Memories of Susan and David Whybrew

John Street, Colchester

I'd like to share some of the fascinating information that was sent to me recently with the photo of Susan Mason. It was recorded from a conversation with Susan's granddaughter, Violet, late in life. Violet had never met her grandparents, Susan and David. Her memories were based on recollections of what  her mother, Ada, had told her, many years earlier. So the source is rather distant in time. 

Having said that, it gives a wonderful insight into the characters of both Susan and David Whybrew, and also answers some questions that were left unanswered in the book, Susan. 

I've edited the information I was provided a little, and reformatted it to make it flow. But I hope you can still hear Violet's voice in it.

Susan was born in Australia in 1848. Her parents were Irish. She married David Whybrew while his regiment was stationed in Australia. After travelling around the world with the regiment, they returned to England and the barracks in Colchester.

Nell (Ellen) and Ada were the youngest of many children, born in many different places, including Cambridge. Susan was nearly fifty when Ada was born. Only Nell and Ada were still at home when Susan used to go away to work as a midwife. (This explains why Susan described herself as a nurse on the 1911 census, despite having no training as far as I could tell. Midwives then didn't need any qualifications.) 

In those days, midwives used to live in with the family in confinement. Susan used to go away for six weeks; three weeks before the birth and three weeks after the birth. Families used to send their pony and trap for her when she was needed. One particular family she used to attend to had lots of children and they always used to send for Susan.

Susan often used to be paid in kind. On one occasion she had been paid with sausages. As she was walking along, all the sausages were trailing along behind her!

Her husband, David, loved her dearly. He described her as 'the belle of the ball' and said that he loved every hair on her head.

David used to sing to Sue:

Sue, Sue, I’m very much in love with you, 

When your pretty little eyes of blue are smiling,

Few, few, few little girls are as nice as you,

There’s a lovely (lonely?) little part, in the middle of my heart,

Just for you, you, you.

David Whybrew was born in 1839. He was Welsh and a Regimental Sargent Major. He met Susan while with his regiment in Australia.  They married and eventually came back to live in Colchester. 

(My correspondent is unsure why the family thought David was Welsh. All the recorded evidence points to him being from Essex, with both parents English, but there's obviously a story yet to be uncovered.) 

He had retired by the time Ada was born. 

He was very strict but he loved his wife and children dearly.  Everything was done to precision. His rule was "no working on Sundays". Nell wasn’t even allowed to sew on a button. They had their own pew at church and went to church every Sunday.

Ada wasn't allowed dancing shoes.  She used to go out, hide her shoes under a hedge and collect them later. He called dancing girls “harlots”.

He did all the sewing and darning. He said that no woman could do it properly! Aunt Nell wanted to borrow some white cotton off him. He gave her some but said: “Don’t ever ask me again. You never lend or borrow, always replenish your stocks, before they run out.”

He used to clean their shoes every day, he even cleaned the soles. He had a piece of wood whittled down and cleaned the edges with it. When the children became fourteen years old, they had to clean their own. Last time he cleaned them was on their birthday. He used to say: “There you are my girl, that is the last time I will clean your shoes”, then he gave them an apple and a penny.

Stories like these are priceless. They say so much about ordinary family life, and they can't be obtained from public records or even newspapers. I'm very grateful to the lady who sent them to me.

Jane Mason's daughter, Lizette

In my post about Henry Hartland, I mentioned that I'd received an email from a descendant of Jane Mason. (Jane was a younger sister of my great great grandmother, Susan Mason). She has very kindly provided me with an outline of the story of Jane's daughter, Lizette. Here it is, with some additional information that I've found online.

The Shamrock Hotel (since renamed several times) in 1927

Lizette was born to Jane in March 1879, in Campbelltown, Adelaide. Lizette's father, Thomas Boddington, was the landlord of the Shamrock Hotel in Currie Street. He was also the lessee of a notorious row of cottages on Light Square, known as Boddington's Row, which were let out as brothels. 

Thomas' father, a baker also named Thomas, had been transported to Western Australia in 1851, for receiving stolen goods. The rest of the family followed him to Australia in 1855. They moved to South Australia in 1859 and Thomas senior established a bakery in Rundle Street. His advertisements drew attention to his 'superior style of Wedding Cakes'.

Jane Mason worked as a servant for the younger Thomas Boddington. But sometime in 1877 she lost her job. On a Friday evening, 28 September 1877, she went to the Shamrock and pleaded to be taken back. 

When Boddington refused, she was "overcome with emotion", and grabbed him by the coat. She was charged with disturbing the peace and appeared in the police court the following day. The magistrate, Mr Beddome, made her promise not to return to the Shamrock and fined her 5 shillings plus costs.

The Express and Telegraph, 29 September 1877

Despite this distressing experience, Jane must have had further contact with Boddington (who was divorced from his first wife) since she gave birth to Lizette 16 months later, on 11 March 1879. Sadly, as was often the case in those days, Jane was unable to keep her child, and it seems Lizette was handed over to the care of one of Thomas Boddington's brothers and his family. (The child's name was spelled Lizzette on the birth register and some later records.) 

