Australia's Colorful Convict History but Wait - Did America Get the Convicts First?

History

Do We Put an "Acceptable Filter on It or Tell it Like it REALLY Happened?"
Should We Tell the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth?

The Real Truth Behind Australian and American Early Convict Histories

My friend Tracy - Proud of her Convict Ancestry

Hello Elementary Friends,

In previous blogs I have shared that I am fascinated with the history of Australia.  I have read about the early settlement in the late 1700's and how the country has grown to be the modern, enterprising, industrious, and thriving continent that it is today.  During our time here, Mitch and I have been interested to learn that approximately one out of every five Australian citizens has a member of their ancestry who was associated with the convict transport program of Britain to Australia from 1788 until the 1860's.  Tracy Morgan is a Year Four teacher at my school, Beaumont Road.  One day over lunch she started telling me about her family history, and I was intrigued by her story.  I asked her if I could write about it in my blog, and she said, "Sure - No Worries!"  So - I will tell you about Tracy's family a bit later in the blog, but first, a bit of education about the British Convict Transport Programs to both Australia and to America!

Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 164,000 convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government.

But, the British government began transporting criminals to overseas colonies in the 17th century. 

So, where did Britain send their excess criminals prior to sending them to Australia?

Here is a bit of interesting Australian and American history for you as outlined by "Paleofuture" and Wikipedia:

The joke about Australia is that it was founded by a bunch of criminals. And from 1788 until 1868, Britain did send roughly 164,000 convicts to the land down under. America’s dirty little secret? The same exact thing was happening in the US! In fact, experts estimate that over 52,000 British prisoners were shipped off to colonial America.

Britain had been shipping convicts to America for decades before they started sending them to Australia. In fact, it was precisely because of America’s fight for independence that the Brits had to start sending their criminals to Australia. But from 1718 until 1775, convict transportation to the American colonies flourished. Some estimates claim that almost 10 percent of migrants to America during this time were British convicts.

Typically, getting banished to America was for a term of either seven or fourteen years, after which the convict could theoretically come back the Britain. Escaping home early, however, was punishable by death. And it wasn’t just men. Some female convicts were transported to the American colonies as well, for crimes such as being “lewd” and “walking the streets after ten at night.”

Many Australians have more or less embraced their convict history. But if you’re an American who had no idea that your country’s founding included a huge prison population, you’re not alone. Historically, Americans have not been too keen on discussing the fact that convicts came to what would eventually become known as the United States.

Americans have rather romantic ideas about how our country was founded. We’ve long been fond of the mythology surrounding persecuted people freely traveling to the New World and building the greatest country on Earth. But, like all history, it’s much, much messier than that. Our history includes plenty of genocide, slavery, and just a dash of prison folk — and the latter may be news to many Americans who wouldn’t hesitate to make jokes about Australia being populated by the descendants of criminals.  Shipping criminals halfway around the world was part of America’s disreputable history, too.

When transportation to the American colonies declined with the move towards American independence in the 1770s, an alternative site was needed to avoid further overcrowding of British prisons. In 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Due to the continent's isolation, it was considered ideal for a penal colony, and in 1787 the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 26 January 1788 to found Sydney, the first European settlement in Australia. Other penal colonies were established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and in Queensland in 1824, while Western Australia, established in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly in the following decade. The last convict ship arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.

Many convicts were transported for petty crimes while a significant number were political prisoners. More serious crimes, such as rape and murder, were punishable by death, and therefore not transportable offences. Once emancipated, most ex-convicts stayed in Australia and joined the free settlers, with some rising to prominent positions in Australian society. However, the so-called "convict stain" would be a source of shame until well into the 20th century, contributing to Australia's "distinct ambivalence" towards its own history. Attitudes have since become more accepting and it is now considered by many Australians to be a cause for celebration to have a convict in one's lineage. The convict era has inspired famous novels, films and other cultural works, and the extent to which it has shaped Australia's national character has been studied by many writers and historians.

As Blogger and Editor Tony Burke put it:

Anyone who expects those with convict ancestry to be the slightest bit embarrassed about our colourful heritage misunderstands the Australian character.  Our larrikin spirit, willingness to question authority and knock down tall poppies is all connected to the former penal colony we live in.

It's also part of our willingness to take people at face value and give each other a fair go.

I've been asked many times whether I'm offended when someone takes a swipe at my convict heritage.

I would never want to change who we are as Australians.

How we got here, whether our ancestors were always here, came last century or last week, is part of who we all are as a nation.

Now - a bit of Tracy's family history!

Here is what Tracy has discovered about John Nichols - in her ancestry on her mother's side.  
"He was born in 1755.  John worked as a servant and porter's assistant with West and Thomas, Wholesale Perfumers of 46 Grace Church St in London.  On the 21 April 1784 he was tried at the Old Bailey Court in London for stealing hairdressing goods.  These 57 razors, 12 pairs of scissors, 22 boxes of soap and a looking glass, together with ribbon, combs for human hair, powder and powder puffs to the value of fifteen pounds and sixpence.  He was found guilty and sentenced to seven years "transportation" to Africa. Whilst waiting for his departure John was housed on the prison hulk, Censor.  Because of problems with the penal colony in Africa, John's destination was changed to Botany Bay, Australia, and he eventually set sail on the Scarborough, one of the First Fleet ships, on 13 May 1787. The First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788."  

Here is information on Ann Pugh who arrived in Sydney Cove on board the Earl Cornwallis on 12 June 1801.  Ann had been found guilty of stealing and sentenced to seven years transportation.  By 1802 Ann was living with John Nichols.  They married on 26 August 1803.  They had twelve children before John died on 24 December 1832.  Ann passed away on 10 July 1849.

