I am currently transcribing the 1873 Diary of my 3rd Great Grandfather Thomas Hitchcox who lived at Fullarton (suburb of Adelaide), South Australia, when he wrote it.
The image below contains a family name that I cannot determine.
The rest says:
A family from Victoria named ? came to live at Barn Abbey
I have found out a little about Barn Abbey:
When European settlers arrived in the 1830’s and began appropriating the Adelaide Plains land from its indigenous inhabitants, a considerable area in Fullarton was bought by James Frew. The suburb owes its name to his wife, Jane Fullarton, and ‘Barn Abbey” at 16 Fern Avenue is said to be the first stone building in Fullarton.
After a few changes of ownership of Barn Abbey, the house and a parcel of land surrounding it was sold to James Fairbrother, who established an orchard and a factory making awardwinning- jam on the property.
which was exciting because I had been wondering who a man named Fairbrother in the diary may have been but I am no closer to knowing what the hard to read family name is.
To me it looks like Strutten but there are no births, marriages or deaths of anyone in South Australia by that name.
Are you able to discern the name?
In case it helps Thomas had been a school master turned farmer at Wheaton Aston, near Lapley, Staffordshire before emigrating to South Australia in 1854.
I am happy to provide samples of any letter combinations that may be helpful to clarifying the spelling of this surname.
I have found a second mention of this family in the same diary on Friday 2 May 1873:
Here the surname looks more like Scrutten and a search of http://trove.nla.gov.au (newspapers) finds a few instances.