Married life for William and Catherine

William Ward and Catherine Mitchell married at St Phillip's church in Sydney in February 1837. They did not waste any time starting a family and their first child, Mary Ann, was born about 10 months after the marriage.

Seven children were born while they were living at Killcare. Mary Ann was born in 1837, Catherine Jnr in 1840, Sophia Jane in 1842, Agnes Elizabeth in 1845, Ephraim Mitchell in 1847 and Emily in 1849. The first house was a simple timber dwelling, but as business improved they built a stone house further up the hill.

In about 1850, the family moved to Kincumber where they purchased a property named 'Toorigal'. I have seen mention that this may have been an Aboriginal word for the area, and that it is is the origin of the name 'Terrigal'. Manasseh was born soon after the move to Kincumber. He was born in 1851, followed by twins Emma Jane and William in 1855 and John William Alexander in 1857. Baby William did not survive and the Gosford Pioneer register lists his death on the same day he was born, so he may have been stillborn. It is significant I think that even in those tough pioneering times, William and Catherine only lost one child. All the rest survived to adulthood.

William was about 58 and Catherine 40 when their last child, John, was born, but perhaps they had an idea he would be their last, so they gave him all the names that they had in reserve!

Everything I read suggests that William and Catherine were a very active and busy couple, who both worked on managing their wide-ranging business interests. Clearly Catherine had help in the house almost from the beginning and the 1841 census shows she had a female servant living with the family.

I have also seen mention of an Aboriginal servant who helped raise the children. This was Billy Fawkner, also known as 'King Billy'. Charles Swancott's book 'Gosford and the Kendall Country' attributes this relationship to Manasseh, but Billy died in 1875, which was before Manasseh had children, so I think it was William and Catherine who employed Billy.

I have heard several other vague stories about the family's interaction with the Aboriginal people and it left me with the impression that they were on friendly terms with them. Given that Billy Fawkner is often described as 'the last of his tribe', I suspect that most of the interaction would have been before 1875.

A lot of what we hear today is about the negative interactions between Aboriginal people and the new settlers. And there was a frontier war fought on the Central Coast over several decades. But I have also read that some ex-convicts had a better relationship and benefited greatly from the knowledge of country that the indigenous people had.

My branch of the Ward family seems to thrive on stories. My Dad told us a lot of tales that he had heard as a child. It is sometimes hard to work out who the story is really about. I would be very interested in hearing any stories that people may have. Even though many are hard to verify, they sometimes lead to important discoveries.

William Ward as a free man

 Back in September, we followed William Ward through his time as a convict in Van Deimen's Land. He completed his sentence in 1824 and I shared the notice from the Hobart paper saying he had been granted his 'Certificate of Freedom'.

We don't know when or how William made his way to Sydney, but Joan Taylor says that by 1825 he was working in the Brisbane Water area cutting timber and shingles. Joan found that there were several William Wards around Sydney, including one who was in constant strife with the law and was eventually executed.

There were two mentions in the government correspondence that Joan thought might be our William.

• An application in 1822 for replacement clothing lost while taking a lifeboat to Port Macquarie. We now know that our William was still in Tasmania, so this could not have been him. The account is still interesting, particularly for my branch of the family who have lived around Port Stephans for the last 60-odd years. 4 men, (including a William Ward) were delivering a lifeboat to Port Macquarie. They were forced by bad weather to shelter on a beach at Port Stephans, where their clothes were stolen by the 'natives'. I wonder in what state they finally arrived at Port Macquarie?
• An application for replacement of a lost Certificate of Freedom. This is dated 24 July 1824, but when you read the whole document, it relates to a Certificate stolen 11 years before, which was before our William arrived in the colony.

I have loaded these two documents onto my website. They are under the 'Disproved resources' section of the Ward page.

I have found a number of mentions of William being among the first four European settlers in the Brisbane Water area, Several local histories talk about William living with some other emancipated convicts at Killcare. These men grew vegetables and kept bees. When they saw a ship passing they would row a boat out through the heads and offer to sell honey to the sailors. 

I have had in interest in beekeeping since I was 16 and worked professionally in the honey industry for 15 years or so - and I was always told that honey bees arrived in Australia in 1822 (aboard the Isabella). I know this has been questioned more recently, but in my books, William will go down as one of the very early beekeepers in Australia! (I have considered the idea he may have kept stingless native bees, but this is unlikely as they produce only small quantities of honey.)

It was more than 10  years before William would get formal ownership of land at Killcare. He seems to have applied for and been granted two parcels of land at Brisbane Water in 1835 and 1836, The first was 80 acres, and the second 150 acres. He had to pay for both parcels - the system of free land grants had ended after Governor Macquarie was replaced in 1821.

The bay in front of William's land became known as Ward's Bay. At some point (probably after the Ward family moved) it was renamed Hardy's Bay.

A key to William's future was the arrival of a new family in the area. William Spears purchased land in what is now known as Pretty Beach in 1834. Spears seems to have had things in common with William Ward in that he was a sawyer and mariner. He moved to Brisbane Water with his wife Sarah and their young family. They established the first Inn in the area, known as the Crooked Billet.

In about May 1836, William and Sarah Spears were assigned a convict to work as a household servant. That convict was Catherine Mitchell, who had arrived in the colony in 1834. William Ward's days as a single man were numbered and at 37, he had met his match.

Catherine Mitchell in New South Wales

 Catherine Mitchell arrived in NSW as a convict aboard the George Hibbert. The ship carried 144 female convicts, 11 free women and 64 children. The voyage took longer than usual and some supplies ran low, including the lime juice used to stay off scurvy. Some of the convicts showed signs of scurvy towards the end of the voyage, but John Tarn, the Ship's Surgeon reported that the women recovered quickly once fresh food was available on arrival in Sydney.

The Ship arrived in Sydney on 1 December 1834 the last of 14 transports to arrive in Sydney that year.  Another 6 ships went directly to Hobart. There were only female prisoners on the George Hibbert. It was normal at this time for male and female prisoners to be transported on separate ships. In 1834, 4 all-female ships made the voyage, three going to Sydney and one to Tasmania.

I have not found out where Catherine was sent on arrival in Sydney. She may have been assigned as a servant somewhere, or she may have been held in custody, but around May 1836 she is assigned to William Spears of Brisbane Water as a servant. 

William Spears was born in Sydney in 1806, son of William Spears, soldier and a Mary Howe, convict. He had married Sarah Dowling in 1829. Sarah was also born in Sydney, daughter of George Dowling, convict and Mary Ann Reynolds, free settler. 

William Spears purchased 50 acres of land at Brisbane Water in 1835. History tells us that William Spears was a sawyer and mariner, so he had a lot in common with William Ward. He also established a tavern named 'The Crooked Billet', at that time the only such establishment between The Hawkesbury River and Newcastle. William Spear's land and the tavern were in the next bay to the area settled by William Ward and would have been only a few minute's walk away.

When a census of convicts was carried out in early 1837, there are two convicts assigned to William Spears including Charlotte Mitchell, aged 21 who arrived on George Hibbert in 1833.  This is our Catherine, although she was 19 rather than 21. It is not uncommon for names to be written down incorrectly in these documents, but Catherine was the only Mitchell on the George Hibbert, and we have other records placing her in the service of Sarah Spears.

This places us back to January 1837 when Catherine asked the Governor for permission to marry William Ward. Joan Taylor included the text of a letter that Sarah Spears wrote to support her servant's application. Sarah stated in the letter that Catherine had been in her service for 8 months and had conducted herself with the greatest propriety. I have not tracked down the original record of this letter, but Joan's research is good enough for me (she was so thorough). 

I wonder if Sarah Spears was a match maker by nature. But clearly Catherine and William met at Brisbane Waters, quite possibly at the Spears home or their tavern, the Crooked Billet. Both William and Sarah Spears had a convict parent, so were probably not prejudiced against convicts as some in the colony were by this time.

