Today's article is the second in a series on the Emmott family. In particular, we thank May Koellner of Moruya, the great-granddaughter of Abraham and Elizabeth Emmott. We also thank the Moruya & District Historical Society's Genealogy Research Centre, at 85 Campbell Street, Moruya, for their invaluable help and research. The society would welcome old family photos or photos of the area from readers that could be scanned into its photographic collection and, of course, be returned.

MORUYA'S most prominent family of general storekeepers, the Emmotts, had a tiny member whose heart was already on the land.

Elizabeth and Abraham's grandson, Abraham, apparently had no desire to follow in his father John's footsteps and work in Emmott's Bee-Hive Store.

When the future model farmer was born on Christmas eve in 1880, his daughter May Koellner said, he weighed just three pounds.

"He was so tiny he was carried around on a cushion," May said.

"He took after his grandfather Thomas Forster, who once managed Bodalla Estate, and always had a love for the land - he wanted to be a farmer from the age of 16."

But Abraham did have to put some time in at the store. He worked there before and after his marriage to Hilda Pfeiffer in 1911.

May said her grandmother, Elizabeth Emmott, was pregnant with her father when she laid the foundation stone of the Mechanics' Institute in 1880.

May's maternal great-grandfather was a German, Franz (Thomas) Pfeiffer, who was a painter's apprentice before he ran away from home when still a lad. His yearning to travel was satisfied by working his way around the globe many times on sailing ships. Thomas never sailed in the same ship twice - he walked up the gangplank of a different vessel on each voyage in his effort to visit as many countries as possible. He went ashore, eventually, to join the Californian goldrush and then married Anna Unrath.

May's grandfather Emil was born in San Francisco in 1857, from where the family departed for the safety of New South Wales just a few weeks before the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Emil spent his youth on the goldfields of Nerrigundah, Gul

gong and Hill End but didn't inherit his father's wanderlust.

"Improving the mind" was a serious business in the Victorian era. Emil took to it after a series of farming and carpen-

tering jobs - "the better to equip himself for life's battles" said his obituary in the Moruya Examiner of July 29, 1939.

University was not the accessible place of learning it is today, so Emil's studies took a course that was very popular with those keen on self-improvement. He enrolled in night school and the success of his endeavours gave him an entree to the Education Department. His first appointments, to half-time schools in the south-eastern High Country, were an impetus to persevere. Higher qualifications led to the headmaster's job at Kiora, Araluen, Nelligen, Ulmarra and a school in Newcastle.

John Emmott, May's paternal grandfather, stood fast to his mother's Wesleyan faith. He was the Sunday School superintendent, a trustee and lay preacher at the Moruya Wesleyan Church (now Uniting) for 55 years. Finished in 1864, the blue granite structure was the town's first permanent church.

The old weather

board Catholic church was converted to a school before a magnificent granite Joseph Ziegler-built church opened in 1889 but the Anglican St John's was labelled "simply a disgrace, and is fit only for a firestick" by the Examiner.

May said that she remembered Moruya as having even numbers of Protestants and Catholics, the latter mostly Irish settler families such as the Heffernans, Noonans and Ryans. The town's Protestants were largely Wesleyan (Methodist).

May, who is 95, remembers her family moving into the residence attached to Emmotts Bee-Hive Store on the corner of Vulcan and Queen Streets (Allens now covers both sites) where her uncle William and his family lived until ill-health forced his retirement to Sydney.

"It was a lovely house to live in," she said. "It opened up onto the street. It was wonderful there. We could wander everywhere and, because of the store, we knew everybody."

May and her younger brother Jack lived in a time when children could roam free beyond their back yards.

"As long as we were home by six o'clock for tea - we would hear the Convent bell ring at six. We would get an extra rush on in summer."

May attended Moruya Public School - which began as Moruya National School in 1879 with her grandfather John Emmott on the school board - "where it still is though it was just one little building", May said.

"They were very good teachers!"

About 10 years before May was born, the Emmotts fitted out the store with acetylene gas lights - a progressive innovation and a first for the town.

"In all, there are 15 jets, eight in the main building, two in the millinery department, two in the produce department, one in the office and two in a large lamp over the footpath," the report said.

In 1923, when May was about 12, her father bought "Riverview" at the first auction of Bodalla Estate farms.

Next week: From the store to country life.