Maggie Armstrong Hope, the third child and second daughter to Richmond Armstrong Hope and his wife Isabella Edgar was born on 6 October 1880. Maggie was and still is a common name within the Hope family and of course Armstrong, as her second name, was after her grandmother (Alice Armstrong).

In March 1905 she married George William Munn [born: 1879]. When Maggie Hope married into the Munn family, she married into a large, well-established pioneering family of Western Victoria.

The Hope and Munn families had adjoining properties, approximately 400 acres each and about 4 miles from Apsley. The children of both families attended the same local school.[1]

Maggie and George had 11 children but I shall only name 8 of them in these pages because I think the youngest 3 might still be alive and therefore, I cannot name them.

Maggie died 15 October 1961 at Apsley, Victoria, suviving George by nearly 3 years, who died on 14 July 1958 also at Apsley, Victoria.

Merle Smyth wrote in 1984, saying: "My father, George William Munn and my mother Maggie Armstrong Munn (nee Hope) were married at Apsley (1905) and lived there for the remainder of their life. Dad worked as a shearer in his early married life, travelling to the Riverina in New South Wales to work and also to Lake Victoria station (which is now in the possession of the Smyth family) who are my husband Gordon Smyth's second cousins. Later on he went tin mining to Marble Bar in Western Australia. Then he bought approximately 500 acres of land on the border of Victoria and South Australia about 5 miles out of Apsley, just off the Hynam, Naracoorte road for sheep farming and cropping. He also acquired 200 acres of scrub, 3 miles from Apsley on the Langkoop road, which he used for sheep and a portion of it for tobacco growing.

During the Depression he went out stone cracking on the roads. Horse breaking was another pursuit of my father and also bee keeping. We had a honey extractor for processing the honey for our own use and it was mainly from red gum and yellow box trees. Mother was often known to don gloves, hat and veil and smoker and take a swarm of bees, if the occasion arose.

Mother had a hard life, giving birth to 10 children, 7 of whom lived. She was a versatile lady and could turn her hand to anything such as drenching cattle, milking cows and making butter and bread as well as spraying the fruit trees in the orchard. Late at night, when the family were in bed, mother would sew into the small hours, making all our clothes and her own. She was very accomplished at crochet and did some lovely supper cloths, doilies and table runners and crocheted a hand bag for me, which I will have on display at the reunion. Mum and Dad were regular church goers at the Presbyterian Church at Apsley and mother was a Sunday School teacher for some years and Dad became an Elder at the church. Dad was a member of the Manchester Unity Lodge and was also a keen race goer. The family sometimes journeyed to Casterton to see Grandfather (Richmond) and Grandmother in a horse drawn buggy and later on in a T-model Ford and still later a Willy's. My father lived to be 79 years of age and my mother 81 years of age."[2]

All of Maggie & George's childen were born at Apsley, Victoria; they being (with LINKS):

• Jessie Haughton Munn [dob: 24 August 1905]
• William Edgar Munn [dob: 15 August 1907]
• Ailsa Mary Munn [dob: 24 February 1910]
• Ian Halbert Munn [dob: 1 August 1911]
• Hector George Munn [dob: 1 August 1911]
• Isabelle Marion Munn [dob: 20 March 1912]
• Merle Margaret Munn [dob: 17 January 1916]
• Ronald Thomas Munn [dob: 23 June 1919]

If you have an interest in the families of Munn and Hansford, then I invite you across to a biography by Thelma Pillifeant of her Munn/Hansford heritage. Like many pioneering families there were marriages within marriages and second and third cousins also married from the limited but ever-growing pool of prospective suitors, as well as neighbouring families. She has gifted an amazing account of those early pioneering days for generations to come to enjoy. See Family Hansford.

[1] letter from Mrs Irene Gray

[2] letter from Merle Margaret Smyth (nee Munn)

Regretably, I have no further information about Maggie Armstrong Hope or her family.

LINK to Home Page

Richmond Armstrong Hope (father)

Thomas Hope (grandfather)

Family Munn

Family Hansford