My Ancestors

The Impact of Convict Transportation on Australia

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Mary Cavillon, Ordery Appleyard, and Thomas Taber probably didn’t enjoy the overcrowded conditions that were forced upon them in their respective journeys from their beloved homeland. On a ship from England, could they even imagine the land to which they were destined. They were amongst more than 162,000 convicts shipped from Britain and Ireland to Australia, from 1788 to 1868.

It was a time in which poverty drove ordinarily law-abiding British citizens to engage in illicit behaviours, and theft was high on the list of punishable offences. Breaking into and illegally entering a home or business could earn a luckless perpetrator an appointment with the hangman, unless a merciful judge commuted the sentence to a lesser consequence.

In the late Eighteenth Century, England had a problem – times were tough, crime was high, and the gaols were full. America had been a convenient depository for the felons that Britain couldn’t squeeze into overcrowded tiny cells, until America called a halt to the practice and refused to take any more.

Britain’s acquisition of the land we now know as Australia, provided a tidy solution to the increasing problems brought about by the felonious actions of England’s destitute citizens.

Captain Cook laid claim to the land in Britain’s name on the 22nd August 1770.

The continent had been carefully maintained by our First Nations people for thousands of years prior to colonisation.

I acknowledge Elders past and present, and thank First Nations People for their custodianship of this beautiful land.

Although the continent was, and had been inhabited by our indigenous people for thousands of years, British colonisers decided it needed more folk from their own tribe. England had an oversupply of crooks, and Cook needed cheap (as in – free) labour with meagre lodgings and a bit of food thrown in, to build a new ‘little England’. The two problems collided and became one big solution, and transportation began.

Landing Day

On the 26th day of January 1788, the First Fleet dropped anchor in one of the most beautiful harbours in the world – now known as Sydney Harbour. Along with rations and crew, the ships ferried the first of thousands of convicts to be transported over the next eighty years.

Some of my ancestors were counted in the total number of felons that survived the perilous journey to the colony. But just to balance the justice scales, not all of my ancestors arrived in chains. My fourth great-grandfather, John Gowen, was a Marine on HMS Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet, under the command of Arthur Phillip. Corporal John Gowen would have had a more comfortable and safe journey on the Sirius than his future wife would as a convict in 1801, on board the Earl Cornwallis.

British women, it seems, were in short supply in the early days of our colonised nation. Luckily, those in power had a good enough handle on biology to know they needed to even the score and bring in more women, if they wanted to increase the British element of the population in this far-off place. And so it was that Ordery Appleyard was included in the increasing number of women who survived the gruelling journey and made it safely to our golden shores from her Lincolnshire home.

Conditions on the prison-ships during the eighty years of transportation were generally appalling, although intervention by medical personnel improved the conditions, marginally, especially for women.

John Gowen had been in the colony thirteen years when Ordery arrived. They married on the 1st June 1805. Ordery had by then served four years of her seven year sentence, at least some of those years as a servant to Mr Smith in Windsor.

John and Ordery had six children, five of whom survived infancy. The second child, born in 1807, was Ann, who married George, the son of convict Thomas Taber, in 1824.

Ann Gowen and George Taber’s first child, Emma Louise Taber, born in 1841, married David Sneesby in 1864. David and Emma Louise’s third son, John George Sneesby, was born in 1870.

John George Sneesby married Emily Beatrice Virtue, and from that union my maternal grandfather, Claude Ernest Sneesby was born in 1895.

In 1924, Betty was born to Claude Ernest Sneesby and Ruby Pleasance. Betty Sneesby married Alfred Thomas Berg (known to all as Tommy) in 1944. Tommy was one of nine children born to Alfred Berg (born Bergman) and Edith Atkinson. Betty and Tommy were my parents.

From the poverty of London to a life well-lived in Australia, our ancestors who arrived in the new colony in chains made an honourable commitment to Australia’s culture and its future. They worked hard in their new land and forged a legacy that was passed down to the current generation, and will live on for generations to come.

As the generations ahead of me continue to grow, I hope they always remember

  • the destitution that drove usually law-abiding citizens to criminal activity
  • the consequences of those actions
  • the unsafe and arduous journeys that brought them to our shores on convict ships
  • the debt we owe them for enduring the hardships and making a new life in the colony

We are who we are, because of them.

