Delving into the archives

He followed his son there who, with his wife and two children, were found suffocated by charcoal fumes from an oil drum in which they had lit a fire in their bedroom to keep warm.

The eldest son, Henry, now became heir to “The Valley”, and a goodly inheritance of cash.  

The other boys were also well provided for as their father had died a wealthy man.

The time came when Harry brought several thousand head of store cattle down the Lachlan.  

He had reached within twenty miles of his home when out of a clear sky a terrific blizzard descended.  

It caught the cattle in open country.  

Weak from a long drive through country with but little grass the cattle bellowed and milled. They could not face the blizzard.  All night long it raged.  

The snow fell in great flakes and settled feet deep. Once the moon broke through and they gazed with horror, the drovers and Warn himself, as they saw a Phantom Rider pass across the face of the moon.  In the morning every beast was dead.  

The drovers could not help remarking at the weird contortions effected by the animals in passing away.

They, themselves, had succeeded in lighting a fire and had huddled together almost frozen until the sky was dapple with grey, heralding the approach of dawn.

Warn decided to lease “The Valley” after this to a man named Frank Cartwright, a hard working farmer and religious in every sense of the word.  

He was on the place about two years and was doing exceedingly well.  But he was troubled.  He heard whispering.  

He did not tell his family.  Where the Warn vault stood was in a cultivation paddock.

Ploughing around the vault he hears voices whispering and calling him.  He brought out a priest who told him that it was opossums perhaps that had got into the vault and made it their home.  The next night Cartwright had not come home at the usual time.  

Getting anxious members of the family found him face downwards in a pool of water not a foot deep.  It was close to the vault.  

The horses they found half a mile down the paddock where they had galloped with the plough: they were shivering with fear and their legs were cut and bleeding.

The family soon afterwards left the place and it was not long after that the next tenant hastily got out.  He too had seen the phantom rider and had seen ghostly figures walking in the bright moonlight.

In conclusion, I may inform readers that another explainable occurrence was when Ben Hall was shot he was riddled with bullets from the police.  

No fewer than eleven bullet wounds were in his body when he was shot at dawn as he rose from his blankets on the river flat near Forbes in a wattle scrub.  

But the strange part was that Hall’s son was born shortly after his death and he had the identical birthmarks of eleven bullets inexactly the portions of his body as his father.

This fact has never been refuted and has appeared in several Sydney papers and many country journals.  To-day his grave is kept beautifully by some person or persons.

Dunn the younger of the two was hung.  He had been shot and was lying alongside a policeman he had wounded and another policeman was guarding him.  

His leg was broken, but during the night he made his escape and crawled three miles with a broken leg.  He was re-captured the following day.

Somewhere in England, no doubt, relatives of these Warns still live and perhaps have handed down to them the story of their grandfather’s brother who went too far off Australia to carve out a fortune.  

He was a pioneer with fighting blood in his veins.

The Life of John & Eliza Warn nee Newham Who settled at “James Valley” in Crookwell

John Warn was born 1799 Wingfield Suffolk, England. Father Samuel, Mother Mary Piper.  He died 1871 in Goulburn NSW. He married Eliza Newham on 8th August 1826 at Parramatta.  Elizabeth was born 1813 at Windsor NSW Father Richard, Mother Mary Burnett. (Both Convicts). Eliza died in Crookwell in 1866.

John arrived in Australia as a convict on board the ship “Surry” (4) on 6th March, 1823.  On the 17th October 1821, John Warn had been convicted of stealing 6 pecks of underground malt and a sack from James Pettill for whom he worked.  He was transported to New South Wales.

He was assigned as a servant (a Brewer) to Ann Bunker nee Minchin in Minchinbury, near St Mary’s.  While working there he met Eliza Newham who was the daughter of a farmer named Richard Newham.  They were married and in the December of that year he was

re-assigned to his wife’s service.  She had petitioned His    Excellency Ralph Darling Esq to have John re-assigned to her and it was granted. In the 1828 census John was listed as an Overseer for a farmer Henry Howe near Goulburn, at the time he was still a convict.  He received his Certificate of Freedom on 17th June 1830.  John and Eliza had been able to amass a small capital to purchase land in the Crookwell River district.  

The Crookwell and District Historical Society, or any of its members either individually or collectively, accepts no responsibility for any information contained in these articles.  Anyone acting on such information does so at their own liability. These events are of historical interest.  Some are hearsay, some oral history, and are not confirmed as accurate. Therefore some facts stated in part of this story are alleged. Please note the article “The Phantom Bushranger” has spelling and grammatical mistakes and also discrepancies in the family history.