Six months since I wrote my last post but I have been doing a lot in that time relating to WikiTree as well as dealing with the death of my father in early September. I will be writing a separate post about him later this month.
Today’s post is about a convict – but he is not my convict.
I volunteer on Fridays at Rosny Library in Tasmania and work with people interested in researching their family history. Last week we were working on Anne’s (not her real name) tree on ancestry. We had proved back to her maternal great grandfather John and had DNA matches linking to him as well.
John was born in 1858 in Hobart in the colony of Tasmania. His parents were George Pierce and Ellen Rosendale.
Ellen was born in Tasmania in 1827 but where was her husband born? According to his death record in 1864, he was born in England around 1815. The first child we could find born to this couple was another George Pierce born in 1845. But we couldn’t find a marriage around this time, so maybe George and Ellen were not formally married.
George and Ellen had a total of nine children – seven sons and two daughters. But the last two children Albert and Sarah Ann both died in 1863 – Albert in July 15 months old from a cold and bronchitis and Sarah Ann in May 6 days old from premature birth.
But where was dad George born? There were a few George Pierce in Hobart Town in the 1820s – 1840s. So I looked in the Tasmanian names index for anything related to a George Pierce in that time period.
The first one was an arrival record for a George Pierce in 1829 aged 14 coming with family on the ship Harmony. Next we checked the list of passengers for the ship.
- Dere Pierce age 4
- George age 14
- John age 10
- Mary Ann 12
- Paul Mr
- Sarah Mrs
- Sarah age 10
We then checked other ancestry DNA matches to see if anyone had any of these names on their tree. And there it was! Paul Pierce and his wife Sarah Deblaine had children – George, Mary Ann, Sarah, John and Dennise and two more children born in Hobart after 1829 – Alfred and Henry Deblane.
Looking at the newspaper report about the arrival of the Harmony in 1829, it says there were 8 wives arriving to join their husbands and their children came with them. Why would a group of women with their children all be coming on the same ship so early in the time of Van Diemen’s Land? Maybe the husbands had arrived earlier as either free settlers or convicts.
So we checked for Paul Pierce and there he was – a convict tried in Kent for being a smuggler. Maybe he was part of a gang working around the Kent coast. This reminded me of Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s book, The Wicked Trade. In his book he mentions George Ransley being sent to VDL as a convict. The Ransley family were some of the other wives and children on the Harmony.
Wow- a real life smuggler from the Aldington gang and I was working with his descendant!
UPDATE: I have since found another blogger writing about the Aldington gang and she has researched Paul and his life as a smuggler and convict.
A fascinating story and a breakthrough for the descendant!
Hello there
I’ve just found your blog while researching my family. I was interested in Paul Pierce because I knew that my 3rd great-grand-uncle, John Doig (his sister Margaret was my 3rd great-grandmother), married Paul’s daughter, Dennise or Dene as she was known by the family. However, even more interestingly, George Ransley was my 4th great-grandfather. His wife, Elizabeth, was also one of the wives who arrived on the ‘Harmony’ in 1829. She was the sister of Samuel Bailey, another of the Aldington Gang. It is pretty exciting to be the descendant of a real-life smuggler!