Amos Langmead was born in the seaside village of Branscombe in County Devon, England on 19 October 1809. His parents, John and Sarah Langmead, raised eight children, of whom Amos was the fifth son and the sixth child. His elder sister and one of his brothers died as infants. Amos was baptised in the parish church on 12 November 1809.

As Amos grew up, he worked for a time for a farmer, Thomas Brown, at nearby Sidmouth. However, during a period of unemployment, he was apprehended for housebreaking. At the Devon Assizes on 21 March 1827, he was sentenced to be transported for life. Amos was put aboard the Bengal Merchant, which set sail on 28 March 1828 and arrived in Hobart on 10 August 1828. The convict roll lists the trade of Amos as a shoemaker.

Amos had a poor record as a convict in Hobart Town. Several times he was reported as being insolent to his master. [1] His punishments included fifty lashes and periods of three to six months working on the chain gang, making roads for the new colony. An even heavier punishment was handed out for attempting to seduce a young girl from the services of the local vicar.

On 20 November 1835, the vessel Charles Kerr arrived in Launceston with some free settlers. Among them was Harriet Hill, aged twenty-three, whose occupation was needlework and dressmaking. She was accompanied by Louisa, aged seventeen, a house or child maid, and perhaps a child, Susannah, aged two. On 7 June 1836, Amos (now recorded as Langmaid for the first time) and Harriet were married in Launceston and Amos set up business as a shoemaker in Paterson Street, Launceston. Amos was granted a conditional pardon on 24 May 1839 and a free pardon on 31 May 1843. Amos and Harriet had six children, all female-five of these were born in Launceston, and the sixth, Mary (Langmaide) was born in Sydney in 1849.

There are several records of Amos travelling to mainland Australia in the 1840s. The most interesting of these shipping records is that of the Devon Malcolm which sailed from Launceston to San Francisco on 13 September 1849 with Amos and Susan as passengers. [2] It is uncertain where they disembarked. It is possible that Amos was in the group of Tasmanians who went to the Californian goldfields and returned after a period of twelve months. The next trace of Amos travelling is from Launceston to Melbourne aboard the Shamrock on 18 December 1851 [3] and again aboard the Gem on 31 January 1852. [4]

The marriage on 24 July 1852 in Melbourne, of Amos to Hannah Hall from Hobart, was announced in the Argus newspaper. [5] Hannah was the daughter of two convicts who, after being transported from London in the 1820s for petty crimes, met and married in Hobart in 1831. Hannah, at age twenty-one, was almost twenty years younger than Harriet. In a photograph from this period, Amos poses as a successful businessman. Perhaps there was good profit to be made in his trade of shoemaker by selling boots to the new-arrived migrants walking in the rush to the Victorian goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo. A son, Arthur William Langmaid, was born on 24 April 1853 in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood.

It seems that Harriet then arrived in Melbourne with her daughters, which made it difficult for Amos to remain in the same town. Susannah died in 1863 near the Castlemaine goldfields. Harriet died in 1874 in Carlton, aged sixty-two. One surviving daughter, also named Harriet (Langmede), was married in 1873 in North Melbourne, but she also died in 1874, after the birth of a girl, Hattie Hallam. The infant Hattie died in 1875 at Carlton, aged one year.

Meanwhile, Amos and his new wife moved their family to Tasmania in 1854 to live at Tarleton, on the estuary of the Mersey River. Here, Amos continued his business as a shoemaker. A second son, Alfred Tarleton Langmaid, was born at Tarleton on 31 March 1855, followed by Amos (junior) in 1858, Clara in 1859, and Louisa in 1865.

Amos is recorded as attending a meeting with 'Philosopher' Smith in 1859, at the Ballahoo Hotel, to discuss searching for gold in the north-west of Tasmania. [6] At this meeting, Dawson offered to build a track to assist the search party. Presumably this track went along Traveller's Valley from Latrobe to Railton and Sheffield, as we note the site of Dawson's Siding on the railway line between Latrobe and Railton. Smith did discover some gold at Wilmot in 1859, but he later became much more famous for his discovery of tin at Mount Bischoff in 1870. Amos Langmaid made a geological discovery of a different kind.

During the 1850s, the Tasmanian Government designed the Unsettled Lands Bill to encourage settlers to develop the less productive areas of the colony by providing a grant of between 50 and 600 acres, depending on the means of the applicant. [7] Money or farm property was granted to the value of one pound for every acre taken up.

By 1860, Amos had selected fifty acres on a small hill on the east side of a wide valley at Dulverton, about 2-3 kilometres north of the present township of Railton. A grant for this land was received in the name of his son, Arthur William Langmaid, the sale dated 11 July 1861. [8] The ground selected by Amos was about one day's walk from Tarleton, and there were no steep slopes to cross as the track kept to the valley. The ground chosen was not flat, with limestone rock clearly exposed on the side of the hill. There is strong evidence that Amos was quick to understand the economic significance of the rock. Blocks of 60 acres and 25 acres of undulating farming land on the other side of the valley, a mile to the west of the original block, were acquired in the name of a second son, Alfred Tarleton Langmaid, and a further 120 acres of flatter land in the head of the valley in the name of a third son, Amos Langmaid (junior). All these blocks contained a significant limestone deposit under the ground. Since 1820, many early explorers had traversed this land without staking a claim to it.

