A tablecloth lovingly embroidered with the names of 48 World War 1 servicemen from Gladstone was lost for almost a century before being returned to the Macleay.
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It is now part of our Military History display at Kempsey Museum.
The psychological wounds on the people of the Macleay left at home during the Great War were deep and slow to heal. The village of Gladstone alone had lost 13 of its young men.
Mrs Florence (nee Forwood) Beattie, wife of farmer Archibald Beattie, had been an energetic and enthusiastic member of the Gladstone Women Workers during the War and in early 1920 was visited by her sister, Mrs Ethel Clara Porter. Florence asked her sister for assistance with designing and sewing a tablecloth containing the names of all the soldiers who enlisted from Gladstone.
The stem stitched autographs of 35 returned soldiers are in each corner of the cloth. In the centre of the cloth, underneath an embroidered Union Jack and the Australian flag, there is an honour roll bearing the names of 13 fallen servicemen from Gladstone.
Underneath this, there is the inscription "Gladstone NSW 1914-1918".
The tablecloth was to be given to the Gladstone Women Workers for fundraising, but was not completed when Ethel had to return to Darwin where her husband, John Alfred Porter, was a journalist. Ethel took the tablecloth to Darwin with her and the completed tablecloth was then mailed to the Women Workers who sold it at their Smithtown Bazaar around April 1920.
The tablecloth was rediscovered early in 1998 in a cardboard box among items purchased at a deceased estate on Sydney's North Shore by Robert and Dorothy Butler of Galston, Sydney.
Robert and Dorothy then passed it onto their friends, Geoff and Margaret Saul, former Macleay residents who had moved to Sydney. Geoff and Margaret realised the historical importance of the tablecloth and with Geoff's sister, Mrs Winsome Richards, donated the tablecloth to the Macleay River Historical Society while holidaying on the Macleay over the October 1998 long weekend.
The 13 deceased servicemen from Gladstone on the tablecloth are as follows: Claude Leo Barnes; Sidney Harold Coleman; Alfred William Kenny; Reginald Luby; Andrew Eyles McIlwain; Joseph Oscar McIlwain; Bernard Joseph McKenna; Cecil Bertram Valentine Peck; John Francis Augustus Perry; Frederick William Rutter; Michael Joseph Ryan; Milton Harry Seale and Cuthbert William Debenham Wheeldon.
The 35 servicemen who returned were: W Anderson; J F Barnes; L H Barnes; W M Barnett; H A Bradley; J Bradley; M L Cheers; L W Clancy; L Crighton; A Faber; A L Fisher; P J Flanagan; P McGuire; A D McKay; A C Morton; J H Morton; W J Morton; E E O'Connor; P O'Connor; H E O'Shea; P P O'Sullivan; C S Piggott; G R Rigby; G Rowe; G H Rowe; J J Ryan; M A Ryan; H T Sawkins; R E F Seale; E P V Sergent; A G Sheridan; R E Sheridan; H Thurgood; H Whalen; and F L Wright.
