This introduction for Your Australian Grannies is written as a family history that I am often asked for by my children and wider family. It is told so as to put the family story into context. In the introduction I haven’t included everything that happened, and being a grandma and great grandma have chosen in the book to concentrate on telling the women’s story believing the men’s story is well told and recorded. Each of my grandchildren and great grandchildren they will have Australian Grannies I have not written about, and my challenge for them is to find out these grandmas’ stories and record them. You will find in this short history of the families the number of children recorded because this very much part of the women’s story, and I have recorded most of ships people travelled to Australia on. Another challenge for future generations is to write a history of the ships our family sailed.

In 1787 the First Fleet sailed for Botany Bay and on board the Lady Penyhrn was a young woman convict Jane Langley from London and a sailor Philip Scriven. Before the ship arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 they had a little girl Henrietta. Henrietta was the only child born on the First Fleet known to have current Australian descendants and my grandchildren her descendants are ninth generation Australians. Philip Scriven was not allowed to stay in the new colony and had to leave Jane and his little girl, he was very sick when he left and the records indicate he died a few weeks later.

Jane and Henrietta were sent to Norfolk Island in 1790 on board the Sirius because of a shortage of food in Sydney. While on the island Jane married a marine named Thomas Chipp, and Jane brought up another five daughters. The family moved back to Sydney in 1794 on board the Daedalus.

Henrietta grew up and married a convict Edward Fletcher in 1807. Edward Fletcher had been transported from Portsmouth in 1803 on the Minorca. After he had served his sentence Edward became the constable at Minto. Henrietta had also been granted land and a cow at Campbelltown. They had six children and my grandchildren are descended from the fourth child Susanna, the third child was Eliza who married William Pearce. Their home was Bella Vista at Pearce’s Corner.

Susanna married William Chapman the son of Robert Chapman a convict. Robert came to Australia on the Barwell in 1798. Robert married Elizabeth Tebbutt the daughter of a soldier. The Tebbutts had come to Australia in 1801 on the Nile from London. Elizabeth’s nephew was the famous amateur astronomer John Tebbutt. His portrait was on the old $100 note. Robert Chapman was killed when he was thrown from a horse in 1815 and Elizabeth was left with their two surviving young children to bring up. Elizabeth had worked for Rowland Hassall before her marriage and went back to Hassall’s to work as the housekeeper. Eventually she married a convict farmer, John Ashcroft, and had another nine children. William Chapman prospered in his business and had grazing properties in the Riverina and Goulburn area and sent all his sons to King’s College, Parramatta. William and Susanna had a family of ten children. Their second eldest daughter Susannah married Cyrus Edmund Smith the sixth son of John and Emma Smith of Birnam Wood near Singleton.

John Smith’s first farm was at Toongabbie. 1810 to 1822 John leased land from the government and ran cattle on it. He wasn’t allowed to sow crops and was refused permission to build a house on the lease. Two of his brothers and his brother-in-law also had cattle grazing leases. John, Robert and James all lived at home with their parents at Baulkham Hills, which in those days was sometimes called Toongabbie; their sister Mary and her husband James Elder lived at Parramatta. Their house was altered in 1887 to become the second Woolpack Hotel, which is the present day hotel.

John’s father was also John Smith. Mary and John Smith with four small young children had come to Australia in 1798 on the Barwell to work as a carpenter. The official who had arranged the contract had left the colony, and instead of the contract John was given a grant of land at Baulkham Hills which he called Torrie Burn after the village on the Fife where he was born. John had married Mary Harley at St. Cuthbert’s Midlothian, Edinburgh on 27th July 1784 and where their four eldest children were baptised. Today there is a sports oval and park where the farm used to be, and Baulkham Hills Shire has a heritage trail and plaques showing where the farm stood. Mary and John Smith had another four children after they came to Australia. Young John grew up in Baulkham Hills, as did the girl he married.

Emma Maria Doyle came from the farm next door to Torrie Burn. Emma probably was born in Toongabbie soon after her parents came to Australia. Emma’s father was Andrew Doyle, a convict from Dublin who came to Australia in 1803 on the Rolla, his wife Sophia and three children accompanied him. Sophia applied for a grant of land and was granted it at Seven Hills — Baulkham Hills was sometimes called Seven Hills. What remains of Sophia’s grant today is called the Sophia Doyle Reserve and is just across the road from the Torrie Burn Oval and Park. Sophia was also granted Andrew as a servant. Andrew was a very clever artist and some of his drawings survive to the present.

