Mary Flintham and John Blackwell (1819)

Mary Flintham and John Blackwell were the first of my ancestors to arrive in Van Diemen's Land (VDL), now Tasmania. To my surprise both came more or less of their own volition at a time when most new arrivals were either convicts or the soldiers sent to guard them.

Mary and John worked in what would today be called the private sector although they survived with help from convict labour supplied by the Crown. John set up small scale industry, and even smaller agriculture, in what had only recently been bushland taking advantage of the proximity of the New Town Rivulet. John Blackwell is even on record as one of the first to pollute its waters.

Researching their story was in some ways easier than expected. A small population and a colony run on bureaucratic lines (it was after all principally an open air prison) meant that often the most trivial event was reported in the local papers. These newspapers have been digitised and are searchable on the National Library of Australia's excellent site, TROVE, which I can't recommend too highly.

Much later I made the (virtual) acquaintance of another Blackwell descendant, Jan Josza, née Liddicut. Jan has kindly shared invaluable souvenirs and knowledge handed down through the family helping to shed light on some puzzling aspects of John and Mary’s lives.¹

But the story begins in Britain …

Nottinghamshire

Mary Flintham’s origins lay in the English midlands. Her parents, Isaac Flintham and Anne Greenwood, were married in the Nottinghamshire village of Ossington in 1782.² Their first child, also Isaac, was born there before the couple moved 15 kms north to Gamston.³

Today Gamston, ‘a scattered village on the River Idle’, has little to distinguish it other than proximity to the A1 and a World War II Royal Air Force airfield but from 1782 it boasted a major candlewick factory which employed up to one hundred workers at its peak.⁴ The first available census data from 1841 describes Isaac as a wheelwright, even at the advanced age of 84, and living at ‘Jockey House’. This address is located on modern maps between Brick Yard Road and Old London Road. Isaac may have made his living servicing the passing trade on this major north-south route.⁵

Isaac and Anne had several children in Gamston between 1785 and 1797, including Mary, baptised on 28 March 1793 at the parish church of St Peter’s.⁶ Isaac junior became a wheelwright like his father but it is harder to know what became of the other children, all girls, unless they worked in the candlewick factory.⁷ The exception is Mary who left her native village to look for work. Almost inevitably the work she found was as a domestic servant.

Sheffield, Yorkshire

Mary Flintham’s Bible has been handed down through the family and on the flyleaf is inscribed ‘Sheffield 1815’.⁸ It’s a good 80 kilometres from Gamston to Sheffield and the most plausible explanation I can come up with is that Mary had been employed in the household of a certain Boothby family of Westgrove House, Sheffield, either in 1815 or later.

In May 1819 Harriett, only daughter of the Boothby household, married John Raine, a widower with a five year old son.⁹ The wedding took place in Sheffield but John Raine’s residence was in new and fashionable Great Coram Street, near Brunswick Square, London. Raine’s younger brother Captain Thomas Raine had made several voyages to New South Wales and his example seems to have inspired John Raine to quit legal practice and try his hand as merchant in the penal colony.¹⁰ The new Mrs Raine must have been agreeable to the idea as her husband’s arrangements had the family leaving for Sydney only weeks after their marriage.

Most importantly for present purposes the Raines’ servants Mary Flintham and John Monten were to make up the party. [see extras]

Raine had found a ship, the Sunderland built Regalia, which could carry a number of passengers but more importantly a cargo of consumer goods which he hoped would find a ready market in Sydney.¹¹ These ranged from cutlery and cognac to coaches, vitriol and vinegar to violins as well as tools and wearing apparel.¹² He had also entered into a partnership with another aspiring merchant, Edward Curr, who with wife Elizabeth would follow the Raines to the colony a few months later.¹³

The Regalia was to call in at Hobart Town en route to Sydney as Raine's plan was to trade between the two colonial ports. His cargo also included a very special item: the first portable threshing machine in Van Diemen's Land destined for a settler in Pitt Water.¹⁴

The Regalia sailed from Spithead on 17 June 1819 in company with another vessel bound for Sydney, the convict transport Malabar. While Mary Flintham could have had only the vaguest notion of what awaited her in the Antipodes the proximity of 170 convicted felons must have begun to set the tone.

John Blackwell, Emigrant

If there is an explanation for how Mary Flintham found herself aboard the Regalia what of the other passengers? Only one set, the Emmett family, seems always to have intended to disembark in Hobart while the remaining voyagers, upwards of a dozen, were destined for Sydney.¹⁵

Entry to the colony of New South Wales was controlled.¹⁶ Permission was required from no less than the Secretary of State for War and for the Colonies on the references of 'two or more respectable persons' and a minimum of £500 in capital.¹⁷ Then as now these requirements were often ignored although John Raine came equipped with a reference from a former Lord Chancellor, Baron Erskine.¹⁸

Cost was also a major consideration. In writing his guide for intending settlers George Evans estimated the cost of a cabin passage to Van Diemen's Land at 100 guineas per adult although there were slightly better deals to be had.¹⁹ Steerage passage was cheaper but the traveller would then have to provide his own food for the voyage, a significant undertaking.²⁰

On board the Regalia was at least one intending young emigrant, John Blackwell, who would have had to have done very well indeed to put together the capital and fare for a passage to Australia.

The papers of Quaker missionary, Frederick Mackie, indicate that John Blackwell had been born on 21 June 1788 in Maidenhead Berkshire, less than 3 kms from Taplow, Buckinghamshire, where he later found employment.²¹ Blackwell's parentage is unknown and tradition in some, though not all, branches of the family has it that he was illegitimate.²² The date of 21 June and the year 1788 are also given on the memorial card printed at the time of John Blackwell's death.

Further corroboration for the birth date of 21 June, if any is needed, comes from the ‘Birthday Books’ kept by two of John Blackwell’s granddaughters, Fanny Heffernan, née Jones, and Louise Emily Arnold.²³

John Blackwell’s Taplow employer, Quaker Joseph Beeby Wise, appears to have been the lessee of a former corn mill then used for manufacturing paper.²⁴ Unfortunately Wise was subject to bankruptcy proceedings in 1816 and it may have this that provoked John Blackwell to seek employment further afield. At the time of his application to emigrate Blackwell gave his address as Russell Place in Bermondsey, London.²⁵

It seems unlikely that his employment had paid well enough to allow John Blackwell, at only 30, to save anything remotely like the £500 in capital required of intending emigrants. It is also interesting to speculate on why he would suddenly take it into his head to migrate to Australia, at the time still largely known as a penal colony. Whatever the truth of his parentage the otherwise obscure John Blackwell had useful connections who were prepared to stand as his referees. One of them was William Batt, a tanner from High Wycombe, a Buckinghamshire town about 16 kms from Taplow.²⁶

On 9 April 1819 Henry Goulburn, Under Secretary of State for the Colonies wrote from Downing Street to Governor Macquarie in Sydney. The letter, entrusted to Blackwell to deliver on arrival in the colony, not only communicated Secretary of State Bathurst's consent to Blackwell's emigration but requested His Excellency the Governor 'to make to him upon arrival a grant of land in proportion to his means of bringing the same into cultivation.'²⁷ Officially at least the emigrant John Blackwell was to be a farmer in New South Wales.

It All Started in Rio

Well it would be fun to think so anyway.

The Malabar and its cargo of convicts accompanied the Regalia as far as Rio de Janeiro before continuing to Sydney. By contrast the Regalia stayed in Rio a full five weeks: more than enough time for its passengers to take in some of the sights and perhaps to get to know each other better.²⁸

Whether the time in port was for commercial reasons (its master Captain Dixon made subsequent voyages to Rio) or to effect repairs the Regalia was eventually on her way again. Despite the lengthy South American stopover it was less than six months after first sailing from England that the ship dropped anchor in Hobart Town - on 30 November 1819.

