History Notes - Tooth's and bars in Barraba
History Notes
The meeting this week was well attended and attracted some good discussions. The April meeting will revert to the usual 3rd Tuesday in the month - just after the markets and at the beginning of the school holidays.
Four times a year the Royal Australian Historical Society publishes a journal which I usually flick through to see if there is anything to interest Barraba. This quarter there are two articles which could be of interest to historians.
The first concerns the name Rusden -the Rev. G. K. Rusden who was descended from a distinguished Cambridge family and arrived in Australia in the 1830's with his wife and ten children to join their eldest son already in Australia. As we know there is/was a property in the mountains to the west of town with this name and the name has been used in some early land ownership.
There is another possible connection as his wife's maiden name was Ann Townsend, another name connected to Barraba history! Perhaps someone has researched the name of Rusden - he was the chaplain at East Maitland for quite a while and lived at Holmwood, East Maitland from the late 1840's until he died in March, 1859. We will be very grateful if anyone can help with some history of our area concerning Rusden and of course Townsend (an Adams descendant married a Townsend!).
The other article concerns the making of beer and the beer company's connection with hotels. Unfortunately, the article only concerns city hotels but it reminded me of a letter written by Blanche Perry to Tooth & Co. Limited in 1975 re the history of beer supplied to the Central Hotel. Her reply pointed out that beer would have been supplied to Barraba during the 1800's mostly in Tasmanian Black-wood or West Australian Sheoak casks. Tooth & Co took over the Central Hotel from Resch's in 1929.
The article in the journal describes the re-building of the city hotels - mostly on a street corner with the bar on the corner. The actual bar had one short side and a round bar leading to a long bar which in this case (Barraba) was parallel to Maude street. There was a door in the side street as well as entry from the hall on the street entrance. It seems the company liked to have similar bars in those days.
If we consider the other Barraba Hotels, the bar was different shape in the Victoria and the Commercial and I suspect the Royal but I am too young to know about that one.