Chapter 6. Post-Emancipation Family Retrieval

It's hame and it's hame, hame fain wad I be,
O, hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!

 Attributed to Allan Cunningham.

Samuel Harford

Samuel Harford, who arrived per Eliza in 1831, was originally assigned to Thomas Bonney a farmer near Richmond, Van Diemens Land, but it seems likely that when Bonney found Harford to be a mere five feet (152 cm) tall in his socks (if he had any socks) he refused to accept him as an assigned servant.1 Whatever the case Samuel Harford was re-assigned, before December 1832, to a Mr Thom(p)son who was presumably located in or near what is now the Hobart, Tasmania, central business district.2 On 5 August 1833 Harford was charged by the Assistant Police Magistrate, on the complaint of Thompson, with General neglect of Duty and using improper language with respect to his master for which he was admonished but not punished, the Offence appearing very trivial.2

In mid-April 1834, less than three years after his arrival in the Colony, Samuel Harford was given a ticket-of-leave for rescuing a child from drowning. The site of the rescue, a quarry probably near the present Hobart Docks, was very close to the Police Court building where he was charged in August 1833 and presumably very close to where he was working as an assigned servant.

Hobart Town Courier Friday 18 April 1834 p2.

GOVERNMENT NOTICE, No. 96, Colonial Secretary's Office, April 15, 1834.
His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor has been pleased to grant Samuel Harford, 1212 Eliza, a ticket-of-leave for his praiseworthy conduct in rescuing a child from drowning who had fallen into a quarry hole of water at the back of the old Penitentiary.
By His Excellency's Command, J. BURNETT.

As a ticket-of-leave holder he was allowed to own property and to work for wages anywhere in the then existing Australian colonies. Presumably he elected to remain in Van Diemens Land because he again appeared before the Assistant Police Magistrate on 12 January 1835 charged with being a ticket-of-leave holder found in a Public House on Sunday for which he was reprimanded. His movements during the remainder of his stay in Van Diemens Land are unknown.

Two hundred and twenty seven-year sentence Swing-rioters, including Samuel Harford, were absolutely pardoned on 3 February 1836 and were then free to go where they pleased, including England if able to find the fare.3 One hundred and eighty-seven Eliza seven-year sentence men, including Samuel Harford, were gazetted sentence expired, certificate of freedom available at the end of 1837.4   Samuel did not need the certificate because he had already returned to England and had been granted, in August 1837, a free passage to South Australia for himself, his seven years old son Stephen, his wife Mary Ann, formerly Brown, and her three years old daughter, Sophia (born three to four years after Samuel was transported). Samuel was more fortunate than his fellow Swing-rioter John Collins of Hampshire who also returned to England after he was pardoned but was refused a free passage to South Australia for himself and family because he had been a transported convict.5 John Collins and his family did eventually get to South Australia but not until 1852.

Obviously Samuel Harford returned to England in late 1836 or in 1837 because he and his family boarded the barque Navarino on 25 August 1837 and arrived in Holdfast Bay, South Australia, on 6 December 1837 when there were just over one thousand two hundred and fifty people in the newly founded colony. At the January 1841 Census of South Australia the Harford  family were listed as follows:6

Surname: Afford, First name/s: Samuel, Mary Ann, Stephen and Sophia and they were living in Census District A, defined as North of Bay Road (now Anzac Highway) and Greenhill Road excluding Adelaide but including Port Adelaide and West of Mt. Lofty. No further records of the presence of Mary Ann Harford, or of her daughter Sophia, were found in South Australia or elsewhere.

Sometime in the 1840s Harford formed a liaison with Maria Goldsworthy to whom the following children were born:

1. William, born 1849 Armagh, Clare District; married Catherine O'Brien (13 children).7
2. Mary Ann born 1852 Armagh, Clare District; married John Fames (1 child).8
3. James (Samuel) born 1853 Armagh, Clare District; married Bridget Brady (8 children).9
4. Margaret Tryphena, presumed born about 1855 (birth not recorded); married (1) George Clarke (5 children), (2) James Shelley (2 children).
5. George (Francis) born 1857 Armagh, Clare District; married Catherine Smith (12 children).10
6. Samuel (Stephen) born 1859 Armagh, Clare District; married Catherine Maddern (12 children).11
7. Harriett Jane, presumed born 1862 (birth not recorded); died 1863 Armagh, Clare District.
8. John born 1864 Armagh, Clare District.12

