#52 Ancestors #Week 9 - At the Courthouse
My ancestors were a law-abiding lot. There were no convicts ( although more research might find that William Barry, 3rd great grandfather was one). Great uncle Michael Gleeson had a few drunken brushes with the law, but he was almost certainly suffering from PTSD after WW1, so can perhaps be forgiven. So, too, was a great uncle by marriage, who took a shot at his daughter’s boyfriend and was lucky not to have killed him.
In my husband’s family, on the other hand, there are several convicts. I thought it would be interesting to record their crimes, and their sentences.
Peter McCann, 4th great grandfather, was a robber, tried in Dublin and sentenced to 7 years transportation. He came to New South Wales in 1800, on the Minerva, a ship carrying lots of Irish political prisoners, which gave rise to the family myth that he was actually a rebel. Not so. He didn’t even take part in the infamous Irish conspiracy in September 1800. Giving evidence, he said that one of the rebels had asked him to participate, saying, “ Although you are a robber, you are a man I can depend on ....”
( He shouldn’t have - Peter McCann was an informant.)
Peter McCann drowned at Rickerby’s Creek, near Windsor, on 26 October 1806.
Mary Fitzgerald, 4th great grandmother married Peter McCann in 1804. She was tried at Waterford, Ireland and sentenced to 7 years for stealing. Mary came to NSW on the Atlas 1, on a voyage which
is recognized as having been one of the worst to the colony in transportation history. There was one
death for every 2.7 convicts, an outcome mainly attributable to greediness and neglect by the Captain.
After Peter’s death, Mary married 3 more times and she died in 1870.
Rosetta Johnston, 4th great grandmother, arrived in the colony with her 6 year old daughter, Catherine, who later married Peter and Mary’s son, Nicholas McCann. Rosetta was also sentenced to 7 years, for larceny.
Rebecca Bloxham, 3rd great grandmother, sentenced to death for “robbery on a person”. The sentence was downgraded to transportation for life and she arrived in 1826.
John Hooper, 3rd great grandfather, married Rebecca in 1829. He too had been sentenced to life, for larceny.
William Roberts, 3rd great grandfather, was sentenced to 14 years in 1827 for stealing. He had been a habitual thief, and had changed his name from “Watson” to “Roberts”, perhaps not to disgrace his honest family. He was sent to Van Diemen’s Land, where he was to met his wife
Agnes McMillan, 3rd great grandmother, whose crimes I wrote about in #52 Weeks - Challenge.
With the exception of Peter, who met an early death, all of these convicts eventually obtained their freedom and never went to prison again. Nor did they ever go back “home”. Like most convicts, they actually flourished in their new environment. They had families, and jobs, and most owned property, and employed others. Their crimes were almost certainly committed in response to the poverty and privation of their lives in Ireland and England and while their initial convictions may have been met with fear and apprehension, there is no doubt that they and their descendants ultimately led much better lives than they would have done had they not been sent to the colonies.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
#52 Ancestors #Week 8 - Family Photo
#52 Ancestors #Week 8 - Family photo
This photo is really about Charles Robert White - always known as 'Boy" - the young man in the centre of the back row, wearing the uniform of the Australian World War 1 soldier.
It was taken in Lismore, NSW, in September 1918. Boy was home from Enoggera Army Training Camp on pre-embarkation leave. All the family has come together to say goodbye to him. They are his parents, Robert and Elizabeth, his 15 year old brother George, and his sisters Alice, Violet and Nellie (standing) and Eliza (known as "Weenie") and Mabel ("Sis") in front. ( You can tell that this family had a penchant for nicknames).
Boy joined the Army in August 1918. He was 20. My guess is that his father had probably withheld permission until then, and it's also possible that he had to finish his apprenticeship as a fitter with the NSW Government Railways. He was quickly passed fit and sent for training, and then joined up with the 8th Queensland Reinforcements. On 28 September, he was granted leave to come home, and then on 7 November 1918, he set off to war on the SS Carpentaria.
Of course, the armistice was declared on 11 November 1918. The Carpentaria, at sea for only four days, berthed in Fremantle, WA and the soldiers were transferred to the SS Riverina, a small coastal ship, and returned to Sydney on 28 November. By 28 December, Boy had been discharged, and was back in Lismore. His war had lasted just five months, and he had seen none of it, but he was nevertheless awarded the British War Medal, the Victory Medal and the 1914-15 Star.
Boy left Lismore for Newcastle in the early ‘20’s after marrying a local girl, Ida Elizabeth Staff, who had lost her fiancé in the War. They were to have two children together, Vivienne and Douglas.
