The Local Studies collection at Cessnock Library is a specialised local history collection.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It contains original material in a wide range of formats including documents, photographs, audio-visual material, maps and plans, artworks, oral histories and objects of many different kinds.
If it relates to the Cessnock Local Government Area, it can find a home in our collection.
One of the more unusual objects in our collection is a doll which is over 100-years-old.
It is important to us as it tells the story of Welsh immigration to our local area, a significant part of our emigrant and coal mining history.
In the 19th century specific British communities were targeted for assisted migration to Australia because of their agricultural or industrial skills.
The first coal miners who came to the Hunter Valley brought their expertise in underground coal mining which had been honed in the mines of northern England and Wales.
The doll in our collection was a third birthday present from a Welsh couple, Emma and Tom Jenkins, to their daughter Nell.
The family lived in the village of Blaenrhondda, a coal mining village. In 1924 they immigrated to Australia, settling in Cessnock.
Tom Jenkins, like the other men in his family, worked as a coal miner.
Despite the fact that Nell was 18 years old when she came to Australia she chose to bring her childhood doll with her, clearly it still had a strong significance, linking her directly to her childhood on the other side of the world.
Nell eventually married a fellow Welsh immigrant, Emery White, a coal miner like her father. They had a family of their own and as the years passed their children married and families too.
One of Nell's grandchildren was Helen White. In 1976, on Helen's 10th birthday, she received a special gift from her grandmother, the much-loved childhood doll.
For the occasion Nell had asked a neighbour to make a new blue dress and bonnet to modernise the doll's appearance. It was put over the doll's original cream cotton clothes.
The White family has now generously donated this precious doll to the Local Studies collection at Cessnock Library.
Do you have something you would like to donate to our collection? We'd love to hear from you!
Kimberly O'Sullivan is the Local Studies Librarian at Cessnock City Library. Contact her on kimberly.osullivan@cessnock.nsw.gov.au.
In other news:
