The Adamsons from Ballymacanallen

Sarah Ann Adamson was married to James Smith and was my great great great grandmother. She was born in around 1828 in Ballymacanallen, Co Down, Ireland. Her parents were Thomas and Ann Jane.

Sarah Ann's whole family came out to Australia, in dribs and drabs. The following table shows the details:

Name	Year of emigration	Ship	Religion	Native place and county	Relatives in the colony
Margaret Adamson	1849	John Bright	Church of England	Near Gilford, Co Down	No relatives in the colony
Thomas Adamson	1849	John Bright	Wesleyan	Near Gilford, Co Down	No relatives in the colony
Mary Jane Adamson	1851	St Vincent	Presbyterian	Gilford, Downshire	Sister and brother living in Sydney
Sarah Ann Adamson	1852	David McIver	Church of Scotland	Ballymacanallen, Co Down	Brother and 2 sisters living at North Shore
George Adamson	1852	David McIver	Church of England	Tullylish, Co Down	Thomas living somewhere in Sydney, Mary Jane and Sarah Ann living at North Shore
Thomas (father), Anne (mother), Martha, Ellen, Eliza, Nancy, Alexander and Robert	1855	Nabob	Presbyterian	All from Sego, Armagh, apart from Anne, who was from Tullylish, Armagh (actually Co Down)	A son, Thomas Adamson, living in York St, Sydney

Margaret and Thomas were the first of Sarah Ann's siblings to come out. Although it seems that Mary Jane arrived by herself, she actually arrived with her husband Henry Donaldson, also from Gilford, whom she married on the voyage - they were married by the ship's surgeon apparently. George and Sarah Ann arrived next, though George seemed quite confused about which sister he was travelling with - presumably because the single men and women weren't allowed to mix on the ship. Then the parents Thomas and Ann Jane brought all the rest of the children out - son Thomas paid immigration deposits for Thomas, Anne, Alexander and Robert a year before they emigrated (interesting that deposits were not required for the girls). Curiously, Thomas and Anne seem to have dropped their ages by about 20 years in order (I assume) to qualify to emigrate.

Ballymacanallen is a townland 4km north of Gilford, in the parish of Tullylish, Co Down, Northern Ireland. I tend to think they were probably all from Gilford, but the parents Thomas and Anne and the younger children may have moved on to Sego before they emigrated to Australia - who knows why. Ballymacanallen seems to have been a small farming community at the time.

Thomas was listed as farm labourer when he emigrated, as were his sons Thomas and Alexander, with son George listed as a labourer. It would appear that they all worked in labouring jobs here in Australia as well. Son Thomas bought 12 acres, 3 roods of land in "Willoughby" (possibly Crows Nest now) in 1853, though I can't work out exactly where this was - having more than one Thomas Adamson living in the North Sydney area makes it hard! Thomas the son (who, confusingly, is generally known as Thomas Adamson snr) built a weatherboard cottage at 10 Munro St, North Sydney, which still stands, and perhaps this is on part of the land he bought in 1853.

The thing which surprises me the most is the listed religion for each of the family members - there's a variety - Church of England (presumably this was "translated" from Church of Ireland), Church of Scotland/Presbyterian (are they the same thing?) and Wesleyan. Firstly I was totally surprised that there was a Presbyterian presence in Ireland. I does suggest to me that somewhere along the line the Adamsons had ancestors who moved to Ireland from Scotland. Secondly, I do wonder how attached the members of the family were to their listed denominations - afterall Mary Jane said she was Presbyterian, her husband Henry was listed as Church of Scotland, and although they married on the voyage, their marriage was registered at the Sydney Wesleyan Methodist church. Sarah Ann was Presbyterian, but married her Wesleyan husband James Smith in the same Wesleyan Methodist church. Some members of the family were buried in the Presbyterian section of Gore Hill Cemetery though, so I guess some did keep to the Presbyterians.

How the Merricks got to Australia

I logged on to Ancestry.com last night for the first time in a little while - I've been working on the Weiss' and there's not much information on Europeans there (well, not that I've found useful), and so I've been using other sources to track down information on them - it's helpful that they had a degree of fame!

