All too often, when we read immigration stories written by descendants, we hear little of the actual immigration itself. Why did they leave their homeland? What was the journey like? When we delve a little deeper into this momentous portion of our ancestors’ lives, too often summarized as a set of departure and arrival dates, their story becomes richer and deeper as a result.
I hope to illustrate this a little today with some of the immigration story of John Harris and his family who came to Australia from Bristol on the 1841 voyage of the Ward Chipman.
John Harris of Shirwell, Devon
John and his wife Elizabeth (nee Trump) were from Shirwell, near Barnstaple in Devon and came from farming families. They had married in 1829 at nearby Loxhore, and Elizabeth had borne seven children, though two had died in infancy.
After the death of their sixth child James in 1837, they had moved to the busy port of Bristol, Gloucestershire where their last child Elizabeth was born. John became a policeman, recruited into the recently formed Bristol police force.
We cannot be sure what drove John to uproot his family from Devon to Bristol, and then ultimately to Australia. However, there was a lot of political unrest at the time and the economic situation was challenging. An unsuccessful vote of no confidence in the government took place that year. Ultimately the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne was to resign.
At the time of the 1841 Census, the family was living in Whittaker’s Buildings, Clifton. A government sanitation survey taken in 1850 stated that:
“the lower storey of one house is used as a public receptacle for filth“
and that the building was set into a hillside and terribly damp. It is therefore not unreasonable to believe that the family was struggling to make ends meet, and saw emigration as a potential remedy.
The Harris Immigration Story Begins
A week after the census was taken, the following advertisement appeared on the front page of the Bristol Mercury, and the decision was made to make a new start.
In order to qualify for free passage as a bounty immigrant, John had to meet the occupational requirements stated in the advertisement. He had previously worked as a mason in Barnstaple, and he stated this as his occupation in order to get his family aboard this vessel.
The Ward Chipman was scheduled to sail on August 1st, but from the very beginning, this voyage was a disaster. Poor planning meant that there were delays in Government inspections and the ship was not ready to sail on that date. Despite that, the passengers were required to remain on board for over three weeks until she finally set sail on 27th August 1841. This must have been an awful beginning to their journey, with 325 cabin passengers crammed together in the height of summer, consuming much of the water and food intended for the voyage.
Things went from bad to worse during the journey, with not only shortages of provisions and implements, but also an outbreak of food poisoning from faulty tinned food. Twenty-one people were to die on the journey, nineteen of them infants and children. Sadly, as an assisted migration vessel, there are no known surviving ship’s surgeon journals for further insight into the dreadful experience endured by the passengers. Luckily, none of John’s family succumbed.
Research tip: Don’t confine your searches of passenger lists to the page on which your ancestors appear. There is much more useful information that can be found within its pages!
They finally arrived in Port Phillip Bay on December 16, 1841. This did not however mark the end of the scandals regarding this voyage. On arrival, a claim for 4524 pounds of bounty payment was denied to Arthur Kemmis, a prominent local merchant and Managing Director of the Steam Navigation Company. Several people who had worked on the ship were also denied pay.
A New Life in Australia
After this inauspicious start to their new life, John and his family initially settled in Melbourne. He apparently bought some land on the corner of Spring and Lonsdale Streets (what would that be worth now?!). Ironically, this was either on, or immediately across from the present-day site of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
Finding the then dirty and primitive Melbourne not to their liking, their immigration story continued when they moved to the Western District of Victoria. Details of this journey and its timing are not yet known, but it must have taken place by 1845 when his eldest son William died in Port Fairy. It is highly likely that the Harris family were part of a contingent of forty families who travelled there together in early 1843 according to reports in the Port Phillip Gazette on the 25th February of that year. I need to have a dig about and see if I can find the names of those families! He took up land, and went back to his farming roots, eventually dying in 1900 in Mailors Flat, leaving behind a large and comfortably-off family.
Immigration stories – not just departure and arrival dates
When looking into the immigration stories of our ancestors, it can be really helpful to check out newspaper reports (in both countries!) and advertisements to find more detail about the voyage. They can also provide information more broadly around the political and economic landscape impacting their lives, which may have influenced the decision to leave the country. Don’t forget history books (try the Internet Archive or FamilySearch Digital Library!), both general and local which can give marvellous insight into the time and place our families were experiencing. Archives may even hold diaries and letters, if not of our family, perhaps of their fellow passengers. Dig, dig, dig!
Note to Regular Readers…
Apologies, ‘life’ got in the way for a few months and the blog suffered neglect as a result. It’s taken a while to have the mental bandwidth with everything else going on to be able to get back into the swing of regular activities. I hope to bring you more regular blogs in the coming months, though it may take a little while to become as prolific as I was previously. Bear with me, thanks for your patience!
It’s just pleasing to know you are still out there. Best wishes, Victor – from the ‘Old Country’!
Still here Victor! Just a few challenges in the last few months (along with a few billion other people!) Glad to know you’re still out there too. 🙂