Whither Catherine Withers nee Scott

Joseph Withers is my husband's 4th great-uncle or, to put it another way, the brother of his great-grandmother's grandmother. Either way it takes us back two centuries.

Joseph was born in 1805 in Bristol, England. His parents were John Withers, a hat manufacturer, and Susannah Cooke. Joseph had six siblings including Ann who married Thomas Stone and migrated to Hobart, Tasmania. Their story can be found at this webpage. Joseph's brothers, John and George, stayed in Bristol and continued their father's hat manufacturing business and his younger sister, Elizabeth, married David Ryland and migrated to Victoria, Australia in 1852 but that's another story. This post is about Joseph.

Two hundred years ago Joseph Withers, his sister Ann and her husband Thomas Stone sailed from Portsmouth on the 11 June 1819 in the David Shaw heading for Sydney, New South Wales as free settlers.

The journey took four months, a long monotonous journey with only one port of call, St Jago (now known as Sao Tiago), a small island of the Cape Verde group of the west coast of Africa. Their intended destination was Port Jackson but the long journey had taken toll of Ann’s health and she was expecting their first child.

When the David Shaw berthed at Hobart Town the three young people applied to Lieutenant Governor William Sorell for permission to land and settle there. This was granted and the Lieutenant Governor reported his actions to Governor Macquarie in Sydney in a dispatch:

Mr. T. Stone and Wife, and Mr. Withers, his brother-in-law, brought no letter from the Secy. of State, and I was therefore doubtful of the propriety of allowing them to land here; but upon considering the hardship which they might feel and represent of being forced from hence at the end of a long voyage without any charge, I judged it best to accede to their application and to report their situation to Your Excellency.
It does not appear from these persons coming out that any restriction exists, and if the only means of preventing those who venture to this Country without the Secy. of State’s Authority, be that of sending them away on arrival, it would be one which in many cases would be impractible and in most involving questions which would be painful to the Chief Colonial Authority. Should Your Excellency disapprove of the permission to land, which I gave to Mr. Stone, I request to be honored with your instructions.

Less than a month after arriving in Hobart Town the following advertisement appeared which shows that Joseph Withers had found accommodation and was ready to set up in business.

Hobart Town Gazette, and Southern Reporter November 13, 1819

The Public are respectfully informed, that J. Withers, recently from England, has commenced his Business as a Cooper, at a new brick house in Bridge Street, corner of Liverpool Street, where every Article in that Line will be made in the neatest Manner, and on the most moderate Terms,—Tubs, Buckets, Pails, Churns, &c. ready made,—Jobs, and Work by the Day, performed reasonably.
N.B.—Old Casks, Staves, Iron-hoops, &c. bought, or taken in exchange.

In 1827 Joseph was the licensee of the Druid Hotel in Argyle Street, Hobart but may not have been there long because in the early 1830s he appears to have  been a crew member on whaling ships along the east coast of Australia. He was on the Dragon in February 1831 (listed as a cooper) and the William the Fourth in February 1833 (listed as crew) bound for Twofold Bay in New South Wales.

At the age of 39 Joseph married for the first time. On 24 January 1840 in St Davids Church, Hobart Town he married Hannah Mathews (nee Hurst). Hannah, aged 29, was a widow with two young boys, John aged seven and James aged two. She must have been illiterate because she signed the church register with a cross. Her husband, James Mathews, had died in 1839. [There was a man called James Matthews murdered in Argyle St, Hobart in March 1839. He may have been her husband.]

Hannah and Joseph Withers had four children: Joseph (1841), Benjamin (1843), James Frederick (1844) and Hannah (1846 who died at four weeks).

The Courier 8 Feb 1845

The family was living in Argyle St, Hobart and Joseph was working as a cooper when Hannah died 26 May 1847. She was only 36 years old but her death certificate said the cause of her death was angina. Her two boys were under six years of age and her three Mathews sons were still young. Joseph may have had sive boys in his care.

Six months later, in October of 1847, a convict called Catherine Scott asked for permission to marry Joseph Withers. Her application was approved on 23 October 1847 and two weeks later, 8 November 1847, they married at St Johns, Newtown. [The witnesses to the wedding were Benjamin and Eliza Hurst. Hurst was the name of Joseph's first wife so there is a good chance that Benjamin was her relation. Unfortunately in August 1858 Benjamin accidentally drowned and his body was found floating in Constitution Dock. He was a keeper of a public pound in Argyle Street and his wife, Eliza, took over that job after his death.]