Anyway, I noticed that Ancestry has a new source of information, one which I had previously only accessed from a CDRom at the State Library: NSW Immigration Deposit Journals, 1853-1900. I had a few family members who I'd been putting aside to look up the next time I went in to the State Library. So I checked them. And though many of them didn't come up in the journals (e.g. James Ball wasn't sponsored to come out, neither was Josiah Horsey) I looked up the Merricks. Though there was an entry for James and Samuel Merrick coming out on the Hotspur from Sligo, Ireland, I was finally able to confirm that they were not my relatives - they were sponsored by David Merrick, so I now know they were the other Merricks from Sligo - David was not one of my Merricks - I confirmed that a while ago.

So I looked at the other Merricks. And there was an entry for a deposit made by James Merrick on 16 November 1864 for Samuel Merrick, aged 15, to come out to Australia, with a note in the final column stating that he was a passenger on the Trebolgan. Looking up the ship's passenger list for the Trebolgan, which arrived in Sydney on 28 June 1865, I am puzzled by the fact that it says he was Roman Catholic when the name given for his reference in the deposit journal was the Church of England Clergyman in Sligo. I am guessing the person writing the list for the ship's passenger list was on a roll and just assumed Samuel was Roman Catholic like most of the Irish passengers aboard. I think this is my Samuel Merrick - his year of birth fits (1849).

Which means my great great grandfather James Merrick, Samuel's brother and immigration sponsor, had arrived in Sydney by November 1864. I still haven't worked out how he got here. I don't believe that he is listed in the Assisted Immigrants Passenger Lists for NSW. Perhaps he came out unassisted, though I'd be surprised if he could afford that, unless he worked as a crew member of a ship. I'm not sure how many ships would have needed shoemakers on their crews though!

Ships' Passenger Lists

If, like me, you live in New South Wales, are of a European background and your family has been here for a number of generations, there is a good chance that your ancestors would have migrated here by ship. If they weren't convicts they may have come as assisted or unassisted immigrants. Assisted immigrants had part or all of their passage paid for them, sometimes by the government, sometimes by a relative and sometimes by an agent (or a combination of all three). Unassisted immigrants paid for their passage themselves. The passenger lists for the ships bringing immigrants to Australia can provide a wealth of information. However, cross your fingers that your ancestors were assisted immigrants because the lists for unassisted immigrants usually only lists their names (often only with an initial) or doesn't even name them at all. Assisted immigrants passenger lists have much more information, and often there are two lists for a ship, one containing more information than the other. The one with more information is the list from the Immigration Board, the other is the Agents immigration list.

The Agents immigration list gives the surname, first name, age, marital status, occupation (calling), native place and county, religion, whether they could read and/or write, and any extra remarks. The Immigration Board list gives all those details plus the names of the immigrants parents, and also the parents place of residence if they are still alive, the details of any relations in the colony (sometimes extremely vague), the immigrant's state of health, whether they had any complaints about the voyage, and remarks by the immigration board. So it is the Immigration Board's list which is most valuable to the family historian.

The NSW Government State records has digital copies of the ships lists online. Use the key name search to find out whether your ancestor is listed in the ships list, ascertain which ship and then view the details in the digital copies. Unfortunately, in my experience, the listing is of the Agents immigration list. To view the Immigration Board lists you need to go to the government records reading rooms, one of the 40 community access points (eg the State Library) or get a subscription to Ancestry.com. It is anticipated that the Immigration Board lists will be added online at some stage.

One other quite useful resource for assisted immigrants is the Immigration Deposit Journals. These record the details of money deposited in the colony to sponsor the passage of an immigrant. Often the money was paid by relatives, to bring out relations, or by someone who wished to employ the immigrant. If the "relatives in the colony" section in the Immigration Board list is vague this may provide a little more detail. Unfortunately it is not available online (update: as of August 2011 it is available through Ancestry.com), but instead in the government records reading rooms or at the community access points.

For more information read the Immigration information on the NSW Government State records website.

True versus guessed, or How I got Myself all Confused...

One of my ancestors, my great great grandfather, was James Merrick. As I understood it, he was Irish (from Sligo) and a bootmaker.

He was married to Eliza Jane Ball and they had seven children, one of whom was my great grandmother. There was no death notice published in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) for him, but there was for his wife when she died, and knowing where she was buried, I found James buried in the same grave. The cemetery records showed he was buried 21 March 1911. The corresponding death record in the NSW BDM showed his parents were William and Jane.

