When I retired from a long career in teaching in 2016, I finally had time to get serious about researching my family history. What I found came as a bit of a shock.

Who would have thought I had convicts and teachers hanging off the top branches of my family tree? And who would have thought the convict, and the teacher, were the same person?

My fourth-great-grandfather, Thomas Taber (alias Tabor), was sentenced to transportation for life in the colony of Australia in 1796, for the crime of break and enter. Was it possible the generous rewards offered by Church and government at the time may have dimmed the witnesses recollections of the details of the event? It seems the Judge at Thomas’ trial in the Old Bailey may have thought so.

When Thomas Taber, a watch maker by trade, left England in August 1796 on the Ganges, he left as a convict. But when Thomas arrived in Sydney on the 2nd June, 1797, he was immediately assigned to the colony school as a teacher, seconded to the position by Reverend Richard Johnson. Did Johnson know Thomas Taber through his church back in England? Was Johnson able to pull some convenient strings to save Thomas from a life of hard labour? We’ll probably never know the reason for the unexpected change of circumstances, but Thomas’ respected service as a teacher, schoolmaster, and parish clerk are well-documented.

Ten years after his arrival in the colony, Thomas Taber was granted a full pardon. Thomas and his son George became pioneers of the settlement of Menangle on the south-western side of Sydney, while another son, Thomas (Jnr.), followed in his father’s footsteps and became a teacher in Sydney.

Thomas Taber died at home in his cottage in Castlereagh Street Sydney in 1842, at the age of seventy-nine years. Although his death was reported in the Sydney newspaper, there was no mention of Thomas’ convict-status on arrival in the colony, such was the respect he had earned for service to his church, and the education of the colony’s children.

My DNA is linked to Thomas Taber through my mother; Thomas was my fourth-great-grandfather, and the fourth teacher in the colony.

And now I know why I was so passionate about becoming a teacher.

Education?

IT’S in my DNA.

Note: Thomas Taber was the fourth teacher in the British colony, but not in the ancient land that we know as Australia. Indigenous elders were teachers long before the British set foot on the continent that we live on and call home, and I respect those elders, past and present, as the custodians of this great land.