1820s NSW – Early education of the children of  Irish catholic convicts. The “Currency Lads and Lasses” and the early Catholic school origins.

  The  1820s NSW – Early education of the children of  Irish catholic convicts.

The “Currency Lads and Lasses” and the early Catholic school origins.

[To go direct to the Roll call of students at four of the first five terms, click here.  Some research notes are here.]

 

Research into the lives of our early colonial ancestors inevitably leads one to ask how the children were brought up, educated, and trained for adulthood. School places were scarce in the early days of the Colony. Those few schools that did exist operated under the stewardship of the UK’s official religion and then mainly for the children of the middle classes.  The Catholic emancipists, overwhelmingly Irish, did not fit this category. The circumstances of the two children of my great great great grandparents, George Marshall (‘INDIAN’ 1810), a ‘clothier’, assigned to Simeon Lord for some ten years, and his Irish wife Mary McCarroll (‘CATHERINE’ 1814 – she was listed as ‘McArdle,) assigned, for a brief period before her marriage, to Stafford Lett of the Punchbowl Inn in the Rocks, provide an insight, though superficial, into how the emancipists provided schooling for their children. Mary, widowed in Ireland prior to her transportation from Dublin  in 1814, had left behind three McCarroll daughters, at least one of whom eventually made it to the Colony. After her 1815 marriage to George Marshall in Sydney, she had two more children in New South Wales. Their Marshall daughter, Mary Ann, was born in Sydney on 24 March 1815.^[1] Charles was born in Sydney on 23 June 1817.^[2]

 

Children such as these, born in the Colony, became referred to at the time as Currency Lads and Lasses.  The origin and use of the term ‘currency lad’ is explained by Peter Cunningham R.N. in 1827:

“Our Colonial born brethren are best known here by the name of Currency, in contradistinction to Sterling, or those born in the mother country. The name was originally given by a facetious paymaster of the 73rd Regiment quartered here – the pound currency being at that time inferior to the pound sterling. Our Currency lads and lasses are a fine interesting race, and do honour in the country in which they originated.”^[3]

 

The Historian, R M Crawford, who took a rather unsympathetic view of convicts overall, believed that the environment in which the currency children were raised had a much greater effect on their development than their parentage. He put forward the view that Australia offered convicts greater hope than they would have ever found at home, and that the country provided an environment that grew less vicious as the corrupting effects of penal discipline became a bad memory of the past. He noted that within the Colony it was frequently remarked that the native born Currency children were better than their convict parents. Crawford quotes Commissioner Bigge, who reinforced this impression. ^[4] Bigge wrote

“ The class of inhabitants who have been born in the colony affords a remarkable exception to the moral and physical character of their parents…and I repeat the testimony of persons who have had many opportunities of observing them, that they inherit neither the vices nor the feeling of their parents.”

 

Such comment confirmed what another observer wrote earlier, in 1811, albeit before the Marshall children were born:

“The children born in this colony from European parents are very robust, comely, and well made; nor is there a solitary of one being naturally deformed. They are remarkably quick of apprehension;n anything with uncommon rapidity; and greatly improve in good manners, promising to become a fine race of people.”^[5]

 

Currency children of Irish and/or Catholic families lacked, however, access to education. There had been at least two Catholic Schools between 1803 and 1806, but neither had more than a brief existence^[6]. One had been set up by James and John Kenny, emancipated Irish convicts (‘BODDINGTON’ 1793), who advertised in the Sydney Gazette on 6 October 1805:

“John and James Kenny respectfully acquaint their friends and the public in general, that they will open SCHOOL at Sydney on Monday 30th Instant, at No 8 on the Rocks, at the back of the residence of Mr Henry Kable. Parents and Guardians who may please to place their children under their tuition may rely on the strictest attention to their speedy improvement in reading, Writing, Vulgar and Decimal Arithmetic, Mensuration, and Book-Keeping according to the Italian mode.”

 

The school had some assistance from Governor King’s administration but closed in 1806 after the arrival of Governor Bligh.^[7] The absence of a Catholic priest in the Colony from 1817 to 1820 meant that spiritual and educational needs of the increasing number of Irish Catholic convicts were not met. The arrival of Father Therry in 1820, appointed ‘Roman Catholic Chaplain’, with a Government stipend, opened the way for him to exercise his leadership qualities before his flock, predominantly Irish and predominantly poor and poorly educated. Father John Joseph Therry was born at Cork, Ireland in 1791. He arrived in Sydney in 1820, succeeding Father O’Flynn, who had been expelled from New South Wales in 1817 by Governor Macquarie. He was coldly received by Macquarie, who warned him not to try to make converts, or to interfere with the (Anglican) religious instruction of the Catholic children in the Orphan Schools. 