John and Emma had a farm at Sackville Reach, Colo River. In 1833 they moved to the Hunter Valley and established a property Birnam Wood near Singleton. They had another property Torry Burn west of Armidale at Bundarra. Drought and bad debts forced John to sell it to Charles Blaxland so the Bank of New South Wales wouldn’t foreclose. John and Emma’s story is told in John’s diary. It tells of their struggle with the 1840’s drought, depression and the foreclosure of banks, bringing up a large family and the effect the discovery of gold had on every day life.

Cyrus Edmund Smith went to the Ballarat Diggings and did quite well with both gold and selling meat to the miners. He and his brothers used to bring cattle from New South Wales to sell on the diggings. Cyrus and Susannah Smith had a family of nine children and their eldest daughter was Emma Amy Susannah who grew up on Gravel Plains Station, Tintaldra, Victoria. Cyrus managed Gravels Plains Station for J. Mitchell. In 1886 Emma married Alfred Snell Chauncy, the eighth child of William and Anna Chauncy’s nine children.

Anna and William Chauncy first came to South Australia in 1840 on the Appoline from Ascot. William and Anna’s eldest child was born South Australia, and on their return journey to England their second child was born at Mauritius. William who was a surveyor was commissioned to write a gazetteer recommending South Australia to settlers. Two more children were born while they were in England. Anna and William and their young family returned to Adelaide in 1849, two years later they moved to Melbourne and in 1858 to Belvoir, later to be renamed Wodonga. In 1861 the family started a winery. The family used up all their capital starting the winery and because of a lack of capital sold it to the Gehrigg brothers and the Gehrigg winery still exists. There is a memorial to William Chauncy the surveyor in Albury.

Alfred and Emma Amy Susanna had ten children and always kept a home in Wodonga where all their children were born. Alfred or Bob as his friends called him, bred horses for the Indian Army on a property in North Queensland, Yarraman Park sixty miles west of Charters Towers on the road to Mt. Isa. They had another property at Port Douglas; it was considered too rough and wild for the women to even visit. Alfred and Emma’s eldest child was Laurie Chapman Chauncy and in 1926 Laurie married George Hardwick in Sydney.

George Hardwick, a bank clerk, was the second eldest son of Harold and Adele Hardwick’s five children; Harold was an architect in Mudgee. Harold was the fifth child of ten children, son of Rebecca and John William Hardwick. John a storekeeper in Rylstone was an active Methodist lay preacher and wrote long letters to his family in Leeds. The Mitchell Library in Sydney has a large collection of his drawings, letters and sermons. John migrated to Melbourne on board the SS Great Britain the first steamship to come to Australia. Rebecca was the daughter of George and Alice White, the tenth child of twelve children, six of them migrated with their parents in 1849 on board the Julindur from Semeley, Wiltshire. Rebecca’s mother Alice died during the voyage and was buried at sea. The surgeon’s log says she died of diarrhoea but the family always said she died of a broken heart because she had left her married daughter Leah in England.

Harold Hardwick’s wife Adele Wells was the fourth child of seven children her parents were Henry and Laura Wells. Henry Edward Alexander Wells was an auctioneer and lived at Mudgee, the eldest son of William and Sarah Wells five sons. William was a surveyor who wrote a gazetteer directory about Sydney in 1848. Sarah was William’s second wife, his first wife Frances Barns died in 1846. William and Frances Wells came in 1835 on board the William Mitcalf from Wiltshire. Sarah Wells married her second husband David Hammond in 1877.

Sarah was the daughter of two convicts George Pickering and his wife Sarah Gordon; they both came from Lancashire in England. George in 1826 on board the Marquis of Huntley and Sarah earlier in 1818 with her little boy Benjamin on the Friendship, Sarah Gordon married Richard Vickers who died in 1826 only Susan of their four children survived. Sarah and George Pickering had two children.

