Travels with my Ancestors #21: The Newton Story continued.
People from the West Country, Part Two
In Part One of People from the West Country, we saw William and Ann Newton and their family embark in 1849 on the long voyage to New South Wales as bounty or assisted Emigrants. They knew they were in for a long journey with all its discomforts and dangers, but they faced an unexpected added threat of a mutiny at sea by some of the crew.
Those passengers not in the married and family section of steerage class, were separated into single male and female sections, with a dividing wall between them. This is what led to a dramatic stand-off between the Una’s Captain Causzer and several of the crew.
About a month into the journey, a group of around a dozen crewmen tried to destroy the dividing partition between the male and female passengers. They had armed themselves with knives and other weapons, demanding that the bar across the sections be removed and a chalk line drawn on the deck instead. They threatened the ship’s master, vowing they had a right to throw him overboard if their demands were not met.1 Will and Ann must have feared for Eliza, Martha, Mary Ann—all young women in their early twenties. Possibly even young Elizabeth was not safe at eleven years old.
The next day the threats to the Captain and First Officer continued, as rebels tried to convince some of the male passengers to join them. Then they refused to work the ship, which forced the captain to ask for help from any of the passengers who could assist. The mutineers continued their strike for several weeks. They passed the time singing loudly and behaving like boorish fools. Everyone’s safety was on a knife edge: mutinies at sea endangered all on board. What if there was a storm, or another crisis needing all hands?
For the Newtons and others in steerage, their proximity to the loud, defiant, cursing sailors must have been disturbing. The shouts and threats of the mutineers and the tight faces of the ship’s master and other officers made for a time of high tension. Many passengers must have longed for the return of the usual shipboard routines.
The mutinous crew were finally restrained. A newspaper report in Sydney, a week after the Una’s arrival, recounted how the men were committed to trial for their actions.2 Mutiny at sea was a serious offence and could result in a sentence of death.
The rest of the voyage passed peacefully, and the ship arrived at Sydney in November 1849, four months after setting sail. The Newtons made their way to Newcastle in the Hunter valley; the traditional lands of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples. They were in New South Wales at last, ready to begin their new life.
Life and death in the Hunter Valley
As Will and his family voyaged to Australia, he could not have known that back in Somerset, his sister Mary Ann was dying.3 His father had gone thirteen years earlier and the family had buried Martha, his mother, just a few months before they left England.4 Some of his strong ties to the west country there were already fraying.
They settled in Newcastle; he may have found work in an established butcher’s business there, or taken up work as a labourer. In the 1850’s his occupation was recorded as a fisherman.5 Perhaps he had decided that, living so close to the sea, harvesting the bounty of the ocean made for a better living than land animals.
The young adult children all began to marry; grandchildren arrived. Eldest son Thomas moved to work in Sydney. They gradually grew accustomed to the different ways and landscapes here, starting to put down tentative roots. Young children are adaptable, so the sounds of Australian birds and the smell of the eucalypts would quickly begin to replace their memories of the west country of their birth.
After all the preparations, the long voyage, the excitement and anxiety about the move, Will only had Ann for eight years in their adopted country. She became ill with a heart and liver complaint, suffering for six months until she died in May 1858, aged fifty-seven.6 Eliza, the daughter born before Ann’s marriage to Will, had the sad duty of notifying the authorities of her mother’s death.
Soon after Ann’s grieving family had buried her in the grounds of the little Christ Church in Newcastle, Will got news that their son Thomas, who had moved to Sydney, was sick with scarlet fever. His neighbour had summoned a doctor, who diagnosed the infectious disease from Thomas’ high temperature, the raised scarlet rash over his body and his swollen, mottled ‘strawberry’ tongue. Within two weeks he was dead at twenty-five years of age.7
It was a double blow for his father. Will’s dreams of his family’s future in the colony had surely not included the deaths of two of them within the first decade. There was nothing to do but to carry on. At least all the children were now grown, no longer needing their mother’s care. That was a small mercy.
Berry Park
Sometime after the tragedies of 1858, Will moved to the town of Morpeth, a bustling Hunter River port on the traditional land of the Wonnarua people. Produce from all over the valley went by steamer to Sydney, and via Morpeth to Maitland, and the coal industry was expanding in the valley. Water transport was growing in importance. Morpeth also had a mill which ground the wheat brought in by farmers across the district. The town had a promising future and some fine buildings lined the main street near the wharf.
Will had a connection with Berry Park, an estate built on the edge of the river near Morpeth by John Eales, originally from Devon, who had become a prosperous grazier and pastoralist. In the 1840’s coal was discovered on Eales’ property and he established a private railway line to carry coal from his Duckenfield collieries at Minmi out of the district. His prosperity allowed him to build a mansion he called Duckenfield Park House, and he employed many workers like Will on the estate.
Two years after moving here, Will married for a second time.8 His new bride was Irish-born Bridget Chadwick, twenty-seven, who had arrived in Australia on the ship Matoaka five years before.9
Together they had four children: George, Sarah, Richard and Lucy, all born between 1860 and 1874 and all (except Sarah) at Berry Park.10
Berry Park was where the Newtons and the Robinsons first connected: Beadon Newton would meet Elizabeth Robinson there, as her family also lived on or near the Eales Estate.
