The trial of William Ward at the Old Bailey, December 1816

 Over the last week, I have done a deep dive into what would have happened to my great-great-grandfather when he was tried at the Old Bailey in 1816. All the official records say that he was tried on 4 December, but it turns out that was only the start of a week-long session at the Old Bailey, and William was probably not tried on that day.

The Old Bailey transcripts list 147 cases for the whole session, which involved roughly 160 defendants. When you read the transcripts, it is clear that these could not have been heard in a single court on a single day, so I went digging for details of how the court worked.

William Ward's transcript (pictured right) gave me a few small clues. His trial was presided over by 'Mr Common Sergeant', and was heard in front of the 'First Middlesex Jury'.

Looking at the start of the session transcript, I found that there were three juries:

• London Jury
• First Middlesex Jury
• Second Middlesex Jury

The first Middlesex Jury comprised George Dodson, Henry Seabourn, Roger Percell, Robert Kennedy Dikman, Chace Craddock, Joseph Styles, Thomas King, Thomas Sherratt, John Williams, William Orton Coleman, John Hart, and John Man.

One of the newspapers of the day, Bell’s Weekly Messenger, reported on several topical cases from the session and shows that hearings were held from Wednesday, 4 December 1816, and the session concluded on Thursday, 12 December.

AI told me more about how the Court was organised. Hearings commenced at about 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. each day and continued until late in the evening. The most serious cases were scheduled for the morning session and were presided over by 'Royal judges'. Three Royal judges were used during the December 1816 session: Sir Richard Richards (Mr Baron Richards in the transcripts), Sir Robert Graham (Mr Baron Graham in the transcripts), and Sir John Bayley (Mr Justice Bayley in the transcripts).  

The less serious crimes were generally heard in the afternoon before the municipal judiciary, namely the Recorder of London (Sir John Silvester) or the Common Sergeant (Newman Knowlys). The three juries were rotated through the day, each hearing six to ten cases before the next jury was used. 

The court procedure was very different to what is normal in a modern democratic legal system. William Ward's case was prosecuted by the victim of the theft, Charles Brooks. William was not supported or represented by anyone. He may not have been aware that he had the right to question the witnesses, and he did not ask any questions. He was given a chance to give his version of events, but this clerly did not impress the jury, who returned a verdict of guilty.

Looking carefully at the flow of cases in the session transcript, I worked backwards through the cases from William's trial at case 72. I found that cases 47 to 55 were heard before 'Mr Recorder', while the the subsequent cases from 56 to 66 alternated between two of the Royal Judges, Mr Baron Richards and Mr Justice Bayley. Cases 67 to 78 were heard before Mr Common Sergeant.

I concluded that cases 56 to 78 represent a single calendar day in the Court. The second Middlesex Jury heard the first 10 cases, then the London jury heard five cases, and the first Middlesex Jury heard the remaining eight cases.

Clipping from page 8, Bell’s Weekly Messenger,
 8 Dec 1816, reporting on the case of Patrick
Kean. The trial records give his age as 13.

One interesting case was case 58, where 13-year-old Patrick Kean was charged with stealing biscuits from a bakery. It turns out that this lad was one of the leaders of a riot that swept through London on Monday 2nd December, and the case was reported in the paper (see clipping right). The newspaper report does not give the penalty, as sentences were not passed down until the end of the session. The paper gives us the date of the hearing as Saturday 7 December.

From case 79, the Royal Judges once again alternate, suggesting this was the start of the next sitting day. The Court did not sit on the sabbath, so this would have been Monday 9 December, which is confirmed by the newspaper which reported on case 79 where Stephen Brooks and James Franke were charged with housebreaking. 

While it appears in the transcript that the verdict and sentence were given at the same time, this was not how it happened in the court. At the end of evidence in any one case, the jury signalled their verdict to the judge, who pronounced the defendant guilty or not guilty.  Prisoners were returned to Newgate Prison at the end of the day. Newgate was next door to the Old Bailey. At the end of the session of court hearings, the prisoners were returned to the court to hear their sentences pronounced. I assume that they would have been assembled as a group for the reading of the sentences, rather than appearing individually in the court.