 

As Waldersee notes^[8], Macquarie’s later support for the construction of St Mary’s Chapel suggests he was not so prejudicial or unfriendly as Eris O’Brien had claimed in his historical writings.^[9]Therry attended, singly, to the spiritual needs of the 10,000 Catholics of the Colony for a period of five years. He did excellent work among the convicts, and is regarded as the Apostle of Catholicism in Australia. He died in Balmain in 1864.^[10] At the time of his arrival, only 844 of the 5,688 children in the Colony attended school.^[11] There had been considerable reluctance among Irish Catholic families to send their children to Government (i.e Anglican) schools, with the result that there were no alternative educational facilities available to them at all. George Marley had in 1821 set up a school under Father Therry’s sponsorship in Parramatta and Therry moved to do the same in Sydney in the next year. The Sydney school had been set up in early 1822, by Andrew Higgins, a convict, a surveyor, who had been assigned to Father Therry after arriving on the ‘DAPHNE’ in 1819. Higgins was described on the convict indent as a ‘Land Surveyor, Overseer of Road works’. He was born in 1791 in County Meath and was sentenced to life at his trial in County Kildare.

 

In order to support the Sydney school, Father Therry petitioned the Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, on 3 April 1822 for assistance to enable Andrew Higgins to maintain the school. Therry wrote to the Colonial Secretary in the following terms:

“Sir, Permit me to recommend to the favourable consideration of His Excellency Sir Thomas Brisbane, Andrew Higgins, Schoolmaster of Kent Street, who teaches sixty children, half of which number are instructed gratis as he is a sober, attentive and moral young man, to solicit for him the usual weekly allowance or provisions from His Majesty’s stores.” ^[12]

 

The Governor’s decision, communicated the same month by the Colonial Secretary, was that

“….for the encouragement of education among children of the lower orders, (he) will allow you out of Colonial Funds, a penny per week for every child regular in attendance on Andrew Higgins Schoolmaster in Kent Street, such attendance from daily class rolls open to public inspection during the hours of instruction in his schoolroom”.^[13]

 

The all embracing term ‘lower orders’ reflected the contemporary situation where most young Catholics were children of emancipated Irish convicts.  The fact that these parents sought an education for their children suggested an ambition to lift themselves in society, and at the same time meeting a strongly held  preference to be educated under the influence the Catholic rather than the Anglican Church, which had comprehensive influence in the Government sponsored schools.   

 

The program was successful, at least in respect of many of the children. For example:

• The Fitzpatrick boys, also sons of a convict, (Bernard Fitzpatrick, “PROVIDENCE” 1811) provide such parents with a success story to justify their efforts. Their father had been transported under a life sentence. He had been convicted, as a letter carrier in Dublin, of “embezzlement” i.e removing a Bank Bill from a letter in the Post Office and sentenced to death. Consistent with the practice at the time in respect of all but the most serious crimes, the sentence was commuted to Life with transportation. The boys’ mother Catherine, a former schoolmistress from Dublin, had brought, also on the PROVIDENCE, young Columbus b.1810 and his elder brother John b.1808 from Ireland to accompany their father to Botany Bay. Their mother would not permit either of the boys to attend the schools which were run by the Government. Michael born in Sydney in 1816, became Colonial Secretary under Sir Henry Parkes. Ambrose, born in Sydney in 1814, became an architect and Mayor of Hunters Hill, and Columbus was elected an Alderman of Goulburn. Columbus, moreover, through a series of letters to newspapers in 1865, provides later generations with important insights into Catholic Society in the Macquarie and Brisbane eras. He was the altar boy who held the silver trowel, handing it to Father Therry to present to Governor Macquarie to lay the first stone of the St Mary’s Chapel in 1821.
• Michael Hayes, one of the Wexford “Men of ‘98”, and a leader in the Catholic community, sent his four children there at the same time as the Marshall pair. It is ironic, though, that all four, Richard and John became carpenters, Elizabeth married a printer on the Sydney Gazette. Ironically, all three, as well as their sister Ellen, were all listed in the 1828 Census as Protestants;^[14].
• John Evans, born 1813, became a weaver with Simeon Lord;
• John McNulty, born in 1811, became a shoemaker in Clarence Street Sydney, with his ex-convict father;
• William Marzagora became a cabinet maker. He had arrived with his family in 1816. His father John who was a ‘dealer in curiosities’ had accompanied his convict wife Mary (“MARY ANNE” 1816) to Sydney in 1816, together with their two sons;
• Peter Brennan became one of the few coopers in the Colony, while his younger brother, Thomas, became an apprentice cabinet maker. Their father was an ex convict;
• Lawrence Butler b. 1812 and his brother Walter, sons of ex convict Lawrence Butler Sr  (‘ATLAS” 1802) became printer and carpenter respectively,^[15];
• Another student in the school’s first group was Peter Dillon, the same age as seven year old Mary Ann Marshall, and son of  Peter Dillon, discoverer on Vanikoro of the remains of the La Perouse expedition; and
• Anne Byrne and James Devlin, children of “Men of ’98” James Byrne and Arthur Devlin.
• Doyle children. See NOTE 3 at the end of this article.