Hobart Town 1819

 

Lodgings in Hobart Town, good or bad, were hard to come by at the time and expensive as a consequence. New arrivals also needed to come to grips with local ways of doing business:

Lieut. Governor Sorrel sent an intimation, that he would wish the settlers to call at Government House; many of them not being aware that they should immediately have waited on the Governor. But both their own interest and the etiqette [sic] of the colony requires them to do so as soon as possible, to state their views, and prepare a schedule of the property they possess. Their grants of land being made out in proportion to their capital, their statement can be required on oath.²⁹

After so many months of enforced idleness Raine would no doubt have been one of the first to pay his respects to Sorell, a fellow old boy of London's Westminster School. Just five days after the ship's arrival, the Hobart Town Gazette reported that

Part of the cargo brought out by the Regalia…. we understand, is choice and select. There are some carriages, and amongst them the stage coach intended to run between Sydney and Parramatta. The former of these Gentlemen [Raine], we are informed, has been actively engaged in making purchases of, and contracts for wool; and we are happy to find a commencement has been made to turn to advantage this essential article.

We congratulate the agriculturists of the Colony on the arrival of a portable threshing machine in the Regalia - the first introduced to this Island ; and we trust it will be the prelude of a supply of those engines which the experience of years in England has shewn to be of the geatest [sic] utility in lessening the labours of the farmer.³⁰

The following week the indefatigable Raine was seeking tenders to supply 'TWENTY THOUSAND WEIGHT OF PRIME SALT BEEF'³¹ for export to Sydney. A fortnight later a further notice in the Gazette³² advertised his intention to trade between Hobart Town and Port Jackson (Sydney) and the appointment of R W Loane Esq and David Lord as his VDL agents.

Change of Plans

Where did this leave Mary Flintham and John Blackwell? Both were supposed to travel on to Sydney when the Regalia sailed. As was customary notices had been placed in the Gazette advising creditors of the ship's impending departure. Claims on the Raine family and on 'JOHN MONTEN and MARY FLINTHAM, Servants' were to be presented to TW Birch Esq in Macquarie Street. John Blackwell was also listed in the Gazette of 25 December, a mere 10 days before the ship was to sail, as one of the passengers leaving for Sydney.

But something had changed by Christmas of 1819. John Blackwell would not be continuing on the voyage to Port Jackson and Mary Flintham had decided to throw in her lot with him.³³

Things moved quickly from that point. Lieutenant Governor Sorell's Secretary wrote to John Raine on 28 December 1819

Sir

An application having been made to the Lieutenant Governor by Mr John Blackwell for a licence to authorize the solemnization of Marriage between himself and Mary Flintham, when [sic] he stated to have come out in your Service, I am directed to request you will state whether any impediment is known to you or exists on your part to the Female in question being permitted to remain in this Settlement.

I request to have an early reply, and am &c HE Robinson Secretary.³⁴

John Raine was no doubt mightily displeased but apparently could mount no legal obstacle to the marriage. Mary's last minute defection left Harriet Raine in an inconvenient position, especially as she was in the early stages of pregnancy. There is evidence that Raine was not a good man to cross – the VDL Land Commissioners later described him as ‘of great celebrity in the blackguard world’.³⁵

In the end Raine's disgruntlement, publicly at least, was confined to a threatening notice which appeared in the Gazette on New Year's Day 1820, presumably lodged before Lieutenant Robinson’s letter had reached him.

CAUTION. -Whereas Mary Flintham, who came from England in the Regalia with me in the Capacity of menial Servant having absconded from my Service, I hereby Caution all Persons against harbouring, concealing, or maintaining her, on Pain of Prosecution ; and also from giving her any Credit on my Account, as I will not be answerable for any Debts she may so contract.

Dec. 29, 1819 JOHN RAINE.

A few days after the Regalia made harbour in Port Jackson Mary Flintham and John Blackwell were married by the Rev Bobby Knopwood, Van Diemen’s Land’s first chaplain.³⁶ Fittingly for a young couple only recently arrived the two witnesses to the ceremony were Knopwood’s clerk, George Northam, and another Regalia immigrant, Robert Graves.

Hobart Town 1820 – Now What?

In marrying John Blackwell Mary Flintham may have been giving up a chance of returning to her home country with the Raine family. John Raine had advertised that he intended to take a colonial cargo to London in July 1820 and he did so in August the following year.

Cutting loose from the Raines was all very well but even newlyweds can't live on fresh air. John would have to earn a living and Mary too as quickly as possible.

Hobart Town was beginning a period of growth. 'Free persons and settlers' (just under 1000 adults) were greatly outnumbered by convicts still under sentence (about 2100)³⁷ but the balance was changing, especially as the sentences of convicts expired with the passage of time. The population of Hobart was overwhelmingly male with women making up only about one-fifth of the adult civilian population. This situation of scarcity would have helped Mary Blackwell if she had decided to look for position as a domestic servant.

And John had a plan. Only 2 days after his marriage and presumably following an audience with Lieutenant Governor Sorell he wrote to Governor Macquarie in Sydney enclosing the precious letter from the Colonial Office and applying for a grant of land. A bit over a week later Macquarie's Secretary, JT Campbell, replied in the affirmative: 300 acres 'at Hobart Town'. It was left up to Sorell assisted by his surveyors to specify exactly which land which was to be granted.

Campbell's reply is interesting in a number of respects. The size of the grant was explicitly linked to the ‘property’ Blackwell had reported bringing with him to the colony. The nature of that property is not stated but the term seems generally to have referred to money rather than goods. Three hundred acres was almost twice the size of the average grant for 1820. By way of comparison a non-commissioned officer in the Marines had the right to 130 acres (150 if married) after three years service.³⁸ The letter also declared Blackwell entitled to be assigned two convicts and that he and they would be on 'His Majesty's Stores' for six months, a standard arrangement but nevertheless a most welcome breathing space.³⁹

Taking up the Land

It is unlikely there were 300 acres still available to be granted in Hobart Town proper by 1820 but instead a site on the New Town Rivulet was identified. The grant was formally executed by Governor Macquarie on 25 July 1821 in the following terms:

Three hundred acres of Land lying and situate in the District of Argyle … Bound on the North East side by Davies, Emmett and Connolly's Farms, on the North West by Connolly and Williams' Farms, on the South west by Crown Land and Priest's Farm to the New Town Rivulet and to the South east side by the Rivulet. Conditioned not to sell or alienate the same for the space of Five Years … and to cultivate Thirty Eight acres within the said period.⁴⁰

The Crown also reserved to itself the right to build a public road over the land and to take timber for 'Naval Purposes' - old habits die hard. Quit rent (more or less the precursor of land tax) was set at six shillings.

Thanks to its proximity to Hobart a considerable portion of the district of Argyle (New Town) had been allocated quite early. The first grants were in 1813 to 22 settlers but most were for modestly sized plots. These were followed by a handful of grants in 1816, 1817 and 1821, including the grant to Henry Emmett, another Regalia passenger.⁴¹

The 'standard' substantial grant for New Town had been 100 acres starting with the land either side of the Rivulet where it ran into New Town Bay (then called Stainforth Cove). Only grants to Robert Jillett (140 acres), Noah Mortimore (170), William Blyth (180) and Emmett (220) exceeded that by any significant extent.⁴² This makes Blackwell's 300 acres stand out even if they could not be considered of prime quality for agricultural purposes.