Catherine Scott was about 22 years old and Joseph was about 47 when they married. Catherine was born at Burslem in Staffordshire in about 1825 and was working as a housemaid when, in August 1843, she was convicted of larceny, stealing money from a person, and sentenced to 10 years. She was transported to Tasmania from Woolwich on the Angelina and arrived 25 August 1844. After marrying Joseph in 1847 she was granted a Ticket of Leave on 29 August 1849 - a document, based on good conduct, allowing certain freedoms to convicts before the end of their original sentence. On 30 April 1850 Catherine was recommended for a Conditional Pardon and this was applied on 13 August 1851. Catherine was now free but was not allowed to return to England. There is no further record of Catherine at all that I can find. What happened to her?

Meanwhile Joseph must have been finding it difficult to keep his business viable. He appears to have been bankrupted in 1849.

In the 1850s, 1859 possibly, Joseph and his three sons moved to Ararat, Victoria. When he died there in 1881 at Ararat he owned several small blocks of land and his house was on a larger block. He worked as a gardener (not a cooper).

His sons all stayed in Victoria. Joseph (2) never married and died at Ararat in 1879 at the age of 38. Benjamin married Margaret Wilson at Ararat in 1864 and died in 1926 in Preston, Victoria aged 82. James Frederick married Phyllis Wilson at Ararat in 1876 and died there in 1899 aged 54. (Phyllis Wilson and Margaret Wilson were sisters, born in Scotland). Both Benjamin and James had children so there are a number of descendants in Victoria.

There are four newspaper articles that describe the location of Joseph's property in Hobart. The final one is particularly intriguing.

12 perches of land in Hobart Town, Launceston Express 30 May 1839

The Courier (Hobart) 11 Aug 1843

Launceston Examiner 19 June 1852

Launceston Examiner 10 May1882
This is the year after Joseph's death and it appears that
 Benjamin Withers, James Withers and a
William Mathews are claiming title on land in
Campbell Street, Hobart. Richard Hurst may have
been a relative of Joseph's first wife, Joseph Stone
is his sister Ann's husband but why would the
Ann Withers be listed as Ann Withers rather than Ann Stone?

Sepia Saturday: Hotel holidays

Just before the second world war, in 1938, the Phelan family (grandparents Roy and Annie, and Roy's siblings Gib and Ina) went on holiday to the island state of Tasmania across Bass Strait from Victoria. This involved hauling their car on board a ship, a much more tricky process than the drive-on ferries today. But it must have been worth it because they then had a vehicle to drive around the state.

Loading the car on to the 'Taroona' at Beauty Point after the holiday.

Several of the photos taken on the holiday are of the hotels they stayed in.

The Rainbow Chalet is in a most beautiful part of Tasmania, high up on a plateau, right beside a very big lake called Great Lake. It is an area that wasn't settled by European farmers because of the harsh climate and inaccessibility but it's been a popular fishing spot, especially since trout were introduced to the lake. It is still a sparsely populated area but there are a few fishing shacks along the edge of the lake and tourists find their way there as well. I was there about ten years ago and remember it as being very beautiful and the plants were fascinating as well. Unfortunately the Rainbow Chalet, apart from a few outbuildings, no longer exists because it was destroyed by fire at some stage. The yellow star on the map below marks the position of the chalet at Breona.

Gib Phelan beside the car, Rainbow Chalet, Breona, Tasmania

Great Lake, Tasmania

Advertisement in Advocate (Burnie) 17 March 1934

Postcard exaggerating the appeal of the Rainbow Chalet.
Source: Tasmanian Philatelic Society forum.

Advertisement in The Mercury (Hobart) 15 Jan 1938.

Another hotel the family stayed in was at St Helens on the east coast of Tasmania. It was called the Bay View Hotel and, as the name suggests, is right beside the bay. The hotel was refurbished in about 1977 and renamed the Bayside Inn and it still exists.

Loading the car, Bay View Hotel, St Helens.

Advertisement in the Examiner (Launceston) 18 Oct 1938

Bayside Inn as it is today.
Source: booking.com

This post has been in response to the theme suggested by Sepia Saturday. It's of a small inn in Cornwall, England. I suggest you follow this link to see what others may blogging about in response.

Sepia Saturday: Scout Corroborree

Christmas 1962 was done and dusted  Several days later my husband, who was 14 years old at the time, travelled with a couple of other lads from Kerang in northern Victoria down to Essendon airport in Melbourne. They flew to Hobart in Tasmania (the island State off the south coast of Australia) to attend the Scout Corroborree, a camp based at Lea. It was a big national camp so there were boys and leaders from all over Australia and beyond. (Coorroborree is an Aboriginal word that means gathering for ceremonies and dancing.)

This is a postcard Phil sent home with an x marking the location of the camp. It was probably a card produced for the occasion but unfortunately he must have put it in an envelope because it doesn't have a postmarked stamp. I say unfortunately because philatelists are interested now because there was a temporary post office established at the camp and the collectors want the postmark.

