In the WITS Column of January 21, I included a piece about the establishment of the first Myers Store here in Boorowa in 1842 by a Jacob Myer who later moved to Melbourne opening a Myer Store there.
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This information was forwarded to me by Bede Ryan following research he had done with Allan Grocott and produced in a work entitled 'Early History and Sketches of Burrowa.'
I subsequently received a rebuttal of sorts from Di Elliott, well, probably 'of sorts' is a little mild.
As promised in WITS last week, I have reproduced Di Elliott's correspondence in full as follows:
I was fascinated by the article in WITS 21/01/2016 regarding Jacob Myers opening the first Myers Store in Burrowa in 1842.
The inference is then made that he moved to Melbourne and so the MYER Empire began.
The Myer family name is in fact Baevski and the name Myer certainly comes from a Jacob Baevski; Myer was Jacob's second given name. He was born in Russia in 1860 therefore could not have been in Burrowa 1842.
He never came to Australia but his brothers did and it was they who were the instigators of the Myer chain of stores.
Jacob's brother Elcom migrated to Australia in 1896 and settled in Melbourne where he worked for a relative in an underclothes store.
Meanwhile, Jacob died in Russia aged 39 in 1899 and that same year the rest of the family also left Russia.
His mother and father settled in Palestine and another brother, Simcha, continued the journey and arrived in Melbourne in August 1899.
Simcha changed his name to Sidney and he and Elcom then took their deceased brother Jacob's second given name of Myer as their surname.
Sidney and Elcom then moved to Bendigo and opened a drapery store in 1900.
The partnership broke up and Sidney bought Elcom out and remained in Bendigo.
Elcom moved back to Melbourne and opened a store and he married in 1902.
After marrying in Bendigo in 1905, Sidney also later returned to Melbourne and that was when the real Myer store story began.
In Russia, Jacob had died just six months after his son Nahum was born in 1898 and as Sidney had no children, he became guardian to Nahum whom he brought to Australia in 1909.
Nahum also changed his name to Norman and was later Sir Norman Myer.
Who then was the Jacob MYERS who had a store in Burrowa in 1842?
He was a convict who, aged 19, was transported from the UK to Australia in 1826 with a life term.
In 1835 he married Caroline and she died at Liverpool, NSW in June 1837.
He then married Ann, also in Liverpool, in November 1837 and they were still living there in 1839.
One of their many children, Sarah, was born in Boorowa in 1841 and Ann is recorded as having a store in Burrowa in 1842.
They then moved to Yass where Jacob was in partnership in a store with Jacob Alexander.
It is recorded that he was a store holder there from 1843 and after dissolution of the partnership in 1851, Jacob Myers went on to own several hotels in and around Sydney.
Ann died in childbirth 1857 leaving a large young family and Jacob married for the third time the next year.
From convict to store and hotel owner, in his own way, Jacob too was an empire builder but his Burrowa store of the early 1840s certainly wasn't the precursor of the Myer retailing dynasty.
-Di Elliott 2016
Well, there you have it.
I thank Bede and Di for their help in making what you read in the Boorowa News interesting, informative and even educational.
Where the story goes from here I don't know.
I am sure (or semi sure) it won't be Di and Bede with pistols at dawn in Marsden Street.
One thing is sure, if we didn't have people like Di, Bede and the late Allan Grocott doing this research, our history would die and that would be one hell of a shame.