In modern terms, Blackwell's grant on the northern side of the New Town Rivulet lies to the east of the Creek Road/Gerrard Street intersection and seems to have taken in what are now parts of Florence and Highfield Streets and Sinclair Avenue.⁴³ It is spread across the current suburbs of Lenah Valley and West Moonah rather than New Town. In 1833 the King's Orphan School opened on neighbouring land and an early Government Farms was also nearby.⁴⁴

It is certain that the Blackwells took up occupation of the site before the paperwork was finalised - those two convict servants would have been of little use to them in town. They could however have been gainfully employed in clearing enough land to construct a rudimentary dwelling, of log or daub, for occupation before the winter of 1821.

Evans quotes a charming if improbably cheery account of a small party of convicts and free overseers despatched to take up a grant in the district of Cambridge:

they arrived at the spot at about four o'clock in the afternoon. […] the ploughman was appointed cook … the rest with their axes cut down such timber as was requisite to erect a temporary hut. This they completed and rendered perfectly watertight before sun-set, when they all sat down to such a repast as the cook had provided for them. […] These have often people declared that they never in their lives ate a meal with greater relish and appetite than they did this supper.⁴⁵

Perhaps the real clue is in the next line which reveals that 'the grog went merrily around'. We can only hope that the Blackwells' convicts were offered similar incentives.

The couple's accommodation needs were also changing – the next generation had started to arrive. Fifteen months after John and Mary's marriage their first child was born and named John, like his father, with Flintham as middle name in honour of the maternal line.⁴⁶

John Blackwell, Tanner

Much as the colony needed to produce food for its population and for export to Sydney, other industries were also in demand. Whatever crops he might have put in to meet his family's needs, John Blackwell lost no time at all in setting up his real business – as tanner and fellmonger.⁴⁷

In her study of the New Town Rivulet Scripps names Blackwell's tannery and Gatehouse's brewery (the latter rather unfelicitously situated downstream from the former) as the first industrial uses of the rivulet.⁴⁸ She further notes that Blackwell's tannery may have been the first of its type to operate in Van Diemen's Land.

As mentioned earlier John Blackwell had been living in Bermondsey at the time he applied to emigrate. That part of south London was then the centre of a thriving tanning industry and it is no coincidence that Blackwell was living there. Descendant Jan Josza has discovered that he was by then a master currier, a separate but related trade to tanning.⁴⁹ Governor Sorell must have been delighted at the introduction of such useful skills to the southernmost colony.

It seems that Blackwell's tanning activities got off to a quick start and even before the paperwork for his land grant had been finalised. In January 1821 Bathurst Street merchants Curr & Mason advertised for sale in the local press

a quantity of leather tanned by Mr Blackwell of New Town, at the following prices, viz -
Crops 16d to 18d per lb
Dressing Hides 13d to 16d
Calf Skins 22d to 28d
Kangaroo Skins 30s to 70s per dozen
Sheep Skins 15s to 20s ⁵⁰

Curr, it should be remembered, had briefly been the business partner of John Raine. Given that from his earliest days in Hobart Raine had been advertising to buy

… Hides, Horns, Tallow, Kangaroo and Seal Skins, or any other Commodity the Produce of Van Diemen's Land …. to trade between these Settlements and Port Jackson.⁵¹

and had continued to advertise in Hobart to purchase skins during the course of 1820 he may have been less than impressed to find himself as a potential competitor for raw materials with the upstart Blackwell aided and abetted by his own former partner, Curr!

But exactly a week before John Blackwell's products were first exposed for sale the following advertisement had appeared in the Gazette

To Shoemakers, Harness Makers, and Others.

MR. RAINE announces for Sale, a considerable Quantity of well tanned Leather, OF THIS COUNTRY, which he has the Satisfaction to offer BELOW the Prices quoted from LEADEN-HALL MARKET RETURNS, and of Quality equal, viz.—

Butts 50 to 56lbs. each . . . . . . 17d. to 19d. per lb.
Dressing Hides . . . . . . . . . . . . 15d. to 16d.
Calf Skins 20 to 40lbs. . . . . . . 22d. to 26d.
Ditto . . . . 40 to 50lbs. . . . . . . 28d. to 34d.
Kangaroo Skin . . . . . . . . . . . . .16d. to 36d.
Sheep Skins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24d. to 30d. per doz. ⁵²

So Raine, who had presumably contracted with Sydney tanners for the occasion, had the jump on the New Town establishment.

The Raine family spent several months in Hobart during 1821 before departing for England in May, again on the Regalia, with a cargo of Vandemonian products amongst them the first Macquarie Island sea elephant (elephant seal) oil exported from the colony.⁵³

In the coming months John Blackwell continued to expand his business and sold more than £13 worth of 'plaisterer's hair', to the Government Store in May 1821⁵⁴. The Crown was still the prime customer for local industry but the public at large was also encouraged to buy

parchment and glue, in every respect equal in quality to any imported from England, … manufactured by Mr Blackwell, tanner, near New-town ⁵⁵

The best opportunity to examine Blackwell's wares was furnished by Hobart Town's new weekly Saturday market which had started operation on 1 January 1820 at the bottom end of Davey Street.⁵⁶ The proud 'Proprietor of the Leather, Parchment, and Glue Manufactory at New Town' advertised in April 1822 to

Shoemakers, Saddlers, and other Consumers of Leather, that it is his Intention in future to attend every Saturday, from 9 o'Clock in the Morning till 3 in the After-noon, at the Public Market-place in Hobart Town, with the under-mentioned Articles for SALE, at very reduced Prices ; viz.

Best tann'd Crop Hides; Dressing ditto; tann'd Sheep and Kangaroo Skins; White Leather fit for Aprons; Parchment; Glue, &c. &c

Nota bene. J. B. will warrant the whole of the above Articles to be equal in Quality to any imported from England. -

*** A considerable Allowance to Wholesale Purchasers.- Raw Hides; Kangaroo, Sheep, and other Skins ; Wool, &c. bought and exchanged.

Leather, &c. for Exportation.⁵⁷

It was just as well that John seemed to be on the way to making a living. Only two months after John junior's baptism by the Rev Knopwood in August 1822 Mary Blackwell was delivered of a daughter, the couple's second child, Mary Ann.⁵⁸

Taking Care of Business

Van Diemen's Land commerce in the 1820s was not without its complications. Banking was in its infancy to put it mildly and there was a perennial shortage of hard currency in circulation. This problem was handled in a number of ways. A trader in multiple commodities like John Raine could accept goods such as wheat or wool at a fixed tariff in exchange for goods sold.

A small operation like Blackwell's tannery had fewer options. It needed a large number of untreated hides which conceivably were supplied in small quantities by a large number of hunters and stock owners. One solution was the issue of promissory notes, often in small denominations. A rare surviving example from 1823 below – printed on parchment as befitted a tanner - was sold at auction in 2000 for a whopping $A10,000 despite its poor condition. It also furnishes an example of John Blackwell's handwriting. ⁵⁹

The tannery on the New Town Rivulet worked with sheep, cattle and kangaroo skins in the main. Sheep did well in Van Diemen's Land as the animals required little active care. Sheep numbers in 1820 were estimated at more than 180,000⁶⁰ an impressive increase from the thirty odd which had arrived with the first European settlers in 1803. Their meat was prized for consumption by the local population and profitably exported to Port Jackson to help meet its needs for food although the wool industry was slower to develop. So sheep skins were abundant and well understood by any English-trained tanner such as John Blackwell.

Cattle were available in smaller numbers, at perhaps half of the sheep population, but a calf skin was a larger and higher value item and consequently prized.

The native kangaroos were a major food source for the indigenous population, settlers and convicts alike, and so pursued by all and sundry, including the convicts and bushrangers in the interior of the island. The introduction of dogs and guns accelerated their slaughter to the point where the sight of a kangaroo had become a relative rarity by the mid 1830s and there was a real prospect of extinction by the 1850s.⁶¹ For the moment though kangaroo skins were there for the taking.