Untangling My Convict Roots in Australia

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According to Australian actor Jack Thompson, having a convict in your ancestral family means you are a descendant of ‘Australian Royalty‘.

This is the story of my Australian Royalty heritage, so kick back, and join me on the journey.

My Ancestral Journey

Somewhere back in the 1990s I waded into a very shallow pool of family history: I accompanied a friend to a church hall a couple of times to look at microfiche films because she was researching her family history. My friend knew what she was doing and what she was looking for, but I had no idea, and to be honest, limited interest at that time. Rather than sit and wait, I thought about family names I’d heard as a youngster, and started scanning microfiche/microfilms (I have no idea what I was looking at – I just followed my friend’s example).

To my surprise, I found familiar names and places, and a tiny spark was lit, only to be snuffed out a few days later. In a phone call to my father, I excitedly told him about my family history discoveries.

Silence reigned supreme…

There was no response for what seemed like minutes, and then Dad shattered my hopes with:

“What do you want to go messing around with that stuff for?”

I quickly changed the subject, and given Dad’s reaction, I didn’t bother sharing the news with Mum.

My hopes may have been shattered, but with due respect to my parents, the torch of curiosity was ignited. I figured there must be a few skeletons in our family history closet, and I wanted to find them.

Work, work, and study

I was working a full-time job and studying part-time, which meant there was very little time to search for family history secrets. The closet door stayed well and truly locked until 2011. With post-grad study behind me and the demands of my full-time job having eased a little, I finally had time to look back at those ancestors.

For the next five years I plodded around the Ancestry website, but didn’t find anything that even remotely resembled a family secret. However, I did find a family tree that had my maternal great-grandmother’s husband as someone I’d never heard of. I dismissed the fact as quickly as I’d found it, but that dismissal came back to bite me a few years later because that tree was right and mine was wrong. My great-grandfather wasn’t the person any of us thought he was.

Fast forward to 2016

Retirement kind of snuck (sneaked?) up on me. I hadn’t planned to retire for a few more years, but by 2016 the pace of my working life was unsustainable. My formal retirement age had passed me by, and I hated the excessive paperwork that had crept into the role, adding hours to an already long day.

I resigned just before Easter.

Travel consumed me for a couple of years, then I settled down to do what most retirees do. I found a hobby. And those skeletons in the family closet started shaking in their boots, knowing the day was coming when the door would be flung open, and their secrets exposed.

Unless Dad was worried about the skeletons on my mum’s side, he had nothing to worry about, because if there are any deep, dark secrets from Dad’s side, I haven’t found them – yet.

And the skeletons on Mum’s side?

Perhaps they were secret-worthy back in their day, but through the lens of today’s society, there is nothing about the lives of my maternal ancestors that would even raise an eyebrow in today’s world.

Unless, of course, we talk about the skeletons whose flesh carried the scars of shackles. Australia’s colonisation, in 1788, left scars from more than just leg irons. Families were torn apart as convicts from England were transported to the new colony. And for the families that followed a convict to Australia, their lives were changed forever. And it was all in the name of building and populating the new colony, while easing the overcrowding in England’s gaols.

And those English gaols had become rather full since the 1775 American War of Independence had stretched the friendship with England, and America no longer wanted to accommodate England’s leftover criminals.

From convicts, to ……

My mother’s family married into Australian Royalty, thereby giving us a claim to a convict. But it wasn’t just any old ordinary convict; our convict gained notoriety of the good kind for his service to education in the new colony.

Thomas Tabor1 (Taber) was sentenced to transportation to the new colony for life, for (supposedly) breaking into a shop in London. The Old Bailey account of the trial and the crime hints at the arrest being a ‘set-up’. Even the judge questioned the motives, asking the arresting constable if he had known there was a reward for a break-and-enter conviction.

Q. Perhaps you know there is a reward given by the parish of Islington, for the convictions of those men? – A. Yes. (The Proceedings of the Old Bailey)

Sentenced

Thomas earned a one-way ticket to the colony for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He boarded the convict ship, the Ganges, in 1797 as a convict. On the same ship were Thomas’ wife, Frances Sarah Medhurst and their three children, who began their new life in the colony as free settlers, as opposed to Thomas’ status as ‘convict’.