It was Amos' knowledge of how to transform limestone into lime that earned him his monument. It is easy to establish that this is an example of technology transfer from England to Tasmania. In the coastal village of Branscombe, Devon, where Amos was born and raised, the nearby cliffs consist of limestone. Coal was brought by boat from Wales and landed on the shore of the creek passing through the village. Limekilns constructed in the hills surrounding the village were used to manufacture lime, a material which is useful for both building and agricultural purposes. [9] Although Amos may have learnt and practiced the trade of a shoemaker, his father would also have taught him about the farming practices in the district.

 In 1860, Amos, with help from his two young sons, commenced the construction of his first limekiln on Arthur William Langmaid's property. [10] The slope of the land on the side of a hill assisted in the construction of the access to the kiln. The slope also helped in the draining of the quarry pit. The limestone rock was crushed with a hammer using hand labour, and so the quantities of lime produced were only modest. [11] The kiln was fired using local timber, which was in plentiful supply. Amos would have been aware that coal had been discovered at Tarleton in 1853, [12] but to use this fuel would have required it to be transported over ten kilometres. The young Arthur William was trained by his father to become a lime burner.

In 1866, Amos was put up on a charge of cattle stealing from Torquay (East Devonport). Arthur William was charged with receiving but not prosecuted. Amos was sent down to Port Arthur for a term of five years. [13] Hannah and her children moved from Tarleton to live on the family cottage at Dulverton in 1866. The circumstances were difficult for the family, and made more tragic by the death of Amos' youngest daughter, Louisa, in 1869, aged four years.

Arthur William Langmaid struggled to keep the lime works going, while the younger Alfred Tarleton Langmaid worked on the farm. The financial pressure forced Arthur William to mortgage his property to a businessman in Latrobe. In 1871, Amos was released from prison and he returned to the farm at Dulverton. For a time, he had an interest in a local timber mill which cut sleepers for the new railway from Launceston to Formby (now Devonport). [14]

Meanwhile, Arthur William Langmaid met up with Elizabeth Jane Jeffries, a farmer's daughter, born in Traralgon, Victoria. The first four children of Arthur William Langmaid and Elizabeth Jane Jeffries were born at Railton between 1871 and 1878, but were not baptised until May 1879 by the Wesleyan minister. A few weeks later, on 12 June 1879, the same minister married Arthur William and Elizabeth Jane in their own house in Railton. However, bad fortune persisted for the family, and the eldest child, Arthur William jnr, died on 27 August 1879 at Railton. In 1885, the Langmaid family sold their interest in the lime works to a neighbour, James Blenkhorn.

Arthur William Langmaid and his family moved to Waratah to work at the Mount Bischoff tin mine. His signature can be found on a wages sheet at the Waratah museum, showing that he was earning ten shillings per shift at the mine in July 1887. The family of Arthur William and Elizabeth Jane grew to thirteen children. They moved onto a farm at Mengha about 1900, but misfortune followed them. Their youngest daughter, Lillian Melba Langmaid, died from injuries caused by scalding water in 1907. Further, in 1910, scandal involving a son split the family apart, and many of the children moved to Victoria. Arthur William Langmaid died on 5 August 1933, and was buried at Wivenhoe.

A younger brother, Alfred Tarleton Langmaid, opened the first coach house and hotel in the Railton district on the road not far from the lime works. [15] His family eventually moved on to new farms at Moltema and Dunorlan.

Amos Langmaid remained on the farm at Dulverton until he passed away on 15 August 1894. He was buried at Railton. The age claimed on his death certificate is 101 years and eight days. This is false information, as his true age was only eighty-four years. He looked much older, with a crippled back, still suffering from the lashes and other punishment he received for misdemeanours in his convict years.

The lime works continued to be operated by the Blenkhorn family and their descendants until 1997, when the lime works finally closed down. The original limestone quarry has been filled in, fenced off with a stand of pine trees now capping the hill behind the old quarry. A monument in limestone has been erected to Amos Langmaid and the Railton Lime Works beside the Latrobe-Railton road. It represents a proud mark for Amos Langmaid, who pioneered industrial development in a country far removed from his homeland.

Across the road, a new pit was opened in 1998 by the Goliath cement factory on the site of the largest of the family farms. This site had to be carefully cleared because the block contained the graves of two children, almost certainly those of Louisa Langmaid and Arthur William Langmaid jnr. This new industrial site will be an even greater monument to the pioneering efforts of Amos Langmaid.

Memorial to Amos Langmaid Railton 1998

---