Catherine Mitchell's Scottish origins

In an earlier post I traced Catherine Mitchell from her marriage to William Ward backwards to her trial at Stirling in 1833. She was 16. We know from letters that have survived that Catherine had a brother named Alexander and a sister named Mary. She also had an Uncle named Peter who had a brother named Alexander in Australia. These facts have been helpful in locating Catherine's family in Scotland.

Catherine was born on 29 March 1817 and was baptised at Alloa on 1 April. Her parents were John Michell and Catherine McGregor (or McGrigor). She was the fifth child in the family, including another girl named Catherine who had been born in 1812. I have not located any burial records from Alloa, but it is safe to assume that the first Catherine died in infancy. 

John and Catherine Snr's family included Anne 1808, Elizabeth 1810, Catherine 1812 (died) , John 1814,  Catherine 1817 (our Catherine), Alexander 1819, Janet, 1822, Marjory 1824, William 1825 and Mary 1827. They were all baptised in Alloa. Alloa is a town on the river Forth, 10 km east of Stirling. It is about 40 km from both Edinburgh and Glasgow. 

I found it difficult to trace Catherine's grandparents because the names Mitchell and McGregor are very common in that part of Scotland and there were a lot of variations of spelling, even within the same family. I think that spelling was not an exact science in the 1700's, but by the time of the 1841 Census, spellings had largely standardised on 'Mitchell' and 'McGregor', so I use those spellings.

I found a letter on ancestry.com.au that was written in 1950 by Harriett Chalmers, a descendant of Anne Mitchell. This letter outlines the family structure and was very helpful in sorting things out - even if it was not perfect!

I believe that John Mitchell was probably born in Alloa in 1782, the son of John Mitchell and Janet Comrie (shown as Janet Condey on the baptism record). John Snr was a coalhewer from Alloa and he and Janet married in 1768. They had 5 children, three were named John. This idea is supported by the fact that our Catherine had siblings named John and Janet. The 1782 John is also a good age match for the Catherine McGregor shown below, so the two theories fit together will.

There is an element of doubt in my theory. I found 6 other John Mitchells born around Alloa between 1767 and 1787. Some other family trees have John's birth in 1787 and his parents as James Mitchell and Margaret Scott. This is possible, although I would have expected our Catherine to have siblings named James and Margaret after their grandparents. 

In researching all 7 John Mitchells I looked for their siblings. There were no siblings named Peter or Alexander, so the uncles mentioned in letters to Catherine Jnr were almost certainly McGregors.

The search for Catherine McGregor's parents proved complex. Harriett Chalmers suggested that Catherine was not born in Alloa, but there were dozens of Catherine McGregors baptised in surrounding areas in the target period. I found a number of family trees that list Catherine's birth as being in Aberfoyle in 1784 with her parents being Alexander McGregor and Elizabeth McGregor. After hours trying to sort out families, I dowloaded a list of all children of Alexander McGrigor born between 1760 and 1820 and looked for siblings named Catherine, Peter and Alexander. The only mother that appeared with all three names was Elizabeth! Even then there were two families.

My conclusion was that Catherine McGregor was born in Aberfoyle, Scotland in 1784 (baptised 'Katherine'). She had siblings born in Callander (Janet 1777, Margaret 1779 and Elisabeth 1782), Kilmdock (Mary 1787), Alva (Peter 1789) and Clackmannan (Alexander 1797). Alva and Clackmannan and both within 5 km of Alloa. There is enough circumstantial evidence for me to say that this is the most likely answer to a complex puzzle, but as with John Mitchell, there remains an element of doubt in my mind.

You can probably read between the lines and guess that this research nearly did my head in. While the Scottish archives are great in giving the maiden name of the mother on a baptism, the information from different sources are not consistent. Unlike many of the English Counties, the Scottish parish registers are not available to browse online. You can only view one page at a time - and then at a cost of almost $1 each page! In most cases I have had to make do with the information available on the index and forgo the register images.

I have loaded by detailed research notes onto the Ward-resources section of my website. Look for 'mitchell-family-research-notes.docx'.