Family of James & Rebecca Best


Emmie


Emmie married Henry Semple PARK in 1907 in the Murchison District of WA.

Henry Semple Park was a baker/pastry cook. He followed the building of the railways, baking bread, sending it up and down the line by train. In 1907 he was at Nannine in the Murchison goldfields area, where he married Emmie. He may have had a small hobby mine, but was not primarily there to prospect. He took his younger brothers to Nannine when the parents died and found them work in the town.

Henry and Emmie had 8 children of which their first died in infancy. There was no doctor at Merredin at the time Claudene took sick and the doctor's advice was to take her to Perth for treatment. Unfortunately the overnight train journey was very cold and she died as a result.

All the children were given the second name Semple after Henry's grandmother. Henry and Emmie moved away from Nannine when the railway was completed (19xx) and went to live in Merredin. They moved from Merredin to Wyalkatchem c. 1912, where he managed a bakery for a short time.

Henry left baking c.1917 and went into the insurance business. In Kalgoorlie in 1919, he rode a bicycle collecting insurance. They returned to Perth in 1920, first to Oxford-street, Leederville for a few months. There the boys could hop over the back fence into the school yard. Shortly after, they moved to Harrowgate St (further up). Lived at Shenton Park 1971.

Henry died in 1953 but Emmie lived on until 1976, just a week before her 97th birthday.

The children were:


Parents