William Tudor Yeager ( 1840 – 1904 ) Pioneer River Trader
William Tudor Yeager was born in Canada and in 1858, at the age of 18, he decided to seek his own fortune and arrived in Australia quite penniless. He took a job as a sailor on the Margaret & Mary, a small schooner trading cedar on the Richmond River.
“from Ballina up, the few small settlements here and there along the bank were barely visible, as the forest came down to the water’s edge”. from Yeager’s diary
A man of great foresight, he saw the urgent need for good river transport on the river, with cedar and tallow to be exported and a huge demand for supplies by timber getters and settlers upstream. At the time there was no river transport except by rafts downstream, or by rowing and towing the little schooners upstream to be unloaded and reloaded with cedar.
After realising the potential of a river service he saved his wages and in 1861 he purchased a ten-ton lugger and commenced a cargo transport service on the river. With oars and sometimes sails he droghed supplies from the little schooners at the Heads to the settler’s up the river.
In a few years he had enough money saved to go to Sydney and purchase another boat, a 15-ton cutter which he sailed back to the Richmond loaded with supplies. This time his luck was out and his cutter went aground on the sandspit at Ballina Bar and became a total loss. Not daunted he started all over again with the old lugger, rowing supplies up and down the river.
By 1865 he had saved enough money to purchase land at East Coraki which he named Oakland after the town in California where he had grown up. He erected a basic slab hut and married 16 year old Mary Ann Webster, the daughter of wealthy storekeeper William Webster from Lismore. Their first son, William junior, was born the following year with five more children to follow – Mary, Catherine, John and Josephine, and then 10 years after Jo in 1888, Edgar (Ted) appeared on the scene.





In 1867 William brought to the river the first steam drogher, Keystone, a stern paddle-wheeler affectionately known as Puffing Billy and then added the Triton and the Vesta for his growing drogher fleet. In 1872 he bought the ocean going steam tug Athletic and began transporting passengers as well as goods up and down the Richmond and Clarence rivers.
Once he had purchased ocean-going craft, he expanded to shipping timber to the ever-hungry Sydney markets. Thus, he also established a base at Pyrmont and wharves and warehouses at Lismore and Irvington.
His first three-masted schooner the Amphitrite arrived in 1874 followed a year later by the Neptune, a schooner of 200 tons. They plied constantly between the Richmond, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide carrying timber. In 1885 the Emu was purchased, an auxiliary schooner of 160 tons, with a 25 horse power engine. She was lost later near Melbourne, uninsured.
The Wyoming arrived on the Richmond in 1890, and won the speed record from Ballina to Sydney making the trip in 21 hours. Then followed the Oakland and the St. George.
The Oakland had a adventurous life. It first ran aground on the Ballina bar in 1891 just one year after it was built. In 1893 it collided with the Sydney off Bird Island near Budgewoi. In 1895 on the Sydney to Ballina run a seasick passenger fell overboard and drowned. The Ballina Bar claimed it again in 1896, twice in 1897 (breaking two blades off the propeller) twice in 1898 and in the Richmond River in 1899. In February 1901 it was damaged when it hit rock twice between North Evans Reef and Evans Head and then in July 1901 it collided with the Sarah L Hixson on the Richmond River near Ballina. In August 1901 it ran aground on the Richmond River entrance and was considered a total wreck. Despite this the Oakland was refloated a little over a month later by Captain Tom Fenwick junior and taken to Rileys Hill dry dock for repairs and returned to service on 16th February 1902.
On the 27th May 1903 in huge seas off Cabbage Tree Island, Port Stephens the Oakland foundered and sank. There were 11 lives lost including the captain, William Slater. 7 survivors in a partially flooded lifeboat were rescued by the SS Bellingen 8 hours later. Shifting cargo was thought to be the cause of the sinking. Source – Scuba Diving site



The business grew steadily; the fleet of steamboats being the envy of the north. William devoted himself to his many other interests besides shipping, foremost among which was the timber industry. He had acquired a large property at Bungabee where he kept his own timber cutters.
In 1882 Oakland Timber Mill was completed, just one month after William Yabsley Junior had turned his father’s ship-building shed into a sawmill. The steam mill was very modern and the whole concern covered more than 2 acres and employed over 150 people, much of the timber arriving by raft from the property at Bungabee. Workman’s cottages were erected nearby and a store, mess-room and dormitory, school, church, so Yeagerton constituted a small busy community.