I did quite a bit of research on James, finding he arrived in Australia on the Hotspur in 1862 with his brother Samuel (both listed as either bootmaker or shoemaker), working as a bootmaker in Sydney (Redfern) and then in Jerry's Plains in the NSW Hunter Valley. Except that there were quite a few bits of conflicting information. I began to suspect that the information I had about Jerry's Plains was not right. I'm not even sure if he had a brother Samuel, because I can't be sure that is him on the Hotspur. There also seems to be more than one bootmaker called James Merrick, more than one called Samuel Merrick, and there's also a David Merrick, bootmaker, on record too. In the end I was so confused about what I knew for sure and what I had guessed that I started again, putting together all (and only) the information I knew to be definitely true about him:

24 Dec 1874, at the residence of the bride, by the Rev George Sutherland, James eldest son of William Merrick, of Sligo, Ireland, to Eliza Jane, youngest daughter of James Ball, Esq., Claremont Cottage, Botany Road (SMH 28 Dec 1874). This information conflicts with the ages given for James and Samuel Merrick who arrived on the Hotspur - Samuel was the eldest there. Either the listing of ages is wrong in the ship's list, or its not my James Merrick.

James and Eliza Jane had eight children, all born in Sydney. Susanna Jane, Lizzie Madeline, Esther Louisa (Essie), Eleanor Sarah, Alice Mary, Ethel Sarah, James William and Ida May.

16 Mar 1880. Death of Eleanor Sarah, infant daughter of James and Eliza Jane Merrick, at Clapton Cottage, Vine St, Redfern (SMH 19 Mar 1880).

James Merrick, bootmaker, listed in 1884 Sands Directory at 96 Vine St, Redfern.

25 Mar 1903, Essie Merrick married Arthur Hulme, noted as "second daughter of Mr J. Merrick of Redfern" (SMH 18 Apr 1903).

27 Feb 1906, Alice Merrick married Henry Allen, "fourth daughter of Mr James Merrick, of Redfern, Sydney" (SMH 10 Mar 1906).

2 Feb 1910, Friends and family of Mr and Mrs Merrick, Mr and Mrs A E Hulme and also Mr and Mrs H A Allen were respectfully invited to the funeral of their dearly beloved and only son and brother James William, leaving his late residence of 167 Pitt St, Redfern, for the cemetery (SMH 2 Feb 1910). My great aunt has spoken of James' death (known to her as Uncle Will) - he was on a trip to the Blue Mountains, drank some stagnant water, became sick and died. He was only 21.

28 Mar 1910, Ethel Merrick married Frank Weiss, "fifth daughter of James Merrick of Croydon (late of Redfern)" (SMH 16 Apr 1910).

21 Mar 1911, James Merrick buried in Rookwood Anglican Cemetery. Cemetery records give his age as 65, which would make his birth year about 1846. This may fit with the James Merrick on the Hotspur, whose estimated year of birth was 1845.

15 Sep 1923, Ida Merrick married Harold Snodgrass, "youngest daughter of the late James and Mrs Merrick, of Railway Parade, Lakemba" (SMH 29 Sep 1923).

13 Aug 1928, Death of Eliza Jane Merrick, widow of the late James Merrick, at her residence, Railway Pde, Lakemba" (SMH 14 Aug 1928). Buried 14 August 1928 in the same grave as her husband.

I also rang Grandma (and her sister was most helpfully visiting her at the time) and queried her on a few things that she/they might remember: was he Irish? - "yes, he was from Sligo", was he a bootmaker - "yes, a cobbler", did they know of any siblings who came out to Australia (or associated relatives) of James - "no" but they will get the family tree from my great uncle for me - I didn't know there was a family tree for the Merricks!

Other information which may or may not relate to him:

A James Merrick married Mary Ann Cooper 26 Dec 1867 (SMH 21 Jan 1868). There is a death record in the NSW BDM for Mary A Merrick in 1870 in Sydney. There are no births registered for James and Mary Ann. It is possible that James may have been married before he married Eliza Jane - the dates do fit. Or it could be another James Merrick.

24 Aug 1913, at Matoka, McDonald St, Lakemba, Samuel Merrick, beloved brother of John Merrick and the late James Merrick, of Pitt St, Redfern, aged 64 years (SMH 25 Aug 1913). This would make Samuel's year of birth about 1849. If he were the Samuel from the Hotspur he would have been 13, a vast difference from his listed age of 22. However, this Samuel would have been younger than James, fitting with James being the eldest child of William Merrick of Sligo, Ireland. Plus, there is a death record in the NSW BDM for a Samuel Merrick in 1913, with parents William and Jane.