Samuel Harford and Maria Goldsworthy were married on 29 March 1882 at Jamestown parsonage, possibly after learning that Samuel's first wife was dead.13 Samuel died, aged 76, in 1886 at Gumbowie.14 Maria died, aged 73, at Lancelot.15

John Tongs

John Tongs received his ticket-of-leave in early June 1835 just four years after arrival in Van Diemens Land and opened a, presumably blacksmithing business in the north of the colony soon afterwards because Swing-rioter James Barton went into his employ upon getting his ticket in late August 1835. Tongs initially remained in Van Diemens Land after being freely pardoned in 1836 and appears on the Return of the Population in the District of Morven on 31 December 1838 as the head of a house in which 4 males and 2 females, none of them engaged in agricultural pursuits, were living, at which time he was a lay preacher.16 John Glover, son of the colonial artist of the same name, wrote from Patterdale, Deddington in the Morven District on 20 June 1839:

commenced quite a new era, that of preaching on Sunday on the premises. The first was Mr Tonks, (by trade a blacksmith) of the Wesleyan class, though his arguments, like his trade, might be rough and homely, yet they no doubt would have a suitable impression on the less educated proportion of the prisoner population and serve as a reminiscence that the main subject, even in the Antipodes is not entirely forgot.

Tongs worked until he had saved enough money to return to England to get his wife, Francis, and children and he arrived back in Hobart with them per King William on 28 January 1843.17 The children were:

1. John Palmer, a child of Francis by a former marriage.
2. Susanna Eugene who married Joseph Frances Walker at Ulverstone on 14 September 1877.18 They had six children.
3. Charles, died Longford, Van Diemens Land, 1853.19
4. John Joseph, married Ann Cole (Cold); died 1869 Longford,Tasmania.20 They had seven children.
5. Fanny, born and died 1860.
6. Samuel, married Hepzibah Woods in September 1853, died on August 1875 in Ulverstone, Tasmania.21 They had eleven children.

John Tongs died on 10 June 1869 at Longford.  His family monument is shown in Figure 13. He fared better than he would if he had stayed in England.

Thomas Mackrell

Thomas Mackrell, transported to New South Wales for 14 years for his part in the Swing riots, received a conditional pardon in October 1837 rather than the free pardon for which he had hoped. An appeal to the Colonial Secretary on Mackrell's behalf resulted in the award of an absolute pardon of which he was notified on 14 May 1837 after which he returned to England to collect his wife and other family members. He was next heard of arriving in Hobart Town, Tasmania (then Van Diemens Land) as an assisted migrant per, Appoline, on 24 September 1842 accompanied by his wife, Mary, sons, Richard and Amos

Also on Appoline were the Mackrell's eldest son, Edmund, his wife Rosanna (Rosannah) and their infant son Thomas. On discharge from the ship the immigrants per Appoline moved into Campbell Street Quarters from which Letitia was first to leave, on 11 October, to a nursery maid position at £7 per annum. Thomas, Mary and Amos together with Edmund, Rosanna and their infant son left the quarters, destination not stated, on 20 October. The last to leave was Richard who went to Hefford as Servant, wages £10 per annum, on 27 October. That is the last record of Richard in Tasmania; he is thought to have died youourthng, as he is not mentioned in his father's will. On the nominal list of immigrants Thomas Mackrell was described as 2nd Class F(arm) S(ervant) & Sheep Shearer and his capacity as Sheep Shearing by the hundred. Edmund was described as a Hurdle Maker & 2nd Class Farm Servt. Thomas had presumably learnt his sheep shearing skill while an assigned servant in NSW where he was assigned to John, son of the John Macarthur who was a pioneer of the Australian wool industry.

