Links to Australia's First Fleet & its light-fingered passengers

A TIMELINE TO SOME FIRST FLEETERS AND COLOURFUL FAMILY HISTORY

On 13 May 1839 Jane McManus who was 20 years old (and who had been born in Paramatta, New South Wales) married James Johnson in St John’s Church, Paramatta. James who was 26 years old had been born in England. It is probable that he arrived in Australia as a free settler in 1824 aged 12, accompanying his mother Sarah who was a servant to Thomas Clarkson. In the 1828 NSW census, he was listed as a carpenter’s apprentice.

In 1845 James and Jane moved to Auckland where he was employed as a cabinet maker by David Nathan.

The Johnsons went on to have 6 children, one of whom Lucy Catherine Johnson (1851 – 1921) married Robert Cossey Pidgeon (born 1836, Kenton, Devon – died Mangapai, NZ 1910). In the succeeding generation, Charlotte (1878 – 1914) one of the daughters of Lucy and Robert married Frank Clifford Smith (1873 – 1952) – and their daughter Mabel Eliza Smith (1906 – 1960) went on to marry Harold Thompson Joll in Northland, New Zealand in 1930. Harold and Mabel Joll are among the maternal great grandparents of my older sons Matthew and Peter Johnson.

But setting aside the regular cascade of worthy NZ ancestors from the 1850s, there is some much more interesting Australian family history associated with Jane McManus.

It starts though with Jane’s law abiding father James McManus Jr. (born Paramatta 1794) who married Lucy Bradley on 7th April 1814. James was a Police Magistrate in Bathurst where he apparently caught a highwayman / bushranger showing considerable bravery. He ultimately spent the last 10 years of his relatively short life in Paramatta Asylum but Lucy died at the age of 81 in November 1871 at Meadow Flat, NSW.

Going back a further generation things become more altogether aristocratic from an Australasian stance.

We find that James’ father James McManus Sr. narrowly avoided conviction for theft in 1790 even though he had arrived in Australia with the First Fleet on the ‘Sirius’ as a Private in the Marines. During his guard duties on board, he appears to have formed a relationship with the mother of his children Jane Poole. Jane had been convicted of stealing a silver watch and other goods valued at 15 shillings in Wells, Somerset in 1786 – and had been transported after her death sentence had been commuted.

Nor can we count Lucy Bradley’s family as aspiring angels. Both Lucy’s father James Bradley (1764 – 1838) and her mother Sarah Barnes (1775 – 1853) were also convicts. James Bradley had been convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing a handkerchief valued at 1-2 shillings around 1785.

And Sarah Barnes had been convicted in the same court in 1790, as a 14-year old, of stealing 8 quart pewter pots valued at 8 shillings and 5 pint pewter pots valued at 2 shillings from ‘The Plough’ Pub in Bloomsbury.


Drawing on the information that has been handed on to me by the Joll family, I’ll summarize what is known about the roles that the family members played in the early history of New South Wales.

JAMES BRADLEY AND SARAH BARNES

James Bradley arrived as a convict on the First Fleet on the ‘Scarborough’ which carried 208 male convicts. The ship left England on 13th May 1787 and arrived at Sydney Cove eight months later on 26th January 1788. Her master was John Marshall, and the surgeon was Dennis Considen.


By the beginning of 1789 food stocks were extremely low, the first crops having failed and relief ships having foundered. Governor Phillip put the entire colony on strict rations but thefts were endemic. On 23rd April 1789 James Bradley was given 25 lashes for insolence to a sentry but, overall, he was said to have behaved in a ‘tolerably decent and orderly manner’.

James Bradley’s sentence expired in 1794 and he was granted an Absolute Pardon on 5th September 1821 by Governor Macquarie – some 33 years after his arrival in Australia. It appears that by this time he was highly regarded in the Wesleyan Church as a preacher and Sunday-School teacher – and that he fell foul of the Anglican cleric Samuel Marsden as a consequence of attracting children away from the church.

James received a land grant of 30 acres at Eastern Farms, Hunter’s Hill near Kissing Point on the Paramatta River (the area is now known as Putney) – and in 1798 he gave evidence to a Government Inquiry on the problems faced by small farmers. According to the 1800 Census, he had two and a half acres in wheat and 5 acres in maize. By the next year, he had cleared a total of 15 acres, possessed 3 hogs and had 20 bushels of maize in store – and he was recorded as still living on his farm in 1828.

