ISAACS Sam  NEW

Researched and created by Gordon Freegard in 2025 from information gathered from many sources including Margaret River Stories compiled by Guy Jennings of the Margaret River & Districts Historical Society, and also research compiled by Marcia Maher of the Kalamunda & Districts Historical Society.

Sam was the son of an Aboriginal woman, Dorinda Isaacs, and a Native American mariner, sometimes known as Saul Isaacs, who had come to Australia in the 1830s, whaling. Their baby, given the tribal name Yebble by his mother, Dorinda who died soon after the birth, was brought up by Anne and Elijah Dawson. Anne had given birth to a baby about the same time as Dorinda. Anne is reported to have suckled both of babies together, who grew up on the Dawson's property Westbrook. Anyway, Yebble , born in 1845, was always known as Sam Isaacs. He was raised as an integral part of the Dawson family.
Sam became a well-mannered youngster who spoke English in the formal way of the settlers. He also became a skilled bushman, probably spending time with his mother’s coastal people, the Wardandi.
He worked for the settlers from an early age and was reputed to have been droving pigs to the Vasse from Augusta for Captain Molloy when he called at Ellensbrook, the Bussell property, after losing the animals in the bush. This was around 1860. He stayed with the Bussells, working on the new homestead at Wallcliffe and then working as a stockman on the property.
 

        

         SAM ISAACS          #1
 

    THE BUSSELL FAMILY HOME      #2
 

On 28th  January 1897 he married an Afro-American woman, Lucy Major, a ship’s cook who had arrived in Australia in the 1860s and was employed at Wallcliffe. They had seven children, Charlie, Jack, Jim, Samuel, Frederick, Mona and Harry.
Sam Isaacs is most famous for being involved in the rescue of passengers and crew from the Georgette on 1st December 1876. Many columns of flowery prose were written in newspapers due to Sam's companion in the rescue, Grace, the 16 year-old daughter of Alfred Bussell. However, a more level-headed account came from Jim Kinsella. He recalled that Sam Isaacs was a personal friend of his grandfather Edward Kinsella.
 

On 29th November 1876, Georgette left Fremantle on what would be her last voyage. She was carrying fifty passengers and a cargo of jarrah and was bound for Adelaide via Bunbury, Busselton and Albany, Shortly after midnight on 1st  December, when Georgette was about midway between Cape Naturliste  and Cape Hamelin, a leak developed, and the ship's pumps would not work. By 4 am, the water was rising so fast that her Captain, John Godfrey, had all the passengers and crew bailing with buckets while he steered for the coast. At 6 pm the rising water extinguished the engine's fires, leaving Georgette drifting still some kilometres from shore. Godfrey then gave the orders to man the lifeboats, but the first lifeboat to be lowered was thrown against the ship's side by a big wave, and snapped in half. Some of the occupants were rescued by a second lifeboat, but twelve people died.

  THE GEORGETTE        #3
 

Georgette continued to drift until she drifted into the surf at Calgarduo Bay, where she was seen by the Bussell familie's Aboriginal stockman, Sam Isaacs Isaacs travelled to the Bussell homestead to raise the alarm, where Alfred Bussell gave him some ropes and gear for the rescue. His 16-year-old daughter Grace insisted on accompanying Isaacs on the return trip to the scene on horseback. Meanwhile, Georgette had grounded and begun to break up.

  THE RESCUE        #4

By the time he got back with Grace, one man had got ashore and he'd got a rope lifeline from the ships mast and fastened it to the shore and soon there were three or four men ashore. She went into the water only once. She rode her horse into the water and Sam had to tell her to be careful; that if she rode her horse in the way she was going, she would kill people or trample them under and drown them. He told her to turn her horse around and swim back. There was a woman and a child who grabbed the horse's tail and the horse towed them ashore. But Sam went in and out several times.  It was a great feat for a girl of 16 but she was later given credit for almost the entire rescue. According to an account by a family friend of Isaacs, he returned to the water with his horse several times but Bussell went back to the beach, having been advised to do so by Isaacs because he felt she could not sufficiently control her horse.

This story captured the imagination of not just the Australian newspapers but also internationally! Grace was compared with the young English heroine Grace Darling whose feat had been similar.

The Royal Humane Society of England awarded Grace Bussell a silver medal, and to Sam a bronze medal. Let’s hastily add to this seemingly unfair story. Sometime much later on, probably 1887, Sam Isaacs got a much better prize.! The Colonial Government of the day granted him 100 acres of land and so Sam Isaacs became a land-owner, selecting a property along the north side of the Margaret River at Sussex Location 243. He also had access to the ford across the river.  (It was most unusual for Aboriginal people to own land!) Also in 1887 Sam Isaacs' seventh child Henry (Harry) Isaacs was born.
The Isaacs family cleared and developed their 100-acre property. This would have been when young Harry was growing up. A house was built and named Fernbrook!  It was finally sold off in the 1930s so that the family could move into town for better employment and better education opportunities for the children. (Note: They did not walk off as many dis-heartened Group Settlers in the Margaret River area were doing around the same time.)