A later (even more lively) relative of Tracy's is Ann Louisa Nichols who was born at Peterborough (later Shellharbour) on 11 January 1831.  She was the first of her family to be born on  reflectthe South Coast and was regarded in family traditions as the that fabled creature "the first white woman born on the Illawarra."  While an exaggeration, this claim reflects the pioneering nature of her parents' lives.  Ann was not baptised until 23 May 1836, by which time her father had left the employment of WC Wentworth and was farming at Shellharbour.  Among their neighbours was John Bradney who had previously married Ademia Henry at Sydney on 14 MArch 1843 and commenced farming at Jamberoo.  Then, in 1850 when aged 19 Ann gave firth to the first of her 11 children to John, a fortnight before

Ademia presented him with their fourth.  Whether John lived openly with two women will never be known.  Perhaps Ann and her growing family were supported by her parents and siblings.  Three of her early children were registered as Pugh, two as Nichols and the rest were not registered at all.  Even when Ademia died in 1863 John and Ann did not marry immediately - they wed at the Church of the Resurrection Jamberoo on 9 June 1869, the day before the birth of their tenth child.  How John supported his two large families is difficult to imagine as his only known source of income was from his farm.  Family tradition has it that Ann and her family supported themselves by weaving cabbage-tree hats that were sold to travelers at the side of the road.  Ann and her son John would disappear for days to collect the fronds or to deliver the goods to Sydney for sale, while the younger children would be left to produce wares.

When John died from dropsy on 2 January 1872 he had fathered 21 children.  Ann's 10 surviving children were aged from 21 years to 12 months at the time of the death of their father.  The next seven years must have been difficult ones by on the 8th July 1879 Ann married Samuel Clarke, a wealthy widower with extensive land holdings at Yellow Creek and Stockyard Mountain, between Albion Park and Jameroo.  Samuel was 25 years her senior, but the marriage would have brought Ann great security; her three youngest sons were given some schooling and most of her older children and their spouses either lived or worked for a time at the Clarke's.  Samuel died in 1901.  By this time all her children were married, and Ann moved to Sydney to live.  She often drove herself in horse and buggy to visit those of her family still living in the Illawarra.  She died at the Newtown home of her daughter Emma Hearne on 4 September 1914 aged 83 and was buried with her daughter Louisa Hunt's family at Rookwood.

As Tracy was telling me this spirited story of her relatives, I could see the smile on her face - she believes that her history along with so many other Australians is part of who she is and is part of of what has made Australia great.  Here are traits often associated with the people of Australia:  Individuality, Equality, Directness, Punctuality, and Tolerance.  I can attest that these traits and many other positive ones have been experienced by Mitch and me during our seven months here!

Now for Those of You Who Like our Cockatoo Stories...

Who is Cockatoo #69?

On Our Balcony This Week

Research is currently under way that involves wing-tagging Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) within the Sydney region, Australia. Our aim is to learn about the Cockies' behaviour: site-loyalty, population size and foraging, roosting and breeding habitat preferences.

Wingtags allow all of us to identify individual birds and contribute to the research aiming to learn about their behaviour. We encourage everyone who encounters a Cockie with wingtags to report their sighting as this helps us learn more about the bird’s behaviour.

This research commenced on 16th September 2011 when ‘Columbus’, Cockie 001, was tagged within the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. To our knowledge this study was the first time plastic cattle-ear tags* had been fitted to a parrot. Cockatoos have powerful beaks we had concerns that the tags wouldn’t last very long. However, our worries were unfounded; Columbus (001) is regularly resighted and the tags remain intact. This hasn’t been the case for all 100 tagged birds; some have partially chewed tags, others have removed one tag and still others have removed both tags. Overall wingtags has worked well and allowed us to collect a lot of behavioural data and engage members of the community to report their sightings.

The idea for this research was born in December 2010 when John and Adrian drove from Sydney to Canberra to attend the Ecological Society of Australia conference. At the time Adrian was in the middle of his doctoral research looking at how parrots have colonised and adapted to the urban environment. Sulphur-crested Cockatoos have changed their distribution over the last 20 years, expanding from remnant woodland areas to be common across the Sydney region. However, no studies had assessed Cockies' behaviour in either natural woodland habitats or the recently colonised urban environment. Importantly, tree hollows are a limited resource in urban areas as there are fewer large old trees; remnant eucalypts in particular are naturally pitted with hollows of various size and shape, the hollows large enough for a Cockie to nest in can up to 100 years to form. Hollows are integral to Australian fauna as over 300 species rely on hollows for shelter for reproduction.

In 2014 we commenced GPS tracking existing wing-tagged Cockies aiming to learn more about their behaviour, specifically foraging, roosting and habitat preferences. The wingtag resighting data has allowed us to learn a lot about the birds' movements and in particular their foraging movements within urban areas. However, we have recorded few records of the birds using natural areas for the obvious reason that few people are around to record the birds' presence. With the GPS transmitters we aim to determine if the birds use urban areas more frequently than natural areas. The transmitters we are using weigh 20g (this equates to ~2.5% of the mass of a 800g cockatoo), are solar powered and can record a GPS position up to every 30 minutes. The data collected is transmitted via the GSM mobile phone network each day so we can see in almost real-time the bird’s movements. The ability to track existing wing-tagged birds enables us to compare their known movements from reported sightings with the GPS movement data. Birds are tracked for a short period (e.g. 1-3 months) and then recaptured to remove the transmitter.

So - of course I had to snap the photo and send it in to the WingTag Project!  Just a little scientific research along with my teaching job here!

Finally, one day this week I was able to get home from school a bit earlier than usual, so I took a walk in my neighborhood.  It was a lovely walk, and I was astounded at how green everything is here in the middle of the winter.  I also snapped these photos of the beautiful flowering trees and shrubs right near my home!  Enjoy, and take care dear friends!