I’m not sure what he did in Newcastle, but I know that he had been a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union for 24 years when he stood for pre-election to the Senate in the 1940 Federal election. Like all his family, he was a good Labor man - he ran for what was then the Industrial Labor Party, a breakaway from the ALP which had been created by a disgruntled Bob Heffron. ( The split didn’t last long and Heffron rejoined the Party, eventually becoming Premier of NSW)
The other strong family connection was with the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows. This organization, founded in Manchester, England, was a non- political, non-sectarian, not-for-profit mutual society formed to protect and care for its members in the days before the welfare state and Medicare. It was very strong in Australia in the early 20th Century, and Boy’s father Robert was a prominent member, who became a Grand Master and had a Lodge ( the Loyal Robert White Lodge) named after him in Lismore.
Boy became a Grand Master in Newcastle in 1946. The newspaper report *describes him as having been a member since 1914.
Ida died in 1959, and the following year Boy married a widow, Grace Dorman. They retired to the Gold Coast where he died in 1977.
* Newcastle Herald 24 Oct 1946
This photo is really about Charles Robert White - always known as 'Boy" - the young man in the centre of the back row, wearing the uniform of the Australian World War 1 soldier.
It was taken in Lismore, NSW, in September 1918. Boy was home from Enoggera Army Training Camp on pre-embarkation leave. All the family has come together to say goodbye to him. They are his parents, Robert and Elizabeth, his 15 year old brother George, and his sisters Alice, Violet and Nellie (standing) and Eliza (known as "Weenie") and Mabel ("Sis") in front. ( You can tell that this family had a penchant for nicknames).
Boy joined the Army in August 1918. He was 20. My guess is that his father had probably withheld permission until then, and it's also possible that he had to finish his apprenticeship as a fitter with the NSW Government Railways. He was quickly passed fit and sent for training, and then joined up with the 8th Queensland Reinforcements. On 28 September, he was granted leave to come home, and then on 7 November 1918, he set off to war on the SS Carpentaria.
Of course, the armistice was declared on 11 November 1918. The Carpentaria, at sea for only four days, berthed in Fremantle, WA and the soldiers were transferred to the SS Riverina, a small coastal ship, and returned to Sydney on 28 November. By 28 December, Boy had been discharged, and was back in Lismore. His war had lasted just five months, and he had seen none of it, but he was nevertheless awarded the British War Medal, the Victory Medal and the 1914-15 Star.
Boy left Lismore for Newcastle in the early ‘20’s after marrying a local girl, Ida Elizabeth Staff, who had lost her fiancé in the War. They were to have two children together, Vivienne and Douglas.
I’m not sure what he did in Newcastle, but I know that he had been a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union for 24 years when he stood for pre-election to the Senate in the 1940 Federal election. Like all his family, he was a good Labor man - he ran for what was then the Industrial Labor Party, a breakaway from the ALP which had been created by a disgruntled Bob Heffron. ( The split didn’t last long and Heffron rejoined the Party, eventually becoming Premier of NSW)
The other strong family connection was with the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows. This organization, founded in Manchester, England, was a non- political, non-sectarian, not-for-profit mutual society formed to protect and care for its members in the days before the welfare state and Medicare. It was very strong in Australia in the early 20th Century, and Boy’s father Robert was a prominent member, who became a Grand Master and had a Lodge ( the Loyal Robert White Lodge) named after him in Lismore.
Boy became a Grand Master in Newcastle in 1946. The newspaper report *describes him as having been a member since 1914.
Ida died in 1959, and the following year Boy married a widow, Grace Dorman. They retired to the Gold Coast where he died in 1977.
* Newcastle Herald 24 Oct 1946
Friday, February 1, 2019
#52 Ancestors Week 6 - Surprise
#52 Ancestors Week 6 - “Surprise”
Surely there could be no greater surprise than to learn of the existence of someone long believed to be dead
This is what happened to my grandmother Josephine and her sister, Elsie, in 1933.
Josephine ( born 1882) and Elsie (1884) were the daughters of George Morgan and Mary Jane (née Black) who were married in Sydney, NSW in March 1880, when she was just 18 years old. They had four children; Max Pedro Power, born 1881, then the two girls, and then Edward in 1886.
Tragedy struck in June 1887, when Max was hit by a cart in the street, and died of tetanus. There is some evidence that George and Mary Jane were already living separately when this happened. Certainly, we know that sometime in 1887 Mary Jane left home, taking baby Edward with her. The two girls were taken by their father to live with his mother and one of his sisters, who was married and was already the mother of six small children.