Clipping from page 6, Bell’s Weekly Messenger,
 8 Dec 1816, reporting on the non-capital
sentencing. The Recorder had sentenced
49 people to death on the previous evening.

Sentences were announced by The Recorder as the principal permanent judicial officer in the city. Death penalties were pronounced on Wednesday evening, after the last cases of the session had been heard. The newspaper reported "In the evening, the RECORDER passed sentence of death upon the following 29 Malefactors...". 

William Ward, and the other transportees were sentenced on Thursday 12 December (see clipping right). 

I estimate that 160 people faced trial during the 147 cases heard in the December 1816 session:

• 39 people were found not guilty.
• 46 were sentenced to fines, whipping and/or short terms in gaol,
• 46 were sentenced to transportation, including 10 women. 
• 7 were to be transported for life, 
• 5 were to be transported for 14 years
• 34 were to be transported for 7 years.
• 29 were sentenced to death, 5 women and 23 men.

Some of the death penalties were later respited to transportation for life. It would be time consuming  to find out whether death penalties were carried out. But in the case of 13-year-old Patrick Kean mentioned above, his death sentence was remitted and he arrived in Sydney aboard the Ocean In January 1818. I have not discovered what became of him after that.

As to my great-great-grandfater, he served out his seven-year sentence labouring on public works in Georgetown, Tasmania. He was released in 1824 and made his way to the central coast of NSW where he was one of the first settlers. He lived first at current-day Killcare, and later at Kincumber. 

He worked hard and prospered, developing a substantial timber business and becoming a master mariner and ship owner. Ten years after his release, he married and raised a family of ten children. When he died in 1876 he owned 550 acres of land.

A letter from home

The address on the letter

In her landmark family history of the Henderson and Ward families, Joan Taylor included a transcription of a letter written by Alexander Mitchel to his sister, Catherine Ward, at Brisbane Water.

I was unable to find the original of the letter when I followed up Joan's references. It was in the Mitchell Library, but Joan's reference did not make sense to the Librarian I consulted at the time. 

I eventually found the correct references in the Library's online catalogue, and last Saturday, I had a chance to visit the library and see the letter for myself. Joan's reference was possibly outdated by the time I initially looked. 

It took longer for the Librarian to fix my Library Card than to get the document on my hands, a matter of minutes. 

The letter is just a two  pieces of stained paper, neatly mounted in an archive folder, but once you know the story, it tells us quite a lot.

I will not repeat the whole letter here, but I took photographs. I added the photos to an updated transcript and some of my analysis. I have put the resulting document on my website. See A letter from home. If you want to find it again, it is under the William Ward resources section as '1853-ward-letter-from-home.pdf'. I will be updating this document if I find any more information.

So what is new? I have found or deduced quite a few things from this original that were not apparent from Joan's transcript. Just looking at it again also raised some new ideas.

1. The letter is dated 27 November 1853, but I think it is postmarked 'Sydney - April 1854'. There is also a visible number five, so maybe 5th or 15th of April. That means that the letter took almost five months to arrive by sailing ship. Allowing a few weeks turn around, Alexander would have waited for a year before he got a reply!
2. I think I found a small error in Joan's transcription. It is in the second line of the snippet pictured below. Joan transcribed it as 'Our sister Mary with her husband...'. But I think it is 'Anny' not Mary, which makes more sense as Mary is clearly mentioned in the next sentence. This has led me to reverse my earlier conclusion that Mary was married. This new interpretation suggests she was not married, otherwise Alexander would probably have said so, as he did with Anne.
3. Later in the letter, Alexander asks for the address of another sibling, John, who appears to be in Australia.
4. All this leads me to wonder about the other siblings? Baptism records for Alloa record nine children in the family, including another Catherine who presumably died before our Catherine was born. Anne, Mary and John are mentioned, and we can account for the two Catherines and Alexander, but what about Elizabeth, Janet, Marjorie and William? I have never been able to find any record of these children that I can be sure are the right family - so my new working theory is that the other children had died or left Scotland by 1853. There do not appear to be any surviving records of deaths in Alloa Parish before 1853.
5. Alexander also asks for news of an uncle also named Alexander. Joan was unsure whether this was an uncle on their father or mother's side, but my research suggests that it was a McGregor. Like Joan, I have not been able to find an Alexander McGregor in Australia that I can clearly link to our family.  
6. The letter is addressed 'care of Mr Northwood, Erskine Street'. Joan Taylor transcribed this as 'William Northwood', but I think the salutation is the same as on William's name, which I read to be 'Mr' – I would stand corrected on that, but it is not important, because I think his name was William Northwood anyway. William Northwood was an ex-Convict who had become a successful timber merchant. I suspect he served his time as a convict at Brisbane Water because that was where his Ticket of Leave was issued and where he married. Given the size of Brisbane Water at the time and his involvement in timber trading I assume he would have been well known to the Ward family and was possibly their agent in Sydney. I found one advertisement in the Sydney papers that hint that he may also have been in business with Robert Henderson as they were both named as contacts for a load of timber and shingles. Northwood's Wharf was at the foot of Erskine Street, quite possibly the wharf at the Bethel Chapel, which was purchased by Robert Henderson in 1953.

