Charles Crichton gave his eldest daughter, Christina Ellen Rutherford Crichton, this American Reed Organ or Harmonium in 1910 for her 12th birthday.
She was usually known by her middle name, Ellen.
At the time, the Estey Organ Company based in Vermont, USA, was one of the largest and best-known manufacturers of reed organs in the world.
All its instruments made at this time, including this one, were labelled Brattleboro, VT, USA.
The reed organ was the most popular instrument of its day but, by the 1920s, it declined in popularity, due to changing musical tastes.
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Ellen’s daughter, Joan Helen Reid, donated the organ to the Young Historical Museum in 2005.
Ellen was the great granddaughter of Walter Rutherford of Milong Station.
Rutherford migrated from Northumberland, England, to the Goulburn Valley in Victoria with his family in 1865.
He took up Milong Station in 1870.
His sons, John and Gideon, took over the property after his death in 1896.
John’s daughter, Christina Ellen Rutherford, married Charles Crichton at Young in 1896.
Crichton migrated from Ayreshire, Scotland, to Bowral NSW in 1886, before coming to Young in 1887, when he started work with Walter Rutherford on Milong Station.
Charles purchased land closer to Young, which he named ‘Glaisnock’, in 1896.
His marriage to Christina Rutherford produced a son, Wilson Rutherford Crichton (1897-98).
Their daughter, Ellen, was born on 29th November 1898, her mother dying the same day.
Charles then married his deceased wife’s sister, Margaret Ellen Rutherford, in 1901.
They went on to have five children.
At the time Charles gave Ellen the Estey Organ, he was a Burrangong Shire Councillor.
Ellen purchased a block of land for 81 pounds at Milvale in 1920.
At the second meeting of the Young branch of the Country Women’s Association in December 1923, she was elected to the committee as a representative of Tubbul.
Ellen married John Valentine Roxburgh in 1925.
He was born in Albert Park, Victoria, in 1894 and served in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I.
John was sent to the Australian Military Forces Central Brigade Training Area at Young in 1919.
He later became a soldier settler and grazier, with his cattle brand being registered to the property Yannawah, care of C. Crichton in 1921.
By 1937, Ellen and John had registered their cattle brand as Roxburgh & Co. at Highfield, Young.
Their daughter, Joan Helen, was born on 5th February 1926.
She was taught to play the piano by Gertrude Tonkin of Young in the 1930s.
John died in 1958 and Ellen continued on her own as a grazier.
She died on 31st December 1997.
Joan died in Orange on 23rd October 2019.
Karen Schamberger - Young Historical Society
