Sneesby

The Impact of Convict Transportation on Australia

/ Maureen / Leave a comment

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. ↩︎

Lucky

/ Maureen / Leave a comment

The theme for this post is ‘Lucky’. Amy Johnson Crow of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge sets the theme; we choose an ancestor, and write their story. I could write about a lot of ancestors who may have had a lucky break, or were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, but one ancestor stands out from the rest.

Claude Ernest Claise Sneesby was born in September 1895, so he was just nineteen years old when he sailed out of Melbourne, Australia, on the troop ship HMAT Ulysses in 1914. Claude was heading for the war in Europe, just three days before Christmas.

Before the sun rose on the 25th April 1915, inexperienced young men were fighting for their lives as they scrambled onto the beach of Gallipoli, now known as Anzac Cove. Like lambs to the slaughter, thousands were killed or wounded on that fateful day.

Claude Ernest Claise Sneesby survived landing day on Gallipoli in that war-torn part of the world. And he spent months, or was it years, in cold, wet trenches, not knowing if he would see the sun set on that day, or rise on the next one. He wrote letters home to his family and he stretchered wounded mates out of danger to safety. He raised the bugle to his lips and sounded the Last Post for those that couldn’t be saved. There were times when he drank too much and became disorderly, and lost pay as recompense for his attempt to drown out the constant terror that surrounded him.

After four long years, Claude received a hero’s welcome home when he returned to Australia at the end of the war, but he never forgot that day in April when the ANZACs landed on Gallipoli. On the 25th April every year, Claude marched in the ANZAC Day parade through the streets of Sydney. He rekindled friendships with those who fought with him, until one by one, they stopped marching. He drank rum and beer at the end of the march to reminisce; or was it to drown the memories out?

In his late seventies Claude could no longer make the trip to the city to march alongside any remaining mates, or the veterans from other wars, so he watched the parade on television.

Claude never forgot the landing on Gallipoli on the 25th April 1915 when he was only nineteen, or the mates he lost in that place so far from home. And he never forgot how lucky he was to have survived the war and return home to those he loved.

Six weeks after his eightieth birthday, Claude Ernest Claise Sneesby’s heart stopped beating. My grandfather had served well, but his duty was done.

He was one of the lucky ones.