The prompt for Week 10 of #52ancestors is 'Strong Woman', and looking through my family tree there are many strong women (and men) to choose from. My focus, however, is my grandmother Rosa May Green (nee Pike).
Rosa May was born on the 27th December 1880 in Suffolk - her parents were Henry Arthur Pike and Sarah Jane (Hart). Her father Henry was a miller and corn merchant in the Rattlesden and Gedding areas, and she had one brother Percy (who also left England, emigrating to Canada) and four sisters. She married Frank Walter Noble Green in Fordham, Essex on 10 October 1907 at the age of 26, and the couple promptly emigrated to Australia, arriving in Melbourne on the 1st December 1907. Rosa May never returned to England and never saw her parents or siblings again.
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| Frank and Rosa Green with Frank Jr, Collingwood, 1908 |
The family grew quickly and Rosa gave birth to 10 children over the next 20 years, with eldest child Frank Jr born 2nd May 1908 and youngest Marjory born 28th March 1928. The two eldest children were born in Collingwood but after that the family moved to the country and the younger 8 children were born around Mildura and Red Cliffs. They moved fairly frequently around Victoria, farming on a number
of different properties, and often struggling to make ends meet.
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| Rosa May Green (Pike) later in life |
Rosa, like so many before her, must have been a strong woman to follow her new husband to the other side of the world to start a new life in Australia, adjusting to the heat and isolation and strangeness of her new home. Rosa died on the 18th November 1965 at the age of 84 in Leongatha, several years before I was born, but she lived to see all her 10 children grow to adulthood and had a total of 23 grandchildren.
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