Notes

Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

While today’s kids are thinking about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the ideas of ten year old Mary Wade will must have been vastly completely different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship sure for Australia: certainly one of 2 hundred and fifty or so women, half method to a strange land. Their female convict ship The Lady Juliana, a half of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and found responsible of stealing another child’s clothes. Her death sentence, commuted to transportation for all times, was bitter sweet. Mary had escaped the gallows but would never see her household again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous circumstances at Newgate Prison. Mary was one of fifty girls fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor toilets. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her situation improved. All convicts have been fairly fed and given warm beds. Only five ladies and two kids died in the course of the eleven month voyage and the condition of those who arrived within the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the pressure on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip sent many new arrivals together with Mary, to a spot described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave delivery to a daughter. Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict had two more youngsters with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the household was residing in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship but by no means returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and set up home near the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took ownership of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived happily till Harrigan’s demise in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty yr previous Mary died at home. She had given start to twenty one children. In her lifetime, her household had grown to incorporate five generations and over three hundred descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants number within the tens of 1000's, together with Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten 12 months old convict Mary Wade was facing an unsure future. Today, she is recognized as one of Australia’s founding mothers.


Read More: https://hillstohawkesbury.com.au/mary-wade-littlest-convict/