How many Convicts are you descended from?

[trish251]

How do you find out why they were sent here?

- Belinda.

Hi Belinda

I found mine through the trial in England - they were at the Old Bailey which is online
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

I think all the counties have records - but others could tell you more than myself about the different areas.

Trish

[sparrett]

Hi All,
I would like others to tell us when they think the 'cover up' began in their family regarding the convict origins.

When in their previous generations was it decided that nothing would be said about 'all that'

I can say with certainty that my fatherand siblings knew nothing of their mother's grandfather and grandmother who were both
Tasmanian convicts married with permission in he 1840's

I would be almost certain also that she, their mother, was in dark regarding the truth about  about the 'nice farming family from Victoria'.

The fact was that my George Cornish was absolutely uncontrollable as a prisoner and kept having his sentence extended for drunkeness, insubordination, insulting his master's daughter, stealing things and , amazingly, making a pair of boots without permission!

He had solitary, bread and water, he had lashings ...the lot.

Finally, at Spring Hill, there was a fire in one of his mater's outhouses and he raised the alarm, and was very helpful in extinguishing it.  The governor saw fit to quickly end his punishment. 
I think they were just sick of him.!!

None of this great story was known to immediate previous generations, so when did the cover up begin?

Sue
 

[Lady Di]

Hi All,

In 1864 my 2x Great G'father (free settler) married the daughter of a convict. They (or someone) started the story that they had met on the boat coming to Oz. It didn't take long to disprove the story but even my father today still pretends that we don't have convicts in the family.

So I'd say that the "shame" of marrying a convict probably started with the "free" ones as they didn't have a lot of choice back then and just made up anything to cover the facts.

Of course, in most of my lines, I have convict marrying convict so they were probably spared the "horror and shame" as they were all in the same boat (so to speak)

I guess it was probably the old English mentality of never marrying beneath themselves that started the stories. Of course, some of the convicts actually came from far better families than some free stettlers but the stigma of being, or being a descendant of, (a convict) stuck for a very long time.

Thanks goodness for our enlightened generation.

Di

[Lady Di]

Sorry Belinda - meant to answer your query as well.

Somewhere on most of the shipping, ticket of leave, musters, Colonial Secretarys index, etc records, a place of trial or name of the ship is normally mentioned.

I was lucky that about half of mine were tried at the Old Bailey in London. So the records are freely available. To search the other ones, I checked the assizes records in the county they came from. That worked for about 98%. The Irish ones are the greatest "challenge" but there are a few databases available on line now that show some of the Irish crimes although the information is rather limited.

Every one of my convicts came into Sydney. But if you find one going to Tasmania, you'll find that their shipping records provide so much more information including, in some cases, their parents, wife, children's names.

Unfortunately NSW doesn't have any of that information so trying to trace the parents of convicts can be a bit of a challenge at times.

Di

[trish251]

Hi All,
I would like others to tell us when they think the 'cover up' began in their family regarding the convict origins.

Sue
 

Hi Sue

My husband's convicts arrived in Tasmania in 1808 from Norfolk Is - by this time they were free as both were convicted about 1784 - arrived in NSW in 1788/9 and by the time they got to Norfolk had virtually completed their 7 years.

So the cover-up began in 1808      - as it did with the hundreds of other ex convict families who arrived in Tasmania at this time. As Mike mentioned earlier, if you have a Tasmanian heritage, there is usually a convict or two in the family.

We have a wonderful family tree created in the late 1800s which shows the family descending from a wealthy british family of the same name (bit of a shady link as to how they got to Australia).

Current generations found out in the 1970s - but until I started researching (30 years later) - nobody told me   

Trish

[sparrett]

Hi All,
That is a wonderful tale, Trish, about the semi-invented family heritage which was not yours

You would wonder though why the second cover up took place in the 1970's.  Perhaps we were still under shame constraints as recently as that.

In all the family stories I used to half listen to as a child, the word Tasmania was never mentioned.  The convict couple died there and within a few months, the offspring [adult by now] had moved to country Victoria farming. One of these men my father remembered..... He was my Dad's grandfather and I think the headstrong temperament was evident in this old man [he was not easy], but he obviously never said a word about who his parents were.

Like yours Trish, the forbears seemed to have just sort of arrived on a ship and were good English stock.   

Sue

[MarieC]

I'd say that in my family, the cover-up began in 1881 when a woman who was both the grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter of convicts married a man who became a Member of the Legislative Council in Queensland.  From then on, the family was ultra-respectable and I'm sure later generations had no idea about the convicts until my second cousin unearthed them!

MarieC

[sparrett]

So, MarieC,
Do you think that this woman you speak of knew her own parental and grandparental background and chose to not mention it?
  Or do you think  from the time of her birth she was led into a different way of thinking and so did not herself know?
Sue

[MarieC]

It's hard to know from this distance, Sue!

But I suspect that she did know, but since she married into a very respectable middle-class family (who came from a line of gentlemen farmers and maltsters in Wales), it was put into the background and not spoken of!

That was the Victorian era, when even here respectability was sought and prized!  (And probably a good pinch of hypocrisy coming along with it!)

MarieC