There do not appear to have been any official controls on the trade in skins other than an early and unsuccessful ban by Lt Governor Davey relating to kangaroo products, an attempt to combat the bushranger problem. John Blackwell could presumably acquire his hides from whomever he pleased including the convicts who hunted 'roo once their official day's work was done once he had adapted English tanning techniques to colonial raw materials.

Bark, another material Tanner Blackwell would need, and especially wattle bark, was so abundant in the colony that it was being exported for the English tanning industry from the 1820s.⁶²

The range of goods produced by Blackwell's tannery expanded steadily through the early 1820s. He boasts of having been the first to produce parchment in the colony and the Government was a customer as early as 1826 for use in the Registrar's office.⁶³

In the same year Blackwell succeeded 'in preparing Morocco Leather, upon the Spanish principle, which he has brought to a state of perfection, superior to the best specimens of that article of European manufacture.'⁶⁴ Presumably there was a limited market for this fine leather which was usually destined for bookbinding, glove making and other high value items but it did add to the reputation of the enterprise.

Crime and Punishment

John Blackwell had the misfortune to be robbed when coming home from Hobart one winter night in 1822. The roads were risky for honest citizens and the Hobart Town Gazette's report of the affair concluded with the observation that it understood 'a Patrol of Constables is ordered on Saturday nights [the day of the weekly market] on the road between Hobart Town and New-town'.⁶⁵ For good measure AW Humphrey, Superintendent of Police, posted a colossal reward of £30 (£10 per offender) for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the malefactors.

It is not clear whether the reward was ever claimed or the robbers brought to justice but this was not the last time John Blackwell was the victim of a crime.

Not all resulted in a bloodied head. Like many of his neighbours Blackwell was plagued by stock wandering onto his land to graze and by unauthorised wood cutting. Fences were rare, cattle need to eat and even today there is money to be made from shady trading in firewood. Like his neighbours Blackwell placed advertisements in the newspapers warning against trespass but it is unlikely they were of much effect. But it is thanks to one of these notices from the Hobart Town Gazette of 23 January 1824 that we know John and Mary had christened their property 'Taplow' after the town in Berkshire where John had worked for Joseph Wise.

Scamsters were also not unknown. In 1824 the Supreme Court in Hobart heard the case of one Edward Millar

arraigned as a common cheat for defrauding John Blackwell,a tanner at New-town, on the 7th day of August last, of two dressed kangaroo skins, valued at 10s, and a sheep-skin rug valued at 4s., under the following circumstances :

At a very early hour of the day charged in the information, the prisoner presented himself to Mr. Blackwell, and said, " I am sent by Mr. George Beaumont (Superintendent of the prisoner's barracks) with his compliments, and he will thank you to send him two nice dressed kangaroo skins, and a sheep's-skin mat" ; which falsehood induced Mr. Blackwell to deliver them, and for which fraud, much to our satisfaction, the culprit was recorded Guilty.⁶⁶

Not much lasting harm done to John Blackwell but Millar was subsequently sentenced to 'two public whippings'.

Tanner Blackwell was also to be beaten and robbed at least once more. This second time was more serious than the first: the crime not only took place within the sanctity of his own home, Mary Blackwell was also its victim, presumably under the terrified gaze of their three young children

Early on Saturday morning, three ruffians with their faces blackened entered Mr. Blackwell's house at New-town, and beat him about the head in a most barbarous, manner with heavy clubs. Two of them were also armed with musquetry, and one fellow was so brutal as to introduce the barrel of a pistol into Mrs. B. mouth, swearing at the same time that if she spoke or stirred to make any alarm he would murder her. The motive of this attack appears to have been excited by Mr. Blackwell's return from Launceston with a considerable sum of money. However we are glad to add, that his most coward-like assailants succeeded in obtaining but a mere trifle.⁶⁷

We can only speculate on what John had done with the 'considerable sum of money' from his Launceston expedition but it is to be hoped he had put it somewhere safe. A week later he posted a reward of fifty dollars 'For the apprehension of the thieves who attacked Mr Blackwell, and so barbarously beat him'.⁶⁸ There was no mention of poor Mary.

The exact circumstances are unclear but in December of that year Chief Justice Pedder sentenced a James Major to death as 'one of those who robbed Mr Blackwell', a sentence which was rapidly carried out on 6 January 1826.⁶⁹

So long was the list of men Pedder sentenced that day to hang – 25 in all and amongst them the infamous bushranger James McCabe - that most individuals sentenced to death were given fairly cursory treatment by the Hobart newspapers. The Gazette did comment however that the case of the Maria Island escapees Bosworth, Millar, and Craven, also sentenced to hang, 'was similar to that at Dr. Hudspeth's and Mr. Blackwell's. It was impossible to conceive any thing more dreadful than the state of a family exposed to such violence, finding themselves broken in upon by a body of armed men threatening their lives.'⁷⁰

In the case of the break in at Hudspeth's, Assistant Surgeon for the district of Jericho, Mrs Hudspeth was able to identify 'one of the two ruffians who burned her house and threatened to murder her'⁷¹

Despite the Gazette's acknowledgement that the Blackwell household had endured a terrifying experience at the hands of their aggressor Major's execution was officially recorded as being for stealing cattle, proof of the value assigned to livestock at the time!

Yet another of the 'ruffians', sealer Timothy Smith, was reported as featuring in a 'boatjacking' off Maria Island in March the following year.⁷² It seems that the Blackwells had either been able to identify their assailants or the constabulary had done an excellent job of detecting them.

Farmer Blackwell and the Three Little Pigs

It being a condition of his land grant that Blackwell would farm at least a proportion of it, farm he did. Or at least he kept some animals. In addition to the cattle purloined by James Major, we know that the Blackwells owned pigs. Their care was most likely part of Mary Blackwell's daily work and allowed her to usefully dispose of any kitchen scraps.

Stock fencing was obviously not of highest priority though as the pound keeper Richard Maddock threatened to sell 'a Bullock and three pigs belonging to Mr Blackwell' which had been impounded at New Town in December 1824.⁷³ A week later the three pigs were already being offered for auction but the bullock had presumably been deemed worthy of his ransom and was no longer up for sale.⁷⁴

Apart from that reference there is little to suggest that Blackwell allowed farming to divert him in the early days from the ambitions he cherished for his tannery.

Asset Rich, Cash Poor

Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s was still a pretty rough and ready place. Apart from thieves and housebreakers the aspiring business man also had to contend with a local taste for litigation.

John Blackwell found himself on the receiving end of not one but three writs in 1823 directed to the Lieutenant-Governor's Court.⁷⁵ Two of them were brought by 'Riseley', the third by 'Murray'. Both were successful in their actions and Blackwell's property was threatened with sale to satisfy the court's orders in their favour. So who were these plaintiffs?

The first is easy. John Riseley, arrived 1819, was the brother and business partner of the notorious, and/or admirable depending on your point of view, Maria Lord. That made him the brother-in-law of one of the wealthiest men in the colony, the landowner and merchant Edward Lord while Maria herself presided over an expanding retail empire. The scale of Riseley's activities in 1823 is evidenced by his contract to supply to the Government Store 11,000 lbs of meat (around 5 tonnes).⁷⁶ He also produced wheat on the land he had been granted in the Sorell and Caledon (to the east of the Coal River) districts and was generally speaking a pretty big wheel.

