Hacker News Reader

Comment by JacobAldridge | Hacker News Reader

My 8x great grandmother was actually born in 18thC Knightsbridge. She stole some clothes and a spoon (which she tried to dispose of in her "privvy") and was sent as a convict to Australia on the First Fleet in 1788.

Ultimately, she would bear children to 3 men across 3 convict colonies - one of the guards on the ship en route to New South Wales, my 8x great grandfather who would become the first hangman of Norfolk Island, and a freed convict in Tasmania.

In modern London, as opposed to the London she left, that would probably earn her a reality tv show.

View on HN

Just curious, how did you manage to recover her story?

Australian governments, from the first fleet until today, have kept records of births, deaths and marriages.

In my case, I was lucky enough to connect with a distant relative who had done a lot of the research, and then confirm parts of it (I was at uni at the time - love a large library and databases!).

Her being a convict helped with the record keeping, of course - court records, ship records, habitation records on the ground. And even by the time she was freed, these were all tiny colonies* so recording everyone was pretty easy.

*How tiny? Well they evacuated the ENTIRE colony of Norfolk Island in about 1807, shipping them all to Hobart which was in need of a larger population. Even then, her daughter (my 7x great grandmother) was something like the 143rd wedding in the colony (now state of Tasmania). Compare that the USA circa 1807 which had 17 states in the union and a population of about 6 million.

The USA was settled much earlier and has turned out to be a much richer ground for british institutions -- particularly agriculture -- to flourish in.

The First Fleeters have been well researched and documented, as these people became the founding fathers (to borrow a phrase) of Australia.

I'm descended from this fellow:

http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/john-herbert.htm

who similarly spent time on Norfolk Island and then Tasmania. I expect his path probably crossed with the above great great [...] grandmother at some point.

The transcript of the court trial that sent him to Australia is available online. It looks like the whole trial lasted about 90 seconds. Reading the transcript, I learned that one of my commutes in London had me walking over the spot where he was arrested twice a day.

For Australian history from 1788 onwards, The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes is an excellent read. It also gives a good insight to British attitudes to criminality, of which traces can still be seen today in government policy, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com