I shall await the arrival of the Merrick family tree from my great uncle. If that doesn't help I think the next step will be to obtain the death certificate of James to see what that reveals.

Wealthy butchers?

As I mentioned in my last post about the Wickhams, I needed to work out how they got to Australia. I had searched the Assisted Immigrants list at the NSW State Records but they did not come up. There were a number of Wickhams listed in the Unassisted Arrivals records, but there is very little information on those - it's mostly "Mr and Mrs Wickham" with a few initials for some records. It could have been any or none of them.

Amongst the records that Mum had there was a sheet of paper on which someone, in lovely loopy handwriting, had recorded the dates of birth of the Wickhams - parents and children. They had also written some other important dates in the life of Thomas Wickham underneath, including "Sailed for Sydney Dec 20th 1852, arrived at Sydney April 29th 1853" - this was new information to me. I checked the ships of Assisted Immigrants for around that arrival date (just in case there had been a spelling error in the records) but they didn't appear. Then I checked the Unassisted Arrivals and amazingly Mr and Mrs Wickham were there, arriving on the Chandernagore on April 29, 1853.

I am still surprised at this because that meant they would have had to pay their own way. Thomas was only a butcher and he had a big family - I can only assume that all 11 of their children came out on the boat with their parents. Who knows how he managed to afford it.

I looked up the Chandernagore in the historical newspapers. Evidently it was a controversial voyage as there was quite a bit of correspondence in the Sydney Morning Herald Letters to the Editor after it arrived. It appears that the voyage of the Chandernagore was supposedly for "Emigration upon Christian principles, unconnected with sectarian character". All the passengers were supposed to be "persons of respectability and moral character". And whilst some were "evidently well connected, and of gentlemanly education, and the majority respectable tradespeople" some supposedly were not. Letters flew back and forth in the Herald, accusing various passengers of immoral conduct etc and eventually the editors seemed to get sick of the fighting between the passengers and refused to publish any more letters on the matter!

I have also discovered that Thomas' brother Edward came out to Australia with his family. I can't definitely find them in any shipping lists, but can only assume they came out as unassisted arrivals as well. Edward was a butcher too. There must have been some money in the butchery business in Kent, where they both came from!

Why did the Beringers come to Australia?

As I learnt more about the Beringers I often wondered why it was that they came to Australia. At that time, the vast majority of German immigrants went to America - it was much cheaper, and the journey was much shorter and less perilous - going south and east to Australia, round the Cape of Good Hope was usually no picnic.

I felt that it would be logical that a relative (or perhaps a family friend) might have come out first and encouraged them to come. But try as I might, I couldn't find a Beringer who preceded them (apart from a convict who was born in London). They were almost certainly the first free Beringers in NSW.

It wasn't until I took a trip to the State Library of NSW that I stumbled upon a vague sort of answer. I came across a CD-Rom that they had in the Family History section, which gave the details of people who had made deposits for (sponsored if you like) immigrants to come to Australia. In that index (Index to the N.S.W. immigration deposit journals 1853-1900) I discovered that a "Philip Post" had made a deposit for Adam, Caroline and [John] Valentine (named as Valtin). Adam and John Valentine were noted in the index as having useful occupations - they were a locksmith and a cabinetmaker respectively. As I noted on my scribbled piece of paper in the library "Who was Philip Post?"

Once I was home again in front of my own computer I did some searching. Not really knowing what I was looking for, from the internet and from Ancestry, all I could find was a Philip Post, who seemed to be some sort of farmer, living in the Armidale area. Considering the close proximity of Uralla, where John Valentine eventually settled, I concluded that must be the Philip Post I was looking for. I still didn't know why he made the deposit though. "Post" doesn't sound a particularly German name so I concluded for the time being that somehow Philip Post had been contacted by the Beringers and had agreed to sponsor them out here - perhaps so that they could work for him - all wild supposition on my part, but it was all I had.

Then a number of months later, by the time I had taken up a subscription with Ancestry, I was going through adding supporting evidence for all the people I had in my tree. I was linking up the ship's passenger lists that Ancestry had images of to the Beringers. I discovered then that there were two different passenger lists for the ship they came on (the Abergeldie). And the second list, the one I hadn't seen before, had some extra information, including a column of "Relatives in the Colony". It was filled out for the Beringers! They had a relative! I tried to decipher the appallingly messy scrawl. "Uncle [in] ????" - so they had an uncle here! But the place name just seemed like an illegible squiggle to me. I traced the word off the computer screen.

