Duty, Land and Legacy

The Sale of the Snowtown Farm

In the spring of 1942, a public notice appeared in the Chronicle newspaper announcing the sale of a 466 acre farm near Snowtown. At first glance, it looked like a routine land auction, one of many conducted by the South Australian Farmers’ Co-operative Union during those years. But behind the advertisement lay a story of family and duty.

The property was located in the Hundred of Cameron, Bumbunga, just southeast of Snowtown, a region known for its robust cereal crops and mixed farming. The land was good, and so were the improvements: a solid six-roomed homestead, a chaff shed, machinery shed, pigsties, stables, cow yard, and a fowl house, the land all neatly divided into six paddocks. 

The farm, a tidy and productive holding, had only recently been acquired in 1940 by Edward John Horgan. But barely two years later, he was forced to put it up for sale, not by drought or debt, but by the weight of family obligation and personal loss.

In quick succession, Eddie’s two uncles, Tom and Jack Horgan, passed away. They had managed the family farm at Linwood in South Australia’s mid-north for many years, but had leased it to their neighbours the Arnold brothers when they moved to Riverton with their sister Kate. Their deaths left the Linwood property in the hands of their ageing brother, Andrew, Eddie’s father. Suddenly, the task of keeping the old family property going fell to Eddie, his brother Joe and his father.

The decision to leave Snowtown was not made lightly. Eddie and Hannah had only recently put down roots there, investing in land and building a life. That life was tough and pennies were few. Hannah recalled walking one and a half miles to a neighbour's farm to borrow a match. A letter to her mother sat on the mantelpiece for several weeks before she could afford the stamp to post it.

Now with two toddlers in tow and another on the way they prepared to make their way south.  By August of 1942, Hannah was in Riverton Hospital where the birth of a still born babe would have added additional stress and concerns. (1)

The 1942 auction was held at the Snowtown Market on Tuesday, 13th October. The land was offered in two parcels, 190 and 216 acres, but could be sold as a whole. Cash terms applied, a standard arrangement during wartime, when credit was tight and inflation loomed. The auctioneers, operating out of both Adelaide and Snowtown, handled the sale on behalf of E.J. Horgan, who had no choice but to walk away from one farm to tend another one steeped in family legacy. The final sale and settlement of the land transfer did not occur until March 1946 when the title was transferred to a Glen William Davidson. (2)

This advertisement in the newspaper fails to reveal the whole story but highlights the way lives were reshaped by family responsibilities and the obligations of inheritance. It’s a story repeated in towns and farms across Australia, where loyalty to land and kin often meant changing direction when least expected.

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1. 1942 'Family Notices', The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954), 26 August, p. 10. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48880231

2. Certificate of Title, SAILIS, Vol 1712, folio 124

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin