Grandfather Stephen and Great-grandfather Alexander

For some reason, I have been thinking lately about my paternal grandfather, Stephen King Montgomery, who died before I was born, and his father, Alexander Montgomery.

Alexander had a wonderful family. He married Lisa Alberta Allom, and they had five children, Rex, Barr, Geoffrey, Stephen, and my delightful great-aunt, Lisa Geraldine, who was generally known as Storkie (her four brothers were told she'd been delivered by a stork). They started out in New Zealand and later moved to Western Australia. The four boys were all involved in some capacity in World War 1, Stephen as a medic.

Storkie taught music at Herschel, a private school for girls in Cape Town, and she ran a private piano studio from her small apartment. She had a beautiful soul. Even when she was old, alone, and dying of lung cancer, she was always kind and spunky. She died when I was 11. Rex worked in finance and helped to educate his younger siblings. He was seriously wounded by "friendly" fire during WW1 and suffered from acute PTSD for the rest of his life. Sometimes he would wake up screaming "Over the top! Over the top!" He fell head over heels in love with his future wife, Madge, and was absolutely devastated to learn she had died during the Spanish 'flu epidemic of 1919, or at least so he believed. Later he fortuitously ran into her! Of course, he was absolutely overjoyed, but Madge was irate that he had been ignoring her. Anyhow, they got married, moved to Cape Town, South Africa, lived in a beautiful house in Fish Hoek overlooking False Bay, and had two sons, David and Geoffrey. Poor Barr was a promising young lawyer but was killed in the First World War. Geoffrey and Stephen became doctors and both studied in England. Geoffrey remained in the UK, married a woman named Bettine, and had two children, Elizabeth and Andrew. Stephen married Emily Turtington, moved to Cape Town, and had two children, my father (also Stephen) and Ann. Ann now lives in Harpenden, England. She has three children, Jennifer, David, and Neil, from her first husband. She and her second husband, Geoff, gave Craig and me our wedding in 1989😃

My grandfather, Stephen, started writing out his memoirs in the last year of his life. He died at the age of 53. I've tried to transcribe his diary from his barely legible handwriting into this website:
The Memoirs of Stephen King Montgomery

He tells some wonderful stories about his father, Alexander. Alexander's father, also Alexander, went out to New Zealand as secretary to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who was instrumental in the colonization of New Zealand and was also convicted of abducting an heiress😮 At that time, my greatgrandfather, the oldest child in the family, was eight years old. Alexander Senior later became a classics master and then headmaster at Otago High School, a private school for boys in Dunedin, Otago. Alexander Junior attended Otago High School and then Otago University and School of Mines. He was apparently an excellent student and graduated with an M.A. with honors in Chemistry and Minerology.

Alexander and Lisa Alberta moved to Tasmania, where my grandfather was born in Launceton, for a while. Alexander was a "government geologist", and one of his jobs was to investigate a gold claim at Mount Huxley in the beautiful but very wet West Coast region of Tasmania.

Alexander quickly found that the mine had been "salted". In other words, a little gold was added to ore samples where it could be found by "prospectors". The intent was to deceive potential buyers of the mine. Apparently Alexander had to be very careful not to awaken the suspicions of the salters, who plied him with fake samples. Meanwhile, he secretly collected his own samples and buried them under his tent. He later returned and dug these up in the safe presence of armed police. This was quite a scandal at the time, and Mount Huxley became known colloquially as Mount "Hoaxley".

I found some links, including old newspaper clippings, now online, about the story:

The Mount "Hoaxley"" Fraud, Thames Star, 20 June, 1894

The Mount Huxley Swindle, Apple Isle Prospector, 22 June, 2015

Australian Mining Engineer (this references the Mount Huxley Scandal, and provides some background about Alexander's life and education).

This report, Outlines of the Geology of Tasmania, makes reference to Alexander.

I also found some old newspaper cuttings at an Australian government website that were taken from a Hobart newspaper, The Mercury.

9 June, 1894

11 June, 1894

13 June, 1894

26 June, 1894

Clearly there was some controversy about the affair, with a contradictory expert witness brought in.

Western Mail, 30June, 1894

Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June, 1894

While my grandfather writes that the three men, Isaac Bertram Barker, William Price, and Antonio Briscoe,  involved in the hoax all received long prison sentences, it seems that they were actually acquitted due to lack of evidence. Both Wikipedia and this old newspaper clipping state that, while the mine was definitely salted, the Crown Solicitor, a Mr. Dobbie, felt there was insufficent evidence to prove a prima facie case against the accused. They had been accused of "conspiring to defraud from January 1, 1894, to June 1, 1894", but were released from custody.

They remained, however, the O.J. Simpson's of the mining world. When Alexander went to London to address The Royal Geographical Society, after receiving their silver medal, he was accosted by the financier behind the Mount "Hoaxley" scandal, who apparently begged him and offered him bribes to be discrete about his past shenanigans. Alexander was apparently embarrassed by the man's  supplications and eventually dismissed him by advising him not to draw attention to himself again.