3-1-63Dear Mum DadI'm now at the post office writing this. The post card is over looking the camp I put an ink mark where we are camping but the hills a lot steeper than it looks. Yesterday Wed. we went to hastings caves had a marvellous time. Tomorrow Friday I'm going to hobart and Mt Wellington. Douglas Westland [met] the Tysons yesterday, I was on tour then missed out.

It was a very well organised camp. Phil took photos between the numerous scouting activities and excursions, and these are some of them. I don't know what camera he was using but his photography skills needed a bit of attention! (Maybe he should have done the photographers badge. If there was such a thing.) The photos aren't great but I've googled and I couldn't find any others on the web so they may be of historical interest.

This post is in response to Sepia Saturday's theme photo. My photos feature flags and tents and uniforms so it almost matches :0
Happy New Year.

Sepia Saturday: The case of the disappearing statue

A 1914 photograph of the Thomas Jefferson statue in Columbia is the theme for Sepia Saturday this week. So my contribution to the theme are these two photos taken in Huonville, Tasmania by family members from Victoria who holidayed on the island of Tasmania off the south coast of the Australian mainland in 1938. They shipped their car over and drove themselves around. I think their car is shown in the second sepia image below.

There are two photos of this bridge and it's a mystery how the first one was taken. The Huon River is fairly wide and I have snipped the Google Maps image from about half way across the bridge so I can't imagine what vantage point was used unless it was taken from the second storey of the old 'Franklin Tavern' that was and is on the south side of the river. I wonder if the family stayed there overnight. [You can click on any images to view larger.] The first bridge across the Huon was built in 1876 and was replaced by a new bridge in 1926. I don't know when the present bridge was built.

Huonville, Tasmania 1938

Image from Google Maps 2014
The red hotel on the corner still exists and externally appears to have changed little.
The red arrow indicates the position of the statue in the photos below and above.

Huonville is about 40 km south of Hobart and used to be a big apple orchard area. (Tasmania is known as the Apple Isle but it is an industry in decline.) There are still apples there but now tourism is important because it's a very beautiful part of the island. Well, actually, all of Tasmania is beautiful.

OK, I'm getting to the theme. This photo is taken from the north side of the bridge and you can see the statue to the right of the car (which I think is Grandpa Phelan's). It's a statue of a soldier holding a gun and is a memorial to the soldiers from the district who served in the Great War of 1914-1918.

Huonville, Tasmania 1938

Google Maps 2014. Arrow indicates the approximate position of the original statue.

But the statue is not there now. Where has it gone? In several newspaper items the memorial is called a cenotaph, and it appears to have still been there in the 1950s. Maybe it was moved or removed when the present bridge was constructed.

Mercury 26 Apr 1938

Mercury 17 Apr 1951

I suggest you wander over to the Sepia Saturday website to see some more sepia photos of statues around the world.

Trove Tuesday: In which Thomas Stone is assigned a convict

In my blog last week (Horfield Creek) I was chatting about the area near Bagdad in Tasmania where Thomas and Ann Stone had their property 'Horfield'. As usual I was checking the resources at Trove as part of my research and found a little snippet that adds another little piece of the jigsaw.

In 1969 Richard T Stone and Margaret M Stone published a little booklet called Early Pioneers of Tasmania: A History of Thomas and Ann Stone. They did a great job compiling information about the family and relied a lot on family letters and memorabilia as well as some information provided by the State Archives of Tasmania. There has been a lot of further research done since then by various members of the family but, as far as I know, no further publications have been published. I have a copy of some unpublished material distributed by Alex H Stone and Nancy Stone in 1992.

There is a paragraph in Early Pioneers that describes 'Horfield in 1842 when a Census was taken.

...there were three sons between seven and fourteen years living in the house, two sons between fourteen and twenty-one years, and two daughters between two and seven years. Also living in the house were three single men between the ages of forty-five and sixty years, one of these being a ticket-of-leave holder. The other two men were in private assignment. There was also a girl between fourteen and twenty-one years of age.

Do you know what a 'ticket-of-leave holder' is? This is one definition: A Ticket of Leave (TOL) was a document given to convicts when granting them freedom to work and live within a given district of the colony before their sentence expired or they were pardoned. TOL convicts could hire themselves out or be self-employed. They could also acquire property. Church attendance was compulsory, as was appearing before a Magistrate when required. Permission was needed before moving to another district and 'passports' were issued to those convicts whose work required regular travel between districts. Convicts applied through their masters to the Bench Magistrates for a TOL and needed to have served a stipulated portion of their sentence.  Convicts to Australia

So in 1842 Thomas Stone was employing a convict holding a Ticket of Leave. But on Trove I found this newspaper item from 1838 in which Thomas Stone of Constitution Hill is recorded as employing a convict, No. 1693 W Walton who arrived on the ship John 2, who had been previously assigned to J Hayes in Bagdad.