The school’s success in giving opportunities to these children “of the lesser orders” continued on into ensuing decades. William Blanchfield, aged nine, and his brother Edward, aged seven, were attending the school in 1830. They were the children of Irish convicts  Edward Blanchfield , “GUILDFORD” , 1816, and Susannah nee Anderson, “Lord WELLINGTON”, 1820.  Edward certainly did well, he sailed to Moreton Bay in 1843 on the Sovereign, added his mother’s maiden name to his and ended up as Edward Anderson, Mayor of Allora  on the Darling Downs.

 

Mary Ann and Charles Marshall were students at Kent Street from the first term in 1822 when they were 7 and 5 respectively. Father Therry’s April 1822 formal request to the Colonial Secretary for financial assistance stated there were 60 students, but by the time the first claim was submitted in August of that year there were 106 students. Mary and Charles are listed on the rolls up to 4 February 1823, by which time the school, then with 114 students, was at a King Street address.^[16]

 

The ‘Higgins and Muldoon School’ was the first government assisted Catholic school in Sydney itself following the arrival of Father Therry in 1820. In my view it was the only one functioning in the early 1820s. But there has been continuing confusion over the past hundred years whether it was merely one of two schools in Sydney at the time, where it was located in Sydney in its first few years, who conducted the school, and whether it operated for only a short time or functioned continuously for 185 years.Firstly, it is puzzling that historian Eris O’Brien wrote that:

“In 1822 the first school was opened in Sydney by Thomas Byrne in the new Court House in Castlereagh Street. Byrne, according to Mr John Weingarth was also the first teacher in the new Hyde Park Chapel School, as it was called. A handwritten advertisement among Father Therry’s papers shows that another school was at least contemplated. ‘At the instance of Revd. Mr Therry, Andrew Higgins respectfully takes leave to acquaint the public that he will open school at No. —,——-Street, on Monday the —- of January, 1822.’ He promises to teach all the Sciences, Grammar, and Bookkeeping and hopes that his talents will be found satisfactory. That is all that is known of him and his school.”  ^[17]

 

While Archbishop O’Brien had extensive access to 1822 historical papers, he was obviously not aware that the school did in fact open, and under Fr Therry’s sponsorship, nor of the disbursements made to the School by the NSW Treasurer, receipted by Father Therry, from 22 April 1822, the day after receiving notification of Governor Brisbane’s approval of funds and at least well into the mid 1820s. Apart from the names Thomas Sr and Thomas Jr in certain student lists, there is no other reference to a Thomas Byrne as an organiser or teacher. Nor did a Catholic school ‘open’ in the Castlereagh St Courthouse” in 1822, though these premises may have been used in late 1823 or early 1824 before moving on to the newly built premises on the St Mary’s site. When Fr Therry asked Darling for (more) funds for continuing the construction of St Mary’s, Governor Darling said no but Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott  allowed the Roman Catholics in the meantime to “…make use of part of the Public School Houses, until their chapel shall be in the state to afford the accommodation required.”^[18] But Scott did not arrive in the Colony until 1824.

