I have said in former blogs I have been researching and writing Harriet Hodgetts story for some time now. In recent times I have been exploring and writing about four sea voyages she made in her lifetime. Her first voyage was in cramped quarters on a convict ship in the Second Fleet.
The only surviving written record of a personal experience of that voyage is a few pages of a journal kept by Elizabeth McArthur, one of the marine’s wives.
To write Harriet’s story, I needed to explore and write Elizabeth’s story too. While doing this, I was completely blown away, with the unbelievable coincidences of the parallel lives, of these two incredible women.
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Both were born and baptized in country parishes in England, within months of each other in 1766. Elizabeth in Devonshire and Harriet in Staffordshire.
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Both were the eldest daughters in their family, who were effectively disinherited by the early deaths of their respective fathers.
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Both came under the guardianship of their grandfathers. Elizabeth, her Maternal Grandfather and Harriet, her Paternal Grandfather.
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Both fell in love, and let their heart rule their head. They ‘choose’ to accompany their ‘husbands’ on the Second Fleet, although by all the ‘rules’ and ‘social norms’ at the time, neither should have been on that voyage.
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Both arrived in Sydney at the same time and lived near each other in the infant colony.
- View of Sydney Cove-1792
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Both moved to Parramatta and lived there for some time.
- Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta
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Both settled on the land and became ‘farmer’s wives’.
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Both became widowed, Elizabeth in 1834 and Harriet in 1823.
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Both died in Australia in 1850, within a few months of each other, aged 83 years. Elizabeth in New South Wales, and Harriet in Tasmania.
Regardless of all these coincidences, I believe although they may have set eyes on each other, from time to time, they never met. Elizabeth McArthur, being a Marine Captain’s wife, at the high end of the social scale of the colony, and Harriet Hodgetts being the wife a convict blacksmith, at the other end of the social scale.
Nola Mackey - Family History 