General Chat

To Australia in 1874, it was a husband and wife and she was pregnant so I wonder what that meant back then, they weren't convicts as far as I know, but will appreciate your thoughts on this, thank you.

There were people required to work on the land, build etc so it could be his skills they wanted and it would be a government scheme or the Poor Law/Workhouse could pay for them to go due to lack of employment in their area. It was cheaper to pay for them to go than have to pay out for several years to keep a family.

I know there was a large scale emigration from Cornwall from the 1840's onwards, due to a potato famine, and the decline in tin mining - Cornishmen moved all over the world - many to Australia, so bearing in mind what happened in Australia, particularly from 1871 onwards, I should imagine many people with various experiences, not just mining, were needed!


From Wiki:
In Australia, silver and later copper were discovered in South Australia in the 1840s, leading to the export of ore and the immigration of skilled miners and smelters.
In 1851, gold was found near New South Wales.
More goldfields were discovered near Rockhampton in early 1867.
Gold found about 10 km south-east of Gawler in South Australia in 1868.
As settlers took up land north of Adelaide, so more goldfields were discovered in South Australia: Ulooloo in 1870, Waukaringa in 1873, Teetulpa in 1886, Wadnaminga in 1888 and Tarcoola in 1893.

From 1871, gold was found all over the place!

State to state there are variations, Kense, but it would still have been a struggle for settlers in 1874.

If they weren’t transported, I expect they were free settlers.

Do you know which state they went to?

They were in Queensland when they had their children and that is where they landed too.

Some of the unions of parishes had a policy by which they would send paupers to the colonies because this made them no longer chargeable to their own parish of settlement. It made economic sense.

I don't know very much about this but I know the parish of Petworth in Sussex was well keen on it. I think Alan Redman has published about that particular area.

Midhurst, I think, favoured Upper Canada, which was kind of the Illinois area.

Many historians believe that gold was found as early as 1823 but for two reasons these finds were not widely known:

The first being that the NSW government ‘kept the knowledge of gold discoveries from the public for fear of the effect gold would have on the convicts;’ and

Secondly, the law at that time stated that all gold discovered belonged to the government.

Anyone emigrating in 1874 would, I believe, have chosen the safer option of setting up in a town once they discovered that graziers and squatterocracy had bagged much of the best land and although the NSW govt had passed the Robertson Land Acts they still did not provide the revenue required or expected.

The pastoralists had their own way of defeating Victoria’s government. Google peacocking and dummying in Victoria.

Landowners then, as now, pay as little as they can get away with to government sources.

Kense, I am curious as to whether the baby was born on board ship?

Queensland separated from New South in 1859. If they went sheep farming there were two big shearers’ strikes to contend with there - 1891 and 1894.

I have ancestors who settled there in the latter half of the nineteenth century - almost all in urban conurbations.

OH and I sold some land we owned there just after we arrived back in England. It was undeveloped but practically on the coast and near Fraser Island. We were happy with the price we got but it has zoomed up in the last 25+ years so I hope they bought a good plot that was passed down the generations. :-D

Nothing to do with this but one of my ancestors, his brother anyway, was transported for stealing two geese belonging to a Martha Trowbridge (the Greens will get up to anything when they have had a few!).

Somebody else who is indigenous fauna, like myself, di his family history and it urned out that Martha Trowbridge was related to him. I never did like him much!

Cooked his goose then, Sharron. :-D

I have discovered many rellies of mine and OH's who emigrated to Aus or Canada. One lady married a carpenter in 1857 then went to NSW Aus, where they had 5 children. She had a long hard life after he died, and left many descendants, some of whom I have been in touch with.

Another rellie married a man who had gone to Melbourne in 1853, returned to marry her, then they both emigrated, had family there. Her brother also emigrated to Melbourne with his wife. They weren't convicts.

However one of OH's family was a convict and was sent to Tasmania in 1843. I don't know what happened to him, he seemed to have left a wife behind.

I have a distant uncle (about 6x gt) and his family who went to Australia in the 1840s. Then his niece and her brother and their families moved down under in the 1850s.

The men went to South Australia and the niece to NSW.

All went under an Assisted Farm Labourers programme, which was seemingly well funded, and apparently advertised in newspapers. I can only assume that the uncle wrote back "home" and said how good the life was compared to their life in Buckinghamshire.

The nephew had more children in SA, and a couple of the older ones married, but he, his wife and the younger children went on a Mormon ship to California. They were supposed to go on to and proselytize for the Mormons, but they stopped off in California and became "founding pioneers" and well-regarded in the San Bernadino area.


By the 1890s, the ones who had stayed in Australia had spread around, and some had prospered more than others. One was a major business importer based in Western Australia, and was Mayor of Fremantle in the early part of the 20th century.

Is there a way I can look at Electoral Register for him during the late 1800s to see his occupation and that of his sons please?

Here or there?

he will show up on census returns here but I on't know about Australia.