AI-generated image

Building the new colony…

Although I haven’t found any formal supporting documents, it seems Thomas Taber was ‘acquired’ on his arrival by Reverend Richard Johnson, the chaplain from the First Fleet.

Thomas was appointed as a teacher in the school Johnson had started in Sydney. Thomas went on to teach in the Parramatta school for a few years, and then became the Master at the Sydney school until his retirement. Thomas Taber was one of the first teachers in the new colony. Thomas’ son, Thomas Taber junior, followed in his father’s footsteps, also teaching at the Sydney school.

Thomas Taber and his son, George, were granted land at Menangle, where George Tabor built an inn that still stands today (Menangle House).

Further marriages of Taber daughters widened our family’s connection with convicts. Thomas and Frances Taber’s daughter, Frances Sarah Taber, married2 James Proctor Harrex3 in 1807, James was a convict who had arrived on the same ship (Ganges) as the Taber family in 1797. Frances was seventeen, and James was forty years old when they married.

Milbah Charlotte Harrex4 was the daughter of James and Frances Sarah (Taber) Harrex, and therefore the granddaughter of Thomas Taber. Milbah married5 Nicholas Cavillon6 in 1829. Nicholas arrived in the colony when he was thirteen years old, having sailed from England as a free settler. Nicholas’ mother, Mary Cavillon, was on the same ship (Broxbornebury) as Nicholas, but seemingly under a different name. The name Isabella Phillips is noted by historians as a possible alias used by Mary Cavillon, at least before and during her passage to Australia.

Now might be a good time to mention that there are two sides to our ancestral notoriety: the convict side and the First Fleet side.

HMS Sirius was the flagship of the First Fleet that arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788, and on board the Sirius was Corporal Marine, John Gowen, my fourth great-grandfather.

John Gowen married7 a convict, Ordery Appleyard, in 1805. John died in Kiama, NSW, in 1837.

John and Ordery’s daughter, Ann, married8 George Taber, son of Thomas and Frances Sarah (Medhurst)Taber, in 1824.

Ann and George’s daughter, Emma Louisa Taber, married9 David Sneesby, my maternal great-great-grandfather, in 1865.

David and Emma Louisa Sneesby’s son, John George Sneesby, married10 Emily Beatrice Virtue11 in 1892.

John George and Emily Beatrice’s union produced my grandfather, Claude Ernest Claise Sneesby12, born in 1895.

Claude Sneesby married13 Ruby McDiarmid14. My mother, Betty Elaine Sneesby, was born in 1924. Colin Douglas Sneesby, Betty’s brother, was born in 1926. A sister, Hazel, was born in 1925 and died in 1929.

And just to be fair, family folklore suggests that my father’s maternal side may be closely linked to John (Red) Kelly, the father of the man in the iron suit we all know as Ned Kelly. John (Red) Kelly came to Australia as a convict. Apart from Red Kelly having been born in the same town in Tipperary, Ireland, as my paternal great-great-grandfather, John Spencer, nothing substantial has been found until recently. A little creative DNA search on Ancestry connected me to a few DNA matches who feature Red Kelly’s mother, Mary Cody, in their Family Trees.

One of John Spencer’s daughters reported that John Spencer15 had notified authorities of the familial relationship to the Kellys (cousins), but disclaimed any association with the notorious Kelly member. No documents have been found to substantiate the claim, but that, as they say, is a work in progress.

I’ve added relevant links to the information above so that future family historians can piece together the story of our convict ancestors. With ongoing advancements in technology, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), hopefully the gaps will be filled by future generations that will cement our family’s journey, and perhaps find more convict ancestors in our family tree.

And therein lies the story of my convict family history, and I’m proud to have descended from those who came to our shores under such stressful circumstances. They didn’t just survive, they thrived, and I’m very glad they did.