Jane appears to have died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1886. In 1895, Lizette, still in her teens, gave birth to a boy named Herbert Harry Bartlett. His father was listed as Henry Bartlett on the birth registration. Nothing is known for certain about this Henry, but possibly he was the same Henry Bartlett, MP, who was charged in 1892 with failing to support an illegitimate child. 

Nor is it clear what happened to the baby. But  like her mother, Lizette probably handed him over to someone else to bring up, not by choice but out of necessity.

Lizette travelled to Western Australia in 1901. We next see her in 1912, at the age of 33, when she appears on the electoral roll at Twin Peaks station 'via Yalgoo', east of Geraldton in Western Australia. She is listed as a lady's help, and is living with Albert and Hannah Boddington. Albert was Thomas  Boddington's youngest brother, born in Western Australia after the family arrived from England.

In 1919, Lizette married Edward Charles Atkins, the owner of the sheep station adjoining the Boddingtons. They had two children, who had children of their own. So despite her hard and short life, Jane Mason has descendants who have been successful in ways she could not have dreamed of.

My correspondent, one of Lizette's grandchildren, writes "I feel sorry for Jane as she had a difficult life. I am also extremely proud of her and all the extended family she has produced." I'm delighted that Jane Mason is no longer one of the "unsolved mysteries" in my own family tree.

Rose Davis - another Rose in the Mason family

It's always exciting to receive a comment or a message from someone who has found a link to their own family history on my blog. This week I heard from a descendent of Susan Mason's sister Catherine, and discovered another Rose in the family that I hadn't come across before.

Port Adelaide c 1870.
Image from State Library of SA

Catherine (sometimes spelled Katherine in records) was John and Catherine Mason's third daughter. She was born in Sydney in March 1844, before the family moved to Adelaide. She would have been 12 years old when her father John died, in January 1857. When her mother applied to the Destitute Board for relief in July 1857, Catherine was already employed outside the home, probably as a servant girl.

On 5 June 1865, at the age of 21, she married George Davis (or Davies), who was almost ten years older than her. It wasn't always a happy marriage, but they appear to have stayed together until George's death in 1903.

Until recently I hadn't much information about George, except that he was born about 1831. But a few weeks ago I was contacted by another researcher on Ancestry, who told me about an entry in the South Australian State Records index of hospital admissions (GRG 78/49) which appears to mention George.

On 13 October 1902, George Davis, aged 68, was admitted to the Royal Adelaide hospital. The index shows that he was a wharf labourer, a protestant, born in Wales. He was said to have been in South Australia for 40 years, though this may be a rounded figure rather than exact. The ship he arrived on isn't listed.

George and Catherine were married in Port Adelaide, and their first three children were all registered there: Catherine (1866), George (1867) and John (1869). The next child on my list was Hannah, whose birth was registered at Nile in South Australia in 1874. There were at least another five children after Hannah, registered in various places around South Australia, so it seems George and Catherine moved around.*

What I learned from my correspondent was that between John and Hannah, Catherine gave birth to a child named Rose. The reason I hadn't come across her before is that her birth seems to have been registered, as Rosey Davis, in Newcastle in New South Wales, in 1872. I have no idea what Catherine and George were doing in Newcastle. If George was a wharf labourer, perhaps he moved around looking for work.

Rose Davis married Robert Carnie in Victoria in 1895. They lived in Coburg in Victoria. I might have questioned whether Rose was a child of the same Davis family, given that all the other children were born in South Australia. But when Rose Carnie died in 1946, her mother's name was listed as Catherine Mason, and her father as George Davis. This notice appeared in the West Australian newspaper on 18 July 1946:

Rose's sister Margaret Davis (born 1876) was married to Arthur Massey, so it seems to confirm  Rose's place in the Davis family. I'm intrigued by the line at the end of the death notice: "Some day we will understand".

Having discovered Rose, I'm now wondering whether the "Elizabeth Eliza Davis" born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1870, to parents named George and Catherine Davis, also belongs to the same family. John Davis was born in January 1869 and Rose in 1872, so it's possible, although Catherine's other children were all spaced two years apart. Time for more research on this family!


*The other children of Catherine and George were:
Margaret 1876, registered in Glanville,
James 1878, in Le Fevre Peninsula,
Mary Ann, 1880, in Farnham,
Thomas 1882, in Alberton and
Naomi (or Nahomie) 1884 in Glanville.

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For more details about the Mason family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Sydney in New South Wales

On 2 March 1834, the Parmelia sailed through the sandstone heads of Port Jackson in New South Wales. Author Thomas Keneally describes the Parmelia's voyage and arrival in his book, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New. Hugh Larkin, one of Keneally's wife's ancestors, was one of the 200 or so Irish prisoners on board. John Mason, my great great great grandfather, was another.

They had been cooped up in the crowded, creaking ship since they left Cork the previous October, so everyone was eager to catch a glimpse of land and the penal colony which was to be their home and prison for the next 7 years, 14 years or even a lifetime. From the decks they could see the coastal hills, with their strange (to their eyes) drab vegetation, the sandy beaches and the lighthouse, signal station and shacks around South Head. Sydney Town itself was hidden from view.