It is not hard to imagine John Blackwell racking up a debt to such an individual, perhaps for hides supplied but not paid for, and Riseley was not the sort to let a debt lie uncollected. In the same year he also threatened to sell up Bartholomew Reardon, proprietor of 800 acres at Pittwater (Forcett) as well as a smaller fish, a Mr Dixon, the owner of a 30 acre farm.⁷⁷

The reason for two separate suits against Blackwell was probably to structure the debt so that it fell under the £50 jurisdictional limit applying to the court based in Hobart. Any higher and a trip to Sydney was required.

It is slightly more difficult to identify the second litigant but it was most likely to have been Robert Lathrop Murray. Murray, transported for bigamy but rapidly pardoned, was better known later as a journalist but also pursued a career as a 'General Agent' and as an 'Agent in the Lieutenant-Governor's Court'. The scope of the former activity is a little unclear but included selling and developing real estate as well as other unidentified business activities one of which must have put John Blackwell in Murray's debt. His activities as agent in the Lieutenant-Governor's Court would have given him an unbeatable advantage when it came to bringing an action against the hapless Blackwell.

Van Diemen's Land had no formal legal profession at the time so those with a smattering of legal knowledge were authorised to represent parties in the Court. Murray must have spent a good part of his time there either as agent or litigant. In 1823 alone he obtained judgments in his own name against a Mr Jackson of Pittwater, Mr Wilson at Macquarie Plains, Mr Rice on the Coal River, Mr Hay at New Norfolk, Mr Lepine in Campbell St and, like Riseley, Bartholomew Reardon for good measure.⁷⁸ Quite a program!

So it was that the Provost Marshall was empowered to sell Blackwell's house, land and tannery to satisfy his debts. The auction date was fixed for 18 September 1823.⁷⁹ This date was deferred a week and then – nothing. We know that Blackwell was still in possession of his New Town property in 1825 so either someone bailed him out or he came to an arrangement with his creditors.

But John Blackwell was not out of the woods yet. In 1825 he was back in court this time with Lord (Maria or Edward) as his opponent. Once again the merchant prevailed and the Blackwell property

A Farm of 300 acres, situate at New Town, with House and Outhouses thereon with Tannery, Pits and Utensils necessary for carrying on an extensive Business⁸⁰

was put into the hands of the Sheriff, Dudley Fereday, the Supreme Court of Tasmania having been established since the last legal skirmish. The property failed to sell or was withdrawn from sale and efforts were made to manage the affair. Blackwell advertised for his creditors to come forward 'in order that same may be put in a frame of adjustment' at the same time urging those who owed him money to pay up or face legal action.⁸¹

What followed is not entirely clear but the property was not sold. Three hundred acres was perhaps too big a spread to be attractive or the tannery not an attractive prospect. But some time between July 1825 and August 1826 a portion of 20 acres was sold to a Thomas Coleman. This sale may have brought in enough to meet the debt to Lord.

The Blackwell Grant – Easy Come, Easy Go?

Had John Blackwell managed to hold onto to all of his 300 acres long enough for one of his numerous descendants to subdivide it there might be wealth lurking somewhere in the family today.

But most of the early large grants which were located close to population centres started to be sold off in smaller lots over the period 1820-1850 as closer settlement replaced farming. Blackwell's grant was no exception. The property, minus 20 acres already sold to Coleman, was once more put up for sale in August 1826 including the 'Buildings, Sheds, Erections, Tan Pits, Bark Mill thereon.'⁸² The sale was to be conducted by the private auctioneer J T Collicott and so does not appear directly connected with earlier court proceedings.

Again the land does not appear to have sold in its entirety but a later document⁸³ refers to 20 acres sold to James Lownd(e)s,⁸⁴ a somewhat larger block transferred to 'Simpson', and large chunks sold to 'Baynton'⁸⁵ and 'Giblins'. This last was Robert Wilkins Giblin, purchaser of 123 acres⁸⁶ and inaugural Master of the Orphan School. He was also the father of Thomas and William Giblin who bought a further Blackwell parcel of 15 acres in 1834.⁸⁷

It also appears that 20 acres on the eastern tip of Blackwell's grant had been sold in 1828 to a Thomas Haskell for £35. A substantial 2 storey residence, Prospect House, was built on this site a few years later ⁸⁸ and still stands today at 38 Sinclair Avenue. Finally the property was also reduced at some point by 21 acres 'conveyed by the Sheriff to R Mather'.⁸⁹

A Dirty Business

John Blackwell was a master of the technical aspects of his trade but as we have already seen his aptitude for business is less certain. As early as 1824 there were six tanneries operating in Van Diemen's Land.⁹⁰ Even if they were not all in Hobart this still meant competition.

Blackwell continued to advertise his wares in usual and less usual ways and earning himself a bit of free advertising in the Colonial Times in 1827:

Nothing like Leather.-What an eccentric figure he cuts - only look at him. There's a true Colonist, we beg pardon, a legitimate Colonist. Every thing of Colonial manufacture and growth, but himself and his shirt - we mean Mr. Blackwell, the enterprising Tanner and Leather Manufacturer, at Newtown ; who is to be seen walking the streets of Hobart Town, in a complete suit of leather - coat, waistcoat, trousers, hat, and shoes, all of leather nankeen - very soft.-We are happy to see that leather trowsers, of Mr. Blackwell's pattern, are on sale at most of the shops in town, and are generally well liked for working men in the bush. Nothing like leather, law, parchment, and papers.⁹¹

Typically of the Times' editor there were no doubt a few hidden and not so hidden barbs in this piece but overall it is unlikely to have displeased its subject. After all, any publicity is good publicity.

But in addition to a growth in competition the noxious nature of the trade inevitably brought with it problems of an environmental nature. 'Whatever materials or mode be adopted, the main purpose [of tanning] is to get rid of mucous fleshy particles, which diminish the durability of the leather by their tendency to putrefaction.'⁹² You get the picture.

As early as 1823 Blackwell had been prosecuted for emptying a tan tub into the New Town Rivulet and ordered to abate the nuisance within 48 hours or risk significant financial penalties.⁹³ No more detail is available but with George Gatehouse's brewery downstream relationships along the New Town Rivulet must have been strained at times. Little wonder Gatehouse's biographer reports that 'this business was not a success' though it doesn’t seem that proximity to John Blackwell's tan tubs and lime pits was to blame.⁹⁴

A case from the early 1840s provides a further insight into the problems posed by tanning on the New Town Rivulet. New Town brewer Robert Jacomb had charged his upstream neighbour Alexander Calder with breaching the Water Act 'in consequence of the lime and slimy matter imparted to the water' carried by the Rivulet to Jacomb's brewery causing 100 hogsheads of beer to spoil.⁹⁵

What is perhaps most remarkable about this case, apart from the fact that Jacomb was unsuccessful (neither he nor his beer appears to have been much liked), was that Calder was not responsible for actually producing the muck complained of. This had come from what had previously been Blackwell's tannery, by then in the hands of a Mr Regan. Calder's alleged fault was to construct a dam to supply his mill causing water to back up against Regan's tan pit. No-one connected with the case seems to have questioned the design or location of the tannery itself!

The Blackwells At Home

As there is more to life than tanning hides it is time to say something about the family life of John and Mary Blackwell. There is frustratingly little which can be gleaned from published sources about Mary. We know that she was literate to some degree: at the time of her marriage she was able to sign her name in the church register unlike the many who simply made their cross.

Mary may have had the task of teaching the Blackwell children the rudiments of reading and writing. The first public Board of Education was not established until the 1830s and the colony's free day schools came too late (1839) for the elder children. As for compulsory education, that was still well off in the future.

The Blackwells were not on the lowest rung of colonial society, that privilege being reserved to convicts under sentence. They also 'outranked' emancipists, those convicts whose sentences had expired, and theoretically even the children of emancipists. But they never featured amongst the movers and shakers of Van Diemen's Land nor involved themselves to any great extent in public affairs.