Three years later, by an indenture dated 5 September 1845, Thomas Mackrell purchased from John Catley, for the sum of £250, one hundred and fifty acres of land in the Parish of Hobart, County of Buckingham, together with its appurtenances. As the land was bounded on the southeast by the headwaters of the Brushy Rivulet (Brushy Creek) it is easily recognisable today, see Figure 12, even though what was once a farm, orchard and grazing land has largely grown back to bush. Thomas Mackrell appeared on the 1856 Electoral Roll for the Legislative Council as freeholder, house and land at Kangaroo Bottom and on the 1856 Electoral Roll for the House of Assembly, Electoral District of Glenorchy, as lease holder for the land at Brushy Park, M'Robie lessor. William M'Robie (McRobie) was a flour miller and a considerable landowner in the district. He gave his name to McRobies Gully (See map below). That suggests that Thomas was supplementing the land he had bought with rented farmland in the vicinity. Thomas and 'Edwd. Mackerell' (i.e. Edmund Mackrell) are shown as joint occupiers and proprietors of a cottage, garden and farm of one hundred and fifty acres in Kangaroo Valley in Subdivision No. 2 on the first valuation roll of the district of Hobart Town issued in 1858. The cottage, garden and part of the farm are identifiable in the 1848 painting by Sirnkinson De Wesselow Sassafrass Valley Mount Wellington. See Figure 14.

The land which Thomas Mackrell bought in 1845 and farmed, in partnership with his son Edmund, was largely unsuitable for agriculture and marginal as grazing land. A small area along the left bank of Brushy Creek was suitable for vegetable and small fruit growing and possibly provided most of the income derived from the farming venture. That part of the farm survived as a small fruit growing area until finally abandoned as such in the late 1940s.

Transportation to Van Diemens Land ceased in 1853 and the Colony shortly thereafter celebrated with a change of name (to Tasmania) and the adoption of a vigorous policy of free assisted immigration, to compensate for the continued drift of the labour force across Bass Strait to mainland Australia. Loss of the labour force had been very much accentuated by the 1851 discoveries of rich goldfields in Victoria. In 1855 assisted migrants to Tasmania from Berkshire included William and Eliza Sangwell and their eight children and Elijah and Ann Brooker and their four children, both families brought out from Berkshire on the application of Thomas Mackrell. Eliza was the Mackrell's eldest child who had married William Sangwell in 1832. Two further children were born to William and Eliza Sangwell after they arrived in Tasmania. William Sangwell appeared on the 1856 Electoral roll, abode - Kangaroo Valley, qualification - leaseholder from George Hull of a property called Spring Grove. On the 1858 valuation roll he appeared as the occupier of a 30-acre cottage and garden in Kangaroo Valley leased from George Hull, Tolosa.22

The name Tolosa survives in present day Tolosa Street in the City of Glenorchy and in other graphical features. George Hull owned extensive land in the area (see map, Figure 12). Ann Brooker was the Mackrell's fourth child. Her husband, Elijah Brooker, appeared on the 1858 valuation roll District of Hobart Town as the lessee of a cottage and 150 acres of land in Brown's River Road. The Brookers afterwards settled in the New Norfolk district of Tasmania where Matilda, who arrived as an 8-year old child, married, in 1863, William Kingshott, who was a grandson of former Swing rioter John Kingshott. The Mackrell’s younger children, Letitia and Amos, married in Tasmania.

Edmund Mackrell, died on 6 January 1859, cause of death being iflammation of the lungs and informant Thomas Mackrell, father (of) Kangaroo Bottom. Rosannah Mackrell was left with six daughters aged from 16 down to three months; in November 1860 she remarried to Jonathan Green. Mary Mackrell died 14 June and Thomas less than a month later, 8 July I860.23 Both were buried in St. Johns Church New Town  burial ground their headstone afterwards being transferred to Cornelian Bay General Cemetery.

By the terms of Thomas's will Rosanna Mackerell the widow of my deceased son Edmund was to

occupy possess and enjoy the said (ie. Sassafras Valley) farm and to receive and take the rents issues and profits thereof.. .. during the term of her natural life without being subject to the debts control or engagements of any husband with whom she may intermarry.

After Rosanna's death the trustees, or their successors, were directed to dispose of the farm for the benefit of Rosanna's children. All the money that Thomas Mackrell possessed at the time of his decease was left in equal shares to his children, Eliza Sangwell, Ann Brooker, Thomas Mackerell (of Staffordshire), Letitia Durey and Amos Mackerell. John Woodcock Graves, the lawyer who drew up and signed Thomas Mackrell's will, was a son of the man of the same name who composed the song D'ye ken John Peel. The trustees were Thomas Mackrell's friends George Hull of New Town Road, Yeoman, and Henry Sherwin of the Potteries, Kangaroo Bottom. Henry Sherwin owned and occupied the pottery that gave Pottery Road its name. Kangaroo Bottom and Kangaroo Valley were early names for the suburb now called Lenah Valley; Lenah being a Tasmanian aboriginal word for Kangaroo.