But the ship didn't immediately head for the docks in Sydney. According to Keneally, the soldiers of the 50th regiment, who had been the guards aboard the Parmelia, were landed four days after they reached Port Jackson. The convicts were given health checks and assessed for their fitness for work. It was not until 18 March that they were disembarked upstream at Sydney Cove.

Map from Museums Victoria

Sydney's history

People had been living in the area that would become Sydney for 30,000, perhaps even 50,000 years. It's estimated that the Aboriginal population was between 4000 and 8000 before the First Fleet arrived in 1788. Their descendants remain to this day, but initially their numbers declined as their traditional food-gathering areas were taken over by settlers, and they succumbed to previously-unknown diseases such as smallpox and measles. Violent confrontations also occurred.

John Mason had come from Limerick, a port city of elegant buildings but dire poverty. Food riots had broken out among the destitute there in 1830. In some ways, Sydney, with its bustling port, might have seemed familiar to him, though it was much smaller than Limerick. In the 1820s, Governor Lachlan Macquarie had set about constructing many grand public buildings and laid out the future city with a botanic garden and public open spaces.

Vue de George's Street a Sydney 1833
By Alexis Nicolas Noel 
Contributed By National Library of Australia  [nla.pic-an8148364]

Macquarie had also insisted that those who had served their term ('emancipists') should be treated as free citizens and be allowed to buy land, establish businesses, and be appointed to government posts. Many had done well for themselves. The port had become a busy trading centre. Those with money or power kept up a social life as similar to their English counterparts as they could, in the heat and dust.

Advertisement in the Sydney Gazette, 9 March 1833

But Sydney was still a town built by, and for, convicts. Although many women had arrived, either as convicts or free settlers, men still heavily outnumbered them. Crime, drunkenness and prostitution were rife. Convicts were provided with food, clothing and shelter, but their lives could be very harsh, depending on where they were allocated to work. Public floggings and hangings took place regularly. In 1833, there were 1,149 floggings in NSW, with 247 convicts receiving 9,909 lashes between them.

John Mason, convict labourer

Nineteen-year-old John Mason was initially assigned to work for Alexander Fotheringham, a prominent local business man and shipwright. By 1837 he had been re-assigned to Wright and Long, a shipping company with a wharf at Millers Point on Darling Harbour. He may have helped to build the store building on the wharf at the Point, eventually sold to Captain Joseph Moore, using sandstone quarried on-site. Working alongside John was another convict, William Doody, who would later migrate with John to South Australia.

By the time twenty-year old Catherine Murphy arrived in Sydney aboard the Mary Ann, in August 1840, the town had a population of 35,000, and had its own City Council. New South Wales was in an economic depression, and transportation of convicts to NSW had been suspended, but settlers continued to arrive. Decent accommodation was in short supply. Perhaps Catherine was met on the wharf by Mrs Caroline Chisholm, who endeavoured to make sure that newly-arrived single women had accommodation and found employment, rather than drifting into prostitution.

Caroline Chisholm

John and Catherine's marriage

Catherine came from a farming family in Monaghan, Ireland, and was hoping to find work as a farm servant. It seems, though, that she probably stayed in Sydney. On 2 February 1841, her twenty-first birthday, she married John Mason in St Mary's Roman Catholic church. John had received his Certificate of Freedom on 18 July 1840.

Hyde Park and St Mary's Cathedral, c1842
by John Rae. Image from State Library NSW

John and Catherine made their home in Elizabeth St, near the harbour, and their first child, Rosanna, was born there 10 months later in December 1841. Andrew and Mary Goodwin, an Irish couple who had been the witnesses at their wedding, became Rosanna’s baptism sponsors (similar to god-parents). One of John’s former mates from his days at Wright and Long’s shipping company, Timothy Rourke, along with his wife Mary, were the sponsors at the baptism of the Mason’s second child, Mary Ann, in October 1842. John’s friend William Doody and his wife Bridget (nee Murnane) were sponsors at the baptism of the Mason’s third daughter Catherine in 1844.

In 1843 John and Catherine were rocked by the death of little Rosanna. Such deaths were tragic but common in the colony as childhood diseases such as measles, whooping cough and scarlet fever arrived with the children of free settlers and spread in the overcrowded conditions in the city. Infants made up thirty percent of deaths in the colony in the 1840s.

Millers Point Sydney c1845 by Joseph Fowles.
Image from State Library NSW

Leaving for Adelaide

The Mason family remained in Sydney until December 1844. Then they sailed for Adelaide aboard the Dorset, along with several other Irish Catholic families. Did they feel any sadness at leaving the former penal colony? Somehow I doubt that they did. It wasn't a place of happy memories. Today, much of what they left behind has disappeared and the city would be unrecognisable to them.


General sources:
Wikipedia, History of Sydney
Webster World Encyclopedia of Australia
Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia
NSW State Records and Archives

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For more details about John Mason and his family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Adelaide in South Australia

We now leave the villages and towns of Essex so familiar to my great grandfather William Beales, and travel to Adelaide, the birthplace of his wife, Eliza Whybrew.

Rundle Street, Adelaide in 1845, by S. T. Gill.
 (Image from the State Library of Victoria.)