I stared at it for minutes before it dawned on me. Uralla! The uncle lived in Uralla! Was Philip Post the uncle? Certainly there were no other Beringers up there.

Doing some more research on Philip Post I found that the surname Post did indeed come from Germany. George and Catharina Post came out to Australia in 1849. They came from Eltville in the Rhine Valley, Germany - a region renowned for its wines - as part of an initiative to establish a wine industry in NSW. There were a good number of "vine dressers" who, with their wives, came out from the Rhine Valley for this. George and Catharina settled in the Uralla/Gostwyck area of the New England region. One of their sons was Philip Post - presumably the one who sponsored the Beringers' passage. However, given his age, it was more likely Philip was a cousin and George the uncle referred to by the Beringers. I have not yet been able to establish any definite family links between the Beringers and the Posts, but I'll keep looking.

As time went by and more pieces of information were uncovered, I learnt from his death certificate that John Valentine was born in Wiesbaden, and his father, a miller, was also named Valentine Beringer, and his mother's name was Elizabeth (maiden name Bridal). The surname "Bridal" surprised me but I guessed this was possibly wrong, the details given by John's grieving widow who had never actually met her mother-in-law.

I despaired of ever finding out the name of Adam's parents (I knew he came from Rauenthal from his naturalisation papers) because they weren't listed on his death certificate. It wasn't until I got in touch with another distant Beringer relative here in Australia that she gave me the details of his parents - from the marriage certificate, when he remarried, after Caroline died. And lo, Adam's parents were Valentine (Valentin) Beringer, a miller, and Elizabeth (Elisabethe) nee Bredel - a much more German sounding name, but understandably confused with "Bridal". So Adam and Valentine were brothers. I found it quite comforting to know that they, as brothers, journeyed so far to a foreign land, together.

The Beringers

I first started working on my family history at the beginning of last year. My husband and our (then) two kids were living in Freiburg, Germany over the six-week Christmas holidays, and while I was there I decided to start looking into the German branch of the family, the Beringers. I signed up to Ancestry.com.au (the non-subscription bit at that stage), probably because that was the only program I had heard of for family treeing - from watching Who Do You Think You Are? on telly. I didn't get very far before we came home to Australia, partly because I was relying mainly on memory and what I could get from my parents while I had limited access to email over there.

One of the first things I researched with the Beringer family was finding out how they got here. Mum knew the name of the ship they arrived here on - the Abergeldie - and I worked from there. We are pretty lucky here in the state of New South Wales that our archival records are reasonably good. The passenger lists for many of the immigrant ships have been digitised and are available at the NSW Government State Records. I found the passenger list for the correct journey of the Abergeldie (it brought immigrants here on a number of voyages) and found them.

Adam, aged 28, a locksmith, and Caroline M. Beringer, 27, arrived in Sydney on December 23, 1884. They brought with them their two children, Matilda, 3, and Adolph, 1. Also on that ship was a Valentine Beringer, 26, a cabinet maker, also from Germany.

What was their voyage like? And where did they go, disembarking on a Tuesday, two days before Christmas? I know from the last page of the ship's list that the voyage took 52 days. I found an article from the Sydney Morning Herald, on Trove (which has Australian historial newspapers digitised) which gave me some idea of what they did on the voyage, but not really any idea of where they went after they disembarked from the ship. I'll never know how they found lodgings, and how they went about finding work, and generally beginning life in a country so foreign. However, Shaun Tan's graphic novel, The Arrival, does give some idea of what the new immigrant faces on arrival.

The next record I could find of the Beringers was in the NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages records. There was a record of Matilda, the daughter, dying in 1885, in the country town of Uralla. It does list her mother as "Matilda", but that was Caroline's middle name, and although the Beringer family did not ultimately settle in Uralla, Valentine Beringer, who changed his name to John, did. So I can be reasonably sure that it is them, because although I only confirmed this morning for sure that John Valentine was related, it was a reasonable guess to assume he was, with such a uncommon surname, coming out to Australia on the same ship. Imagine coming all the way to Australia to have your eldest child die within a year. Surely you'd wonder what kind of God-forsaken place you'd come to...