 

The fact that two of the Fitzpatrick brothers, who lived in the adjacent Sussex street, students at Higgins’ school with the Mary Ann and Charles Marshall, were altar boys for masses at St Mary’s Chapel, supports the view that there was only one Catholic school at the time. Moreover, the biography^[19] of aforementioned Columbus, reinforces a view that the schools were one and the same.  Indeed, the present day St Mary’s Cathedral School has the August 1823 class list, showing many of the same names, framed on the Assembly Hall wall signifying the connection, despite the fact that the school to be built on the St Mary’s site was yet to eventuate in the following year.

 

There is some inconsistency in claims re date of origin, between the Choir and the School.  St Mary’s present day Choir dates, according to its web page, from 1817, when Mrs Fitzpatrick coached a small catholic choir, this claim despite the fact that in 1817, St Mary’s was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye, three years before Fr Therry’s arrival.) Incidentally, this historical recognition by the present day School puts paid to John McSweeney’s claim that Fr Therry’s school “….did not last very long.”^[20]Sir Thomas Brisbane’s instructions to the Colonial Secretary to pay funds in respect of recently completed terms referred on many occasions, to “The Roman Catholic School of Sydney”.^[21]  Note the singular. Finally, to put paid to any more suggestion that there could have been two different schools, as raised  by  Luttrell^[22],  an examination of the students in the first (1822) term and the fifth (1823) term , has no less than forty four names (including Philip Fitzpatrick, though his brothers Ambrose,  Columbus and John did not appear until the next Term) on both lists.

 

Nor does Luttrell’s comment – that Higgins may have been a teacher at Byrne’s school – pass scrutiny. After all, the school was called “The Higgins and Muldoon School” on the early documents, including on minutes signed by Governor Brisbane.As an aside, there were six Byrne children, (including Thomas Sr and Thomas Jr) among the students at Higgins’ school over the early years. There may or may not have been a connection between them and the Thomas Byrne who was said to have opened the St Mary’s School?^[23]We need to find the answer the question of why Thomas Byrne’s name appears in almost all twentieth century writings as the person who set up the first Catholic school and was the teacher.  Eris O’Brien’s refers to the Therry  papers. However, since the Therry documents failed to demonstrate to him that Higgins set up his school, then they may be seen also to be misleading on the appointment of Thomas Byrne. Several (all?) later historians, appear to unquestionably produce Thomas Byrne from their peers’ writings  and their apparently unsubstantiated or unnamed sources. For example Br Ronald Fogarty wrote in 1959 that “…Thomas Byrne was installed in 1822” sourcing McGuane (1906 RAHS) who noted that “…a Roman Catholic school was first opened in 1822 by Thomas Byrne” without McGuane himself giving any source for this claim. Similarly Br Urban Corrigan noted “…here …..the pioneer priest installed Thomas Byrne as the teacher of the first Catholic School in Sydney in 1822″ though without stating a source for the Byrne claim.^[24]

 

Although Higgins received the Government funding from April 1822, Father Therry’s letter of 3 April 1822 to the Colonial Secretary, excerpted above, makes it clear that Higgins was already teaching 60 children as at that date. If a Thomas Byrne was selected AND took up duty, and nothing in my extensive research, including among the Therry papers themselves, supports any conclusion that he did, it must have been a very temporary appointment. So it is evident that other historians – see the names in the endnotes – were similarly confused. Yhomas Byrne was certainly running the school in 1826 but this study relates to the establishment years. Goodin, writing in 1949^[25], correctly records the Governor’s subsidy to Higgins in 1822, he goes on to say that “…this was soon changed to a payment of pounds 50 per annum to Thomas Byrne, who kept his school at St Mary’s Chapel.” In any case, any school “kept at St Mary’s Chapel’ whether by Thomas Byrne or Andrew Higgins, was not established until 1824, evidenced by Fr Therry’s own statements that he “….put up his school (there) in 1824…”.^[26]

 

Moreover, none of the historians in my endnotes provide any background to Thomas Byrne, whereas the backgrounds of Higgins and Muldoon, as well as, for that matter, of George Morley of the Parramatta School, are well documented. And so, it seems the myth, if it is one, of Thomas Byrne having set up the first school continues. If he was in charge, it was not before the very end of 1823 at the very earliest. Sadly, it is this unknown Thomas Byrne whom the historians constantly recognise, ignoring Andrew Higgins (and Robert Muldoon) who developed the first Catholic school in Sydney itself in 1822 post the Therry arrival. Higgins was involved in many Church matters, including the management of the funding and development of St Mary’s Chapel, for some years. Indeed, his signature appears as a witness on George Marshall’s contract of sale of some of his Campbell street land to James Comer in 1828.