Laura Wells was the third child of eleven children her parents were Evan and Caroline Richards. Evan a school teacher from Caernarfon in Wales came to Sydney on board the Persian and soon after started teaching at St’ James School, King Street in 1844. Evan married Caroline Smith who had migrated to Sydney on board the Lord Stanley looking for a better life than she could expect as an orphan in England. They eventually settled in Mudgee.

George and Laurie Hardwick had two sons; the eldest was the Reverend Canon Alfred Robert Hardwick, who was known as Bob to many of his friends, was your Grandad and in 1952 he married me. We had five children.

In marrying me, Margaret Wareham, another whole history started as my family came to Australia over two hundred years ago. My first Australian ancestor to come was William Davis a convict who came from Ross on Wye on the Royal Admiral in 1800. William married Mary Greer a convict at St John’s Parramatta. Mary came to Australia on the William Pitt from Etchingham. William and Mary had eight children and their sixth was Ebenezer who was born and baptised at Parramatta. Ebenezer married Louisa Briarley in 1846. In 1846 Ebenezer built the Half Way House a coaching house at King’s Plains, which sometimes he leased and sometimes he or his family ran. Ebenezer I and Louisa had five children and his second son was Ebenezer II who married Isabella Armour at Sofala. Ebenezer II was a boot-maker. Isabella was born at Windsor the daughter of Samuel and Agnes Armour northern Irish migrants who arrived in Sydney on 1836 onboard the Manadrin and lived at Macgrath’s Hill. Isabella’s sister Mary married William Macgrath. Ebenezer II and Isabella had ten children and called their second child Ebenezer Bathurst Davis.

Ebenezer Bathurst Davis was my grandfather and he worked in mines, which affected his health, and he died at the age of fifty-six. Ebe married Ellen Gertrude Bate, known as Nell in 1891, only one of their five children survived the harsh mining life. Nell’s second husband was Owen Conduit a retired musician. My mother Elsie Isabel Davis, though fragile, was Nell’s only surviving child, and lived until her one-hundredth year. Elsie married my father Frederick Charles Wareham in 1931 in Maryborough, Victoria. Fred had migrated to Victoria in 1923 on board the Larg’s Liner SS Moreton Bay from Southampton looking for a better life. Fred and Elsie had five children.

Nell’s father was John Murray Bate. John was born in Hobart in 1814 the third child of Samuel and Matilda Bate. One of his many houses was Echo Point Farm, which took in a large part of what today is Roseville. John or Jack as the family called him was married first to Julia Philips by whom he had ten children (of which eight survived) and for second wife the widower married the young widow Elizabeth Arthur who lived next door to him in Riley Street, Surry Hills. Elizabeth had three surviving children of her five children by Charles Arthur. The only child of Jack and Eliza’s marriage was Nell born on Australia Day 26th January 1872 at Riley Street Surry Hills. Nell grew up on the farm Brookdale at Vittoria left to the young Arthur children by their father, Charles Arthur.

John Bate’s father was Samuel Bate, a magistrate in Hobart. Sam had travelled from London first to Sydney aboard the William Pitt in 1806 with his first wife Sarah Adams and their daughter Susan and then to Hobart. Sarah didn’t like Hobart and returned to England. Sam’s second wife was Matilda King whom he met and married in Hobart. Sam and Matilda had three children in Hobart, the fourth on the return voyage to London, and two more in London before returning to Sydney.

Elizabeth Arthur’s parents were John and Susan Lister. John Lister who had a master mariner’s licence sailed his own supply ships the Fortune and the Wave between England and Australia for eleven years before settling in Sydney. Eventually John, Susan and their family of six children settled in the Bathurst district managing the Robin Hood coaching house. John was killed when a horse bolted with the gig and he was thrown out. Susan continued to support her family by managing coaching inns. Their eldest son John and his brother-in-law were involved in the discovery of gold both acting as Edward Hardgraves’s guide and panning the first payable gold field in New South Wales.

Susan Lister’s maiden name was Susan Pymble and she was the niece of Robert Pymble an early immigrant to Sydney. Both of them had been born at Hoarwithy on the Welsh border. Robert migrated to Australia in 1820 with his wife Mary and their young family on board the Marquis of Wellington and Mary died soon after and is buried in St. John’s Cemetery Parramatta, as are John and Mary Smith. Robert was eventually granted 600 acres where he grew an orchard — today it is known as the suburb of Pymble.