The top of page 2 of the letter which gives the news of family and friends.

The whole point of this letter is the cheque that had been incorrectly made out. The cheque was to pay for the Scottish siblings to emigrate to New South Wales. History tells that Alexander never made it here. I found a copy of his death registration which leaves little doubt. He died in Alloa in 1873. The death registration gives his age as 57 (a close match to his birth in 1819) and his parents as John Mitchell and Catherine McGregor. The informant was his wife, Mary Younger.

Armed with the additional information of Alexander's marriage, he can easily be found in the Census records for 1851, 1861 and 1871.

I doubt that Mary came either. With the new information that she was probably not married in 1853, I have a better chance of finding her story. The Scottish birth, death and marriage records are frustrating to work with (as are many) in that you have to pay over $30 to get enough information to be certain, but there are several deaths in Alloa in the 1890s that could be our Catherine's little sister. I will keep looking!

Always worth a second look

I was checking my references for Robert Henderson in the last few weeks and made the final breakthrough in sorting out his Sydney land dealings. I had been working from hand-written land transfer documents that were mainly sourced from family tree websites. But with a fresh look and a clear mind, I managed to track down and make sense of the Land Titles Office records. Now I can see why I was confused!

The area of Robert Henderson's Sydney properties
as it was in 1833 (click to enlarge).

The image to the right is a detailed street plan of Sydney as it was in 1833. I have put this image together from four separate plans which is why it has writing at odd angles. You can see the original plans at the Historical Atlas of Sydney and this is worth a look if you are interested in such things. You can compare the 1833 map with the 1880 plans (Dove's Plans). The 1833 plans show the  boundaries and  ownership/occupation of the properties as they were in 1833, with a lot of lines and notes in red that are about later developments. I have marked seven properties on my version here. Robert's properties are numbered 1 to 6 which is the order in which he acquired them. The property marked in blue is an interesting diversion that I will cover at the end.