Indeed the most obvious feature of the Blackwells' domestic life is the impressive regularity at which they added to their family. John jnr (1821) and Mary Ann (1822) were joined by Charlotte in 1824, Elizabeth Jane, 1826, Benjamin Isaac, 1828, Patience Selina, 1830, Prudence Rebecca, 1832, pausing until 1836 for Alice Rachel, followed by Sarah Ann, 1838 and the last of the brood, Eliza Frances, 1841.⁹⁶

With Eliza's birth Mary Blackwell, by then in her late 40s, could justifiably feel she had done her bit to boost the local population. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that her life was mostly taken up with child rearing and housekeeping. But at least she was no-one's servant as she had been in England and indeed like most free settlers she had her domestic help furnished through the convict assignment system.

At times though this help may have seemed more trouble than it was worth. There are many instances of assigned convicts being accused of misconduct by their masters or just simply absconding. One Blackwell assignee, Mary Stevens, convicted of stealing wearing apparel at the Warwick Assizes in 1827, was punished in 1828 for being 'Absent from her master's house after hours and being found in the company of two men.'⁹⁷ This is unlikely to be an isolated example given the nature of Hobart Town's population.

John Blackwell wasn’t always so unsympathetic towards convicts. In the same year that he turned Mary Stevens in to the authorities he also copped a sturdy fine of $95 for harbouring a convict runaway.⁹⁸ Jonathan Edwards had absconded from the Launceston Public Works Gang in January and managed to stay at large until 20 May 1828 when he was ‘apprehended by Constable Byron at Mr Blackwell’s at New Town’.⁹⁹ It’s not clear how long Edwards had been there but for a fine of that magnitude Blackwell may have done more than just turn the proverbial blind eye.

Family Reunion

Even if she never saw England again after more than 20 years in the colony Mary Blackwell was to receive a very tangible reminder of the world she had left behind: her younger sister Charlotte! Charlotte and husband George Pennington arrived in Sydney from Liverpool with 300 other bounty immigrants aboard the Argyleshire on 12 November 1840.¹⁰⁰ A few weeks later – perhaps once they could face the sea again - the couple took a second ship, the Abercrombie, on to Hobart Town, arriving on 15 December, just in time for Charlotte to support Mary through her last pregnancy.

Charlotte, like Mary, could read and write and her immigration suggests that the sisters had been able to keep in contact, perhaps starting when Mary first left home. The family back in Nottinghamshire had obviously heard enough positive stories about life in VDL to encourage the Penningtons to follow Mary’s example.

The sisters seem to have been close – the Blackwells had even named a daughter after Charlotte - but the brother-in-law Mary may never have met before was not destined to become the ideal colonist.¹⁰¹ George Pennington, a gardener in the old country, found work with Hobart solicitor TW Rowlands but the position must not have suited him. In February 1841 he appeared in the Hobart Police Court ‘charged with absenting himself [from his employment] without leave and drunkenness’. That sort of behaviour could have serious consequences as George found to his cost: he was sentenced to fourteen days at the treadwheel.¹⁰²

George Pennington was to die of fever in July 1842, a mere 18 months after arriving in the colony.¹⁰³

Nearer my God to Thee

Religion played just as important a role in colonial life as it had in England. When John and Mary arrived in the colony the only form of worship available to them was the Church of England. They had their first child baptised by the Anglican chaplain, the Rev Knopwood when John jnr was already 14 months old.¹⁰⁴

The next two, Mary Ann and Charlotte, were baptised together in 1824 when Mary Ann was nearly two but Charlotte only a few weeks old. Interestingly John Blackwell had in the meantime made a donation of £1/1s towards the building of a Presbyterian church in Hobart which may indicate a general leaning towards other forms of Protestantism.¹⁰⁵

In the end it was St John's Anglican Church in New Town that got the lion's share of the Blackwells' baptismal business. At the time of its construction on the lobbying of the local community and with the support of Governor Arthur the building's role had been expanded from that of chapel for the Orphan Schools to fully fledged parish church for New Town.

The church had been in use since December 1835 but it took John and Mary Blackwell until January 1839 to muster their brood for a mass christening, despite the fact that the church cannot have been more than a few hundred metres from the Blackwell residence.¹⁰⁶ The reasons for this reticence can only be guessed at.

Thus it was on Sunday 20 January 1839 that a conga line of Blackwell children were presented to the Orphan School chaplain, Rev Naylor, for baptism under the eyes of a congregation comprising local worthies in their reserved pews, the inmates of the boys and girls Orphan Schools in one upstairs gallery and a number of convicts in the other.¹⁰⁷

First in line was Elizabeth Jane already nearly 13 years old, then the second boy Benjamin Isaac 10½, followed by Patience Selina 8½, Prudence Rebecca 6½, Alice Rachel, nearly 3 and perhaps clasping her mother's free hand while with her other Mary carried the latest of her brood, Sarah Ann born only weeks before. It must have given the neighbours something to talk about other than the weather and the failings of their convict servants, especially if John senior turned out in one of his leather suits for the occasion.

The Friends' Connection

Officially then the Blackwells were Church of England and so the head of the household reported to the New Town census taker in 1837.¹⁰⁸ But a Quaker influence is also clearly discernible, perhaps from John Blackwell’s Berkshire employers, perhaps from his own family. John Blackwell's Mercury obituary claimed that 'He was generally looked upon as a Quaker, and no doubt in principle was one; but although he worshipped with the Society of Friends nearly all his life, and always adopted the garb peculiar to that sect, he was never a member of the Society.'¹⁰⁹ The Examiner obviously had access to slightly different sources and reported that John Blackwell had been ‘a member of the Friends meeting [...] accustomed on the First Day weekly to ride to Hobart Town on his well-known nag to attend worship.’¹¹⁰

Just what Quakers wore in 19th century Hobart Town is hard to be sure but it is likely to have been plain, slightly old fashioned and possibly preponderantly grey. It may also have involved a distinctive way of wearing beard and whiskers – classic markers of difference for the male of the species - but photographic evidence is hard to come by.

Quaker leanings may also help explain John's tardiness in having his children baptised as christenings were not part of the sect's practice. More importantly Quakers were and are known for their outspokenness on social issues, often in opposition to prevailing majority views. There is no known evidence of John Blackwell as a campaigner for social change but we can speculate that his Quaker sympathies indicate he held more progressive views on a range of subjects than the majority of his fellow Vandemonians.

John Blackwell's connection with the Society of Friends is also evidenced by the purchase prior to 1843 of 20 acres of his land by 'R Mather' via the Sheriff. This was very probably Robert Mather a prominent Hobart Quaker who had himself experienced insolvency in 1836.¹¹¹ I imagine it means that either Mather had lent money to John Blackwell secured against a portion of the latter’s land or that Blackwell owed money to Mather for goods obtained on credit.

Finally Blackwell's ties to the Friends are evidenced by the journal kept by Quaker missionary Frederick Mackie on his 1852 visit to Van Diemen's Land with fellow missionary Robert Lindsey. In company with East Coast pastoralist and Quaker Francis Cotton, Mackie and Lindsey walked from Hobart Town on 6 December 1852

to call on Jno Blackwell … [who] attends meetings but is not a member [of the Quaker sect]; in a solid time after tea R.L. had much council and advice to hand to J.B.'s son an interesting young man about 25 years old.¹¹² J.B. formerly lived at Taplow Mills in the employ of the Wises. He was much interested in hearing any tidings of the family and desired his respects to any who might be living.¹¹³

The Demon Drink

Frederick Mackie does not mention it (and he doesn't hold back in the case of some other Hobartians) but there was one insuperable obstacle between John Blackwell and the Quaker ideal. It may also help explain his rather mixed results in an admittedly difficult business climate.

