Notes

Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

While today’s kids are excited about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten 12 months previous Mary Wade will must have been vastly completely different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship bound for Australia: one of 2 hundred and fifty or so girls, half way to an odd land. Their female convict ship The Lady Juliana, part of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and located responsible of stealing another child’s garments. Her demise sentence, commuted to transportation for life, was bitter candy. Mary had escaped the gallows however would by no means see her household again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous situations at Newgate Prison. Mary was certainly one of fifty girls fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor bathrooms. However, as soon as aboard The Lady Juliana, her situation improved. All convicts had been reasonably fed and given warm beds. Only five girls and two youngsters died in the course of the eleven month voyage and the condition of those that arrived in the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the strain on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip despatched many new arrivals together with Mary, to a place described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave start to a daughter. She had two extra kids with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the household was living in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship however never returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and set up home close to the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took possession of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived happily till Harrigan’s dying in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty yr outdated Mary died at house. She had given birth to twenty one youngsters. In her lifetime, her household had grown to incorporate 5 generations and over 300 descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants quantity in the tens of 1000's, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten yr old convict Mary Wade was dealing with an uncertain future. Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict , she is recognized as certainly one of Australia’s founding moms.


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