Rookwood Cemetery Discoveries

  Today's blog is about an entrepreneur who via marriage, gave his rather ordinary name a touch of class. His name is associated with railways, a tourist resort and one the of most palatial venues for a wedding in Sydney. HARRY “ CURZON” SMITH Harry was the born in Toronto Canada the eldest son of Hugh Thomas Smith and his wife Rebecca. Hugh was an engineer and was extremely successful in the gas and soda water manufacturing business. His improvements to the aerated water machinery in Toronto soon made him the leading manufacturer of soda fountains and dispensing machines in Canada and the USA. In 1877 Hugh moved with his family to Australia and set up a firm in Sydney that secured contracts to install gas lighting in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmanian railway carriages. Harry commenced working with his father as a travelling salesman. Aged 23, in 1884, he married Isabella Curzon Webb. Isabella was related to George Curzon, First Marquess Curzon of Kedlesto...

 Well a few short decades ago who would have thought that Enmore Road would be considered a "cool" place! It was recently officially voted the coolest Sydney Street by Time Out for 2022 - (as well as being No. 24 on the list of coolest streets in the world this year!) Enmore Road was a "happening" place from the mid 1910's through to the early 1980's after it transformed from an area of villa garden estates to a suburban landscape before it went into a gradual decline before reinventing itself. So who made this area the "place to be seen" ....Two brothers with stars in their eyes. GEORGE AND WILLIAM SZARKA George Clifton was born in Sydney in 1869 to Lucy and John Szarka, the eldest of their seven children, with William joining the family in 1880. George worked for a number of years as a compositor at the Government Printing Office and later at John Sands. Both brothers lived in the Newtown area and were heavily involved in the promotion of boxing,...