Footnotes:

  1. Variations in spelling of Tabor/Taber are noted in relevant documents. ↩︎
  2. There are two entries for this marriage: 721/1807V1807721 3A. HONNOR, JAMES; TABER, FRANCES S; CA and
    364/1807V1807364 4. HOSSIERE, JAMES; TABER, FRANCES S; CA – both appear to be the same couple, albeit variations of the surname of Harrax or Harrex ↩︎
  3. Variations in the spelling of Harrex are noted in relevant documents. ↩︎
  4. Milbah is an Aboriginal name, used by Richard Johnson as early as 1790, and then by Frances Taber and James Harrex. The name was subsequently used by future generations of Taber descendants. ↩︎
  5. 644/1829V1829644 13. CAVILLION, NICHOLAS – HARRAX, MILBAH CB ↩︎
  6. Variations in the spelling of Cavillon are noted in relevant documents. ↩︎
  7. There are two entries for this marriage: 640/1805V1805640 3A – GOWER, JOHN; APPLEFORD, ORDERLY; CA and 332/1805V1805332 4 – GOWER, JOHN; APPLEFORD, ORDERLY, CA – both appear to be the same couple, albeit variations of the surnames ↩︎
  8. The two entries represent the civil and church registrations: 369/1824V1824369 8 – TABER, GEORGE; GOWEN, ANN; CA
    3422/1824V18243422 3B – TABER, GEORGE; GOWEN, ANN; CA ↩︎
  9. 1861/1865 – SNEESBY, David; TABER, Emma Louisa; Camden ↩︎
  10. 5789/1892 – SNEESBY, JOHN; VIRTUE, BEATRICE E; NEWTOWN ↩︎
  11. Birth names are used predominantly in this text, despite some having used their middle name, such as Emily, known to family as Beatrice. ↩︎
  12. 32585/1895 – SNEESBY CLAUDE E C ↩︎
  13. 12575/1923 – SNEESBY, CLAUDE; MCDIARMID, RUBY; AUBURN ↩︎
  14. 31948/1901 – PLEASANCE RUBY; Father: DANIEL; Mother: ANNIE; Place: GRANVILLE – Ruby’s parents separated not long after she was born and she was raised as Ruby McDiarmid – ↩︎
  15. John Spencer migrated to South Australia from Tipperary, where he lived during the Kelly Gang era. ↩︎

102 Candles and a Bailey’s: Celebrating Betty Sneesby

/ Maureen / Leave a comment

Today, she would have celebrated her 102nd birthday.

I imagine she would have raised a Bailey’s to toast another milestone year, joked with family about ‘getting older’, and still outrun her great-grandchildren in a race across the park.

On the 10th January, 1924, Betty Sneesby was born. Perhaps being the firstborn to her parents, Ruby and Claude, made her somewhat special: a bit of a larrikin; a tomboy; a debutante. She was all of these in her younger days, but age didn’t diminish her willingness to have a go at anything, or to stand up for what was right.

Her father fought at Gallipoli in the Great War of 1914. As a trumpeter in the Lidcombe band, he was assigned the role of Bugler in battle. When the war ended, Claude became an accomplished boxer. Perhaps it was his way of releasing some of the horrors he had seen in the trenches on the other side of the world.

Claude taught his daughter the finer points of defending herself and anyone else who found themselves on the wrong side of local bullies.

Despite her fearless approach to life, Betty could just as easily don a ballgown and be the belle of the ball, or tap dance with a local dance troupe to entertain soldiers. During the war that was never meant to be, following the war that was “meant to end all wars1“, Betty was engaged to a young soldier, whom she married on the 29th January, 1944.

World War II

Tommy Berg was so handsome with his blonde hair and blue eyes, it was easy to see how the beautiful young Betty could fall in love with him. War may have separated them while Tommy fought with the Australian Army in New Guinea, but peace brought them together again when the guns were finally silenced.

Many years and five children later, Tommy succumbed to a terminal illness in March 1995. Betty continued on, just as she had when faced with any hardship throughout her life. Always the life of the party, and always with the love of her children, grandchildren, and eventually great-grandchildren at the centre of her universe.

And the tough years?

The early years were hard, but Betty never complained. She just got on with it.

Whether it was carting buckets of water to the chooks2 at the other end of the farm, or using a hessian bag soaked in water to beat flames threatening the house, she just did it.

After Tommy’s death, Betty stayed in their home on the northern side of Brisbane, where they had migrated to from Sydney years earlier. Surrounded by friends and family, Betty engaged in a rigorous social life, often dictated by wherever the like-minded seniors of the Crazy Gang were meeting for coffee that day.