Eliza's grandparents, John and Catherine Mason, arrived in South Australia in December 1844, when the colony was less than a decade old. The main streets of Adelaide already contained some impressive civic buildings, churches, shops and hotels, along with a smattering of houses built of brick or the local stone. But most of the settlement's European population of around 10,000 people lived in single-story structures built of wood, tin or pise (a form of wattle and daub).

Adelaide and its surrounding farmland was the brain-child of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. While in prison in Newgate (for abducting a young heiress) he put forward the idea of populating a new Australian colony by selling land to the wealthy, then using the proceeds to pay the fares of labourers and artisans, who would provide a labour force for the land owners. The labourers' incentive to work hard would be that they could eventually save enough money to buy their own land. This would, he believed, avoid the social problems experienced in most of the other colonies, where land was granted freely to settlers while transported convicts provided the labour force. The "taint" of convict life would be absent.

The British Government passed the South Australia Colonisation Act in 1834, and in  February 1836 a convoy of ships full of eager settlers left England for the new colony. The first task of the Surveyor General, Colonel Light, was to work out where to actually put the new settlement. Light favoured one site on the Torrens River, while the Governor, Hindmarsh, favoured another, closer to the coast. It took a public meeting and a show of hands by the frustrated settlers, on 10 February 1837, to agree on the site favoured by Colonel Light.

William Light's map of Adelaide, 1837.
Image from Adelaidia website

By March 1837, the future city, with its grid of streets, open squares and surrounding parklands had been surveyed. It didn't take long for land prices to soar as new settlers continued to arrive. The Kaurna people, who had lived on the land for tens of thousands of years, and whose fire-stick farming practices were responsible for the park-like landscape so admired by the settlers, were gradually displaced.

What brought the Masons to Adelaide?

As an Irish ex-convict, John Mason (my great great great grandfather) was not exactly the sort of settler that Edward Gibbon Wakefield had envisaged for his new colony. In 1834 the 19-year-old John had been transported from Limerick in Ireland to New South Wales for stealing several yards of cotton material from a shop. 

After serving his seven-year sentence in Sydney, John married a newly-arrived Irish girl, Catherine Murphy. In December 1844 they and their two surviving daughters, Mary Ann and Catherine, left Sydney on the brig Dorset. They seem to have been travelling as part of a group with John's friend and fellow ex-convict William Doody, William's wife, Bridget (nee Murnane) and her sister and brother-in-law, the McCormacks. 

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Dec 1844

For John Mason and William Doody, Adelaide offered the opportunity to leave behind the taint of being a convict, although they would have to keep that motivation to themselves. Bridget Doody's parents had settled in South Australia a few years earlier. William Doody, a country man, may have been attracted by the chance to buy land. News about the riches to be made at the recently-opened copper mines in South Australia might have been an attraction. Or, as good Irish Catholics, the group may have been following the Sydney priest, Father Francis Murphy, who had just been appointed the Bishop of Adelaide.

The Bedford Hotel, Currie St, c1891
Formerly named the Ship Inn, and now demolished,
it stood almost opposite the Mason's house.

John and Catherine rented an assortment of small cottages around Adelaide as their family grew to include eight daughters. They eventually settled in Currie Street, to the west of the city centre. Their sixth daughter, Eliza's mother Susan, was born in May 1848. It's clear from the girls' baptism records that the family were part of the community of Irish Catholics in Adelaide, a small and sometimes unpopular minority in the largely English and Scottish protestant colony.

John found work as a labourer. As immigrants continued to arrive, there was plenty of work for builders' labourers and the like. So much so, that land owners often had difficulty attracting labourers for their farms. In time John established himself as a member of the wider community, becoming a member of the Ancient Order of Forresters, a mutual aid organisation.

But in 1856 he became bed-bound and was unable to work. In January 1857 he died, leaving Catherine and her daughters destitute. She was able to get some support from the Destitute Board, a body which, like the police force and the prison, had not been envisaged by Wakefield in his original plans for Adelaide. The older girls also brought in a small amount of money.

Currie Street, looking west, 1872.
Image from the State Library of South Australia

By the time Susan Mason was in her teens, Adelaide had grown to a sizeable place. In 1866 the non-Aboriginal population numbered 163,452. This included over 5,000 Germans who had established a wine growing industry in the hills around Adelaide. It also included thousand of single women from Ireland who arrived during and after the great famine. Many of these found work as servants or farm labourers, but some joined the growing number of prostitutes around the city. Susan included several of them among her friends.

The Whybrews leave South Australia

By the mid 1850s, South Australia had been granted its own parliament, though initially only land-owning men could vote. By 1861 property-owning women had been given the right to vote in municipal elections. Despite some ups and downs, the colony was faring well. Much of its wealth came from exports of wheat and wool, and from copper mining.

Yet it was also very isolated, leading to a sense of vulnerability among the population. Most residents were happy that the British government continued to station troops in Adelaide to protect them from real or imagined threats.