 

The Kent Street location has not been identified, at least in any published material.  Examination of maps of the time suggest that only the middle part of the long Kent Street was built upon. On the other hand much of the Irish population from which these children were drawn lived in the Rocks area, near the northern end. The Marshall family, however, was in 1822 living in Campbell Street, at the southern end of the town. Ruling out the northern end, where Kent Street had not formed at the time, it is entirely possible that the school was operated on the premises on or near James Dempsey in Kent Street near Erskine Street. Here, Mr James Dempsey, another of the “Men of ‘98”, and well off builder, had made available his premises as an open house where Catholic rites could be celebrated, during the period prior to Father Therry’s arrival and afterwards. Making available a building on or near his property to enable Father Therry to set up the school was consistent with his hospitable welcome to the newly arrived priest. This possibility as to the location is reinforced by the comments of Columbus Fitzpatrick, who wrote in 1865,

“ I knew (James Dempsey) when I was a boy; he was then a rich man and used to often say nothing on earth gave him so much pleasure as to have it in his power to oblige a Catholic……..” and “………when Father Therry came to the Colony (in 1820) he was surprised and delighted to find a couple of boys able to serve Mass and a good few people who could sing the church services, for my mother and a man named McGuire used to meet at Mr Dempsey’s to teach the youth of both sexes to sing, long before the arrival of Father Therry……,^[27]

 

By February 1823 the Higgins School had moved from Kent Street to King Street. Later references by 20th Century historians to the ‘Castlereagh Street’ site – the Court House – is further confusing. Bertie and others suggest that the school was located  in the Court House, Castlereagh Street.^[28]  There, he said, the Court House buildings were made available to Catholics for divine service as well as for educational purposes.^[29]. However the successive reimbursement claims made on the Government between 1822 and 1824 make reference to the School at Kent and later King Street, not Castlereagh. A couple of years earlier, Bigge had overruled Macquarie as to the respective locations of the Court House and the Church, despite construction being already underway.^[30] Perhaps a new study of the matter and a review of the consistent references by historians to Castlereagh St, including the claim that Therry commenced schooling there, could be tested.

 

Following the successful establishment of his school “for the lower orders”, Father Therry expanded his efforts. In 1823 he sent Robert Muldoon to open a school in Windsor, initially at the home of Laurence May of Pitt Town^[31]. In 1824 he petitioned the Governor, proposing that

“from that class of persons sent here for offences not of an absolutely degrading and demoralising tendency, an individual may be selected for each township, qualified and willing, for a small pecuniary consideration, to instruct poor children in the rudiments of education….”^[32]

 

Whether this approach met with success or not has not been followed up for this note, but it reinforces Father Therry’s reputation as one who encouraged and facilitated education for the children of his flock in the pre-Catholic Emancipation time, which was to continue to the end of the decade.

 

It is puzzling that Mary and Charles are not on the list for the August 1823 term, when they would have been eight and six respectively. It is not known how nor where their schooling continued. The return of Charles’ name to the November 1824 Higgins student rolls further complicates the matter. It is not surprising that the children might have been removed to a ‘better’ school from what Governor Brisbane earlier described as catering for “children of the lower orders”. George Marshall, , placed great store on being “instated once more in the middle sphere of society” having earlier petitioned the Governor in those terms, seeking an indulgence.^[33]  He was by now a successful entrepreneur in the woollen goods manufacturing industry at the George Street end of Campbell Street on his own land, originally allotted by Governor Phillip to Nathaniel Mitchell, his gardener. Marshall had purchased it from Mitchell’s widow in about 1820. Options for his children’s schooling included a Government (Anglican) school of which there were fifteen in the Colony at the time, or one of the four other private schools.^[34]  Sydney Grammar School goes back only to 1825, though it absorbed in that year the Halloran School.  Dr Halloran had opened a school in 1819 on the south east corner of Phillip and Hunter Streets. It soon became popular with free settlers. Children of some Irish emancipists, including James Meehan, by now Assistant Surveyor General were earlier students there.^[35] Such a school may have been more attractive to the Marshalls, with aspirations for their children, particularly if he and Halloran had an earlier personal connection. In this regard, Halloran had his Ticket of Leave suspended for a short time in the late mid 1819, during which time he was assigned to Simeon Lord, to whom George Marshall was also assigned at the time.George Morley’s school, on the face of it, was too far away in Parramatta, but statements many years later by Patrick Coady Buckley in Victoria to having been at school in Parramatta with our Charles Marshall and an Edward William Bayliss, are informative.^[36] Moreover, Andrew Higgins appears to have taught there, at least from July to September  in 1827.^[37] Could he have encouraged or facilitated a move?

