Anyone who has delved into their family history will know how fascinating and addictive it can be. Finding old letters, diaries, birth, marriage and death certificates can expose well-hidden secrets. Intrigued, we dig deeper to find more surprises waiting for us. Was our prim and proper great grandmother really a beer hall dancer on the goldfields? Why is great uncle Bert’s death certificate at odds with his marriage certificate – how many wives did the old boy have? My family research began with my daughter’s family tree school project.
My first surprise came when I applied for my dad’s birth certificate. I was informed there wasn’t one in that name. Convinced the register office had made a mistake, I was about to contact them when an old, vague reference to his father’s dying early came to mind. I probed a bit more and discovered dad had been registered under his mother’s maiden name (Ferguson) because he was illegitimate. In those days unmarried mothers were shamed and bullied into giving up their babies which was so cruel, considering the unmarried fathers were never shamed or rejected. Dad’s birth certificate is sheer fabrication because my grandmother, Elizabeth Ferguson, stated she was married. I don’t know how she got away with the falsehood, but she did. I am so proud of her courage and determination to keep her baby.
My curiosity aroused, I began researching my family history and I’d like to share a story of my Irish convict ancestor.
In the mid 1800’s, Eleanor Stanford, widow of Galway Ireland, was convicted of “receiving” ten sovereigns from a small child. (The closest I can find to receiving is “…property taken by theft or robbery…” Wikipedia.org 
Creative Commons) For this act, the equivalent today of taking 10£, she was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania Australia, the sort of triangular-shaped island off the southern coast of Australia). The 13,000 miles journey on the convict ship Hope took approximately three months.
Tasmania, now seen as a beautiful island and a vacation destination, was not viewed with much hope when it was one of the harshest penal colonies in a land of penal colonies. There are stories of convicts choosing almost certain death by escaping into the bush because death was better than life
in the colony. If they weren’t recaptured, they died due to lack of skills and the deadly snakes or other wild animals in the bush. Still, taking a chance against the huge tiger snakes was seen as better than the horrible floggings they suffered otherwise. Eleanor fared better than some.
Once in Van Diemen’s Land, Eleanor was put to work in the home of a government official. According to one of my descendants living in Tasmania, after five years Eleanor was given her ticket of leave, a type of good behaviour bond. She immediately begged her master to apply for her children to join her. As the colony was actively seeking new settlers, her request was granted. A year later, three of her four children arrived in Van Diemen’s Land on the ship Jardine. (There is no record of what happened to her fourth child.) Embarking on that long voyage to the other side of the world must have been overwhelming and frightening.
Her children now with her, Eleanor didn’t let the grass grow under her feet. She married a ticket of leave convict, stating her age as 30 when in fact she was 39, and settled into colonial life. Here my searching hit a brick wall until I discovered her daughter Bridget’s marriage certificate. I don’t 
know when Bridget left Van Diemen’s Land for the mainland or why she moved on to western New South Wales but there, aged 25, she married Richard, a bullock driver.
In those days, bullock teams were the lifeline of the bush. They carried the precious cargos of wool, wheat and sugar cane, and timber to shipping ports, and returned with essential supplies to the isolated country areas. Travelling at 6 to 8 miles a day, these bullock teams would be away for weeks on end, leaving the women to manage everything. Bridget’s five children, who called her Biddy or Blue Bonnet, were born at the mining town, Lake Cargelligo.
Life in the Australian bush wasn’t easy. No running water and push button mod cons. It was a two or maybe three-room slab hut with a dirt floor and water from the pump or creek, and watch out for the snakes. Wash day was lighting the fire under the copper tub, filling it with water and shredding
slivers of hand-made soap on top. After the clothes boiled for a few minutes they were pulled out with a copper stick and heaved into the rinse trough. Many a naughty child’s backside felt the whack of the copper stick.
Bridget was also a bush midwife, one of the wonderful women of the outback who helped deliver babies day and night, in good and bad weather. Like many colonial bush midwives Bridget had little training and a lot of practical hands on experience.
The Bush of today is not like when Bridget lived there, but it’s still very rural, with neighbours living miles apart. Today people in our vast interior still rely on the Royal Flying Doctor Service for medical services and the School of the Air for children’s education. For example, Anna Creek, the largest cattle station in the word, has an area of 23,677 square kilometres (9,142 sq. miles). Wilgena Sheep Station currently occupies an area of 4,742 square kilometres (1,831 sq. miles).
Bridget passed away at Narrandera on the Murrumbidgee River, aged 70 years. From a little girl joining her mother in a penal colony, to a young woman moving to mainland Australia, marrying a bullock driver and rearing five children in the Outback, to steam trains and motor cars and a new century, Bridget earned her place beside Richard on the New South Wales Pioneer Register.
Up to the middle of the last century one didn’t admit to having convicts in the family. We looked to our British roots for status. Our beginning as a penal colony was embarrassing and good fodder for snide comments and jokes. The English and our Kiwi cousins rubbed it in with relish. Then we got out of the cringe shadow and began to take pride in our heritage. Now, having a First Fleeter – a convict on the first fleet which landed in Sydney cove January 26th, 1788, – is a status symbol. An ancestor on the Second Fleet is a slightly less status symbol, but still, nothing to be ashamed of. My convict was just one of the thousands that followed.
I’m happy and proud to be the descendant of such strong women, and I’m teaching my own granddaughter about them! To Eleanor, Bridget and Elizabeth, three strong women, I salute you.
The Author:
Jan Selbourne was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia and her love of literature and history began as soon as she learned to read and hold a pen. After graduating from a Melbourne Business College her career began in the dusty world of ledgers and accounting, working in Victoria, Queensland and the United Kingdom. On the point of retiring, she changed course to work as secretary of a large NSW historical society. Now retired Jan is enjoying her love of travelling and literature. She has two children, a stray live-in cat and lives near Maitland, New South Wales.
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For more information on:
Van Diemen’s Land, try this Wikipedia article.
Penal transportation
Australian history
Island of the Dead