The overwhelming evidence is that the head of the Blackwell household liked a drink. So much so that when in 1828 the local bureaucracy prepared a list of children living in New Town the entry for John jnr, then 6 years old, reads 'The parents of this child came free from England. Father a drunken character.'¹¹⁴

John Blackwell (or to be fair someone of that name) seems to have been charged with public drunkenness and fined 5 shillings at fairly regular intervals in the 1830s.¹¹⁵ His business affairs were going relatively badly by then but it is hard to know which was cause and which effect. Opportunities for a tipple were not in short supply either – ‘[t]he amount of drunkenness in the town was something awful’ - and Mackie noted with disapproval the existence of 180 public houses in Hobart at the time of his visit.¹¹⁶ One local newspaper, the Colonial Times, was in the habit of reporting on the court appearances for intoxication of those it delighted in calling 'lushingtons' with a high degree of hilarity.

If alcohol was a bone of contention within the family it is perhaps no surprise that three of the Blackwell girls, Patience, Prudence and Alice, married fervent temperance campaigners and a fourth, my ancestor Charlotte Blackwell, became the wife of a Methodist chapel keeper! Family lore has it that John Blackwell eventually reformed and happily he was still welcome at his daughters’ ‘wowser’ weddings.¹¹⁷ He was witness at two of them and presumably needed to give permission for the two who married as minors.

Nevertheless when Patience's husband William Evans who 'well known as a temperance advocate, ... [and] never failed to expound his views on the matter when opportunities served' got started on his favourite topic there could have been some awkward moments in the Blackwell household.¹¹⁸ As for John Andrews, husband of the well named Prudence, he remained a trustee of the Tasmanian Temperance Alliance until his death in 1921 at the great age of 88, having joined the Rechabites in 1858!¹¹⁹

Not all was temperance and self denial amongst the next generation of Blackwells. John jnr seems to have been more at risk of following in his father's footsteps, at least as an adolescent.

Thirteen year old John and his young mate Walter Motton had been tasked with acquiring some grocery items in Hobart Town.¹²⁰ The boys had visited the George and Dragon Inn for refreshments on their way home and somewhere along the way they had been robbed of their goods and some money – or so they said.¹²¹ Whether they anticipated it or not, the constable to whom they reported the matter expected them to be able to identify their assailants.

Two ideal culprits were easily located: Isaac Barrow, living in a hut on the Blackwell property, and his drinking partner James Bonsor, both of whom had arrived as convicts in 1824.¹²² Barrow and Bonsor had called at Cain's that afternoon to buy chops.

Barrow and Bonsor were charged with the theft of a Spanish dollar (about 4 shillings), some meat, tea, sugar and a bag from Motton and 2 shillings from Blackwell 'on the king's highway'. Highway robbery was still a capital crime and it is clear from the newspaper account that Justice Montagu, unconvinced of the boys' truthfulness, had to work hard to shake their testimony (Barrow and Bonsor were unrepresented despite the seriousness of the charges against them).

In the end the men were convicted of stealing a bag from Motton, valued at sixpence. Presumably judge and jury were persuaded that the men had broken the law in a way which fell short of highway robbery but still merited punishment. The bag stealing conviction seems almost to have been chosen at random. It might have been a case of all's well that ends well except that the sentence imposed for such a trifling offence was a solid 7 years 'transportation'.¹²³

Making Ends Meet

Despite the various land sell offs during his lifetime John Blackwell managed to keep hold of a block of 36 acres, including the tannery, in the southwest corner of his original grant and with a boundary along the New Town Rivulet.¹²⁴ But for some reason he had decided to hang up his tanner's apron in 1832 after only twelve years at the helm of the business he had founded.

At the time John Blackwell was still relatively young and he and Mary were still adding to their family. Perhaps the work itself – smelly and unremitting toil at the tan tubs – or the drink had taken too heavy a toll, or perhaps his heart was just no longer in the enterprise.

But a man with a wife and six – then seven, then eight, then nine, then ten - children to support needs to make a living.

Farming does not seem to have been the solution though no doubt the space to be largely self sufficient in food was a great help with all those mouths to feed. No doubt the Blackwells also ate their share of bush tucker. A neighbour recalled the abundance of parrots in the 1830s

[They] came down in their thousands around the stacks of corn and many a parrot pie my mother used to make, we used to kill them by taking a number of large stones to the top of the [hay]stack and lying down quietly until the ground below was green with parrots then a storm of stones generally killed or wounded a dozen birds.¹²⁵

How else did the Blackwell family manage? Part of the answer must lie in the rent received for the lease of the tannery. This should have been reasonably constant over the years. There were also the bits of land which could be sold off here and there if things got too tight.

Just as importantly there can have been few if any years when all of his children were living at home and dependent on John for their keep. Children in nineteenth century working class families were expected to pull their weight from an early age and the young Blackwells were no exception.

This point is illustrated by the census taken in New Town in 1837. As head of household John Blackwell completed and signed a return listing the eight people then resident with him – Mary and six of their children: John jnr, Mary Ann, Charlotte, Patience, Prudence and Alice, as well as one unnamed male convict. John gave his occupation as tanner, and all of the family were said to be Church of England.

John junior would have been old enough to help his father with the farm while Mary Ann and Charlotte could help their mother with running the household and caring for the younger girls.

That leaves two children unaccounted for: Elizabeth, the third girl, and Benjamin Isaac, the second son. It turns out they were not far away.

Wanted, IN a Family where there are Children an active steady respectable Girl, who would make herself generally useful. Apply to Mrs. Robert Nichol, New Town Road.
Jan. 23, 1837¹²⁶

Elizabeth Blackwell, barely into her teens, must have fitted Mrs Nichol's criteria as she appeared in the otherwise Presbyterian household of Robert Nichols for census purposes: one less mouth to feed and perhaps a small wage in return for the domestic chores which would have otherwise occupied her at home.

The Nichols were quite a modern family. Robert, the nominal head of household was a cashier at the Commercial Bank, but his wife Ann also aspired to work, establishing a school for girls at their home, Leslie Cottage, from late 1840.¹²⁷ Teaching was one of the few occupations considered suitable for respectable middle class females at the time so Elizabeth was in safe hands.

As for Benjamin, or Isaac as he was usually known, he formed part of an even more rarefied but bachelor household in New Town. The head of household, William Taylor Noyes, not yet 40 had been clerk to the Lieutenant-Governor's Arthur's Private Secretary and remained for the time being on the staff of the Arthur's successor, Sir John Franklin. The Colonial Times, no lover of the bureaucracy, described him disparagingly as 'Mr Noyes, of seal-affixing notoriety' and a 'pin-making sprig about Government House'.¹²⁸

The second of the bachelors was Gibraltar-born James Jones Pringle, also a young man in the service of the Lieutenant-Governor but not so much in the sights of the Colonial Times.¹²⁹ Pringle was later appointed as Superintendent of Convicts at the Cascades Probation Station.

Finally there was William Edward Nairn¹³⁰ an Oxford graduate in his mid 20s, who had arrived in the colony in February 1837 and was perhaps lodging with Noyes on a temporary basis while he found his feet in Hobart. First appointed as a clerk in the Colonial Secretary's Office he was to finish public life as President of the Legislative Council.

Apart from one male convict Isaac Blackwell was the only 'support staff' to these fine gentlemen, or at least the only one living on the premises. As Isaac was 9 or 10 years old at the time it is difficult to imagine him in charge of the household so there was presumably a cook or housekeeper who allocated his daily tasks. It is conceivable that the boy also ran messages or errands for Noyes and the others, possibly connected with their government work.