1. Robert's first property was in Kent Street. In May 1830, the owner took out a mortgage with Robert, and the following year, ownership was transferred to Robert. I think this property cost Robert £300. I suspect that this property became Robert's first base in Sydney as he testified in a court case that he lodged in Kent Street when he was in Sydney. Robert sold this property in October 1835 for £400, no doubt to fund the next purchase. On the plan, the owner is shown as Robert Anderson, which was a common mistake at that time, but the Land Titles transfers are clearly in the name of Robert Henderson.
2. In December 1835 Robert purchased the property on the north western corner of Erskine and Sussex Streets. The vendor was John Forster Church and his name is shown on the block on the plan. Robert paid £650. In January 1836 Robert was given permission to build a wharf into Darling Harbour from the rear of the property. The wharf was not to extend 'beyond the true line of Sussex Street', which makes sense when you know that Sussex Street ended at the waterline, just past Robert's rear boundary and the Governemt had plans to fill in the inlet and extend Sussex Street, which they later did.
   It is not clear if there was an Inn on the site before Robert bought it, but Church was a wine merchant, so it quite possibly did have one. There certainly was an Inn named the Captain Piper there in 1837, licensed to John Anderson. He had leased the property from Robert in 1836.  William Bergan took over the lease in 1838, paying  Robert for £120 rent per year. Bergen held the license for the Sprig of Shillalah. The same building would would become the Dove Inn in 1842.   
3. In January 1838 Robert purchased 33 perches of land adjoining the Inn site to the west. The vendor was William Tiernan who is shown as the owner on the plan and the price was £650. This land was absorbed into the Inn site.
4. In November 1853 Robert purchased the site of the Bethel Chapel at auction. The Bethel Union had moved their operations to the Rocks. Robert paid £3,450, which shows how much prices had increased.
5. Robert had leased several properties in Erskine Street from George Allen in 1850. He established the Clarence Hotel in one of these properties, which was on the north-western corner of Erskine and Shelly Streets, one block west of the Dove Inn. It looks to me like he set up this hotel for his son, Robert Jr. Robert did not buy the property until May 1865. It was then described as Lot 3 of Phoenix Wharf, and Robert paid £2,100. By this time, Robert Jr was in disgrace, having deserted his family and his wife, Hannah, was the licensee of the Clarence Hotel.
6. In June 1865,  Robert purchased Lots 4 and Lot 5 of Phoenix Wharf from George Allen at a price of £927. These properties were on the north-eastern corner of Erskine and Shelly Streets, opposite the Clarence Hotel.

The last five of these properties where still in Robert's possession when he died in 1868 and they became part of the Trusts that he established in his will. If you are interested in tracking what happened to the properties, see my 2023 posts on those trusts.

My 2022 post on Robert Henderson's Sydney properties mentioned several other properties that Robert seemed to advertise for sale. Given that Robert was an Innkeeper, and the advertisements mentioned the hotel as well as Robert's name, it is possible that 'Robert Henderson's Dove Inn' was given the address of the vendor and Robert himself was not the vendor at all. I have not found any evidence in the official land records that Robert sold any more properties in Sydney, so I have now discounted these properties.

My confusion over the Sydney properties was to some extent because of the property I have marked in blue. If you look carefully, there are two blocks, one fronting Erskine Street and one fronting Sussex Street. The owner of both is shown as Mary Stewart, widow of the Late Robert Stewart, with a note in red 'R. Henderson C. Pass trustees'. Other documents spell-out the names as Robert Henderson and Casper Pass. And the description of the combined properties make it sound like a corner block. So we have Robert Henderson and Casper Pass showing up in a series of transactions for a property that seems to be on the corner of Erskine and Sussex Streets! It was the above plan of the properties that finally made it clear to me that this property was on the diagonally opposite corner to the Dove Inn site.

So what is going On? Well clarity came in one of the Land Records. It describes the person as 'Robert Henderson of Sydney aforesaid gardener'. So not our Robert Henderson at all!

This man was born in England in about 1800 and arrived in the Colony as a free settler about 1830. He married  Elizabeth Shepherd in Sydney in 1831. They had eight children born between 1833 and 1848. He lived in Newtown and worked initially as a gardener and later as a nurseryman. He was involved as a trustee in several trusts including this one. He was also a trustee for a church property in Lime Street, also quite close to the Dove Inn.

Once again the cautionary tale about similar or duplicate names. I have double-checked the other properties for collaborating details to make sure I have the right Robert Henderson. The sale document for the Kent Street property refers to Robert Henderson and Catherine his wife, so clearly our Robert. All the other properties were detailed in his will.

William Ward's arrival in Sydney?

Some of the most interesting discoveries I have made in my family history research have been accidental.

This week, I solved a long-standing question about when and how William Ward came to Sydney. We have solid evidence that he arrived in NSW as a convict aboard the Almorah (1817) and was immediately transferred to another vessel, the Pilot and sent to Tasmania. He served out his 7-year sentence on public works at Georgetown before being released in February 1824. The next we hear of him he is running shingles to Sydney from Brisbane Water in 1825. 