 

Another option in Parramatta is Daniel Thurston’s School, functioning in the early 1820s as the Parramatta Commercial Academy, which took in boarders. Some prominent men of note were educated there.^[38]Though the Marshall children’s education gaps remain unfilled, we can record that Mary Ann, at the age of fifteen, married one Edward Conyngham, an emigrant ’wireworker’, who left Dublin in June 1828 to be shipwrecked in the Atlantic in July, travelling with other survivors in a succession of ships chartered by British Consuls, arriving in New South Wales a year later, via Cape Verde Islands, Rio de Janeiro and Hobart. From 1830 they owned and managed her late father’s woollen manufactory in Campbell Street and later the Bee Hive Inn at that location, and the Dublin Castle at George/Liverpool where the Sir John Young Hotel now stands . Her brother Charles, after taking up land in Porter’s Retreat near Hartley, later moved to the Monaro in or around the 1840s, then to Victoria where he was among the earliest settlers in East Gippsland.

 

Researchers may find ancestors among the names of the children at the Higgins and Muldoon School in the first five terms from April 1822 to February 1823. A list follows this article, sourced from NSW Archives records.^[39] Those attending  in both the first (April 1822) Higgins Term and in what is said by others, including St Mary’s School itself, to be the original (May 1823) School term are marked with an asterisk.And, finally, in the interest of future genealogists, I cannot resist the temptation to record that my greatnephew, one William Dawes, five greats grandson of our Currency Lass Mary Ann Marshall, later Conyngham, was a student at this same school,  in the Choir, and continues  as an adult member – thus providing a link –possibly unique – with the school’s origin 196 years ago as well as with the first Catholic Choir, formed by Mrs Catherine Fitzpatrick 200 years ago (2018)..

For the Roll of four of the first five terms, click here.

For some Research Notes, click here.

 

NOTE 1 : The late Veronica Walker’s account of James Dempsey and the St Mary’s community should be read along with the above article.   See also ‘Where I took two small steps: the Dempsey Story’ by Dennis Dempsey.  Lately that website appears to be inaccessible. However,  in the meantime, see the Wikipedia reference.

NOTE 2: I have been advised by Damien Farrell of another school, this for Catholics and Protestants, sat up by Farrell Cuffe, in Upper Pitt St St in around 1807.

NOTE 3: Elizabeth Kaziro has written as follows: “Among those on the class list for the Higgins School, I discovered my great great grandmother, Anne Doyle and her siblings.  I have just found this family of Patrick Doyle (Hercules 1802) and his wife Catherine Browne (Providence 1, 1811).  It was said that they were the licensees for the Three Jolly Sailors public house in Harrington St, Rocks – although I have not been able to find out any more about that pub. Anne Doyle is recorded as marrying Thomas Mason in 1830 by Fr Connolly at St Vergilius Chapel, Hobart Town.  They had 3 children and Thomas Mason died in Tasmania in 1837 and is recorded in the Hobart Town Courier as holding licence for Whale Fishery public house in Hobart (now Hope and Anchor and still operating as the oldest pub in Australia).  He was also a whaler and at the time  of death managing several whaling stations.  In the Church bans obtained from the Hobart Diocese it reads that both Anne and Thomas were born in NSW Colony.  However I have not been able to find Thomas Mason and his parents back in Sydney.  Have you come across this name in your research?  The closest I have come is to an Alexander Mason who married Hannah Simpson and had several children among them a Thomas.   Alexander had been 1^st mate on the Speke in 1808 and Hannah was also transported on that ship.  Alexander later became a pilot in Port Jackson.  He died in 1823 (Hannah in 1826) and in 1824 their 3 sons were sent to the Male Orphan Home at Cabramatta.  Thomas was made apprentice to Mr. Robert Driver of Cabramatta when in was 13 but after that the trail runs out – so it probably wasn’t him as he would have only been 16 in 1830.”