The arrangement was not to last very long in any case as Noyes was appointed Assistant Police Magistrate at Waterloo Point (Swansea) in 1840.¹³¹ Isaac later became a shoemaker so his next place of residence may have been that of his apprentice master.

Apart from the snapshot provided by the 1837 census it is possible to plot some of the ebbs and flows of the Blackwell household through the marriages of the Blackwell girls. Mary Ann was first to go in 1842 aged about 21 followed by Charlotte in 1845 aged 20. The latter, my ancestor, had been living as a servant at the house of Mr Witt for three years at the time of her marriage. This means she had ceased to be dependent on her parents at the latest at 16 or 17 years of age and perhaps considerably earlier. By contrast Patience was still living with her parents at the time of her marriage in early 1851 at the age of 20.

Deaths in the Family

In such a large family it is perhaps surprising that all ten children survived childhood. They obviously came of robust stock. But John and Mary's satisfaction at raising their brood to adulthood and seeing the eldest girl Mary Ann marry turned quickly to sorrow when she died in childbirth the following year at the age of only 20.¹³²

Mary Ann's husband George Bird, a currier, was foreman for John Regan at the tannery Regan was leasing from John Blackwell.¹³³ That made him pretty much the boy next door given the family's proximity to the business. It must have doubled the blow when Bird drowned himself in the Derwent two months after Mary Ann's death.¹³⁴ Their little son Samuel was entrusted to the care of his Blackwell grandparents as George had no family in Van Diemen's Land but the child survived only a matter of months, dying of a 'bowel complaint' in January 1844.¹³⁵ Uncle John Flintham Blackwell reported the death.

Neither were John and Mary destined to live into old age together. After successfully negotiating the perils of childbirth no less than ten times and burying her oldest daughter Mary Blackwell died in 1851 of scarlet fever aged 58.¹³⁶

John had his wife of thirty years laid to rest in the burial ground behind St John's Church New Town. Like the church, the burial ground was originally intended for the inmates of the Orphan Schools and many were the orphans who ended there. But inevitably it also served as burial place for the residents of New Town until Cornelian Bay cemetery opened in 1872.¹³⁷

To the Memory of MARY, wife of JOHN BLACKWELL
OF NEW TOWN
Who departed this life Oct 30^th 1851
Aged 58 Years
The winter of trouble is past
The storms of affliction are o'er
Her struggle is ended at last
And sorrow and death are no more.

The verse on Mary's headstone comes from a Methodist hymn penned by John Wesley himself. This suggests that it was chosen by daughters Charlotte and Patience, both of whom had married Wesleyans.

John Blackwell’s qualities as a father would now be put to the test: four or five of the girls ranging in age from early teens to mid twenties seem still to have been living at home at the time of their mother's death.¹³⁸

Moving On and Moving Out

But it was not only death that separated the members of the Blackwell family. John Flintham, the eldest son, had moved to Victoria for good some time in the mid 1840s.¹³⁹ Once there he worked as a builder and carpenter, married (in 1856), founded a family and ended his days in Geelong in 1892.¹⁴⁰ Amongst John's five children was a daughter named Alice, perhaps for his sister, and a son who received 'Flintham' as his middle name.¹⁴¹

The other son, Isaac, also made the move to Victoria, also to Geelong where he appeared on the electoral roll in 1850.¹⁴² Isaac's whereabouts at the time of his mother's death are unknown so it is possible Mary saw neither of her sons again after the mid 1840s.

In Isaac's case the Victorian adventure was not an enduring one and he returned to live in Van Diemen's Land. But any pleasure John might have felt at this homecoming – he did have a relative surfeit of daughters - was to be shortlived. The 27 year old shoemaker died in Hobart in 1855 of an abcess on the stomach.¹⁴³ His death was registered by Patience's husband, William Evans, who seems to have played an increasingly active role in the family's affairs. Isaac shared a headstone at St John's New Town with William and Patience's infant daughter, Mary Jane, who died a few months later.¹⁴⁴

With two exceptions the Blackwell girls stayed in Tasmania. Alice Blackwell (Arnold), moved with husband and children to Adelaide around 1873, and the youngest girl, Eliza Frances, was living in Auckland New Zealand by 1880 according to the will made by her aunt Charlotte.¹⁴⁵ It is possible that, like her mother, Eliza was an accidental emigrant in domestic service with a family which relocated to New Zealand.

Burnt Out!

Despite marriages and removals interstate much of the Blackwell family seems to have stayed in regular contact even after Mary Blackwell’s death. This is evidenced by the fact that it was that John Blackwell’s daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Blackwell, née Browning, normally resident in Geelong who made a distressing and dangerous discovery in the summer of 1860:

On Tuesday afternoon the dwelling-house of Mr. Blackwell, situated at the back of the Orphan School, was destroyed by fire. It appears that shortly after dinner Mr. Blackwell lighted a fire in his oven. The oven is at the rear of the house, and close to it, and had a shingled roof over it. It is supposed that there had been too much brushwood used, and the flame had reached from the mouth of the oven to the shed roof over it, and thence to the roof of the house. The fire was discovered by Mr. Blackwell's daughter-in-law, who, hearing a noise, looked and found the roof of the house blazing. The premises had just been newly shingled and improved, and they are completely burnt out. We have not heard whether the furniture was saved, or if the premises are insured.¹⁴⁶

Not only was John Blackwell senior burnt out, daughters Sarah and Elizabeth were still living at home and caught up in the drama. Sarah was planning to marry later that year so it is to be hoped that her trousseau did not go up in flames.¹⁴⁷ There are no further press reports about this dramatic incident so presumably the Blackwells, in good pioneer fashion, simply picked up the pieces and re-built.

The Final Years

A handful of years after Mary Blackwell's death transportation of convicts ceased (1853) and the colony in which she and John had settled in 1819 changed from Van Diemen's Land to Tasmania (1856). With the new name came the right to elect a self governing Parliament provided certain criteria were met. John Blackwell was amongst the quarter or so of the adult male¹⁴⁸ population qualified to vote for both the Legislative Council (as owner of property valued at £50 or more) and the House of Assembly (as owner of property valued at £100 or more).

So John Blackwell, freeholder of Kangaroo Bottom (Lenah Valley), was enrolled to vote in the electorate of Buckingham for the Council and Glenorchy for the Assembly. His polling booth was located at the New Town Racecourse but there is no way of knowing whether citizen Blackwell took the opportunity to exercise his newly acquired privilege.

In all John Blackwell was to outlive Mary by 25 years before joining her in the New Town Anglican cemetery. His later years were relatively comfortable from a financial point of view¹⁴⁹ but with one son in Victoria and the other in the grave it was left to John's remaining daughters to see to his physical well being. At least three of the girls had pre-deceased him, Mary Ann in childbirth at 20, Patience and Sarah of diabetes in their 30s.

But that still left daughters Charlotte, Prudence and Alice married with children and living no further away than central Hobart. More importantly John had one daughter who never married to keep him company. It was Elizabeth Blackwell who 'watched the declining of her father and tended him until he was called away.'¹⁵⁰

And called away he inevitably was – dying at home of 'old age and catarrh' on 3 March 1876 - but at the age of 88 there was hardly cause to complain.¹⁵¹

His obituary considered that John Blackwell had passed 'the close of his life very pleasantly' after retiring from business and was tactful enough not to disclose that the retirement from the tannery business for which he was best known had lasted more than forty years!¹⁵² Perhaps most tellingly John Blackwell's death certificate records him with some pride not as farmer or retiree, but as currier, the trade on which he had embarked more than sixty years before.

 

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