856 and was admitted to the Bar in 1858 but never practised the law or any other paid profession. During his twenties he led a carefree existence and a busy social life indulging in cricket, dancing, cards, debating as well as writing poetry and performed in amateur dramatics. His father was a wealthy man who had acquired large land interests in the Hunter Valley, in the Branxton and Cessnock area, where coal was found.  At the age of 29, in

 As a member of the Friends of Rookwood volunteer gardening group, over the last two Saturday fortnights we have been endeavoring to clean up graves in Sections 3 and 4 of the Old Anglican section which will be highlighted in the forthcoming Military Tour in November - details further on. Some are commemorating those bodies that did not come home after WW1 or those that did and died earlier than perhaps, they should have due to their war injuries. There are others from WW2 and even some American Civil War veterans.  One grave I had worked on a few years back was in dire need of some TLC. The man buried there was a war hero, one most of us have never heard of and this blog honours him today. RALPH NORMAN SPENDELOVE   Ralph was born in Toowong Queensland on the 4th of August 1890 to Benjamin James Spendelove and his second wife Amy Ann Benham. He was the third child in a family of six; two boys and four girls.  Benjamin was from Staffordshire England. He married Emma Heath in April 1883