To Tasmania they came

My interest started when my Mum mentioned she'd love to know where her mother's people came from. She knew her father's side came from Dunfermline ( a fact totally unknown to her siblings, I discovered - but correct I later found.)
So I booked surprise trip 'home' to Tasmania from NZ to go looking. Unfortunately, only 2 weeks before, Mum was raced to hospital with a pulmonary embolism that she didn't survive. That was 1996 and the very last time I ever booked a 'surprise'.
Instead, I decided to continue to find out for her - and my entry to the wonderful world of genealogy started right then. Hours and days spent in the reference library; expensive CDs of BDM records bought as that was cheaper than return airfares; and slowly but surely I teased out the story of the family from East Tisted and Ropley whose son, after being transported for horse stealing (unfortunately the court records don't exist, just the transportation ones) sponsored his brother - my ggg grandfather way back in 1854. My grandfather's wife's lineage went back to the purchase of oats with a forged note in Glasgow in 1828 leading to transportation - a statutory result at the time, with a judge calling for the forgers, not the housewives, to be brought before him. Her husband and elder daughter caught a boat to join her some 3 years later.
As my profile on Ancestry says:
A 6th generation Tasmanian who got bitten by the 'where did I come from' and 'why did they leave' bug many years ago.
Along the way, the Irish mob have proven the most elusive thanks to the paucity of records - Burke and Lyons from Galway; Hannon and McNamara from Limerick, Long from Carlow.
Cornwall gave me Cayser, Chilcott, Medling & Thomas.
From Fife in Scotland came Moir, Findlay, Bell, Donaldson & from Lanarkshire McDonald and Wotherspoon;
Yorkshire - Best, Bateman, Butterfield & Thompson;
Somerset - Loney
Warwickshire - Britton, Salter
London - Corke, Courtney
Hampshire - Bricknell and Pullinger - and just for a change Stammer and Doerfle from Germany.

A true antipodean mixture.

 

Ah, the Antipodean delight of those who emigrate first and then marry... Although, I'm the strangest of all things, an Australian without convict ancestors...

That is a wonderful story all the same, I'm sure your mum would have loved it.

 

Hi Sue, I also have Batemans from Yorkshire. Mine lived close to Bradford and Halifax, from about 1720; before that I suspect they were near Wakefield. Where were yours from? Cheers, Fern

 

Absolutely Bradford and Halifax later. I have them starting in Shelf - Jonas abt 1710-1790; next William 1747-1817; next Benjamin (Northowram) 1779-1821 to finally ggg grandmother Ann 1818 in Huddersfield-? who married Miles Butterfield 1835 Bradford.

 

Fascinating! Shelf is a very familar placename, but I think my line is a slightly different branch from yours. We're probably connected a bit further back, though - so hello distant cousin My earliest known Bateman is Jonas who died November 1741 'in his 86th year', so probably born abt 1656; he married Susanna Wood at Wakefield in 1701, then lived at Northowram and later at Wyke. Their son Jonas 1705/1706-1755, who was married to Judith Mann, lived at North Bierley ... after that, three generations of the first Jonas's descendants married men in my Fearnley line. The two families must have liked each other a lot!
I also noticed you have Best ... and that rang a bell too. It's ages since I've done any Bateman research, so I had a dig around in my notes and found an indenture from 1735 which involves "Jonas Bateman the elder of Wike" and a Richard Best. Do you have a Richard Best around that time? I think this Richard Best had another connection to my Batemans, but I can't lay my hands on it right now. I do remember trying to work out who he was, and getting nowhere!