May Brown
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
May Brown (24 May 1875 – c. 1939) was a flamboyant Northern Territory miner, publican and pioneer, who became well known her role in developing the wolfram (tungsten) mining industry in Australia. She was known as "The Wolfram Queen".[1]
Brown was born in Sydney on 24 May 1875, the sixth of seven children. She was the daughter of Charles James Weedon (aka Wheedon) (1835–1892) and his wife, Mary (née Maria Santa Fortunata Chiodetti) (1842–1932), daughter of composer and music professor Vincenzo Rafael Eustachio Chiodetti (1788–1858), a native of Rome, Italy and bandmaster to Her Majesty's 28th Regiment, who had emigrated to Australia in 1836.[2] Among her siblings were brothers Sydney and Percy, and a sister, Florence Alice Weedon Budgen Davies (1868–1960), who had been launched into the hotel business and became a publican, with her first husband, Sydney Budgen, before she was even 18.
Brown married rower, cricketer, footballer, and New South Wales amateur boxing champion George Seale whose brothers, Joe and Ted, were also professional cricket players.[3]
George Seale was lauded as "the best all-round amateur athlete in Australia," and as one of the best amateur boxers in the world, as well as for successfully running the Sydney Gymnastics Club on Castlereagh Street in Sydney, until his death in March 1906.[4]
Six months after Seale's death, Brown married Northern Territory wolfram miner James Burns and moved with him to the Northern Territory. They had one son George Seal Junior.[1][5] George Junior's daughter, born 10 May 1926, became renowned nurse, educator and writer Jacqueline "Jaci" Moya Seale O'Brien, AC, who was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1984 for her decades of service to nursing.[6]