Oakland House was built about this time and replaced the slab house first built on the Oakland property. The new house consisted of twenty five rooms including a double drawing room and enormous kitchen wing. It had sweeping lawns down to the river’s edge and extensive gardens with a lily pond.

In conjunction with the mill, William purchased a site at Pyrmont, Sydney and built wharves and a second timber mill. He bought a three story house at 17 York Street, which became his Sydney residence and was named “Unara” (now the site of Wynyard Station).
The family were well respected with Mary Ann being a pillar of the church community and her teenage daughters Mary Agnes (Doll) and Josephine (Jo) involved in charity and social activities. Young John Tudor, aged 11, died of typhoid fever whilst attending school in Sydney.
In 1898 William sold his fleet of large ocean steamboats to the North Coast Steam Navigation Co. but retained the smaller river passenger vessels.
William Yeager Junior became more involved with his father’s business and became manager at the Oakland sawmill whilst Edgar (Ted) was running the Sydney operations.


In 1899, whilst William was in England, Mary Ann, aged 50, died suddenly leaving behind four adult children. Mary Agnes had moved to Sydney and married George Barter, while Josephine was alone at Oakland with her mother. The following year, on the eve of her wedding, Josephine was struck down with typhoid fever and after a lengthy recuperation, married Leslie Walter Pye and started a family. William, aged 61, remarried and had two more children. In failing health, he sailed for America with his new family but he died in 1904 while visiting family in Philadelphia; his business interests in Coraki and Sydney being passed into his sons’ capable hands.
The Next Generation
Just over one year later in 1906, William Junior was also stricken with illness and passed away suddenly, leaving 25 year old Edgar Osmond (Ted) Yeagar as the sole male heir in charge of an extensive business empire. Life in the Richmond Valley was changing and when the river trade diminished the family turned to other pursuits. The large land holdings at Oakland, Bungabee and Wyoming were divided up between the three remaining siblings, while the Oakland Sawmills and Steamer Enterprises, including the river boats, were sold to Davis Bros and Burgess. Many people had been employed by this family over the years and the Yeagers always had the reputation for dealing fairly with employees.
The sawmill continued to be successful under the guidance of Davis Bros & Burgess and was expanded to include a small ship-building yard with Oliver Jones in charge of operations. He had learnt the craft from William Yabsley Snr and was married to his daughter Elizabeth. William Burgess died soon afterwards and the supply of softwood from around the district petered out. After the devastating flood in 1921 the sawmill was closed down.
Ted married Clara Goulding and, after a world honeymoon tour, started a family and settled into life at Oakland. He began developing his ideas around mixed-crop farming and by 1911 was expanding into dairy cattle. He invested a lot of time and money into the very latest machinery and innovative farming techniques. He purchased a 100 horse-power traction engine for irrigation, ploughing and road building, new silos for conserving fodder and installed 36 new milking machines. The dairy was said to be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere servicing dozens of surrounding farms, milking 600 cows per day.



Possessing a brilliant engineering mind, Ted invented a variety of useful contraptions and applied for several patents: a multi disk gramophone; a reversing propeller for aeroplanes and even a drainer rack for tableware. During WWII with the threat of Japanese subs targeting river ports, Ted designed and built a full scale anti-torpedo net which he demonstrated to the amazed onlookers by dragging it behind the steamer Magnet. It was lauded as an engineering masterpiece for the protection of the many boats on the Richmond River.

The family were very private and Ted, although very civic-minded, never sought public office on the council. The Yeager women were involved in charity and social work, particularly during the war. Clare and Ted raised three children: Gwendoline, William and John.
John Yeager, like his father, had an inventive turn of mind and inherited a fascination with cars. He built his first one in 1931, when he was only 17. War came again and William signed up.
By 1954 the house had fallen into disrepair and was pulled down and rebuilt as a single storey house using the original timbers.
John built three more cars, but abandoned his last project because of family illness in 1963.
Yeagers have shaped the district for more than 150 years.