This week I was searching for a document about another ancestor and stumbled on the answer to that puzzle. When looking at scanned images of old land records, I flicked backwards few pages just to see if there was anything related or interesting. In this case I found William Ward's original application for the purchase of a property at current-day Killcare. 

It all seemed as I would expect, except that his surname is spelled 'Whard'. The description of the land seems right for the land that William and his  family called home. It reveals that William had engaged an agent to do the application, a man named Samuel Jones at Market Wharf. That makes sense because William was illiterate.

Land purchase application by 
William Ward in 1835

Then I noticed something odd. There is a small declaration at the end 'I am free and arrived in the Colony by the Ship...'

The 'Ship' was crossed out and 'Cutter Lord Liverpool, from London in 1824' was entered! That does not match our William at all! What was going on! So I did some more digging.

The Lord Liverpool was a cutter that was purchased in London by a wealthy merchant who wanted to emigrate to a warmer climate. She sailed from London in 1822 with 16 people on board, crew and passengers. No Ward or Whard listed, although there were two unnamed apprentice blacksmiths (unlikely to be William because he was not a blacksmith). The vessel arrived at Georgetown in February 1823. She was sold in Launceston in September 1824 and soon afterwards sailed to Sydney where she arrived on 27 October. She was carrying a cargo of wheat and sundries. She carried five passengers including the new owners and some businessmen. There were also three of their servants who are not named. Apart from the Master, the crew are also not named. The cutter had sailed from London with a crew of seven, including the master and a carpenter, so it is safe to assume there was a crew of at lease four or five for the short voyage from Launceston.

The Lord Liverpool went onto regular service to Newcastle which she continued until wrecked at the entrance to Newcastle Harbour in 1830.

It seems perfectly logical that a recently freed convict would take on a job as temporary crewman as a way of getting to the main part of the Colony, which at that time was Sydney. 

I am satisfied that this document is evidence that William Ward arrived in Sydney aboard the Lord Liverpool on 27 October 1824, travelling not from London, but from Launceston. He could argue that  he did come from London, and he did arrive in Sydney on the Lord Liverpool. The fact that he left London six years before the cutter is just an untidy detail.

I don't think this was a subterfuge to increase his chances of getting the land. A convict past was not a barrier to purchasing land from the Colonial Government. More likely it was because of the intermediary, his agent, getting William's story slightly awry.

Accidental paradise

It has been a while since I posted on this blog, partially because I have largely completed the research phase of my project, and partially because I have been rethinking what I am trying to achieve. What set out to be an update of a landmark family history from the 1980s has evolved into something quite different. 

I have now worked through at least four different versions of this book. Most of the other family histories that I have read document the lives of individual people, which involves a degree of duplication for a married couple. I had the feeling that in most families, the story of a man or woman cannot be easily separated from the story of their spouse and children, and telling of individual stories can easily undervalue the contribution of the women of the family. So I decided to base the book on a series of small ‘family’ biographies. This works very well, except for the unusually complex family of Robert Henderson II. But he is a special case.

Next, I started to look at how I would organise a printed book. I had written over 40 separate chapters, mostly biographies of families, and no mater how I organised them, it seemed clumsy and difficult to navigate. 

There was one recurring thought that came to me as I was researching many of the convict generation was the likelihood that many of them must have had a 'light-bulb' moment. They had been sent to the Colony of New South Wales as a punishment, but it was turning out to be a better life that they would have had if they had stayed in their homeland.

This led me to a new way of organising my intended book. I have divided it into three parts.

Part 1. Ancestral roots

The first part will look at the ancestral roots of our family in the British Isles. My starting point is 1770 when James Cook was making the discoveries that would eventually lead to the establishment of the British Colonies on the Australian continent. This is also an important point in time when you look at the reasons most of our ancestors ended up in Australia. 

Across most of the British Isles people were living a largely rural existence. Most families had lived out many generations within a small local area. But agricultural revolution was driving an unprecedented population growth and the industrial revolution was stirring. People were starting to move around to find work and the drift of people to the larger cities was increasing.

Part 2. The immigrants

16 of our ancestors made the journey from Britain to the Colony of New South Wales. They arrived over 60 years starting in 1793. They included eight convicts, six free settlers and one soldier with his wife. Three married couples made the journey. The remaining ten immigrants met their partners in the colony.

