ONLINE PASSENGER LISTS OF FREE SETTLERS

I have just found a new section of the State Records NSW website - Online microfilm of passenger lists of assisted and unassisted immigrants to the colony of New South Wales.
*
From the passenger list for the Asiatic, I discovered that one of my great, great grandfathers, Robert Clarke, came from the village of Postwick in Norfolk.
I already knew that his wife Elizabeth was from Wickhampton, Norfolk.
He was 21 and she 18.
Their religion was given on the passenger list as Church of England.
Elizabeth's parents, Samuel and Charlotte Smith and her two younger sisters, Sarah and Mary, who were travelling with her are Methodists.
Robert an agricultural labourer.
He was illiterate but Elizabeth could read.
*
Samuel Smith came from Cantley, Norfolk his wife Charlotte (nee Newson) and their two daughters, Sarah 13 and Mary 10, came from Wickhampton, Norfolk.
Samuel was 48 and Charlotte 41.
All but Mary could read and write.
Mary could only read.
Samuel was an agricultural labourer.

CALLING ALL MY CLARK(E) RELATIVES

After discovering the grave of young James Clark at Upper Castlereagh near Penrith last weekend, I've been delving into that branch of the family.
Sarah Mawbey's eight brothers and sisters bearing the surname Clark(e).
This has made me realise that I probably have lots of Clark(e) relatives.
I'm hoping I'll find some of their family trees on Ancestry because I don't think I'm going to have time to do too much digging for them.

FAMILY HISTORY EXPENSIVE PASTTIME

I'm now reaching the stage where I need to spend quite a lot of money purchasing births, deaths and marriage certificates.
Being on a pension and struggling to make ends meet, this is not possible unless I manage to get some paid work.
I would be very grateful to anyone caring to donate to this blog.
Only registered charities and not-for-profit organisations are able to do this, accept donations, through Paypal on their webpages.
Could anyone wishing to donate to my family history blogs please email me on mawbeyfamilyaustralia@gmail.com.
It's amazing to think that I have obtained all the existing information for free, not counting all my unpaid time and effort, which I have made available to everyone.

Interestingly, the parents of my paternal grandmother, also named Mary Ann Ewards, were living in Gundagai in 1880, the same year Herbert Thowhaldsen Edwards was born.
His parents were Charles and Mary Ann Edwards (nee Clemson nee Smith) my grandmother's parents were James and Sarah Jane Edwards (nee Tucker).
Coincidentally, James and Sarah gave birth to a son in 1880, also called Herbert.
In both cases, the boys were second children.
*
I am wondering if there was any familial link between these two Edwards families.
*
When my grandmother, Mary Ann Edwards (daughter of Charles and Sarah), turned up at Breelong West as the schoolteacher in 1899, Sarah Mawbey would have been struck by the fact that she bore the same name as her younger, twice married sister.
*
But Mary Ann did not board with Sarah Mawbey while she was there, unlike the two previous schoolteachers at Breelong, and the subsequent one murdered by Aborigines.

TWO MARY ANN EDWARDS

A rootsweb.ancestry.com WorldConnect website has a detailed family tree for Samuel Smith and Charlotte Newson, the maternal grandparents of Sarah Mawbey (nee Clark).
She and three of her children were murdered by part-Aboriginal man, Jimmy Governor, in her home late one winter's night at Breelong in 1901.
*
According to this rootsweb website, the youngest of her mother's two sisters, Mary Ann Smith, married George Thomas Clemson at Penrith on 9 March 1860.
She was only 15 at the time.
The Clemsons had seven children, all born in the Penrith district, the last in 1872.
The family then appears to have moved to Gundagai in south-western NSW where George Clemson died on 17 October 1872.
*
Two years later, the widowed Mary Ann Clemson, 29, married Charles George (known as "George") Edwards at Gundagai.
Three sons were born to Charles and Mary Ann Edwards there: Victor (George) Emmanuel, 1875, Herbert Thowhaldsen, 1879 and Ernest Charles, 1880.
Another son, Frederick Adolphus Edwards was born in 1882.
He was the father of a distant cousin of mine currently living in Melbourne.
*
Using the unusual Scandinavian-sounding name 'Thowhaldsen' as a guide in my Ancestry search for Charles Edwards, I found one from Finland.
He departed from Glasgow, Scotland on the Tamerlane and arrived in Sydney on 18 July 1873 aged 27 (b.1846).
*
My distant cousin says his grandfather Charles "George" Edwards was born on 29 March 1835 at Stepney, London and baptised on 26 April 1835 at Saint George in the East Parish Church Stepney.
His parents, and my cousin's great grandparents, were Charles Edwards (b.1810) and Lucy Maria Sennel, married 1834.
My cousin tells me his grandfather was a mariner.
Also that the Thorwaldsen was a migrant ship, bringing his wife's grandfather to Melbourne in 1851, but that his grandfather was not a passenger or crewman on it.
*
He says Charles George Edwards arrived in the colony of NSW in 1854 when he was 19.

THE SMITHS & CLARKS AT CASTLEREAGH

Yesterday I found the grave of Sarah Mawbey's older brother, James Clark, in the old Methodist cemetery on the Old Castlereagh Road near Penrith.
When I lived in the Hawkesbury in 2000-01, I drove past that cemetery many times, but did not see it because the tombstones are hidden by a fence.
Even if I had seen it, I had no idea some of my ancestors might be buried there.
*
James Clark died in 1882.
He was born in England and came here on the Asiatic in 1855 with his parents, Robert and Elizabeth Clark (nee Smith).
With them were his mother's two younger sisters, Sarah Ann and Mary Ann Smith, and the girls' parents, Arthur Samuel and Charlotte Smith (nee Newson).
*
Sarah Ann Smith, b.1840, married Thomas Appledore Jnr, an English-born son of a convict, Thomas Appledore (1) [aka George Kane] who arrived in the British penal colony of NSW in 1801 and died at Penrith in 1841.
Thomas Appledore (2) arrived in 1842, settling at Castlereagh in 1854, the year before the Smith family arrived in the district.
He was baptised in England on 6 December 1795 and had an older brother, Richard, and younger sister, Mary Ann.
His father had married Anne Jagolfe in at St Andrew's church, East Stonehouse, Devon, England in 1792.
*
Mary Ann Smith, b.1843, married twice, first to George Thomas Clemson and then, after being widowed, to Charles George Edwards.
*
This is yet another offshoot of the family I now have to investigate.

GEORGE MAWBEY DURAL SCHOOLMASTER

It has now been confirmed that my great great grandfather, George Mawbey, was the schoolmaster of the Church of England diocesan school at Dural in the district of Parramatta in 1849.
According to the 'Blue Books' of the Colonial Secretary, he had 12 pupils, 5 girls and 7 boys.
He appears to have been being paid 30 pounds per annum.
The cost of running the school was 10 pounds per annum and this was paid by the Colonial Treasury.
*
The two biggest schools listed on the same page (p.612) with 100 pupils each were Liverpool and Wollongong.
At Liverpool 67 boys and 33 girls were being schooled, and at Wollongong, 58 boys and 32 girls.
The running total at the bottom of the page is 2,373 boys and 1,733 girls.
*
George Mawbey and his family lived at Dural until around 1860, and I will try to find out more about his teaching there.