Leading Lights
The McIlveen Family's Lustrous Legacy
William and Annie McIlveen, who were members of two old and established families in the Inverell district, married in 1883. This pair of lustres, a wedding gift, decorated the dining room of their home in Brodie’s Plains, near Inverell. Surviving through the generations, they were kept as family heirlooms until they were donated to the Inverell Pioneer Museum by their grand-daughter, Margaret Scott.
William McIlveen was a tin miner at Tingha who ‘followed farming and mining pursuits’ all his life. His Irish-born father had taken up one of the first selections on Brodie’s Plains, on the land of the Gomeroi people, in 1861. The McIlveens were among the district’s most esteemed families. Annie was born in Bathurst and had arrived in the district as a five-year-old, in 1873. She was the eldest daughter of William Loughrey, an Irishman, who settled on Brodie’s Plains.
Kind-hearted and cultured, Annie had a deep love of home and family. She bore three daughters and two sons, the eldest of whom, Sir Arthur McIlveen, was knighted in 1970. She gave her children a love of books and poetry, and her home was a warm and welcoming place throughout her long life. When she died in 1954, aged 90, she was remembered for the love and kindness she showered on her local community, and for always keeping sweets on hand for any young visitors.
Sitting on a sideboard or gracing the dinner table in the happy home that Annie made, these lustres would have reflected candlelight from their hanging cut-crystal prisms. At evening meals, with family and friends gathered around the table, they would have sparkled and shimmered throughout the night – enchanting curious children and setting a scintillating backdrop to adult conversation.