But bad news kept arriving from Somerset. His siblings were dying: brother George in 1873, sister Charlotte in 1876, another sister Ann in early 1881.11 They were all getting on in years.
Will’s own time was up in 1881; he died at Berry Park and was buried at Hexham Cemetery.12 By then he had lived for more than thirty years in the colony.
The decision to bring his first family across the seas to settle here could not have been an easy one; at the end of his seventy-seven years, was he able to reflect on that choice and be satisfied it had been a good one, despite the setbacks they’d suffered?
He left behind his second wife and their children, then aged from twenty to eight.
A few years after his death, the family suffered an awful loss: their home and possessions were razed in a house fire in April, 1888. Volunteers from the local community came to their assistance, collecting funds to allow the family to rebuild. George, then twenty-eight, put a grateful notice in the Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley General Advertiser, expressing their thanks.14
Bridget lived for another sixteen years, passing away at Newcastle in 1904.15
Meanwhile the children who had emigrated with their parents from Somerset had made lives of their own, mostly remaining in the Hunter district.
Eliza married twice; first to Thomas Dawson (1850) then after his death in 1859, she wed George Barry in 1861.15 She lived in the Newcastle area until her death in 1896.16
Martha married William Wilding, a druggist and chemist, in 1851, and they had one child, a son (also William) who was born and died in 1881, the same year his father died.17 What a traumatic time for Martha, losing both husband and baby in one year. Perhaps it because of this that she suffered for some time from a mental illness and spent years in what was then the Gladesville Lunatic Asylum, Parramatta, where she died in 1895.18
Elizabeth (known as ‘Biddy’) had nine children with David Avard who she married in 1860, but suffered the loss of three infants.19 She died in Berry Park in 1890.20
Youngest son John married in 1864 to Mary Lindores; they lived in Muswellbrook.21 He died in 1907 at Minmi, outside Newcastle.22
The Newtons had become firmly established in the Hunter Valley. Somerset and the West country of William and Ann’s youth were now places on the map to these younger immigrants.
The Newton family story will be continued in the next chapter of Travels with my Ancestors
1.‘Revolt on Board the Emigrant Ship “Una”’, Shipping Gazette & Sydney General Trade, 24 Nov 1849 p 293 Via Trove, accessed 30 September 2023
2.Bells Life in Sydney & Sporting Reviewer Sat 24 Nov 1839 p3 Via Trove, accessed 30 September 2023
3. Burial of Mary Ann Dyer Oct 1839 in Somerset Heritage Services Taunton, Somerset England, Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914, Ref No D\P\ wal.sw/2/1/39 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024
4. Death of Martha Ann Newton March 1849 in Somerset Heritage Servicesd Ref No D\P\stogs/2/1/8 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024.
5. Death registration of Thomas Newton in Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/736
6. Death registration of Ann Newton in NSW Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/4629
7. Death of Thomas Newton in Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/736
8. Marriage of William Newton & Bridget Chadwick Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, , reg no 2524/1860. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024
9. Australia; Persons on bounty ships (Agent’s Immigrant Lists); Series: 5316; Reel: 2137; Item: [4/4792] Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024
10. Australia Birth Index 1788-1950, George William Newton reg no 1860/9163; Sarah Jane Newton reg no 1863/10140; New South Wales Pioneers Index: Pioneers Series 1788-1888 Richard Henry Newton reg no 1871/13072; Catherine Lucy Newton reg no 1874/14112. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024
11. Death of George Newton March 1873 in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915 Volume 5c Page 281; Death of Charlotte Perrett (nee Newton) March 1876 in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, vol 5c p259 1837-1915 Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Burial of Ann Geen (nee Newton) 30 March 1831 in Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\stogs/2/1/8; Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\du/2/1/18. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024
12. Transcript of William Newton Death Certificate reg no 1881/8734
13.Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley General Advertiser 9 June 1888, p2. Via Trove, accessed 19 March 2024.
14. Death of Bridget Newton 14 June 1904 in Australia Death Index 1787-1985 Death reg no 1904/10268. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
15. Marriage Eliza Long & Thomas Dawson1850 Australia Marriage Index 1788-1850, vol VB; Marriage Eliza Dawson & george Barry Australia Reg No 2463/1861, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024 ;
16. Eliza Barry at ttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/177510222/eliza-barry
17. Marriage of Martha Newton & William Wilding Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Marriage Reg 1851 vol V. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024; Death of William T Wilding NSW Death reg 1881/8445; Death of William Thomas Wilding (snr) reg 1881/8365; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 1
2024; 1882 ‘Family Notices’, The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW:1843 – 1893), 25 February, p1 accessed 13 Jun 2024; http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article848178; accessed 13 June 2024
18. Death of Martha Wilding reg no 1895/2499, Death Index 1787-1985, Pioneer Index Federation Series 1889-1918 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024
19. Marriage of Elizabeth Newton & David Avard reg no 1860/2050, NSW Pioneer Index – Pioneer Series 1778 – 1888, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024; Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current; Harriet Avard 1860; Alice May Avard 1880; Mary Avard 1877. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
20.Burial of Elizabeth Avard https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/170978688/elizabeth-avard Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
21.Marriage of John Newton & Mary Lindores reg no 1865/2683, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024;
22. Death reg no 5627/1907 in Australia Death Index, 1787-1985 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024
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