Our latest book is here!

One Family History: 220 Years in Australia is the latest edition to the Irish Wattle stable. Meticulously researched by Neil Hall and Barbara Hall, One Family History is the story of a family whose first Australian ancestor was sent on the Second Fleet, arriving in Sydney in June 1790. The book tells of other arrivals, convicts and free, up to 1825; when all those from whom the current family are descended had arrived in the colony.

The family names Hall and Readford occur again and again throughout this history: but there were other family names too. In placing this family history in a broad social and historical context the book provides an interesting, detailed and easy to read story of one family in Australia. This is a family history that is contemporaneous with the history of Australia.

Unique facts and much evidence not previously published and certainly not readily available are presented in this publication. The book provides an example of good practice in family history writing. It has been thoroughly researched, it is well written and provides detailed stories and insights into the lives of convicts, their 19th-century descendants and the more recent generations, including those still living.

One Family History: 200 Years in Australia is available for purchase by contacting Irish Wattle.

The voices of Convict Sydney

Convict Sydney. Photo: Ben Mercer

Historic Houses Trust NSW has opened their latest exhibition at Hyde Park Barracks: Convict Sydney. Irish Wattle visited this impressive show earlier this week, and loved it!

Hyde Park Barracks - checking for stolen goods. Photo: Ben Mercer

Just some of the features include wonderful murals depicting life before transportation, and after arrival; a giant map that guides you through the streets of early Sydney; and touch screens allowing you to scroll extracts of the Barracks Benchbook, where crimes and sentences were recorded.

Interactive touch screen map of early colonial Sydney. Photo: Ben Mercer

Interactive touch screen mural. Photo: Ben Mercer

Details for the exhibition are below. To find out more, go to the Historic Houses Trust or follow on Facebook for updates on all their brilliant work!

Location: Queens Square, Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW 2000
Contact:   02 8239 2311
Admission: Adult $10 I Child /Concession $5 | Family $20 | Members free
Hours:  Daily 9.30am — 5.00pm

Its a great way to spend a morning and to get to know Sydney's convict past!

Spotlight on: James Meehan, convict surveyor

Above: Field Book 31: Survey of Grants and Farms, Road and River Traverses, 
Sydney Leases (County Cumberland) 1804 to 1808 (1817). 
Source: Land and Property Management Authority of New South Wales

These days every part of the world has been mapped and surveyed, and even our houses can be zoomed in on thanks to Google street view. Imagine then the role of the first surveyors in the early colony, and the significance of their findings.

One of these surveyors was James Meehan (1774-1826) from Offaly in Ireland. In 1796, when he was 22, he joined the Society of United Irishmen as a schoolteacher and surveyor. After surrendering voluntarily, he was charged with being a member of an illegal organisation and transported for life to New South Wales.

When he arrived in Sydney aboard the Friendship in 1800, he was assigned to work in the Surveyor-General’s Department where he was immediately successful. By the time Lachlan Macquarie took up his position as Governor in 1810, Meehan was holding a ticket-of-leave and was Acting Surveyor-General.

The two became good friends and Meehan accompanied the governor on many tours of the colony. Meehan was also relied on by Macquarie to enact his vision of opening up the colony through the issue of land grants.  In return, Macquarie supported Meehan’s application to become Surveyor-General of New South Wales. The British Government proved not as supportive of emancipists as Macquarie, and subsequently John Oxley was appointed in his place.

The field book pictured above dates from 1804 to 1808 and documents Meehan's work in surveying the settlement in Sydney and across the Cumberland Plain. Now thanks to the Land and Property Management Authority of New South Wales, you can explore the book online.

And more than 200 years later, a stone statue of Meehan is being made and will be placed in the wall of the heritage-listed Lands Department building in Bridge Street, Sydney later this year.

Notes: Additional information courtesy of State Records NSW and the Land and Property Management Authority of New South Wales. Field book collection, State Records NSW: NRS 13889 [SZ864]

George Massey, gentleman convict

On August 1795, the Saunders Newsletter in Dublin published a letter written by convict George Massey. In it, Massey wrote that "tea, of the quality sold [in Dublin] for 6 shillings per pound, sells [in Sydney] at a guinea, sugar 2 shillings per pound, soap 4 shillings, and bad rum 28 shillings per gallon."

Massey was a former Bank of Ireland employee who'd been convicted of embezzlement. The explanation given for his crime was that he'd recently married and launched he and his wife into a style of living they could ill afford. He tried to cover up his crime by saying she was an heiress, but the truth about him cooking the books soon became clear.

Massey was sentenced to transportation for life and arrived aboard the Sugar Cane in 1793. Read more about him in A Nimble Fingered Tribe by Barbara Hall, available through Irish Wattle.