The Stain (3) - Oh dear, more convicts

Last night Dad and I had a look through the family tree and found two more convicts- Dad's great-grandfather David Rees, and David's father-in-law George Oliver. To recap - one of Dad's ancestors on his mum's side, Beni Griffiths, was transported for murder in 1841.

Today I found the transcript of George's court case. In 1824 he was 13 years old, and working for a mangle-maker in London, when he stole a £5 note from the cashbox. He took it to the pub to get change, then bought himself an ass. An officer found him nonchalantly riding his ass through Smithfield, and took him to the watch-house. He asked George what had happened to the rest of the £5. "He said he had bought a saddle and bridle for 16s. 6d.; also six trusses of hay, and had paid a month's rent for a stable for the ass". Thorough.

He was sentenced to death, but the prosecutor recommended mercy. It seems he remained in jail for four years, then was transported to Van Diemen's Land (now called Tasmania) in 1828. George was assigned to a landowner in the Fingal Valley. He married a free emigrant, Eliza Southwell, while still a convict. He was pardoned in 1840, and stayed in the area until he died. George and Eliza had ten children, and their eldest, Ann, married David Rees.

My dad had heard that his dad's grandfather was another convict from Wales, and last night we found his record.

 David Rees' trade is listed as "puddler", a skilled craftsman who manipulated pig iron in a furnace to create wrought iron or steel. In 1843 he was transported for "manslaughter of John Bolan in a row in Swansea". That's about all his record has to say about it. Like all the convict records, it is particularly detailed in describing his tattoos. One said "David Rees Sarah Gill". He was listed as single.

Once in Van Diemens Land, David was also assigned on the East Coast, first at Steiglitz then in the Fingal Valley in 1850. In 1854 he married Ann Oliver. William, the first of their twelve children, was born on the first day of 1856. David's record shows he was granted a conditional pardon two weeks later.

William Rees married Martha Tapp in 1878. They also had a neat dozen children, and the youngest was my dad's father Elliott (known as Didds), born in 1902. I don't remember Didds, as he died when I was a baby. I know he started his working life as a clerk at the Cornwall Coal Company in the Fingal Valley, and ended up as a successful accountant for a large woollen mill in Launceston. 

In 1934 Didds married my grandmother Ivy Enid Stubbings. Ivy's grandfather John Griffiths was born aboard the Ocean Child in 1855 as his father David and family sailed out to join his father, the bloke we started with - Benni Griffiths.

So to sum up; that's a manslaughtering puddler on Dad's father's side, and a murdering poacher on Dad's mother's side, with an additional ass-riding thief contributing to the gene pool. There'll be more criminal family revelations as they come to hand. So far Mum's side of the family are looking pretty pristine.

The Stain (2)

 

Hmm, that pretty clearly says "Transported for Murder" doesn't it?

The Stain

I had a really interesting day at work yesterday, sitting in a meeting beside historian Hamish Maxwell-Stuart. He has been working on a massive project called Founders and Survivors which we are now joining. If you are interested in convict history and genealogy, it's worth a look.

The records of the 73,000 convicts that came to Tasmania are so thorough, and so dense, that they are actually one of the best sources in the world for doing comparative research about populations. Although it is from a time before photography, the convicts’ appearance was noted in detail, together with any scars and tattoos. All of this is fascinating to dig through.

One of the things that had never occurred to me before is that any convict story found by tracing back from the descendants, is going to be an atypically happy story. Generally only successful convicts lived long enough to have children, so if there are defendants living today, they will usually be able to trace back to a convict who served their sentence, got some land and kept out of trouble.

Hamish spoke a lot about "The Stain" - the stigma of having convicts in the family, which only started to fade in the 1970s. It was a perception reinforced by the colonial government - that the convicts were here primarily because they were wicked people. The fact that they were an essential labour force for getting the new colony off the ground meant that emancipation and rehabilitation could only be allowed to go so far - it was necessary to maintain a workforce in servitude. Before 1822 freed convicts and especially their children were given land grants. After that it was realised that with their own land these people would not be a pliable and controllable workforce. Wide-ranging limitations were imposed on ticket-of-leavers. Hamish says that you can argue the thesis that today's Tasmanian working class is essentially made up of the descendants of the convicts. While people now have a different attitude to their ancestors, the effects of 150 years of shame and silence are still felt today. To quote Hamish "The stain is real. It does its job and keeps people in place".

Despite this, some families made the climb out of the despised and feared convict class astonishingly quickly. Tasmania's first premier, Sir Richard Dry, was the son of a convict. Another surprise is the density of convict ancestors. It is not unusual for a current 6th generation Tasmanian to have 30 or more convict ancestors. One of the key things Founders & Survivors is doing is relating the convict records to the data from enlistment in Tasmania at the start of World War One. One bit of research has found that of the 100 men with memorials in Soldier's Walk, Hobart, 52 had convict ancestors - mostly great grandparents.

I didn't get a chance to buttonhole Hamish about our ancestor Beni Griffiths but hopefully over the duration of the project I might be able to winkle out of him some insights into how he managed to be transported for murder - usually a straightforward hanging offence. It's interesting that although I am pretty sure this is him in the Probation Book below, his crime is listed as housebreaking.

Genealogy

Here are some pics from April 2004. Michael is about three months old, and that is my dad's mum Ibey holding him, her great-grandson. This was the last time I saw her - although she lived until November 2007. She was not recognising my Dad a lot of that time, and he thought if I went to visit it would only upset her.



I am just doing some genealogical research, spurred by a convict-heritage-y thing we are doing at work. Ibey's grandfather's grandfather Beni Griffiths was sentenced to death for murder, but that was commuted to transportation. Queen Victoria received a petition for clemency from all the jurors in his case, and hundreds of others, to the effect that nobody liked the victim much. He had informed on Benni and some of his mates for poaching, and they went to teach him a lesson. That was in deepest Wales, in about 1840.

1. Beni Griffiths - labourer, murderer, transported to Van Diemens Land 1841 aboard HMS Tortoise
2. David Griffiths - son of Benni, came to Van Diemens Land with wife, children and mother 1855 aboard Ocean Child
3. John Griffiths - b. 1855 aboard Ocean Chief. Later was Postmaster Chief Linesman at Queenstown, Tasmania
4. ? John's daughter must have married a Stubbings around 1900-1908 [Ethel Emma Cordelia Griffiths married Daniel Herbert Stubbings on 17 Jun 1903. Their daughter Ivy Enid Stubbings married Elliot Elwick Rees on 17th Feb 1934 - thanks Ruth]
5. Ivy Enid Rees - b. 1909, d. 2007 - drapery shop assistant, mother of 2
6. John Rees - b. 1936 - teacher, footballer, father of 3
7. Chris Rees - b. 1968 - graphic designer, father of 2
8. Marcus Rees - b. 2002 and Michael Rees - born 2004