Members of the 50th regiment in 1850
Image from the National Army Museum

In 1868 it was the turn of the 50th (Queen's Own) regiment to be stationed in the barracks near the Torrens River. The red-coated soldiers of the 50th would provide husbands for both Susan and her sister Eliza. Ironically, the same regiment had acted as guards on board the ship that had transported their father to Sydney. Susan Mason and David Whybrew were married in Adelaide in May 1869, after some interesting escapades and the birth of their first daughter, Harriet, in 1868. Their daughter Eliza was born in December 1869.

When David's regiment was called back to England in 1870, Susan went too, taking baby Eliza with her, but leaving Harriet behind in the care of another family. As far as I know Eliza never went back to Australia, so had no memory of her birth place. Harriet, on the other hand, remained in Adelaide until her teens, when she suddenly reconnected with her family in England.

Several of Susan's sisters married in Adelaide and some of their descendants no doubt still live there. I've yet to discover where John and Catherine Mason are buried, although it is probably somewhere in West Terrace cemetery.

St Luke's church, Adelaide, where Susan
and her sister Eliza both married 

My own family arrived in Western Australia from the UK in 1969 and I visited Adelaide several times over the following decades. One of my daughters studied at university there. I always liked its leafy, old-but-trendy atmosphere. But until I began researching my family history I had no idea that three generations of my father's family had lived there. Now, when I have chance to visit, I see it in a different way, with various landmarks around the city having associations with "my" Adelaide family.

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You can find out more about the Mason and Whybrew families in Adelaide in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool.
It's available on Amazon and other online books stores

Was the convict James Orton related to John Orton?

Back in 2014, I described how I'd found records for a man in Australia with the same name as my Leicestershire-born great great grandfather, Thomas Brown Orton. My curiosity was piqued and I looked into this younger man's story a little. I soon realised that it was probably co-incidental that the two men were both named Thomas Brown. My great great grandfather (born 1842) was named after his mother, Mary Ann Brown, while the Australian (born 1880) was named after his maternal grandmother, Ruth Moore Brown. (I previously said he was named after his grandfather, but this wasn't correct.)

Along the way I discovered that the Australian Thomas was descended from a convict named James Orton from Leicestershire. I kept digging, hoping that he might still be related in some way to the Ortons in my family tree. He would be from the same generation as my ggg grandfather, John Orton, born in Husbands Bosworth in about 1813. But I couldn't find a link and eventually gave up.

The Australian Thomas Brown Orton came to mind again this week with the centenary of the Armistice at the end of World War One. I recalled that he enlisted in 1915. Sadly he died of war wounds in Belgium in September 1917, a terrible blow to his widowed mother in Victoria. I decided to look again at his story to see if I could find any new information to link his Orton family and mine.

His grandfather, James Orton, was sentenced on 31 December 1838 at the Leicester Assizes for his part in stealing a large quantity of wool from a hosier in Leicester. His sentence of 14 years transportation was much more severe than that of his companion, Thomas Tomkins, because he had a prior conviction for stealing. (Leicester Chronicle 5 January 1839, p4). He was transported to New South Wales in 1839 aboard the Barossa, at the age of 18.

In 1844, while still serving his sentence, he successfully applied for permission to marry Jane Waddell, a single woman from Glasgow who had arrived as a free settler aboard the Trinidad in 1841. They went on to have at least five children - Allison (1846), Anne (1847), Hannah (1849) James (c 1851) and George (1853).

James Orton received a conditional pardon on 10 June 1850. It seems he and his family moved to Sofala, near Bendigo in Victoria. On 22 March 1856 this advertisement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald:

(JAMES ORTON left his wife and four children about the middle of February 1855, and has not since been heard of. Should this meet the eye of any person who has seen the above James Orton, will please communicate with his wife.JANE ORTON, Sofala.)

Whether poor Jane ever managed to locate James is unknown. Possibly he was the James Orton imprisoned in Darlinghurst Gaol in 1862 for being "of unsound mind". There were many James Ortons in New South Wales and Victoria at the time and the prison record contains few details, so it's impossible to be sure.

Jane died suddenly of heart disease in 1872. I haven't been able to find a definite date for James' death. Their son James married May Fulton Eaglesim and became the father of Thomas Brown Orton. He died in 1912.

So, was the convict James Orton related to 'my' Orton family from Leicestershire or not? Until I discover who his parents were, I won't know. I still haven't been able to track him down prior to his appearances in court in Leicester. Several James Ortons were born in Leicestershire around the right time (1820). Some of these I've excluded because they were still living in Leicestershire after 1839. None of the others have clear links to my Orton family.

If there is a connection, it may be much further back than I've been able to go so far. I know that 'my' Thomas Brown Orton's grandparents were John Orton and Mary Steans. (Not to be confused with his parents, John Orton and Mary Brown, though it certainly is confusing!) Mary was baptised in Husbands Bosworth in 1784, and she and John Orton were married there in 1804, but John's origins are still a mystery. Another of those mysteries yet to be solved.

