Charlotte was born in Balmain on the 1st September 1886 to Charlotte Annie (nee LLewellen) and Harry Cox. She was the second girl in the family with five brothers.
Charlotte was of medium build with pretty, light brown, curly hair. She was a keen and capable student and won the medal for Dux in 1898 when she was a student at Balmain Ladies College. She went on to be educated at Fort St High School on Observatory Hill in the city. She was fond of dancing and one of the highlights in her maiden days was dancing with the Prince of Wales at the ball hosted by her father, Harry Cox, when he was Mayor of Balmain.
Charlotte and her sister, Alice, worked at home helping their mother care for their five brothers, Harry, Charles, William, Walter and Ron. Walter and William remained bachelors. Harry married Vera and had one son Douglas. Charles was killed in Flanders on the Western Front in September 1917, the day after being injured while serving as stretcher-bearer. Ron married May Phillips and fathered Judith and Philip, who became a well known architect. Ron worked at the Sun Herald office, and helped young Bill Hannah get a start there.
Charlotte married William Alexander Hannah on the 12th December 1914 at St Paul’s, Rozelle. Their first son, William Cox Hannah, was born on the 22nd of September 1915. Their second son, Charles Sutton Cox Hannah was born on the 11th of October 1917.
Charlotte was meticulous in the house, and Charles remembers her going out early in the mornings wiping the window sills. She kept a keen eye on the smoking gents, making sure they dropped no ash onto her carpets. Bill and Charles were dressed cleanly and neatly. There were no washing machines in those days. Just a gas-fired copper and mangle. Monday was washing day, Tuesday, ironing day, and one other day was set aside each week to meet with Aunty Alice, who came down from West Ryde. They met in Anthony Hordern’s Store in the city, over morning tea, then looked around the shops. As money was scarce they probably did more looking than buying.
She and Alice shared many holidays at the family holiday house in Booker Bay, Woy Woy. It could not have been much of a holiday for the women with a fuel stove and very limited water supply from the rainwater tank but it was great for the men who went out in the boat fishing, and the children who fished and swam and worked up enormous appetites. She was close to her sister, and enjoyed being with her and her family, travelling by tram to West Ryde to visit them. Alice and Tom had a large block of land, enough to run a milking cow and grow fruit trees and vegetables with room to spare for a rough tennis court (which Charles remembers helping to construct). Charles remembers sometimes going there with his mum when he was young. He liked his eight cousins, especially Sid and Fred. Betty was the youngest and he carried her on his shoulders. Sometimes he and his mother, in wintertime, came home in the dark, sitting in the waiting shed at Central Station for the Maroubra tram to arrive. Once Alice and Charlotte went for a boat trip to Tasmania, and that would have been quite special for them.
Sometimes on Saturdays the family went by tram to Charlotte’s old home in Balmain for lunch (usually of tripe) and to spend the day with Grandma Charlotte Cox, also to repay the loan on the purchase of the Maroubra home.
On Sundays, she always cooked baked dinners, with scones for afternoon tea. Charlotte played the piano while family and friends sang, and she encouraged Charles to learn to play. In those depression days, it would have been hard to find the money for lessons, but she did. She was a worrier about lots of things. She did some embroidery but didn’t knit or sew or read books. For some reason she was not a good mixer, perhaps she was shy.
The soil at Maroubra was sandy but Charlotte grew dahlias, Easter daisies and chrysanthemums, and she loved looking after her palms and baskets of ferns growing in the latticed bush house that Dad had built for her, outside the back porch.
Looking back, says Charles, it would have worried her when he and Sylvia sold their house at Peakhurst, and moved, with three small children to Emmaville, near Queensland, on the Northern Tablelands. For Christmas, 1955, she and Dad came up by train, and spent a fortnight at Cherrywood. On the journey home, the train was delayed by the dreadful Maitland floods near Newcastle.
In April that year she sat down on the back step, broom in hand, looking out onto her beloved fernery, and suffered a stroke. After three weeks in the Prince Henry Hospital at Little Bay, near Malabar, she caught pneumonia. Charles flew down to visit her when she went to hospital, and she died on 26th April 1956, leaving her family to mourn and remember always a much loved mother and wife. Her funeral service was conducted at St John’s Maroubra and her ashes interred in the Cox family grave Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde, Plot 234-237 in the Presbyterian Section, Row 10.
Thanks to Charlotte Samiec (nee Hannah) for this contribution
June 2021
