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David was killed in 1908, when a cedar log at the timber mill in Queensland where he worked
rolled on him and crushed him.
All the Pearses and their children appear to have worshipped at the Methodist Church at
Torrumbarry South; and the children went to the Roslynmead Primary School. This was in the
1920's. In 1930 the Pearse farmhouse 'at Roslynmead' - on the Kotta Road - was burnt down
for the second time.
It is clear from all this that the Mountjoys' original homestead west of Echuca gave its name not
just to a railway station and a school, but to an area on the Terricks road, west of Wharparilla.
And all because a pioneering Scottish settler west of Geelong decided to name his first
homestead Roslyn, after the Scottish town that once had been his home.
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Family Tragedies
The full family history of the remarkable Mountjoys from northeast Cornwall would be worth a
book in itself. Much of the stirring saga of their family fortunes has been touched on. But further
details need not concern us unduly from now on, apart from the deaths of some of those most
closely related and known to Jane, Lawrence Mountjoy's second wife. For she was herself a
Mountjoy by marriage and died as one, and the activities of all three Mountjoy brothers, their
dreams and dramas, obviously affected her life.
So did their dying - especially of those who died young - and in the 1880's family tragedies
struck more than once in the midst of the Mountjoys' golden years.
In July 1881, when Thomas and Caleb Mountjoy took over the lease of Lawrence's land, Jane
and Lawrence were living a life of affluent ease in Fernside, their new home in Geelong. Jane
was 55 that year; Lawrence was 61. Caleb, now 52, was farming at Wharpahlla near Echuca
and was in the process of becoming the biggest land-owner in the district at that time.
It was an unhappy year for Caleb Mountjoy: two of his children died. The first was a one-day
old baby boy, born at Wharparilla in June. Called George Lemon, he was Caleb and Louisa's
last child. Then one of their teenage daughters, Louisa, known as Louie, died in August in
Geelong. Aged 15, she was buried in the graveyard of the Wesleyan church at Highton, and on
the gravestone commemorating her death were also inscribed the names of the three other
children in the family who had predeceased her; James, in 1862, aged five; Edgar, in 1866,
aged one year and 10 months; and Harward, in 1867, aged six years and 10 months.
After the deaths of George Lemon and Louie, six of Caleb and Louisa's 11 children still
survived: Lawrence, Rhoda, Emma, Edmund, Mabel and Annie. But within 10 years, three of
these would also be dead.
The first of them to die was the eldest daughter, Rhoda, who committed suicide on the Trewin
selection at Torrumbarry in the early hours of Wednesday, 25 April, 1888. She was 25.
A 'Magisterial Inquiry' was held in William Trewin's house the following day before Robert
Foyster, JP. Having viewed the body, with Constable Brooks and a clerk in attendance,
Foyster heard the evidence of William and Kuriah Trewin (Rhoda's aunt and the older sister of
Lawrence Mountjoy senior), and two neighbours, Tom Pearse and Roderick McLeod.
What follows is taken from their signed statements, made the day after Rhoda died.
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William Trewin: 'Rhoda Mountjoy is my niece. She has been staying with me on a visit for about
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