Summary

The "English" Thomas Brown Orton
b 1842, Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire
m Sarah Gregory, 1865, Leicester
d 1918, Ashton, Lancashire

Parents:

John Orton
b about 1813, Husbands Bosworth
m 1841, Birmingham
d 1880, Husbands Bosworth

Mary Ann Brown (daughter of Joseph Brown and Mary Berry)
b 1819, North Kilworth, Leicestershire
d 1901, Leicester, Leicestershire

Grandparents:

John Orton
b ? 1780, location unknown
m 1804, Husbands Bosworth
d October 1840, Husbands Bosworth

Mary Steans (daughter of Thomas Steans and Elizabeth Illiff)
b 1784, Husbands Bosworth
d July 1863, Husbands Bosworth

The "Australian" Thomas Brown Orton

b 1880, Eaglehawk, Victoria

d 1917 Hell Fire Corner, Belgium

Parents 

James Orton b about 1851, 

m 8 March 1873, the Manse, Eaglehawk

d 1912, Victoria

May Fulton Eaglesim (daughter of William Eaglesim and Ruth Moore Brown)

b March 1853, Eaglehawk, Victoria

d 1926, California Gully, Bendigo, Victoria

Grandparents:

James Orton

b about 1820, Leicestershire. Transported 1839

m 1844, Port MacQuarie, NSW

d ??

Jane Waddell

b about 1821, Glasgow, Scotland

d October 1872, Bendigo, Victoria

How did Harriet find her family?

One of the things I most enjoy about having a family history blog is the contact it provides with people from far and wide. It's always a thrill to find an email in my inbox from someone who has read my blog and found a connection with their own family. Often this is followed by both of us exchanging information and photos that we would never have come across through the normal methods of research.

But there's also a rapport that comes, if not from a shared ancestry, at least from a shared interest in family history. I have friends all over the world who I've never met, but still have something special in common with.

Last week I had the pleasure of actually meeting one of these people. He was in Australia for work and family reasons, and we spent a couple of hours sitting in a seaside cafe, drinking coffee and talking about a whole range of topics, including his great great grandmother, Harriet Whybrew. Harriet was sister to Eliza, my own great grandmother and was the original reason for us making contact.

Who brought up Harriet?

Despite the fact that we know quite a lot about Harriet, there are still some mysteries about her life yet to be solved.* The first is, who looked after her during her childhood. She was born in Adelaide in 1868, before her parents Susan Mason and David Whybrew were married. When the British army moved David back to England, Susan and their second daughter, Eliza, went with him, but two year old Harriet remained in Australia.

One story is that she was brought up by the Lindrum family. Frederick and Clara Lindrum were German migrants who ran a billiard hall in Adelaide. Their son Frederick married Harriet's cousin, Harriet Atkin. Walter Lindrum, the famous billiards player, is said to have visited Harriet at her home in England, causing quite a stir. So there were definitely connections between Harriet and the Lindrum family.

The difficulty I see with the idea that the Lindrums brought up Harriet is that Clara Lindrum was heavily pregnant with her own daughter when Harriet was born. The two girls were born only a month apart. It seems an odd time to be taking in another baby, unless Clara was able to feed two infants. Harriet may not have been handed over to the Lindrums at birth, of course. But there is also no official record of Harriet being fostered by the Lindrums, though it could have been a private arrangement.

If she wasn't brought up by the Lindrums, who did look after her? Records suggest that in her teens, her aunt and uncle, Mary Ann and Henry Atkin, were her guardians. This was after the death of Frederick Lindrum senior, and the disappearance of Clara (another unsolved mystery!) so it doesn't necessarily indicate that the Atkins had always been her carers.

When did Harriet leave Adelaide?

The next question about Harriet is how and when she travelled to England. She is mentioned several times in the newspapers in Adelaide during the 1880's, due to her regular appearances in court for "loitering" and other anti-social behaviour. The last mention I've found of her in Adelaide is in August 1885.

After this her name disappears from the records, and doesn't appear again until she was mentioned in an English newspaper in August 1888. By then she was back with her family in Colchester.

Harriet must have sailed to England, but when? Did she travel alone, or with someone else? Over the years that I've been researching her story, I've come up with all sorts of hypotheses about this, some wilder than others. So far I have found very little evidence for any of them.

Perhaps she was encouraged to rejoin her family by the Salvation Army, who were active in rescuing "girls at risk" in Adelaide at this time. They might have persuaded her to go back to her family. They might even have organised the travel arrangements for her. It would be interesting to know if the Salvation Army in Adelaide kept any records of who they helped. So far I haven't come across any, but I haven't contacted the SA directly.

Perhaps she was escorted by someone already known to her. Her father David left the army rather suddenly in 1885. Could he have travelled to Australia to bring his wayward daughter back to England? Given the cost of travelling even one way, and the financial situation of the Whybrew family, that seems unlikely. His name is not on any passenger lists in the UK or Australia.

Another of my wilder theories is that she might have been accompanied by Clara Lindrum. That would neatly explain Clara's disappearance from Australian records around the same time. Unfortunately neither Harriet's nor Clara's names appear on any official ships' list. Few of the UK incoming passenger lists from before 1890 have survived.

I found one tantalising possibility for Harriet's departure from Adelaide in this newspaper list of passengers departing aboard the Garonne in November 1886. The passengers included  a "Miss S Wybrow".

Harriet's name was often mis-spelled in the newspapers, so it's tempting to think this could be a typo.

