Lillian May Telfer
Biography
Role: Daughter of Adam Francis Telfer and Margaret Dougal Telfer
Born: 1872
Died: 1951
Father: Adam Francis Telfer (1842–1925)
Mother: Margaret Dougal Telfer (1849–1936)
Photo
John James Smith and his cousin, Lillian May Telfer — group portrait from the family book, in which Lillian stands at left behind her seated cousin. Lillian May was a Telfer by birth (daughter of Adam Francis Telfer and Margaret Dougal Telfer) — a cousin of John James Smith through the shared Telfer line — and here appears young, in an ornate dark dress with puffed sleeves and a multi-strand pearl necklace, before her long nursing years on the Kalgoorlie and Norseman goldfields and her 1922 marriage to Charlie McElhone. The printed plate caption reads "John James Smith and his cousin, Lillian May Telfer". (From the Borders to the Bush, 1989 — plate; photograph supplied by Mark Telfer)
Family
| Relation | Name |
|---|---|
| Father | Adam Francis Telfer (1842–1925) |
| Mother | Margaret Dougal Telfer (1849–1936) |
Life Summary
Lillian May Telfer was born in 1872 and died in 1951. Daughter of Adam Francis Telfer and Margaret Dougal Telfer
Source: Telfer family records
Family Stories
🖊️ Anecdote — as told in From the Borders to the Bush (book pp. 286–287): Lill was the free spirit of the lot. Off she went nursing — and not gently; she took on the goldfields, Kalgoorlie and Norseman, tending miners in the heat and dust when the town was rough with money and men. Then she fell for an Irishman, Charlie McElhone, a larrikin who'd fought with the 16th Battalion in the first war and helped lay the Mundaring–Kalgoorlie water pipeline. They wed in 1922 and took up one of those Group 19 soldier-settlement dairies out near Manjimup. Oh, they worked their fingers to the bone on that place, and Lill had the cheek to christen it 'Slave-On Farm' — her little joke on the settlers they'd made us farmers into. She reckoned she scrubbed herself clean in a kerosene tin lit by a candle, no running water to speak of, and she laughed about it all her days. She died in 1951.
(Anecdote only — family colour, told as the elders tell it. Does not establish any relationship, date or place.)
Parents
- Adam Francis Telfer (1842 – 1925)
- Margaret Dougal Telfer (1849 – 1936)
Siblings
- Adelaide Elsie Pearl Telfer (1889 – 1976)
- Effie Olive Telfer (1886 – 1969)
- Elizabeth Beattie Telfer (1871 – 1948)
- Eva Rowena Telfer (1885 – 1974)
- Francis Adam Telfer (1875 – 1955)
- Hazel Rose Telfer (1891 – 1939)
- Herbert Dougal Telfer (1881 – 1974)
- James Edgerston Telfer (1878 – 1959)
- Margaret Wright Telfer (1869 – 1890)
- Vernon Ray St. Clair Telfer (1879 – 1960)
- Violet Hope Telfer (1883 – 1967)