When he was sentenced to transportation for 14 years for his part in the Swing riots Thomas Mackrell was 44 years old and he might well have concluded that his useful life was finished. However, his exemplary conduct and his application during his time with John Macarthur in New South Wales, coupled with agitation on his behalf at home earned him a conditional pardon in 1837 followed by a free pardon in 1840. When he actually returned to England is unknown. In Tasmania, at 55 years of age and above, Thomas Mackrell reached a level of prosperity that he could not have achieved had he remained in England. He also brought relative prosperity to his children who came with him and to those children, and their families, he attracted to Australia as assisted migrants.

Some Swing-rioters were joined by their wives and families after they had finished their sentences.

William Hughes

William Hughes was sentenced to seven years transportation for his part in the Swing riots and arrived in Hobart Town, Van Diemens Land on the convict transport Proteus on 4 August 1831. He was freely pardoned on 3 February 1836, apparently still in the employ of David Gibson to whom he had been an assigned servant. His conduct record, previously with the Campbell Town (Police) Office, was endorsed to the Westbury Office 13 August 1835 suggesting that he had changed his place of residence. David Gibson owned land at Dairy Plains in the Deloraine district before 1830; the area then being under Westbury jurisdiction.

Pre 1900 Tasmanian marriage and death records have no family history details and only occasionally give place of birth so it is virtually impossible to trace those convicts with common names who stayed in the colony after emancipation. The Van Diemens Land census records of 1831-57 name only the head of house but do specify free persons, anonymously, as Born in the Colony, Arrived Free or Other Free; the latter category being former convicts.

Understandably, emancipated convicts were reticent about revealing their past history as they had to compete for jobs and social status with locally born Tasmanians and free immigrants who were entering the workforce in ever increasing numbers in the early 1840s.

There are over eight hundred Hughes or Hughs entries, including above forty Hughes' with forename William in the Tasmanian Pioneer Index. There were at least five William Hughes' on the convict list who could be relevant and there was at least one other, presumably non-related, es family living in 19th Century Deloraine. Accepting that William Hughes was the elder William Hughes of that era and locality it is possible to catch occasional glimpses of his life, and the lives of his family members, from various sources including census returns, electoral and valuation rolls and birth, death and marriage records.

On 31 December 1847 William Hughes was the Householder, Employer of Servants and Person in charge of a house at Alveston, an early settlement then part of Westbury but later absorbed into the newer township of Deloraine. His association with David Gibson of Pleasant Banks, Evandale was over and he was now a farmer renting land from Alexander Rose. Significantly Rose came from Corra Lynn near Evandale and, in the early 1830s, took possession of a 1,000 acre land grant, on the outskirts of what was to become Deloraine.

William Hughes purchased Lot 1, Section Gg and Lot 1, Section Hh in the Suburbs of the Township of Deloraine which were advertised for sale at the upset prices of £30 2s. 3d. and £30 9s. respectively, in 1851. Those lots were situated to the west of the 12 acre Lot U which he then owned and where he had a house in which he was living before 1858. His name appeared in 1848 on the first valuation roll for the district of Deloraine and he remained on the valuation rolls in respect of the same house and land until his death in 1874. He was listed in 1856 on the earliest House of Assembly and Legislative Council electoral rolls for Tasmania and on subsequent electoral rolls. His electoral qualifications were in respect of the freehold house and 27 acres of land that he owned in East Deloraine.

William Hughes of the 1848 Van Diemens Land Census entry appeared to have a wife and a fourteen to twentyone year old daughter. Ann Hughes, William's wife in England, and her children were not found on the 1841 Huntingdonshire census but the Huntingdon Sawtry baptismal register showed that Ann had been living at Sawtry in July 1837 when her last child, Mary (mother Ann Hughes, labourer) was baptised. A search in the immigration records for entries relating to Ann Hughes and her children gave no positive results but a search for the family in Australia was more successful.