This part of the book will comprise eight chapters, each covering the lives of a couple and their children.

Part 3. Colonial pioneers

The final six chapters will be the stories of the colonial-born generations. As in the immigrant section, each chapter will cover  the lives of a couple and their children.

Some rule breakers

While most of the immigrants either arrived as couples, or married another immigrant in Australia, Sarah Lewis and Hannah Wallbridge did not quite fit that rule. Sarah Lewis was colonial born, but married a convict, while Hannah Wallbridge arrived as an immigrant, and married a colonial-born man. 

• I included Sarah Lewis with her husband, Thomas Watkins in the immigrant section. 
• I included Hannah Wallbridge with her colonial born husband, Robert Henderson II in the pioneers section. The fact that Hannah’s parents followed her to Australia means that this makes more sense.

Progressive rewrite

I have created a new section of my website for the new version of the book and will be linking in the new chapters as I go. I am trying to rewrite the new chapters more as a story and less as a commentary on the records that have been found. I will be referencing the sources of key facts and will make my rougher notes available under the resources section of each chapter.

Purse of gold

I was recently reading back through a family history prepared in the mid 1980s by Joan Taylor, a granddaughter of Manasseh and Madeline Ward. Joan's mother was Doris Ward  (always known as Dolly), the youngest of Manasseh and Madeline's children. Joan was a very thorough researcher, and recognised the importance of recording things, even if she was unable to verify them.

Towards the end of Joan's folder, there is a small collection of family stories. In my latest skim through, I noticed the story below which I did not remember. It is possibly the story of how an unnamed couple first met.

The family story from page 95 of Joan Taylor's landmark family history.

So who were this couple? The source of the story was Dolly Pierce nee Ward. It is very unlikely that this was about Dolly herself. In fact, it is an unlikely story for anyone to recount about themselves, because it paints them as either a thief or an accomplice. I suspect that it was told in the third party to protect the identity of the protagonists, but was likely one of Dolly's ancestors.

My logical mind stepped back through the family tree to see who might fit the story. The key facts are that it was in Sydney or Parramatta, and the couple went on to do well - the sovereigns were the basis of the family fortune.

• Manasseh and Madeline Ward met in Gosford. ✗
• William and Catherine Ward almost certainly met at Killcare. ✗
• William Ward and Catherine Mitchell both arrived as convicts, so that rules out any of their ancestors. ✗
• Madeline's father, Robert Geary Henderson squandered rather than made a family fortune. ✗
• Madeline's mother, Hannah Wallbridge, arrived from England, so it could not have anyone in her family. ✗
• Madeline's Henderson grandparents, Robert Henderson and Catherine Geary cannot be ruled out! 
• Robert Henderson's parents arrived together as Irish convicts, so they are rued out. ✗
• Patrick and Elizabeth Geary arrived together, Patrick as a soldier and Elizabeth as his wife. It cannot be them or any of their family. ✗

Dolly's only ancestors who I could not eliminate were Robert Henderson and Catherine Geary. They fit the story nicely and if the story was true, it may explain a few things. 

They both grew up in Parramatta and married there when Catherine was only 16. Neither was from a privileged background, and it is very unlikely that the young couple had much money. Robert's father was a tenant farmer and petty criminal and had been in prison in the years leading up to his son's marriage. Cathrine's father was a private in the NSW Corps. While many of the officers had done well for themselves, Patrick Geary was a working-class man.

Shortly after they married, Robert was granted land at Pittwater. There was an error in the grant documents and Robert's name was recorded as 'Anderson'. Was this really an error - or did the couple intentionally give the wrong name? And why take up land so far from where they had grown up? Was this just where the opportunities were, or was it to escape a poor reputation in the Parramatta district?

Their Pittwater farm prospered quickly. They quickly built up a herd of cattle and within five years they were buying nearby properties for cash. How were they able to build up their resources so quickly?

Robert and Catherine had setbacks and windfalls along the way, but of all of Dolly's ancestors, theirs was probably the largest family fortune.

