My great great grandmother, Rhoda, featured twice on the
1841 census in Cornwall, in consecutive houses (you would think that the census
collector would have noticed) in a street of shoemakers. Four days later she set sail for Australia on
a bride ship, The Lady Kennaway and disembarked in Sydney where she settled
down to earn her living as a milliner.
Five years later she suddenly upped and took a ship to
Adelaide. She was documented as she
passed through the Port of Melbourne and again when she disembarked in
Adelaide. Three weeks later she was married
in the Wesleyan Chapel in Gawler Place to a man who claimed to be John Sexton,
Mariner. As the couple were both “of full
age” there is no record of their fathers’ names and I think that they may have
lied about their ages.
I cannot find John Sexton and I have searched diligently for
him; he is the one stumbling block in my genealogy research and I have formed
certain ideas about his origins.
Having searched the census records and done numerous
searches through Ancestry.com I decided that if he actually was a mariner that
there must be a record so I contacted the Royal Archives in Kew, London. They helpfully suggested which bus I needed
to catch to go to Kew and do my own search and it was only when I told them
that I was in Western Australia that they grudgingly looked for him.
Yes, there had been one John Sexton on record but he had
spent his whole life in the navy and at no stage went anywhere near
Adelaide - or Australia.
And here it all comes together for me. Escaped convicts headed for South Australia,
the one non-penal colony. I searched the
convict records and there were several John Sextons but they were either too
old or were deceased. New name and an
occupation which could explain where he had been prior to his marriage. I think that he reinvented himself but must
have known Rhoda in Cornwall or why did she leave and move to Australia?
Did she travel to Australia because he had been
transported and did she move to Adelaide to marry him when he managed to make
it there? I’ll probably never know.
Adelaide is described as the city of churches and I suspect that most people think that there must be a lot of church buildings there so this is a little history lesson for any overseas readers I have.
When Australia was first settled by non-indigenous people its prime use was for penal settlements. The east coast was one big state called New South Wales which encompassed Queensland in the north, down to what is now Victoria. Tasmania is the little island south of Victoria and had a couple of penal settlements: Port Arthur of massacre fame and another around Strachan. Tasmania was probably the worst place to be sent as a boat was needed to get away. Any convicts who managed to escape headed for South Australia.
The west coast had its own penal settlement centred around the Swan River. And between New South Wales and Western Australia was a strip of land stretching from the south to the very untamed north. This was in the late 1799 and early 1800s.
The south half of this strip had no penal colony and there were only free settlers and a few escaped convicts.
The official religion in England was The Church of England, founded by King Henry V111 and all official baptism, marriage and death records were gathered unto the Church of England. There were, of course various other organisations (for better or worse) such as the Methodists and the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Roman Catholics. The members of these congregations were somewhat pushed aside. As a genealogist I know that only recently have the church records from these congregations become readily available. All births, marriages and deaths had to be submitted to the official Church on a quarterly basis.
People looked to South Australia as a place where they could worship s they pleased and there was a lot of migration from various religious organisations outside the orthodox Church of England. There was a massive influx if German immigrants who settled in the Adelaide Hills and proceeded to grow grapes and produce beautiful wines. There are still a lot of Lutherans in South Australia. My great great grandfather was a Congregational minister who emigrated with his whole congregation and settled near the mouth of the Murray river.
The Afghan camel drivers, who did the trek north carrying supplies and mail, settled in South Australia and Australia is now home to some of the best racing camels much valued in Saudi Arabia. The train from Adelaide to Darwin is named The Ghan after the camel drivers who traded north across the desert.
So South Australia has a lot of churches - Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalists who have now united as the Uniting Church, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Quaker, Muslim, Chinese, etc. Not, to my mind actual buildings but churches as living entities - congregations.
I guess that it depends how one interprets the word "churches".
And the limerick:-
There once was a curate of Kew
Who kept a large cat in a pew.
He taught it each week
A letter of Greek,
But it never got further than Mu.
Last night I had dinner with an old school friend. She was not actually a friend while we were at school; she was a daygirl and I was a boarder and ne're the twain used to meet. However, like me she married a Western Australian (or moved here with her husband after they married) and lived close to me so we ran into each other quite frequently. Eventually they moved to Claremont/Cottesloe and she is now looking to downgrade. As she once said that she would like my apartment or one facing south on Level 7, with the death of Mrs 705 I mentioned that Apartment B705 would be coming on the market and yesterday she attended a 'home open' and invited me back to her place for dinner last night.
She has a beautiful house full of beautiful furniture, rugs and pictures and she will have to do a huge downgrade if she downsizes and that would be very, very hard. I was lucky in that buying off the plan I had four years to decide what would fit into the apartment I had bought and was able to shed everything I could not fit or which I did not want any more.
Anyway, during dinner a friend of hers called in and questioned me quite closely as to my connections with Adelaide. All the male members of my family went to the same school - the same one he went to and he knew my family and some friends or friends of friends. It is really quite incestuous. I am sure that things have changed now and probably for the better but it pulled me up short and made me think about my life before Western Australia. I did live over here for several years as a child so I sort of have a foot in each state but I have never felt the connection going back generations the way it did last night.
The Limerick:-
There once were some learned MDs
Who captures some germs of disease
And infected a train
Which, without causing pain
Allowed hundreds to catch it with ease.
This is a special 'corona virus' limerick.
The Claremont Quarter is refurbishing its apartment public areas and for the next three weeks it is the painting of our front doors. Mine was supposed to be painted today but by some strange Kiwi logic the painter promoted the idea that I asked for two days hence but since it was now the next day that today was when it was going to be done. So I missed knitting on account of the door had to stay open until the paint dried (7 - 8 hours) and I didn't want to leave my front door unlocked or leave the cats unsupervised with the door unlocked; not that they went anywhere while the door was wide open.
Anyway, when I tried to close the door after the paint was dry I found that when the lock was replaced it was somehow skewed so that neither key nor handles nor the little snib thingy worked and I realised that if I pushed it shut no-one would have been able to rescue me without removing the lock again. So I tied a sash around the handles so that it could not accidentally slam and first thing this morning went down a level to where the painters were and asked to have the lock properly inserted again.
During my search I found the new carpet laid out on Level 5 and it is the most dreadful smudgy leopard spots and it looks a bit fluffy which will mean that shopping trolleys will not wheel over them easily. I have suggested that the wallpaper should have giraffes and elephants to emphasise the theme.
I have been having problems with my eyes and accompanying vertigo but that seems to have cleared up and five weeks after I started trying for an appointment with my ophthalmologist I am finally going to see him next week.
On a lighter note I have acquired a whole heap of knitting yarn and have made an early start on knitting for the homeless. I have finished three pairs of wrist warmers but have not sewn them up yet (why do knitters hate sewing up?). There is no hurry - yesterday and the day before were over 40 degrees and today was 39. Sydney with its bushfires and high humidity was much worse and at least I have air conditioning.
The Limerick:-
I bought a new Hoover today,
Turned it on in the usual way,
And it made a great din
And sucked everything in.
Now I'm homeless with no place to stay.
