Robert Henderson the farmer

Robert Henderson was born in Parramatta in 1796. He is numbered among the first 1000 British children to be born in the Colony of New South Wales.

Robert learnt farming from his very early days. His father, Thomas Henderson (often called Anderson) gained his freedom from his convict sentence in 1798 and was soon renting land near Paramatta where he grew wheat, barley maize, fruit and vegetables. He also kept pigs.

Things fell apart in 1812 when Thomas and several other men were charged with a string of thefts. Thomas was sentenced to 5 years at the penal settlement at Newcastle. 16-year-old Robert was also included in the charges, but was acquitted.

Reading between the lines, I think it is possible that Robert carried on the farming operations while his father was serving his sentence. If so, he was probably aided by Thomas' common-law wife, Margaret Broughton, who still seems to be with Thomas after he returns from Newcastle.

Robert married Catherine Geary in Parramatta in 1817. Catherine was the daughter of a soldier in the NSW Corps and was born on Norfolk Island in 1800. The following year, Robert was granted 60 acres of land at Pittwater. The farm is shown on the Parish Map below, in the top right - numbered 38. It is now part of Newport.

Robert and Catherine moved to the farm and established their home there. In 1922 Robert purchased Jeremiah Bryant's Grant of 80 acres. This farm can be seen in the bottom left of the map (No 30). Robert also had grazing rights in land adjoining his original grant. I have not found this in the original records yet and it is variously given as 100 or 1000 acres (probably 100 I think).

The Pittwater farm was not to be Robert and Catherine's forever home. In 1825 Robert took on the position of District Constable at Brisbane Water and the couple moved to a farm at current-day Saratoga. This farm had been a grant to Catherine's father, Patrick Geary and would become the family base for many years. More about that in future blog posts.

Robert's investment in Pittwater was not finished with his move to Brisbane Water. In 1831 he purchased Richard Porter's grant  of 50 acres, next to his original farm. This gave him frontage on Pittwater at Crystal Bay.

Robert sold his original 60 acres and the neighbouring 50 acres, but he held on to Bryant's grant until he died in 1869. He left the property to his grandson, Robert Francis Geary Henderson, who sold it in 1881. (I have used the grandson's full name because there was another grandson named Robert Frederick Henderson and they are easily confused.)

The original Pittwater property was Robert Henderson's first land holding in his own right, but it was not his last. At various times he controlled thousands of acres of farming and forest land and also invested heavily in property in Sydney. In the coming weeks I intend to look in more detail at his properties at Budgewoi, Brisbane Water and Sydney. It is a complex picture!

A man of many talents?

I have been putting off researching Robert Henderson because there is so much material to wade through. But the time has come, so I started to delve into the mire this week. 

I keep finding references that describe Robert differently, such as:

• early settler
• farmer
• constable
• ship owner
• ship builder
• innkeeper
• councillor
• trustee
• landowner
• 'Bob the smuggler'
• 'the portly host of the Dove Inn'.

Just to mention a few! He is recognised as an early settler of both Brisbane Water and Pittwater districts.

I have been thinking a lot about how to write this chapter of the family story. If I write it chronologically, it could become hard to follow as the different parts of Robert's life intertwine. It may be better to write a section on each occupation, although they may also be difficult to tease out.

Another thing that I am wary about is making the whole family story about the men. The women often get scant attention in family histories because so much of the documentation was done in the man's name. In reality, the women often played an equal role to their husbands in the pioneering families. They worked just as hard as the men, and regularly produced and raised children at the same time. 

Skimming through Robert Henderson's story, his wife Catherine Geary must have been an active partner in his business. How else could he have run a farm, built ships and started a successful hotel at the same time! Yes he had employees, but I am sure he relied heavily on his life partner as well. 

A witch in the family?

This week I followed the trail of ancestors backwards in time from Thomas Wallbridge and his wife Sarah Shepherd. I will only be writing up profiles to their parent's generation, but I like to follow the trail as far back as I can without making too may leaps of faith and deduction.

Sarah's family proved difficult to follow, mainly because there are some missing records. I was unable to locate any record of Sarah's baptism, nor her parent's marriage. There is a Sarah Ann Shepherd baptised in Wareham, but she is too young by about 7 years to be our Sarah - she would have been only 14 when Sarah married Luke Wallbridge. There were also a lot of Shepherds in Wareham at the time, possibly siblings and cousins – the same names keep cropping up in different families!

Luke's heritage proved to be more fruitful, and I have yet to reach the end of some threads. There are also some juicy bits in Luke's family!

Luke's mother, Hannah Bearns (or Barnes) Fancy was born out of wedlock! Hanna's mother, Susanna (or Susan) Fancy and the father of the child, Daniel Barnes (hence Hannah's middle name), were taken to court by the Churchwardens of Bere Regis and told to pay for the care of the child.

Susan was herself born out of wedlock, and had probably done it tough all her life. A few years after Hannah was born, she married George Woodrow, an older man who had been recently lost his wife. Three more children followed, but the very day that the last child was baptised, George died and Susan was once again a single mother. How she got by we don't know, but in the early 1800s, Susan Woodrow (Hanna’s mother) was employed as a gardener by the Turners Puddle Vicar, Rev William Ettrick. 

Things did not go well! After a series of minor misfortunes befell Ettrick, he became obsessed with the idea that Susan was a witch and the source of all his petty misfortunes. He dismissed her from his employ and continued to blame Susan for things that occurred even a year later.

