Assigned convicts

This week I was writing up a section of Robert Henderson's story. The section was broadly about the convicts and other people that Robert employed and there are quite a few small snippets of information from a range of sources. Piecing them together, they tell a story of a man who looked after people who were loyal to him, but would not hesitate to pursue those who betrayed his trust.

It is a slow process to pull together the threads of information from different sources. Each source gives a different slant on the picture. This week I found records of convict assignments published in the Government gazette between 1830 and 1840. Some of the assignments make perfect sense from what we know about Robert's activities, but two raised my eyebrows just a bit:

• In 1833 he was assigned a house painter, so maybe this was when he was building the new house at Veteran Hall?
• Later in 1833 he was assigned two labourers.
• In 1834 he was assigned a shoemaker. A shoemaker?
• In 1835 he was assigned a seaman and this fits in with his expanding shipping business at that time.
• In 1839 he as assigned two more labourer's and a tailor!

I wonder if the tailor was in preparation for Robert and Catherine's move to Sydney? Were they preparing for more social activities in the growing town (he said with a smile)?

Of course I am not even sure that Robert was asking for these particular skills or whether it was just the luck of the draw. My thinking is that they would not publish the trades if it was not relevant, so I think he probably wanted a tailor or something similar.

I am also aware that we might misinterpret the trades and occupations of that time and what they did. I noticed that the only convict assigned to William Ward in these lists was a 'metal fork maker'! I assume this was garden forks, because a maker of household cutlery was a 'cutler' (I did see one cutler assigned to someone else). Many of the trades common in the 1830s are now extinct, or at best maintained by a small band of historical enthusiasts.

Another resource that I found were lists of 'absconding' convicts that were published in the newspapers. William Billett ran away from Robert's employ in 1830 and Robert Mitchell absconded in 1833.

I have also looked at Ticket of Leave records – Robert supported applications for James Freeman, Robert Forsey and James Franks. These records are hard to find, because they are not indexed under Robert's name. I discovered these three while trolling through the Brisbane Water Police Letter books.

There may also be information in the convict muster lists, but once again, they are indexed under the convict's names only. In one muster I found four convicts listed with Robert, all with names starting with 'F' (Freeman, Forsey, Fordy and Franks). 

I am getting closer to the first draft of Robert's story. After I finish this section, there us just one more on his time as a publican to complete, and most of the research for that section has already been done.