However, it's much more likely that Harriet travelled the cheapest way, in steerage. If so, it's unlikely that her name would be mentioned in newspaper reports, since they usually only listed cabin and saloon passengers by name.

Unless I can think of some less obvious way of tracing her journey, I may never know when and how Harriet got to England. Does anyone have any suggestions?

*I'm currently working through some of the unsolved "mysteries and puzzles" in my family history, which is why I'm repeating information from previous posts.

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You can find out more about Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool.
It's available on Amazon and other online books stores

Muslin by the yard - John Mason's trial

Limerick c 1900

John Mason was 18 years old when he was transported to Australia aboard the Parmelia. Until recently all that I knew about his crime came from his convict records, which stated that he had been sentenced in Limerick for 'stealing cotton'. The Limerick prison records (available at Find My Past) showed that he had been tried on 27 June 1833 and sentenced on 11 July, but gave no other details.

This week the British Newspaper Archive posted a new batch of pages from Irish newspapers, including the Limerick Chronicle, and I was finally able to discover a little more about John's trial. On 13 July 1833, under the heading "Limerick City Sessions" this appears:

John Mason, for stealing 29 yards of muslin goods from Thomas Evans.
James Evans sworn - He was behind the counter when he heard a pane of glass broken in the window; jumped over the counter and saw the prisoner outside with the piece of muslin in his hand; his brother coming out, they took the muslin from him.
George Evans sworn - corroborated the evidence of his brother, whom he saw struggling with the prisoner outside the window.
Thomas Evans; fully confirmed the testimony of the two preceding witnesses, young boys, who gave their evidence in a most correct and intelligent manner. Verdict - Guilty.

The sentence, transportation for seven years, given a few days later, appears on page 3 of the same paper.

Since reading this I've been trying to find out more about the shop owned by Thomas Evans. Where was it? What did it sell? On a genealogy site I found a Thomas Evans in Limerick with sons named George and James, born in  1817 and 1818 respectively. That seemed promising

The Evan's family in the 1846 Slater's directory p 264

Then I came across an entry in the 1846 Slater's National Commercial Directory of Ireland for Thomas Evans in William St, Limerick  (pg 264). But according to this he was an ironmonger, and the correct and intelligent George and James were hardwaremen in Rutland Street. Another entry showed Thomas Evans and his sons also held a license to sell gunpowder (p 274). It didn't seem likely that either of these stores would sell muslin by the yard. Had Thomas Evans changed his business in the thirteen years since 1833, or was this a different family?

George St, Limerick c 1880

The mystery was solved when I noticed a Hannah Evans listed as the owner of a haberdashery store in George Street, Limerick. Thomas Evans' wife and James and George's mother was named Hannah, so I'm guessing that it was the Evans' haberdashery shop rather than the hardware or gunpowder store that John Mason robbed. 

John was not the only Limerick resident sentenced on 11 July to being transported. Just below the newspaper account of John's trial is one for Mary Lynch, who stole a coat. She freely admitted that she was guilty, adding that she had deliberately stolen the coat in the hope of being transported, since so many of her family and friends were now in New South Wales. She was found guilty and had her wish granted.

Photos from National Library of Ireland on Flickr

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You can find out more about John Mason, Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool, available on Amazon and other online books stores

And it's done!

View the book

The book I've been writing about Susan Mason and her family is finally complete and published on Amazon worldwide. It's available as an e-book which can be read on any Kindle device or Kindle app. A paperback version is also available (although sadly not through the Australian Amazon site, which doesn't stock printed books yet). I'm still looking into other e-book options such as epub and ibooks.

I hope if you've enjoyed reading my articles about the Mason and Whybrew families here on Clogs and Clippers you will find this much expanded and chronological version of their stories interesting and enjoyable. The book has extensive endnotes and a bibliography.

I've had great fun writing it. My sincere thanks to all who have helped with the research, editing, and revising of the book. Thanks especially to Katie for the cover and Amy for her editing.

For UK readers, the Kindle edition is available here.
For customers of the Australian Amazon site, it can be found here.

Visit my new "author page" on Amazon for more information.

Certificates, transcriptions and Brexit

Well, here's some positive news at last about Brexit. As a result of events on June 23, it has become less expensive for Australians like me to purchase certificates from the UK General Registry Office (GRO). This time last year one British pound was equivalent to roughly $AUD 2.0. Now it's down to $AUD 1.70. That takes about $3 off the cost of a certificate.

Politics aside, ordering copies of birth, marriage or death certificates is an expensive way to do family history research. If I can find reliable information about the people I'm researching by some other means, I'm usually content with that. But there are times when the only way to find information, or check dubious sources, is to order a copy of the certificate.

Copy of Lily Whybrew's birth certificate from the UK GRO
Lily was the youngest child of Susan and David Whybrew.
She died in infancy.

Each country has its own approach to the issuing of certificates. The UK GRO allows orders to be made online or by mail, then sends a certified copy of the original registry entry by mail. Curiously, the cost (currently £9.25 each) is the same whether you provide complete details, including a reference to the GRO index, or just a few details such as a name, place and year, requiring the GRO to do the research themselves to find an entry on the index. Even more strange, the cost is the same whether it's posted to Highgate in London or to Highgate in Perth, Australia. There's no option to have copies delivered electronically.