James wife Sarah Barnes who had been caught red-handed at the melting down of the stolen pewter ale pots arrived in Sydney on the 9th of July 1791 after 5 months at sea on the ‘Mary Ann’, which had sailed alone just ahead of the Third Fleet. Nine of the 155 convicts on the voyage died at sea.

James and Sarah were married in 1792 and they had 10 children (James 1792-1793; James Joseph b 1795, married Amy Greenwood; Lucy b 1796 married James McManus; Sarah Elizabeth b 1799 married John Berringer; George 1801 – 1829; Thomas b 1803; John b 1806 married Charlotte Dallison; Job Joseph b 1809 married Elizabeth Downs; Rachel Rebecca b 1811 married William Lynn and Samuel Small); and Isabella b 1813 married James Wright).

JAMES MCMANUS (Senior) and JANE POOLE

Private James McManus (Marines) departed with the First Fleet on the ‘Charlotte’ but arrived on the ‘Sirius’. Two years later he was jailed for stealing a chest of personal articles from a fellow marine. He tried to kill himself on arrest but only succeeded in scarring himself.

He was subsequently formally acquitted of the charge but discharged from the Marines – and in the wake of the disgrace he took up a grant of 60 acres of land on Norfolk Island in 1790. However, he returned to Sydney and was accepted as a Private in the NSW Corps. He was granted 65 acres of land in Mulgrave Place by Governor Hunter.

Jane Poole (who married James McManus) arrived in Sydney on the ‘Charlotte’ on 26th January 1788. As already noted, it seems that she started he relationship with James on the ‘Charlotte’ – and he may even have been transferred to the ‘Sirius’ to break it up. On the 2nd January 1790, she travelled to Norfolk Island on the ‘Supply’ to work as a servant – and presumably keep company with James.

The ‘Charlotte’ was a First Fleet transport ship of 335 tons, built on the River Thames in 1784. She was a light sailer, and had to be towed down the English Channel for the first few days of the voyage. Her master was Thomas Gilbert, and her surgeon was John White, principal surgeon to the colony. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 88 male and 20 female convicts.

As one of the small number of female convicts, Jane would have got to know the Cornish convict Mary Bryant (nee Broad) very well. Having been transported for highway robbery, Mary took up with another of the ‘Charlotte’s convict passengers William Bryant when they arrived in Sydney – William was also from Cornwall where he had worked as a fisherman.

On 28 March 1791, William, Mary, her children and a seven-man crew stole one of the governor's boats and after a voyage of 66 days, they successfully reached Kupang in Timor. This was a truly epic trip that involved navigating the then uncharted Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Straits.

The Bryants and their crew claimed to be shipwreck survivors but were discovered after William became drunk and confessed in the process of bragging. They were sent back to Britain by the Dutch to stand trial. Expecting to be hanged, Mary Bryant was instead imprisoned for an additional year in Newgate Prison, during which time a public outcry ensued, coupled with an onslaught of publicity by the famous Scottish writer and lawyer James Boswell.

As a result, she was pardoned in May 1793, as were the four surviving men of her crew later. Boswell (accused by wags as having designs on her) gave her an annual pension of 10 pounds - but nothing more is known of her life after her release.

BOTANY BAY

Farewell to old England forever,
Farewell to my rum culls as well,
Farewell to the well–known Old Bailey
Where I used for to cut such a swell.

Chorus:
Singing too-ral, li-ooral, li-addity,
Singing too-ral, li-ooral, li-ay,
Singing too-ral, li-ooral, li-addity,
And we're bound for Botany Bay.

There's the captain as is our commander,
There's the bo'sun and all the ship's crew,
There's the first– and the second–class passengers,
Knows what we poor convicts go through.

'Taint leaving old England we cares about,
'Taint cos we mis-spells what we knows,
But because all we light–fingered gentry
Hops around with a log on our toes.

These seven long years I've been serving now
And seven long more have to stay,
All for bashing a bloke down our alley
And taking his ticker away.

Oh had I the wings of a turtle–dove,
I'd soar on my pinions so high,
Slap bang to the arms of my Polly love,
And in her sweet presence I'd die.

Now all my young Dookies and Dutchesses,
Take warning from what I've to say:
Mind all is your own as you toucheses
Or you'll find us in Botany Bay.

SITE OF JAMES BRADLEY'S FARM TODAY
[House for sale at Delange Road, Putney/Kissing Point, Sydney for $A 1.5m ++]