Hi Helen,
Excellent! Isn't it great that there's now so much genie material available online.
My Elizabeth and Richard also ended up on Norfolk Island in 1790 and 1791 and were sent down to Van Diemen's Land in 1808 when the first settlement on Norfolk was abandoned. So that's how your Hugh and Charlotte ended up in Tasmania!
Elizabeth and Richard co-habited on Norfolk for fourteen years and married in Hobart in 1810. The local newspaper, the Derwent Star, actually commented on this marriage, saying that it verified "the old adage 'better late than never'"!
As for the record of Hugh and Charlotte's marriage, I would have expected it to come up on the NSW BDM index (Norfolk Island was part of the colony and records for the island go back to 1790):
http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/Index/IndexingOrder.cgi/search?event=marriagesThe fact that it doesn't seem to be there suggests that, like Elizabeth and Richard, they co-habitated on Norfolk and married in Tasmania.
If an individual has submitted marriage information with the IGI, you can take that with a grain of salt. I only trust the extracted records on the IGI for reasonable accuracy. A submitter may have assumed the marriage date based on any children the couple had around that time.
Two records pop up on the NSW BDM index for Charlotte Simpson (one with Hugh) for children (the same child?) born 1804 and 1805 (I did a 1790-1810 search):
V18041540 1A/1804, SIMPSON WILLIAM D, -- , CHARLOTTE
V1805117 4A/1805, SIMPSON WILLIAM, HUGH, CHARLOTTE
On the Tasmanian Birth index there's the following:
Elizabeth McGinnis
Parents: Hugh / Charlotte Simpson
Date: 1808
Place: Tasmania
Reference No: 44
No doubt this is your Elizabeth who married William Gulley. It's not that surprising that she was only 14-15 at the time of her marriage, many girls were married off young. There was a serious lack of women in Tasmania at the time. My own ancestor, Ann Burrows, was married off at just 12 years of age to a 40-year-old ex-convict in 1812!
A quote from a contemporary about the youthfulness of Tasmania's married women:
"They [ie. the Norfolk Islanders] brought with them many young lads and maidens, these last so eagerly sought in a community where there were eight men to every woman. The Norfolk ladies were soon in marriage, as were the girls who came out from England in the first two ships. The Norfolk girls seemed mature at fourteen and many of them were married at that age or younger. They were used to an open-air life and were fed in a land of prodigal richness."
Poor girls!
The information about Charlotte on the Lady Juliana website seems correct as the compiler has used excellent sources (see the bottom of the webpage).
Cheers, Rachel