Hobart Town Courier, 30 March 1838

Transcription of the above newspaper item.

I checked the website Founders and Survivors for W Walton without success and then checked again using the convict's number 1693 and found a William Watson who arrived on the John 2 in 1833 so I'm assuming the newspaper spelling was wrong. On this website you can click on the images on the right hand side - this will take you directly to a scanned image of the original documents. Here I found that William Watson was convicted for stealing 27 shillings from his employer in London and was in trouble several times while serving his time in Tasmania before receiving his Conditional Pardon in 1842. One of the offences occurred while he was assigned to Thomas Stone -  he was convicted of misconduct because he put a beef steak in a bed and was sentenced to one month hard labour. What on earth??? Does that mean he stole the steak and hid it in his own bed, or did he put the steak in someone else's bed for revenge (as in The Godfather)?

William Watson's record recording a misconduct incident whilst assigned to Thomas Stone in July 1838.
Source: Founders and Survivors

There is also a record of Thomas Stone being fined ten pounds in 1833. Alex Stone's notes (mentioned above) state that it appears that on occasions when Thomas sent a convict employee [John Day] of the school [the Male Orphans' School where he was a teacher] in a cart to Hobart Town for stores, he got the man to drop off a load of manure or wood at his farm in Elphinstone Road just off the Main Road. Thomas petitioned the Lieutenant Governor in an attempt to have to fine remitted, arguing that he wasn't harbouring a convict. The petition was rejected because the activity hadn't been authorised by the school's committee. Ten pounds was a lot of money in 1833 so it must have had quite an impact on the family's resources.

It is said that if you have any ancestors connected with Tasmania in the 1800s you can't avoid the possibility that they were either convicts or employed convicts. It seems that Thomas and Ann Stone were definitely in the latter camp, but all is not as it seems. One day I'll write a blog about their son who married the grandaughter of a convict.

Horfield Creek

You know that childhood card game of 'Snap' where you match the pairs? Well this little genealogical exercise is a bit like that.

Thomas and Ann Stone migrated from Bristol, England to Hobart, Van Diemens Land in 1819. They lived in Hobart for a while (to keep a long story short) and moved to Constitution Hill, near Green Ponds and Bagdad in Tasmania's Midlands. They named their property 'Horfield'.

It's taken me a while to sort out the location and I still don't have a good understanding but it doesn't help that some of these names are obsolete. Green Ponds is now Kempton, Constitution Hill (the area not the hill) is now Dysart, Van Diemens Land is now Tasmania.

Bagdad area, Australia. Source: Google Maps

Constitution Hill, Dysart, Tasmania

And Horfield? Several years ago I was on holiday in Tasmania and drove through the Bagdad area just to get a feel for what the area looked like. We weren't actually doing any research because of time restrictions. But I had to stop to take the following photo because the main Midland Highway just north of Bagdad crosses Horfield Creek.

Horfield Creek, Bagdad

I knew immediately that the creek must have been named after the Stone's property. And if we go back a step, the property was named 'Horfield' after the birthplace of Thomas Stone. He was born in Horfield, Bristol, England in 1796. Prior to our visit I had no idea that there was a Horfield Creek!

Sepia Saturday: In which Annie and Roy enjoy holidays

In the 1930s Annie and Roy went to Tasmania for a holiday. They lived in central Victoria so it was a bit of an adventure. First they drove to Melbourne where they put their car on a boat (it was lifted on by crane), then they sailed to Launceston in northern Tasmania. Then they drove around the beautiful island for several weeks before doing the trip across Bass Strait in reverse.

They took quite a few photos, including this one. It's taken from a lookout near New Norfolk in Tasmania and that's the SS Cartela on the River Derwent. As the article below states, she's a famous steamer in her 'patch'. I don't think Roy and Annie went for a ride on the ship. (By the way, those are hop fields by the river.)

SS Cartela on the Derwent River near New Norfolk, 1937.

www.afloat.com.au [Sept 2012]

Also in the 1930s, Roy and Annie went for a holiday on the Gippsland Lakes in eastern Victoria. The steamers that plied the lakes were very popular with tourists, and were often the most convenient way of getting about for the locals as well. This is their photo of the SS Gippsland as she pulls into a jetty.

SS Gippsland, 1930s, Gippsland Lakes.

In 1937 the SS Gippsland left the lakes for good. I don't know what happened to her after that. But I do know what happened to Annie and Roy. WW2 is just around the corner, two of their sons fought in the Pacific, their shop burnt down, they moved to Bendigo and started a completely different phase of their lives...but those stories will have to wait for another day.

Gippsland Times 7 Oct 1937

Why don't you sail on over to Sepia Saturday to see what else is happening on the water.