Category: Crew-AUS

J. J. C. Bradfield is by far our family history’s “claim to fame”. Its unfortunate that he is not known by the Canadian Crew descendants unless they read any family genealogy about the Australian immigration in the mid to late 1800s.

I’m not going into the history and stories surrounding J. J. C. Bradfield here because you can simply Google his name or buy or borrow a book about him from the library. I’ll only summarize:

John Job Crew Bradfield was the engineer behind the building the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the engineer behind creating the specs for another famous bridge in Australia – Story Bridge.

I will relate how I found out about him.

After my Dad died in 1988, and I began to deep-dive into my family history, I visited my cousin Myrtle Connolly in Ottawa. She was an avid family historian and she shared many documents and pictures with me, including letters she’d received from an Alice MacGregor in Australia. I then began to write to Alice myself. It was very exciting to get mail from Australia and, like Myrtle, Alice was very keen to share her family’s history with me – and the biggest story was John Job Crew Bradfield.

I didn’t dwell on it a lot then. I just thought it was great to have a smart relative who had a high-up job building a big bridge in a far off country.

A few years later my mom is remarried and takes a trip with her new husband overseas. She starts chatting with an Australian guy sitting beside her on the plane. My mom knew my Dad’s family history and knew that his grandmother was Rachel Crew and knew that some of the Crew’s immigrated to Australia. So that began the fateful conversation. This guy was over the moon that he was sitting beside a “relative” of J. J. C. Bradfield. I think he could have been Bradfield Fan Club president if there was one. He insisted on getting my mom’s address and sent her photocopies of information on Bradfield, including one of a book on him. It was then that I realized the J. J. C. Bradfield was somewhat of an Australian hero.

Of course, television has made our world so much smaller and “far away countries” are not so far anymore. I usually try and watch the New Years celebrations every year being broadcast from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and it really is a spectacular bridge.

• John Job Crew BradfieldMarch 14, 2023
  J. J. C. Bradfield is by far our family history’s “claim to fame”. Its unfortunate that he is not known by the Canadian Crew descendants unless they read any family genealogy about the Australian immigration in the mid to late 1800s. I’m not going into the history and stories surrounding J. J. C. Bradfield here because you can simply Google his name or buy or borrow a book about him from the library. I’ll only summarize: John Job Crew Bradfield was the engineer behind the building the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the engineer behind creating the specs for… Read more: John Job Crew Bradfield
• BradfieldFebruary 28, 2023
• Pennell, Crew, Bradfield – AustraliaFebruary 28, 2023
  This is a letter sent to Myrtle Connolly (nee Keech), daughter of Jane Keech (nee McNamara), granddaughter of Elizabeth McNamara (nee Pennell) by William Pennell of Brisbane, Australia, April 1, 1973. Brisbane–Queensland, Australia Until near the end of 1859, the State now known as Queensland was part of New South Wales. When Charles and his wife Susan Pennell arrived in Moreton Bay in the little sailing ship “Glentanner”, it was N.S.W. they came to and not Queensland which did not then exist. The Glentanner anchored in Moreton Bay and the passengers were taken by small paddle-boat steamer up… Read more: Pennell, Crew, Bradfield – Australia

This is a letter sent to Myrtle Connolly (nee Keech), daughter of Jane Keech (nee McNamara), granddaughter of Elizabeth McNamara (nee Pennell) by William Pennell of Brisbane, Australia, April 1, 1973.

Brisbane–Queensland, Australia

Until near the end of 1859, the State now known as Queensland was part of New South Wales. When Charles and his wife Susan Pennell arrived in Moreton Bay in the little sailing ship “Glentanner”, it was N.S.W. they came to and not Queensland which did not then exist. The Glentanner anchored in Moreton Bay and the passengers were taken by small paddle-boat steamer up the Brisbane Ricer to a small wharf in South Brisbane, which adjoins Kangaroo Point. The only hotel in South Brisbane was the Lord Raglan. Kangaroo Point was covered with thick bush and the midst of which was a large Black’s (aborigines) camp.

There was also a building to received new settlers and Charles and Susan and Susan’s brother, William Henry Crew, were accommodated in this building from the Thursday to the following Monday awaiting the arrival from the town of Limestone (now Ipswich), 24 miles away, of John Edward and Marie Bradfield who had migrated to Australia two years earlier.

When the Bradfield’s arrived, John and his brother-in-law Charles went to the Lord Raglan Hotel to finish a game of Quoits they had commenced the day the Bradfield left London in 1859. The party left Kangaroo Point on the Monday about 21st July for Ipswich. The women went by small steamer and the men walked the 24 miles. The object in walking appears to have been the desire to see the new country at close quarters.

In another letter, William writes that Charles and Susan sailed from West India Docks, London on February 4, 1859 and went non-stop to Brisbane, Queensland, arriving at Moreton Bay, July 7, 1859 – a 153-day trip. After a few days in Moreton Bay, the ship sailed for Callard, Peru, South America and was not heard of again.

William Crew (William (the younger), Rachel, Susan, Maria and Eliza et al’s father) was a “highly successful London brickmaker for whom Bradfield, Crew and Pennell had worked. Subsequently, they went into partnership to found one of the first mechanised brickmaking businesses in Queensland.” (The Unreasonable Man: The life and works of J. J. C. Bradfield by Richard Raxworthy, page 13)

However, in a letter to Myrtle Connolly from William Pennell (grandson of Charles Pennell) dated April 2, 1969, he writes…

Bradfield thought there would be a great scope for brick making business at Ipswich, some 20,000 miles from Brisbane. They were the first to manufacture machine bricks in the country. Unfortunately, timber was too plentiful and cheap at the time, and the bricks could not compete to any real extent.

In the year 1932, the Queensland Government decided to build a modern steel bridge from Brisbane City across the Brisbane River to Kangaroo Point. The famous Queensland born Engineer, Dr. J. J. C. Bradfield was called in as a consultant and he fixed the requirements and drew up the specifications for the tenders. He and his son, Dr. Keith Bradfield were in partnership at the time as Consulting Engineers and they supervised the building of the Cantilever steel bridge, which was given the name Story.

The bridge was opened in 1940 and the roadway across it was named the Bradfield Highway. The right hand piers of the bridge start at Kangaroo Point. How interesting to remember that in the year 1859, the Pennells, Bradfields and William Crew walked around Kangaroo Point and that 81 years later, a son of John and Maria not yet born, would become Australia’s most illustrious Civil Engineer and would be Chief Engineer for the building of Queensland’s largest modern bridge with one set of its piers on Kangaroo Point. When the Sydney Harbour Bridge was officially opened in March 19832, Bradfield insisted that my father, W. J. Pennell, his cousin, should sit beside him. He said to Dad, “Wouldn’t mother [Maria nee Crew] and Aunt Susan (Pennell nee Crew) have enjoyed this occasion.”

It is interesting to note here that a search of Australian war veterans is long. Combining WWI and WWII there are 254 pages of Pennells. Thinking I could narrow the list down, I search for records up to 1920. There were over 30 pages. Bradfields were the same. So I’m leaving the war veterans research to someone else and will just say, the Pennells, Bradfields and the Crews all were warriors for freedom.