Josie and Elsie grew up in this household. We don’t know if they ever saw their father but they believed ( or were told) that their mother was dead and when Josie met my grandfather and married him (in 1911) she described herself as an orphan.
Imagine the surprise then, when, in 1933, the two women received a letter from the Public Trustee
seeking the children of Mary Jane. 46 years after they had last seen her, they learned that she had
recently died.
Amazingly to me, neither of them seems to have been angry or resentful that their mother had ignored them for all these years. They went happily off to Sydney where they met lots of half siblings and learned that their brother, Edward, had died on the Somme in 1916.
So what had Mary Jane been doing in those 46 years? It’s complicated.
After she left her husband, she took up with George Ellis. There is no record of a divorce, or a marriage, and several children born between 1887-1899 were registered as ‘Morgan’. The six born before 1896 ( when George Ellis died ) were probably fathered by Ellis, although Mary (1895), twins
Leonard and May (1897) and Arthur (1899) all appear as “Sarchfield” on her death certificate.
She married Edward Sarchfield in 1900. George Morgan was still alive ( he died in 1921) - she probably didn’t know, but she was a bigamist.
Four more children were born, Ernest ( 1900-1900), Mabel (1901), Eric ( 1903) and John, (1905). Her husband died three months before John was born. There were 9 surviving children, of whom at least 6 were young enough to be fully dependent on her.
In the 21st century, we can be judgemental about a woman with such a chequered sexual history, but in an era with no social security what could she do but rely on a man for protection? Serial pregnancies were the lot of a fertile woman in a time of poor contraception, and the early deaths of six of her children is a horror familiar to many women of her time.
There was a happy ending, of sorts. Josie and Elsie remained close to their two half sisters, Kate and Mattie, for the rest of their lives.
(The cottage in Summer Hill, where the girls grew up with their aunt’s family).
Surely there could be no greater surprise than to learn of the existence of someone long believed to be dead
This is what happened to my grandmother Josephine and her sister, Elsie, in 1933.
Josephine ( born 1882) and Elsie (1884) were the daughters of George Morgan and Mary Jane (née Black) who were married in Sydney, NSW in March 1880, when she was just 18 years old. They had four children; Max Pedro Power, born 1881, then the two girls, and then Edward in 1886.
Tragedy struck in June 1887, when Max was hit by a cart in the street, and died of tetanus. There is some evidence that George and Mary Jane were already living separately when this happened. Certainly, we know that sometime in 1887 Mary Jane left home, taking baby Edward with her. The two girls were taken by their father to live with his mother and one of his sisters, who was married and was already the mother of six small children.
Josie and Elsie grew up in this household. We don’t know if they ever saw their father but they believed ( or were told) that their mother was dead and when Josie met my grandfather and married him (in 1911) she described herself as an orphan.
Imagine the surprise then, when, in 1933, the two women received a letter from the Public Trustee
seeking the children of Mary Jane. 46 years after they had last seen her, they learned that she had
recently died.
Amazingly to me, neither of them seems to have been angry or resentful that their mother had ignored them for all these years. They went happily off to Sydney where they met lots of half siblings and learned that their brother, Edward, had died on the Somme in 1916.
So what had Mary Jane been doing in those 46 years? It’s complicated.
After she left her husband, she took up with George Ellis. There is no record of a divorce, or a marriage, and several children born between 1887-1899 were registered as ‘Morgan’. The six born before 1896 ( when George Ellis died ) were probably fathered by Ellis, although Mary (1895), twins
Leonard and May (1897) and Arthur (1899) all appear as “Sarchfield” on her death certificate.
She married Edward Sarchfield in 1900. George Morgan was still alive ( he died in 1921) - she probably didn’t know, but she was a bigamist.
Four more children were born, Ernest ( 1900-1900), Mabel (1901), Eric ( 1903) and John, (1905). Her husband died three months before John was born. There were 9 surviving children, of whom at least 6 were young enough to be fully dependent on her.
In the 21st century, we can be judgemental about a woman with such a chequered sexual history, but in an era with no social security what could she do but rely on a man for protection? Serial pregnancies were the lot of a fertile woman in a time of poor contraception, and the early deaths of six of her children is a horror familiar to many women of her time.
There was a happy ending, of sorts. Josie and Elsie remained close to their two half sisters, Kate and Mattie, for the rest of their lives.
(The cottage in Summer Hill, where the girls grew up with their aunt’s family).
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