If my logic is sound, this story puts a different light on Robert Henderson. While I had his father down as a petty Irish villain, I thought that Robert may have lived a more honest life. Sure he had a reputation as a rum smuggler, but that was just a bit of 'character'. 

But if this story is about Robert and Catherine Henderson, it paints him as a character more like his father. He may have been a thief from a young age, but was clever enough to stay a step ahead of the authorities and used his ill-gotten gains to establish a legitimate business empire. Maybe not the law-abiding good citizen that my imagination had created?

Which Thomas Watkins?

 I have been working this week going over the information that I have on Thomas and Sarah Watkins, who were early settlers of Mangrove Creek, a settlement in the lower Hawkesbury River region of Colonial New South Wales. I have written previously about both Thomas Watkins and his wife, Sarah Lewis. Thomas was a convict who arrived in Sydney on the Baring in 1815. Sarah was born in the colony, probably of convict parents.

The problem is that there were a number of people in the Colony who carried the name 'Thomas Watkins'.  That is not particularly unusual with the more common surnames. Christian names like Thomas, William, James, John and Joseph where also a dime a dozen at the time. William Ward was another relative that had the same problem - there were 35 or more convicts of that name over the history of convict transportation!

When considering a new piece of evidence that refers to a person of interest, in this case Thomas Watkins, I usually look for a second collaborative detail to make sure I have the right person. For a convict, this is often the ship on which they arrived, but I also accept locations or other details that give added assurance. So with William Ward, we can be sure that any reference that mentions the Almorah or Brisbane Water are likely to be my ancestor.

But this gets more complicated for Thomas Watkins, because there were two convicts of that name aboard the convict ship Baring. The two men often appear on the same page of convicts and the key detail that separates them is the place that they were tried.

• One was a native of Bristol and had been convicted at Gloucester on 6 April, 1814. His occupation was carter.
• The other was a native of Herefordshire and had been tried at Hereford. He was a labourer.

Both had been sentenced to transportation for life and were of a similar age (within five years). You can often find them both on the same list of convicts.

Click to enlarge - list of convicts in Baring.
There are two men named Thomas Watkins.

So which one was the Thomas that married Sarah Lewis? They had to get permission from the Governor to marry, but the records of that permission just describes Thomas as coming on the Baring.

The answer requires a bit more detective work than normal.  

In 1826 our Thomas Watkins was accused of stealing wood and his Ticket of Leave was revoked. Sarah appealed to the Governor and in her letter says that Thomas had held his Ticket of Leave for seven years. This matches up with a request to the Governor in 1919, which says that Thomas was recently married.

The investigation cleared Thomas of any wrong-doing and a new Ticket of leave was issued. This document is the clue I neeeded. It gives his native place as Bristol, his place of trial as Gloucester and the date of trial as 6 April 1814. It also  details the cancellation of the earlier Ticket of Leave. So there is no doubt that the Thomas Watkins who married Sarah Lewis was the one from Bristol. They are linked by Sarah's letter to the Governor.

The Hereford Thomas was granted his Ticket of Leave in 1824, at which time he was in the Illawarra region. I have not traced his history further.

It is not surprising that some family historians have mixed up the two men, and you will find some family trees that have the events of both men combined into a single story. 

At one point a few years ago, I was living at Wentworth Falls in the NSW Blue Mountains. Our house was on a section of the original 'Cox's Road' that had been built in just six months by William Cox. I had a short-lived thrill when I found the name of Thomas Watkins, who arrived on the Baring among the convicts assigned to work on the road. Of course it was the Hereford Thomas, not our relative.

The coincidences are interesting. I was browsing old copies of 'The Gloucester Journal', where I knew there were reports of Thomas's trial. I did a search for 'Thomas Watkins' and 'horse-stealing' and got an immediate hit in the right timeframe. I was about to save my find, when I noticed that it was a report of the Hereford Assizes (courts). I was sure I was in the right edition of that paper, and did some page flipping, and sure enough, the Gloucester Assizes, and our Thomas's conviction, were reported on page three, while the more distant courts, with the other Thomas, were on page four. And they were both convicted of horse-stealing.