Baxter Cousin’s Day

Another year has rolled around. Last Sunday, the first weekend in March was our annual cousins get together for one of my maternal families – BAXTER.

I have organized these Cousin’s Days for this branch of the family for many years now. You can see reports of some of them in former blogs.

 

Although they are always wonderful days for us all, each year has been a little different, and this year was no exception. This year the numbers attending were about the same, but there were no children. These were all off representing their school or community in a team sport of some kind or another.

Another interesting fact was that all lines of my grandparent’s children were represented by at least the eldest grandchild on that line. This has never happened before. In fact, most of the attendees were first cousins to me.

In the past, I have selected an ancestral couple on that family line and prepared material telling the story of the chosen couple. In the past years I have written the story of ‘The Life and Times of Arthur and Harriet May Baxter (nee Bell)’ – my grandparents; The Life and Times of James and Margaret Jane Baxter (nee Kennedy)‘ – Great-Grandparents; ‘The Life and Times of Thomas George and Mary Baxter (nee Mather)’ – Great- Great- Grandparents; ‘The Life and Times of James and Elizabeth Baxter (nee Dixon) – Great-Great-Great Grandparents and the Life and Times of George and Sarah Bell (nee Sargent)‘-Great-Great Grandparents. This year it was The Life and Times of Thomas and Mary Bell (nee Battlemore)– Great-Great-Great grandparents.

 

However, for several reasons, I didn’t have the story of Thomas and Mary Bell ready in time. Firstly, I became ill while only up to the indexing of the material. Secondly, I found photographs and documents, that I had filed away safely during our bushfire crises this last year, and had forgotten about them. They needed to be included- and thirdly, I received a  DNA match (of a very small amount), with people in England, who are connected to the female line of ‘Battlemore’ or more correctly ‘Bartholomew’.

 

The DNA research trail is something I have recently embraced although I know it is only a ‘tool’ rather than the answer to research problems. Although everyone was a little disappointed I didn’t bring all the material with me this year, they all know I will eventually get it done. They are very excited about what might come out of the DNA connection. Particularly, to my delight, several of my first cousins received DNA Kits for gifts at Christmas! They have at last sent their samples away and are awaiting results. Everyone is most interested to see how it might help with our ancestral quest.

 

Another plus with all my work and sharing with these cousins each year, it has now begun to bear fruit. Some of my cousin’s, now adult children, have begun their own family history journey. One visited Picton and the surrounding area and was able to identify and photograph family homes still standing after over 150 years; the old farm, with the sign still at the front gate; family headstones in cemeteries, once crumbling and overgrown, now cleared and restored beautifully;  and the historic Picton Anglican Church, St Mark’s, restored after severe flooding a few years ago. All this material they put together as a slide show with video clips. All to music in glorious colour to be enjoyed by members of our family.

 

I know I do not have to worry about the future of our family histories. They are in the good hands of the next generation.

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Convict Cousins in My Baxter Family

I have already blogged about, my ancestor, Thomas George Baxter, who arrived in Sydney as a convict on board the Roslin Castle in 1834. However, he was not the first in our Baxter family to be transported as a convict. William Shipman Baxter, his first cousin, was transported in 1829.

William Shipman Baxter, the eldest son of John Baxter and Sarah Shipman was born in London in 1806. He was baptised at St Botolph Without Aldersgate, London, which is the same church his first cousin, Thomas George Baxter was baptised in some nine years later.

[St Botolph Without Aldersgate, London, Google Earth, 2014]

Although they were both born and raised in London, and even baptised in the same church some years apart, due to a family quarrel, they are not likely to have met, or had knowledge of each other.

John Baxter, William’s father , inherited half the family business along with his mother,Elizabeth, when his father, James, died in 1802.

John Baxter married Sarah Shipman in 1806 at St Botolph Without Aldersgate, London. They had three sons; William Shipman, 1806; Charles, 1808 and Frederick John, 1810,all of whom were baptised in the above mentioned church.