On the 11th November3, 2015, Betty left this earthly life to join her family and loved ones on the other side. It was a sad day for those left to mourn her, but a fate we must all one day face.

Betty’s Legacy

Betty raised a son and four daughters. Each one benefited from watching a strong woman deal with whatever a hard life threw at her.

Never afraid to stand up for what was right.

Never afraid to work hard.

And she never complained.

So today, we, the children of Betty Sneesby and Tommy Berg, celebrate the life of a remarkable woman, our mother.

We honour Betty by trying to live up to her standards in our own lives.

We honour Betty by telling our children and grandchildren about how strong their grandmother and great-grandmother was.

We honour Betty by never forgetting the sacrifices she made for all of us.

So, today we raise a toast to what would have been Betty’s 102nd birthday. And we know she will be kicking up a storm on that other side of life, still the life of the party, and still outrunning everyone.

Happy Birthday, Mum.

  1. H G Wells ↩︎
  2. chickens ↩︎
  3. Rememberence Day, and two days before Tommy’s birthday ↩︎

Annie’s Life – Defined by a Vowel

/ Maureen / Leave a comment

In the English language there are five vowels: 

a – e – i – o – u

Lots of words begin with a vowel, but probably none more feared, in our not too distant past, than the word illegitimate.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines illegitimate as “born of parents not married to each other“.

In Australia, in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, illegitimate was a word that had serious connotations. It wasn’t enough to say you were married when registering the birth of a child, you seemingly had to provide a date for the said marriage. If there was no marriage date, it was likely that the child was labelled ‘illegitimate’. Birth certificates in New South Wales were stamped accordingly, and the father’s name either not recorded on the document, or in my great-aunt’s case in 1898, recorded, then noted to be removed. She was given the label ‘illegitimate‘.

One can only wonder at the shame felt by women who, for various reasons, had a child out of wedlock, a situation frowned upon by society at the time. My great-aunt’s birth was no exception.

My great-grandmother, born Annie Siddall, 1879, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, bore her first child in Sydney New South Wales at the age of twenty. The father’s name was recorded on the birth document, despite a note in the margin instructing that it be removed. Luckily it wasn’t. The label on that birth certificate confirmed the parent’s marital status: ‘illegitimate‘, or born out of wedlock, as it was commonly called.

Annie, as I remember, was a quiet, elegant woman who died when I was six years old. I remember the day clearly. I remember the stairs leading up to her room in the flat she lived in with her daughter and son-in-law in Leichhardt, on the western side of Sydney. I still have some of Annie’s things, passed down to me from my mother: a watch, a sandalwood fan, but most of all, memories of a beautiful great-grandmother.

Only now, as an adult in a seemingly enlightened world, can I appreciate what Annie went through. It wasn’t enough that her first child was born out of wedlock, but her second child narrowly escaped entering the world with the same label.

A few years ago while researching Annie’s life, I stumbled across a newspaper article dated 1900, the year before my grandmother was born. It seems Annie was trying to locate the father of her first-born daughter, the older sister of my yet to be conceived grandmother. In desperation Annie went to the police, who issued a warrant for Daniel’s arrest: the charge – desertion of an illegitimate child. A year later another article appeared in the same newspaper, stating that the warrant for Daniel’s arrest had been withdrawn because he was going to marry Annie.

When my grandmother was born in September 1901, her birth registration included the marriage date of her parents, and excluded the label illegitimate, if only by the grace of four months from the date of the marriage. Daniel’s name took it’s rightful place as father of the child on the formal document.

Twelve months later Daniel was on the run again. In 1902 he married another woman, in another country, only to return a few years later to the suburb where he and Annie had lived. Daniel relocated his second family in close proximity to the one he had abandoned in 1901. A DNA match with a granddaughter from Daniel’s second family confirms that Daniel was indeed the father of my grandmother, from his first family.

Daniel’s subsequent clashes with the law can be found in the pages of Sydney newspapers through the wider-reaching lens of the Internet, which gives us access to those newspapers more than a hundred years after they were printed.

We will probably never know when Annie changed the course of her life, and that of her two young daughters, but we know that she did.