A William Hughes, apparently the eldest child of William and Ann Hughes, married Elizabeth Porter, a widow, at Launceston on 26 Apr 1837. William Hughes, junior was a tenant farmer with Alexander Rose, his father's former landlord at Deloraine in 1856 and at Whitefoord Hills, part of the estate of the late Charles Field of Calstock, in 1858. William junior died in the registration district of Port Sorell Tasmania aged 69 on 18 April 1885.

Joseph Hughes, a farmer aged twentyone, married at Launceston in 1841 and died in the Westbury Registration District of Van Diemens Land aged thirty-five of inflammation of the lungs'and was buried in St Marks churchyard, Deloraine, on 12 January 1856. Although there is nothing to link him to William Hughes, other than name, age and proximity, he is presumed to be his second son.

Presumably the Charlotte Hughes who married:

(i) when aged 17 John Thomas, a blacksmith, in the Police Office at Westbury, Van Diemens Land In 1841 and

(ii) James East at Launceston in 1864

was the only surviving daughter of William and Ann Hughes. She died at Railton (Registration district of Mersey, Tasmania) in 1899 aged 74. The site on which the Bush Inn hotel still stands in Deloraine was apparently given to John Thomas, the first Deloraine blacksmith, on condition that a blacksmith's shop should always be kept on it. Thomas may have kept a blacksmith's shop on the premises but he had better things to do with the site, on which he built the original Bush Inn of which he held the licence from 1848 to 1851 and probably until he died in 1863. He apparently did very well out of the hotel and on the 1858 valuation roll appears as the owner of extensive farming and other property. A David Hughes married Harriet Curnick in 1853 in Victoria, Australia and David and Harriet Curmick Hughes were the parents of a son David Solomon Hughes born Westbury Registration District, 1854. A David Hughes aged 29 died in Victoria in 1858. A Solomon Hughes, who was born in Hunts, married in Victoria in 1868 and a Solomon Hughes, aged 56, parent's names unknown, died in 1880, at Melbourne, Victoria Hospital. Those were, almost certainly, the two youngest sons of William and Ann Hughes.

William Hughes the elder died in Deloraine on 30 December 1874 aged 78, the informant of death being his son William, a farmer of Deloraine. Ann Hughes who had been left in Huntingdonshire with four children under the age 12 years in 1831, and was working there as a labourer in 1837, died, also in Deloraine, on 8 March 1881 aged 83. The final testing-places of William and Ann Hughes are, at present, unknown but neither appears to have been interred in St Marks Church graveyard.

William Hughes was 35 years old, penniless, suffering from scurvy and faced with the prospect of seven years servitude when he arrived in Van Diemens Land in 1831. His conduct record testifies to his good behaviour and sober habit during his period of assigned service. All of his immediate family had joined him in Australia by the early 1840s and he undoubtedly helped to make that possible by his industry, application and frugality. Although none of the children were as long lived as their parents, all appear to have achieved a degree of prosperity in Australia they may not have done had they remained in England.

Stephen Atkins

A Stephen Atkins was cleared for passage to Port Phillip from Launceston, Van Diemens Land, to Port Phillip per Adelaide with a cargo of sheep on 3 May 1836. The Adelaide returned to Georgetown, Van Diemens Land, on 23 May 1836 and immediately sailed again for Port Phillip with Atkins as a passenger. He presumably returned to Launceston twice more in 1836 as on 11 July he was cleared for passage to Port Phillip per Gem carrying sheep and horses and on 23 August per Henry carrying a variety of livestock.24 Those records indicate that Stephen Atkins, after being freely pardoned, was extensively employed in the movement of stock from Van Diemens Land to the newly established Port Phillip settlement and that as a free man he chose to remain in the settlement which eventually became the Colony of Victoria.

A Steven Atkins, aged 67, birthplace Buckinghamshire, died in Victoria in 1879 and a Sophia Atkins, aged 67, died in Victoria in 1877 so it appears that Stephen Atkins was joined in Australia by his wife, with or without their only recorded daughter and child.25

Figure 12.

Figure 12 Map: Part of Buckingham Land District

Figure 13.

Figure 13: Tongs family monument in Longford Methodist Cemetery with detail of inscription from west side of monument.

Figure 14.

Figure 14: Thomas Mackrell's cottage and farm at Sassafras Valley with Mount Wellington in background.

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