But what does it mean?

Tracing back through the family tree can be a difficult and sometimes frustrating task, particularly in early colonial Australia when record keeping was patchy and many records have been lost over the years. In addition, you have to be careful when interpreting language as the meanings of some words have changed.

A good case in point is James Lewis, the father of Sarah Lewis.

To put Sarah in context, she was one of Lena Parry's great-grandmothers on her father's side. Sarah married Thomas Watkins. Their daughter Sarah Jane Watkins married Griffith Parry and their son William Henry Parry was Lena's father.

We can trace Sarah back to her baptism in Sydney in 1802 and the record of baptism gives her father's name as James Lewis. (Her mother's name is given as Catherine Conway, but that is a  different puzzle - maybe next week?). 

It is likely that James Lewis was a convict who arrived on the Hillsborough in July 1799. I cannot be certain that this is Sarah's father, but I think it is better than 50% likely. There was an earlier James Lewis on the Third Fleet, but he had died by the time Sarah was born, so the Hillsborough James is the more likely. There are no records of soldiers or free settlers names James Lewis before this time, but that is another possibility of course. 

The James Lewis on the Hillsborough is listed in the convict records with an alias 'James Druce'. There is no explanation what this means and it is easy to jump to the conclusion that it was a criminal alias, which is how we usually use the term today. But alias literally means 'alternative name' and in historical records it was often used in ways other than the criminal sense. One use I have seen in census records is where a couple were not married and their children might be given both names. A case in point is the family of Sarah Lewis' brother-in-law, John Watkins who was listed in the 1851 census in Calne, Wiltshire:

1851 Census listing for John Watkins, Elizabeth Gee and their children. the 'do do' after george and Thomas' names means 'ditto ditto' - so 'Gee alias Watkins'.

John Watkins is shown as Head of the household, unmarried, 52 and is a Fish Dealer. He is living with Elizabeth Gee and three children. The three children (young adults) are listed with the surname 'Gee alias Watkins'! Elizabeth Gee's entry is confusing, but I read it that she was married to a labourer who was not John Watkins, but the children were John's children. (Elizabeth is listed as John's wife in the 1841 and 1861 census but there is no record of a marriage).

This is a good illustration of the dangers of applying a modern meaning to words like 'alias'. The court and prison records may have used 'James Lewis Alias Druce' because his surname was unclear. If we used the above census example, Jame's mother would have been named Lewis and his father Druce.

I asked myself where would the alias come from? It does not seem lileky that someone would give their name willingly as "Lewis alias Druce'!  So it is more likely from the criminal records, or from someone who knew him. There is nothing that I can find in the criminal records, but there was someone who knew him!

The constable who testified at the Old Bailey trial said 'I am certain of his person, because I knew him before'. So perhaps by giving his name as 'alias Druce' he was implying something else entirely. 'Not only is he a thief, but also a bastard'. It is not at all unusual for people to carry the stigma of being illegitimate for their whole life! 

The reference to an alias has sent some family historians off on a tangent looking at the activities of 'James Druce' There was one such convict who was a notorious character who was constantly escaping and causing mayhem.

There is no evidence that our James Lewis ever used the alias in the colony and there is good circumstantial evidence that he was well-behaved and trusted by the authorities. In 1806 he was sent to Hobart as an overseer of the goal gang and while there he married Susan Shadwick, a woman with whom he had been linked in Sydney (she may be Sarah's mother). 

After being in Hobart, James returned to Sydney and worked at various times as a seaman and a carrier. He also worked for former convict and Sydney entrepreneur, Simoen Lord. 

The final chapter in James' life begins in April 1823 when he sails aboard Fame bound for Port Stephens, north of Newcastle. Employed by entrepreneur and former convict Simeon Lord, James was a member of a 25-man timber-cutting party sent to cut cedar. Shortly after arrival at Port Stephens, James Lewis was appointed a special constable on Pelican Island, a small island today marked on maps as Dowardee Island. Some correspondence survives about instances of smuggling of alcohol on the Island, and James was asked to seize the contraband and prevent any boats from leaving until the Commandant at Newcastle contacted him.

The following year in February 1824, 11 men appeared in Newcastle and were taken before the Court for being at large in the settlement in defiance of regulations. They claimed that they had fled Pelican Island after one of their party had been killed by the natives and their huts had been ransacked. The man who had been killed was James Lewis.  He was 47 years old. We will never know whether James was killed by the indigenous people, or whether this was just a tale to cover up his murder by the smugglers.

So was the James Lewis who died in 1823 my 4th great-grandfather? I think he probably was, but the evidence falls just a bit short of my standard for stating it as fact. Perhaps one day DNA evidence will emerge that will prove it one way or another, but at seven generations from me, it is towards the extremes of current DNA technology. Proof would also require tracing back at least one further generation.