  GRACE BUSSELL        #5
 

 GRACE BUSSELL'S BRAVERY AWARD         #6

   THE ISAAC'S PROPERTY        #7

Sam was awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Humane Society for bravery and selfless courage in the Georgette rescue. The colonial government later granted him full title to Location 243.

       THE ISAAC'S PROPERTY      #8

Some years later Sam worked at H.J. Yelverton's Quindalup Timber Mill and nearly lost one of his thumbs in an accident on the shingle bench. Fortunately the resident doctor was able to sew it back on. Lucy died after the stillbirth of their eighth child and she was buried near the mill alongside her mother. In his later years Sam worked for many local farmers, making hay, ploughing fields, working stock and driving a bullock team for Edie Bussell at Ellensbrook and Fairy Ring. He continued to work his own farm, cutting oats by hand with a scythe.

SAM ISAACS SENIOR       #9
 

The following notice appeared in The West Australian newspaper of Tuesday, 27th  July 1920: “Mr. Samuel Isaacs, a 74 year old resident of the Margaret River, passed away on the roadside midway between Busselton and Karridale, on Thursday morning July 15th . Mr Isaacs, with a companion, left Busselton on Wednesday at about 3 pm and was thrown out of his sulky while in the act of lighting his pipe. At the time of the fall, which left practically no mark on him, he made light of the matter but later asked to be sat against a tree. In that position he continued for some time, appearing to rally, but as night appeared a change for the worse set in and a camp was made with a couple of travelling friends.

“Gradually his condition became worse, and death occurred, at about 6 a.m. "Old Sam Isaacs," as he was familiarly termed, was born at Karridale, and, like many of the older generation of Western Australians, was particularly hardy and active. Even at the advanced age of 74, he had all the industry of a youth. He was a splendid teamster in the thickest forest, an expert bullock driver, a good bushman, and a kindly and trustworthy settler.” Further information from Ted Ashton indicates that the accident happened on Metricup Hill and Sam was traveling with Charlie Simpson, whose daughter Mary was married to Sam’s son Fred. Ted Ashton's father Albert and Fred went looking for them and took them straight into Busselton after they found them.

Fred Isaacs, one of Sam and Lucy's children. Worked as a bullock driver for Edie Bussell and married Mary Simpson. They had six children Maurice (Peck), Elsie, Peter, Robert, Bill and Kath. Later he was employed to cart river water to the 100-gallon tank that provided water for the hospital. He was employed by the Road Board as a traffic and cart licence inspector. These licenses cost 1/9 pence and Bill Duggan remembered that "farmers used to drive their horses and carts into town and park on our place, which was private property, so they wouldn't get caught by Fred.”

The Road Board also gave Fred responsibility for the cemetery Gloucester Park and the dog pound, a job he kept till the end of 1953. The family lived on Town lot 28, bounded by Wallcliffe Road, Mitchell Street and the railway reserve. The land was subdivided in 1952 into four half-acre blocks and one five-acre block and rated to Peck Isaacs. Peck worked for Ernest Le Souef on his property, Glen Ellie, before being employed at the butter factory as truck driver collecting milk from farms.

PLAQUE FOR SAM ISAACS SENIOR       #10
 

Unfortunately, racism as we would call it today, was alive and well even then. World War One records show that Harry and also his older brother Herbert had joined the army in Geraldton on 19th  May 1917. Harry served only until 14th January 1918. This seems like a surprisingly short period. Harry’s young nephew, James Isaacs, had a similarly short record. The draft data produced by the Highgate Sub-Branch of the RSL states that this was because they were not substantially of European origin or descent and so their service was terminated. These words came from Section 138 of the 1909 Defence Act. This discrimination persisted until changed early in World War 11.
 

FRED & SAM ISAACS       #11

THE PICKERING BROOK CONNECTION

Harry and his son, Sam Isaacs eventually arrived, worked and settled at Pickering Brook about the 1925 to 1930s. Harry Isaacs, a big upstanding full-blood Aboriginal teamster who had teams at Barton's Mill,  This was in the period 1925 to 30s. Harry Isaacs also worked as a teamster at Smailes Mill and became a well respected resident of Pickering Brook where he owned a small orchard in what was then known as Faulkner Road. This has now been re-named Isaacs Street which runs north off Pickering Brook Road. (Bigger Trees is now situated at the end of it).
 
Harry's son (also Sammy after his famous grandfather) attended Barton's Mill School. am was a little man with a rather darker complexion and worked at Barton's Mill probably also as a teamster. We know that young Sam, along with an Aboriginal girl called Biddy McKee, performed as a black and white minstrel duet. They both played button piano accordions and performed regularly as the "Nigger Minstrals" at the local dances. Harry was a beautiful dancer, and he could be seen whirling the dance floor, always placing a large white handkerchief on his partner's waist so the perspiration from his hand would not mark her dress.

According to Mr and Mrs Owen (Ray Owen’s parents), Harry Isaacs and his family had full citizenship rights by virtue of being descendants of their heroic father. Finally, the records of the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board indicate that a Henry Isaacs, of East Perth, born 1887, died in 1962 aged 75. He is buried at Karrakatta Cemetery

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References:                 Article:        Margaret River & Districts historical Society
                                                   Gordon Freegard

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