In 1912, Annie added another daughter to her family. A chance comment by my mother in her declining years caused a ripple effect through Annie’s descendants. Nonchalantly, over afternoon tea, my mother regaled the story of my cousin’s mother, Annie’s youngest daughter, being passed over the back fence for Annie to raise. Adoption meant there was no blood relationship between Annie and her youngest daughter, and therefore between the descendants of the three daughters.

When you grow up loving the cousins you know so well, it would take more than an adoption to sever the ties of those relationships, and so it is with my family. The children of Annie’s youngest daughter are just as much the cousins of the children of her first two daughters as they ever were, regardless of the lack of DNA or blood-connection.

Documents pertaining to children in care in New South Wales were recently digitised and released, and part of the adoption story emerged. Annie legally adopted her youngest daughter when the baby was nine months old. The records state the child’s birth-mother’s name, but no father was registered. The words ‘Deserted’, and ‘Illegitimate’ were recorded on what would become a vital document in the life story of an adopted daughter.

But there was another noteworthy piece of information on that baby’s adoption document. Annie’s and Daniel’s surnames did not match, nor did Annie use her maiden name. Instead, Annie’s surname was the same as Charles’ surname – the man the family had believed was Annie’s husband and the father of her three daughters. Research had already established, and proven, Annie’s marriage to Daniel and the paternity of their first two daughters, and the adoption of the third daughter, but when did Annie marry Charles?

No record has been found of a marriage between Annie and Charles. When Annie died in 1956 my grandfather, husband of Annie’s middle daughter, recorded the missing details on her death certificate. Annie’s surname was recorded as the same as Daniels, but also included that she was ‘also known as‘ Mrs … (the surname of Charles). The forethought of my grandfather to record the details accurately, illuminated the path going forward for descendants to see the whole picture of Annie’s life, albeit, missing details of when she co-habited with Charles, and why she didn’t marry him. Did Annie consider herself still married to Daniel, despite his subsequent marriage overseas? Did she always love the rebel Daniel? Sadly, we will never know, as those who may have held the knowledge have long since passed.

Does it matter that Annie and Charles didn’t marry? In the twenty-first century, while marriage is still popular, there are many who choose to have children and not marry until later, if at all.

Although too late for Annie and the women of her era, the boundaries of righteousness that dictated the order in which a woman should marry and conceive, have been stretched, and indeed removed. Men, in the old equation, were only held responsible for the financial support of the children they spawned, not their part in fathering an illegitimate child. The father’s name was not recorded on the birth registration if he had not married the mother prior to the child’s birth. Fathers were seemingly spared the shame and scorn that prevailed at the time; shame and scorn were reserved for the woman and child.

That previously feared word, illegitimate, no longer has the impact on a child’s life, or that of the child’s mother, that it did in our great-grandparents era. In Australia, broadly speaking, the expectation to marry before having children, or at all, is no longer valid (with the exception of some sub-cultures based on cultural or religious beliefs). The law in Australia has changed to extend the same legal rights to de facto relationships as married couples, allowing more moral freedom for all, especially women1.

And the word, illegitimate, has no place in our society now, nor should it ever have had2.

1 The view that the changes in law that allow more moral freedom for all, especially women, is the personal opinion of the author

2 The personal opinion of the author

Note: if you have any questions regarding the life of my great-grandmother, Annie Siddall, please contact me through this site, and I will respond.

Anecdotal Note: ***Information gleaned from the marriage certificate of Annie and Daniel suggests they were married at the World Matrimonial Association at 471 Pitt Street Sydney, not necessarily the Church of Latter Day Saints as implied on the certificate. The building housed a marriage business run by Theophilus Carulus. The following newspaper report from 1903 paints Mr Carulus as a somewhat less than favourable character. Annie’s marriage certificate was signed by Edith Carulus as a witness to the marriage.

Article identifier http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article167903293 Page identifier http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page16124005 APA citationTHEOPHILUS IN TROUBLE. (1903, June 7). Truth (Sydney, NSW : 1894 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved September 12, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article167903293

Truth (Sydney, NSW _ 1894 – 1954), Sunday 7 June 1903, page 6Download

A Google search of ‘471 Pitt Street Sydney’ resulted in the following document, which ultimately unearthed the above document.