Some people who have read Ettrick’s eccentric diaries concluded that Susan was probably not a good gardener, but that was all. If she was a witch, she did not cast a very good spell on Ettrick! He lived to father 10 children and died at the ripe old age of 90.

Susan herself lived to the age of 80 and died in 1839.

Read the full story as written by Natalie who is also one of Susan's descendants: My Ancestors’ Secrets: A Dorset Witch.

In case you were wondering, there is a solid chain of evidence leading from Madeline Geary Henderson all the way back to Susan Woodrow nee Fancy. Each step has multiple threads of evidence - no guesses in this one!

Luke Wallbridge and Sarah Shepherd

Luke Wallbridge was born in 1804 in the hamlet of Turners Puddle, Dorset, the son of Thomas and Hannah Wallbridge. Sarah Shepherd was born about 3 years later in the nearby market town of Wareham. Her parents were William and Elizabeth Shepherd. 

Luke and Sarah married in Wareham in 1829 and set up home in Turners Puddle, where Like worked as a farm labourer. He also worked as a carter at times. Their growing family can be traced through the parish registers and the 1841 and 1851 English census. They had 12 children baptised between 1830 and 1850. Four daughters died in childhood.

Times were difficult for working class people in England as the industrial revolution and mechanisation made many workers redundant. In 1850, Luke and Sarah's eldest daughter, Hannah, emigrated to Sydney. Within two years she was married to Robert Geary Henderson. Then another daughter, Mary Ann followed Hannah and she too married in Sydney.

In 1856, Luke and Sarah followed their daughters and took their remaining 6 children to NSW. Luke was 50 and Sarah 47. They arrived in Brisbane (then part of NSW), but immediately moved to the Gosford district where they would spend the rest of their lives.

Sarah died in 1879 aged 73 and Luke died in 1884 aged 79. At the time of Luke's death, they had 33 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, all in Australia. By my calculations their great-grandchildren would eventually number over 150 and not a single Wallbridge surname among them! Neither of their sons who survived to adulthood seems to have married.

My family is descended from Hannah Wallbridge's daughter Madeline Geary Henderson, who married Manasseh Ward in 1877.

The Wallbridge family arrived in Australia in the midst of the gold rush, but they were not fortune seekers and did not go to the goldfields. They were probably just seeking a better life for their family. I like to think that their descendants have had a better life than Luke and Sarah experienced in rural Dorset in the early 1800s.

Why did they come?

While researching the Wallbridge family this week I was reminded of a story that I think is at the heart of why our ancestors ended up in Australia! Luke and Sarah Wallbridge emigrated from rural Dorset to the Gosford district in 1856, following two daughters who had arrived in Sydney a few years earlier. Luke was an agricultural worker from Turners Puddle, one of several hamlets and villages along the River Piddle (not a joke) that include 'Puddle' in their name.

About the time that Luke and Sarah were welcoming their third child in Turners Puddle, a story was playing out just 4 km upstream at the village of Tolpuddle. Six agricultural workers were convicted under an obscure English law and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales.

The back story is that wages for farm workers were about to fall from 7 shillings per week to 6 shillings on the back of increasing farm mechanisation. A group of workers in Tolpuddle formed a 'Friendly Society' and vowed not to work for less than 10 shillings per week. The landowners saw such organisations among workers as a huge threat to their profits and agitated for government action to stop what was effectively an early version if a trade union.

Six of the leaders of the society were charged and found guilty of swearing a secret oath. They were transported to New South Wales for 7 years (three were assigned to the Hunter Valley). James Brine, pictured above, was singled out for particularly brutal treatment by his assigned master in the upper hunter. He was labelled 'one of the Dorchester machine breakers'.

Meanwhile back in England the six men became popular heroes, martyrs for the union cause. They were labelled the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' and 800,000 signatures were collected for their release. Their supporters organised a political march, one of the first successful marches in the UK. The public outcry worked and in 1836 the men were pardoned and returned to Britain.

Ultimately however, they won the battle, but not the war. After trying to make a living in Essex, James Brine and four of his fellow martyrs emigrated to Canada. Only one, James Hammet, remained in Dorset and he died penniless in a Dorchester workhouse in 1891.

Luke and Sarah's story is less dramatic, but the ultimate result was the same. As the industrial revolution progressed, mechanisation steadily displaced people from the working class. The first to go were possibly the cottage-industry crafters, but agricultural workers soon followed. Some would find work in the new factories, but many more would face a tough choice - move from the area where their families had lived for generations, or starve.

Some were forced into crime. Luke's brother Hervey Thomas Wallbridge was gaoled in 1841 for stealing potatoes to feed his family. Many others found guilty of such petty offences were transported to penal colonies overseas. Many moved to London, where they lived in poverty in the crowded slums. A lucky few, like Luke and Sarah, took up offers of assisted emigration to the Americas or Australia.

When I cast my eye across the list of my ancestors who came to Australia (from both my mothers's and fathers sides), they came in three waves. Many of my Ward and Parry ancestors came in the convict era between 1793 and 1840. By far the majority of these were convicts. The second wave were all in the 1850s, which I associate with the gold rush. There were gold-rush settlers among the families of my Ward, Parry and Kemp grandparents, but I have not found any that actually went to the goldfields, so they were more like industrial refugees than fortune seekers. 

The last arrival was my grandmother Isabel Stewart who arrived with her family from Scotland in 1913, and that is also a story of working-class people seeking a better life.