Despite the ready availability of family history sources online, there's still something exciting about finding a long brown envelope in your letter box marked with Her Majesty's Government seal. If family history is your 'thing', nothing beats the thrill of seeing a certificate issued a hundred years ago and finding that vital piece of information that you were looking for inscribed in handwritten scrawl. Occasionally there's the disappointment of finding the certificate belongs to someone different than you were expecting, or it contains information that blows a long-cherished theory apart.

The Irish GRO also issues certificates by mail, which can be ordered by post or electronically, for €20. Alternatively they will send a photocopy of the record by email, for a reduced price (about €4). If all you want is the information, rather than something to hang on the wall, that's a good option. For some reason, emailed photocopies can't be ordered online, but have to be ordered by fax or mail after downloading the request form and ticking the box that says 'photocopy'. Odd, but that's the way it is.
Another of Brexit's effects is the appearance on the Irish GRO site of a warning that "Due to a significant increase in orders for certificates as a result of the recent referendum in the United Kingdom (UK), the delivery time for certificates from this service will be up to thirty (30) days from the date of order." A sudden increase in interest in family history? Maybe not.

Rosina Whybrew's death in Ireland in 1874.
This is a photocopy of the original entry from the Irish GRO.

Birth, marriage and death records in Australia are kept by each State's own registry offices, and certified copies are generally very expensive. (The NSW registry charges $32 for an emailed copy of a birth entry. That's twice the price of a hard copy British certificate mailed overseas.) One way around this is to order a modified version of the certificate through a transcription agent. They will send all the information that's found on a registry entry, usually laid out on their own attractive presentation form, for about half to two thirds of the price. Transcription agents can be found by searching online.

Transcript of Mary Mason's birth in NSW,
provided by a transcription agent from the original entry.

If you have ancestors in South Australia, and live outside the state, you're in luck. The City of Unley Library has a wonderful bunch of family history volunteers who will look up births, marriages and deaths in that state free of charge. All that's required is the details of the person you're researching, mailed or emailed on one of their request forms (up to a limit of 3 requests at a time) and a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Since they are volunteers, it can take several weeks to get a result, but they'll often add helpful comments to the report. A fantastic service. (I'm not aware of similar services in any other state, but if you know of one, please let us know about it in the comments box.)

The missing link - William Doody

Millers Point in 1870
(Image from State Library of NSW collection)

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will be familiar with my theory that John Mason, who married Catherine Murphy in Sydney in 1841, was an Irish convict born in Limerick.  He arrived in Sydney on the Parmelia in 1834.

The problem has been that my conclusion was based on excluding all the other possible John Masons around at the time, and some circumstantial evidence. And that meant I could never be sure that I wouldn't one day come across another John Mason that I'd overlooked, who would ruin my theory. (I've mentioned before how my heart sank when I read in the Destitute Board records in Adelaide that John Mason was said to be English.)

That uncertainty has always nagged me. It meant I was constantly having to say that John Mason was "probably Irish" and "probably a convict". It's hard to build a good story on the word "probably".

So this week I started to think about what sort of evidence would I need to show that "Convict John" was the same person as "Catherine's  John". Convict John disappears from the records in 1840 after getting his certificate of freedom. What could tie him to the John who appeared on the scene to marry Catherine in 1841?

After asking that question on a genealogy forum, and tossing it around, it occurred to me that William Doody (or Dowdy or Doudey) might be a link. William was a former convict who sailed to Adelaide with the Masons in 1845. He and his wife Bridget (nee Murnane) were also the sponsors at one of the Mason's daughter's baptisms. He was obviously a friend of John and Catherine.

I found William's record on the 1837 General Muster of Convicts. It showed that he arrived on the Dunvegan Castle in 1832 and was employed by Wright and Sons in Sydney. That didn't seem very promising. I knew John Mason fom Limerick was assigned to an Alexander Fotheringham when he arrived in 1834.

Then I realised that I'd never found John Mason's name on the 1837 muster. My information about him came from his convict indent and his certificate of freedom. After some searching I found him listed as "John Wason". All the other details such as his age and his ship, the Parmelia, matched. And he was assigned to.... Wright and Sons. So he would have known William Doody in 1837, before he met Catherine. They would have worked together and probably lived in the same quarters.

I did a little dance - this was just the sort of link I needed. It's not quite proof that the two John Masons were the same man, but it makes it a lot more likely.

Since then I've done more research and found that "Wright and Son"s is probably a mis-transcription of Wright and Long, who owned a wharf and shipping business at Millers Point on Darling Harbour. Another convict assigned to them, Timothy Rourke, was a sponsor at the baptism of one of the Mason's other daughters. Two for the price of one!

More about John Mason:

John and Catherine Mason - pioneers
John Mason - where did he come from?
Two more small clues about John Mason
An interesting snippet of news about John and Catherine Mason
Discoveries in Adelaide part 1
Discoveries in Adelaide part 2
A sad tale of two Roses
The missing link - William Doody
A song of the sea

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You can read more about John Mason and William Doody in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.