John Baxter died suddenly in January 1810, a few weeks before his youngest son was born. He was only 29 years of age and died without a Will. His mother, Elizabeth took the family business over herself, including John’s apprentices. It appears she declined to assist John’s young widow and infant family, and is said to have turned them out into the street.

Sarah Baxter with her three young sons moved to the poorer area of Shoreditch, where she worked as a laundress and charwoman.

She stated in a letter to the Home Office in 1828, that she apprenticed her sons to a trade at a young age, but I have not been able to find any apprenticeship nor guild records for these Baxter boys. As she was very poor, perhaps it was a more casual arrangement.

William Shipman Baxter was reported to have been apprenticed to a silk weaver. However, he didn’t finish his apprenticeship as the silk weaving trade fell into rapid decline and there was very little employment. He then found work on the waterfront moving cargo. Work was piecemeal and wages very low and William struggled to make a living. He was also the sole support of his mother and aged maternal grandmother.

William Shipman Baxter, known as William Baxter was tempted, along with many others, to steal goods from his employer and sell them to make ends meet. He was caught and sentenced to transportation for life. He was sent to NSW on board the convict transport, Waterloo, under Captain Addison, in 1829. On arrival he was assigned to the McArthur family at Camden. Later he was sent to their properties near Goulburn.

William Baxter married Ann Rankin in 1846 at Goulburn, and they had nine children, before William died from injuries after a fall from a horse in 1868.

Meanwhile his cousin, Thomas George Baxter, was not faring well either. When his father died in 1829, and his mother remarried, he was left to find his own way on the streets of London. Early in 1832 he was arrested and indicted at the Old Bailey for stealing a cap. He was sentenced to one month imprisonment in the nearby Newgate Prison.

The following year, he was again arrested and charged with picking pockets. The sitting Justices of the Peace at the Middlesex Session in September did not treat him so lightly this time, as he was considered a habitual petty thief, and was sentenced to seven years transportation. He was held in Newgate until transferred to the Euryalus prison hulk for boys, which was anchored off Chatham in the Medway River in Kent.

Thomas Baxter was in the Euryalus for eight months, when he was transferred to the Roslin Castle to be transported to New South Wales.

When we were in Kent last year I was able to visit an interesting mock-up of a ‘hulk prison ship’ at Rochester. This gave me some idea what it was like on board these vessels.

When Thomas Baxter arrived in Sydney in 1834, he too was assigned to the Camden area, in the employment of George Brown.

In the 1837 Convict Muster, Thomas Baxter is listed as working for George Brown at Camden.Two years later, Thomas Baxter is recorded as receiving a Ticket of Leave, which allowed him to hire out to work for himself as long as he remained in the Camden area. His residence was shown as ‘Stonequarry,’ which is now ‘Picton’. He was granted his Certificate of Freedom in 1842 having completed his sentence.He married Harriet Mary Mather in 1850, and they had a family of nine before Thomas died in 1889.

In the 1837 Convict Muster, William Baxter is recorded as working on the McArthur property at Goulburn.

Although both cousins were in the Camden area for a time, it is very unlikely that they ever met. Even if they had, they would not have known they were related.

Some years later, these convict cousins, both had sons born within a few months of each other, whom they named “John.” When Thomas George Baxter’s son “John” (born 1860), married Mary Ann Davis at Stonequarry (Picton) in 1885, they moved to Taralga near Goulburn, where they raised their family.

Meanwhile William Baxter’s son ‘John” (born 1859), married Mary Ann McLean at Taralga in 1902.

Believe it or not the old cemetery at Taralga, where many of the Baxter families are buried is referred to as ‘Stonequarry’. Similiarly, the old cemetery (St Mark’s Churchyard) at Picton, formerly known as ‘Stonequarry’ is also the resting place of many of the our Baxter families too. These two cemeteries are about 168 kilometres or over 100 miles apart.

[Above: St Mark’s Anglican church and churchyard, Picton, Chalmers Family Private Collection, 2014]

There lay the ground work for much confusion between not only these two ‘convict cousins’ Baxter families, but several other Baxter families in and around Goulburn.

What wonderful puzzles there are in our family histories just waiting for us to sort them out.