FRETUS, Joseph  (1830-1887) and Family

Champion Choppers and Contractors

Joseph Fretus and family came from the St George area to make their home in the Sutherland Shire in the very early days as did many other families. However Joseph had come from much further afield than the St George area when he married Sophia Ann Robinson in St Lawrence’s Church of England in Sydney on 14 May 1855. He was born in 1830 to Jose and Rosaline Fretus in Flores, one of the nine Portuguese Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic Ocean.¹ Sophia was the daughter of Robert and Margaret Robinson and had been baptised in St Mary’s Catholic church in Sydney in 1832.²

Joseph and Sophia moved from inner Sydney to the Hurstville area with their children and Joseph worked as a woodcutter on James Oatley’s grant. The timber was used for building material and also locally for shipbuilding and was often transported by water down to Botany Bay in small boats. Joseph was one of several who carried timber down the river and on one trip was blown out to sea in a storm. He was missing for three days before returning safely after taking refuge in a cove.³

 On 27 July 1878 the first of their family married when Emanuel and Sarah Collis were wed at St Silas’ Church, Waterloo.⁴ Elizabeth followed the next year with her wedding to Robert Towell, then Sarah’s marriage to Patrick Hannon took place in 1882 and Joseph’s to Emily Pearce in 1884. Joseph was not to live long enough to see his daughter Rosa marry John Gilligan in 1888 as he died on 26 June 1887. He was buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery in Sydney. The remaining two children married within a short time of each other – Francis to Jane Bell in 1890 and John to Catherine Ross-Kelly in 1893.⁵

From early times land was acquired south of the Georges River by the Fretus family. After the formation of the Sutherland Shire Council came the first rate assessments in 1907. Frank Emmanuel and members of their immediate families are listed as having interests in numerous parcels of land mainly in the Cronulla area. Their sister Rosa and her husband John Gilligan are shown as living in Robertson Street, Sutherland on the 1903 Electoral Roll. Sarah and Robert Towell took up land on the Boulevarde Miranda where they had a poultry farm, raised pigs and established a market garden.

Three of the boys had acquired their father’s skill with the axe and took part in wood chopping competitions which were a popular pastime of the day. A report of a tournament held in Boyle’s Lane at Sutherland tells of an accident in which one of the Fretus boys had the finger tips on one hand chopped off by Mick Hannon in a freak accident while pulling out wood chips.⁶

Frank Fretus, who had the nickname ‘Racker’,⁷ often successfully tendered for work with the Sutherland Shire Council. He laid paving around Boyle’s Hotel for £50, cleared Manchester Road for 14 shillings and 6 pence, laid kerb and guttering at Cronulla for 11 shillings a lineal yard, according to newspapers of the day. When the President of the Sutherland Shire, Councillor Monro was impressed with satisfactory experiments using tar for ‘top dressing main roads’, he managed to obtain 3000 gallons of it for two pence a gallon from the Australian Gas Light Company. Frank Fretus received the contract to lay it on Surf Road at Cronulla for four shillings and three pence per superficial yard – the first road in the Shire to receive this innovative new treatment. Of further benefit to the council was the fact that they sold the tar to Frank for three pence a gallon.⁸ Frank was also responsible for the construction of the first seawall at Cronulla Park. He had 23 men under his supervision when the work commenced in 1921 and it was officially opened on 13 May 1922, all 234 metres. This wall was later extended to the southern end of the beach, and money was provided for the building of a men’s dressing pavilion and the surf club.⁹

When the First World War was taking our young men away Frank’s son, also named Frank, enlisted at Casula with the 9th Reinforcements and embarked at Sydney on the HMAT Hororata on 2 May 1916 in the 12 Light Horse Regiment. He had married Ada Gertrude Derrey, who was a laundress from the well known local Derrey family and the couple lived in President Avenue, Sutherland. Private Fretus gave his occupation as stonemason, aged 25 years 11 months when he joined the 18th Infantry the previous December. Just four months from the day he left, the St George Call listed him in the 199th Casualty List as being ‘severely wounded’. He had received a gunshot wound to his arm and foot and although it was reported the following month he was ‘progressing favourably’, the wound was severe enough to return him to Australia on the Kanowna.¹⁰

Sophia was living with Rosa and John Gilligan and it was from there that Sophia’s body was taken, when she died on 24 November 1905, for burial in the Woronora Cemetery Roman Catholic section B, grave 51-52. When the Devonshire Street Cemetery was closed in 1901 to make way for Central railway station, her husband Joseph’s body was exhumed and re-interred in Woronora and she was laid to rest with him. Many descendants remain today to honour the memory of Joseph from the Azores Islands and his wife Sophia who was born in the fledgling colony.

 Maree Mckinley & Maureen Lewis

First published in  Sutherland Shire, Some Early Residents, 2006, by Botany Bay Family History Society. Compiled by Maree McKinley and Sue Hewitt.    

Click on the name FRETUS, Joseph (1830 – 1887) and Family at the heading of thIs story. You will be taken to the database entry for Joseph Fretus and his family.

References:

1       www.FamilySearch.org

2       NSW BDM Index Ref. V18351044/126

3       Pedr Davis, The Hurstville Story, Hurstville Municipal Council, 1986

4       Kogarah Down Under, Hurstville Family History Society Inc 1999. p.10,11

5       NSW BDM Index

6       SSHS Bulletin No 54 Nov 1985 p157

7       SSHS Bulletin No 43 Feb 1983 p.22

8       History of the Shire 1917 p9

9       History of the Shire 1922 p28

10     AIF Nominal Roll WWI