Family Tree

In my first novel, Katie is wrongly accused of a crime and sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia. Over the years readers have asked me if there are any convicts in my ancestry and I've always answered, "I don't know."

Well, now I do.

This month our church's fellowship lunch had a missions focus and DH and I decided we would provide food from Ireland. In the past we have done the Shetland Isles, and Wales, places from which his ancestors emigrated, and I figured it was time that we did a country from my side.

However, the Irish connection has always been a little vague since details of my maternal grandfather's heritage have always been rather sketchy. Whether this was because his mother died when he was eighteen and a lot of that information was never handed down, or whether it was because his father had little time for worrying about those who had already died when his focus was on providing for the living, or whether for some other reason, even my own mother was not aware of how she was related to several individuals in our community and even in our church. Just that she was related. Somehow.

My previous foray into researching my family tree had turned up some links to individuals born in Ireland and I thought that was as much as I was going to discover. But then, only last night, as I was looking again at my family tree I noticed that a distant relative had been born in Australia prior to 1800 and I commented to DH that it was likely that his parents had been convicts or else his father a soldier. DH and I then proceeded to search and within minutes we were astonished at what we learnt. 

In 1791 John Tucker Snr (my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather) was accused of stealing almost five hundred yards of linen. Although he tried to protect his step-mother, she was accused of receiving stolen goods and both were sentenced to transportation to New South Wales, Australia. He arrived as part of the Third Fleet in 1791. 

In 1794 he married Ann (Heratage) Vales/Viles who had also been transported for receiving stolen goods from her then husband. Her husband and two daughters appear to have died on route to Australia or shortly thereafter.

John and Ann had two children, John Jnr and Charlotte. When John Snr moved to Newcastle to the closed penal colony (even free persons needed permission to enter or leave the town) to take up a position as the first storekeeper his children were the first colonial-born children in Newcastle. He held this position on and off for several years.

In 1812 John Snr began to farm land on the Paterson Plains where his son had been working as a sawyer (cutting cedar logs to fulfil government orders). It has been suggested that land was not granted to his son either because of his youthful age or because of an earlier indiscretion (he had tried to leave Newcastle without permission). John Jnr's first wife drowned only days after their wedding, and his second wife was a convict who had worked as a nurse and absented herself without permission and was consequently sent to Newcastle (as a secondary penal colony and a closed one at that, it was far harder to escape from Newcastle than Sydney).

So, it would appear that there are at least three convicts in the family tree on my maternal grandfather's father's side from whom I am directly descended. Since we know that there are also some Irish connections on my maternal grandfather's mother's side as well as on my maternal grandmother's side (as well as a lot of individuals whose parentage/heritage is at this stage still unknown), it's possible that a few more convicts may come to light. However, I have a vague recollection of one or more of these Irish relatives being granted assisted immigration which possibly means that they had a relative who had earlier been transported to the colony, or else they decided to take up the government's offer of assisted passage and hopefully make a new life for themselves in a distant land.

Only more research will reveal the truth. Meanwhile, I feel that I must apologise to each of my daughters-in-law who unknowingly married into the family unaware of its criminal history.

For a sneak preview of the farm that my ancestors originally settled and which is now a wedding venue go here. According to their website, Albion Farm was the first land settled in the Hunter Valley and is the oldest, continuously farmed land in Australia (some sources say outside of the Sydney basin, others omit this, but either is impressive).

For a slightly more in depth look at the history of John Tucker senior and Junior go here.

And to purchase any of my books, go here.