INTRODUCTION

PLEASE NOTE 

During 2021-2023 this Blog is undergoing a major revision. This process will continue into 2024. It has doubled in size and includes many new people, additional information about known relatives, more images, many corrections to the text and more diagrams for each family showing how they fit into the 'big picture'. The main family branches have been regrouped into a simpler format and the numbering system used for chapters is being revamped to incorporate all the extra information with the addition of  'empty' chapters for possible future expansion.

 

For this edition I have not included as many extracts from primary documents, because these tend to make the blog overly long and slow to load. Most of these are easily found on Ancestry.com or other family history websites. I have however kept copies of documents that are harder to find or that are unavailable on the web. I have also included more diagrams (with extra details) showing  how members of families were related to each other in the family tree.

EDITION 5: 2024

The family tree is very long and detailed and at first glance appears to be a long list of repetitive names and dates, but within these pages there are some remarkable, courageous and even infamous tales. Here are some hints about some of the stories hidden among the mass of detail;

• Long lives, and sadly, many very short lives.
• Everyday people who lived their lives as best they could, often under very trying circumstances including deadly infectious diseases, crop failures, a disastrous fire and occasional flood.
• Great tragedy and probably great joy; but you have to use your imagination to see the latter.
• Multiple marriages, separations, a bigamist and people disappearing for years.
• Women who bore ten or more children (often one every two years) and raised, fed and cared for them; sometimes by themselves without the support of a ‘breadwinner’.
• Soldiers, including some who made the ultimate sacrifice and never returned home.
• Children born into poverty who made lives for themselves against the odds.
• Migrants who made long trips in rickety sailing ships, across treacherous oceans in attempts to create a new life in relatively unknown lands including Australia, Jamaica, North America and in one case Malaysia.
• Pioneers and settlers who arrived in the early days of the Colonies of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. Members of the extended family tree were some of the earliest settlers in Hobart, Adelaide, Melbourne, central Victoria and parts of NSW. They helped build many rural communities and some left their mark as shire councillors, mayors and J.P's.
• Fortunes, businesses and farms built from scratch. Some of the properties they built or occupied, still exist today.
• Wealthy relatives who owned grand houses, large properties and employed servants. Some people in our direct line were beneficiaries who shared inheritances; including one with a total value over £30 million pounds in today's money.The latter was well documented in newspapers at the time.
  
• Many relatives in the extended family tree were involved in court cases; as either witnesses or sometimes 'the accused'! In the dozens of trials cited, many involved bankruptcies, but others were to do with assault and other crimes including a highway robbery and a murder.
• Seekers of gold who caught ‘yellow fever’ as they sought to 'strike it rich'.
• Humble occupations such as servants, labourers and a milkman, unexpected ones including ‘bookbinders’, jockeys, coal mine and ship owners and flour millers, as well as farmers, merchants, engine drivers, grocers, carpenters, builders, plasterers, preachers and a sprinkling of publicans.
• At least one direct ancestor was the focus of a museum display. A grandnephew of another relative, became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A third relative played a role in helping Bonnie Prince Charlie's army retreat, ahead of the advancing British army. If not for his actions, Scottish history may have played out differently!

NOTES ABOUT THE FAMILY TREE

This Family Tree is the result of extensive research of records and other family trees that are available on the web. It is quite complex and at first glance can be very confusing. This is especially so, as it was very common for children to be named after their parents, sometimes resulting in two or three people having the same name and born in the same place. Therefore a date of birth/baptism is often given after the name and the maiden name and previous married names are also given for women. Names of direct relatives are in bold and underlined. If you are interested, I can provide diagrams showing how different people fit into the various branches of the tree, which is a useful tool to see how it all fits together.

Part of the motivation for writing this family tree was to make sense of the facts. The style used goes further than a list of people, places and dates of birth, marriage and death. I have tried to dig a bit deeper and have attempted to link the facts into a story of each person, showing social and family events that influenced the direction of their lives.

The Family Tree is divided into seven “Parts” which cover each of the main ancestral names that have records available. Each of these parts is now divided into 'sub-parts' showing the ancestors of both partners in each generation where that information is available. Although the emphasis is on direct ancestors, also listed are all known siblings of ancestors and occasionally other people who had a close association with the family. As the same event often happened to several people (e.g. a family moving house), this event is repeated under each person’s name, so that an individual’s ‘life story’ can be seen in full and in context.

Some records are available that go back further than I have gone, but as they cannot be crosschecked, they are less reliable, and at this stage have been left out.

Where Do We Come From?
Our Smith family principally has its roots in southern England in the hamlets of West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, in northern England around Newcastle Upon Tyne and in Southern Scotland in the counties of Perthshire, Stirlingshire and Ayrshire

Summary of Surnames of direct relatives in the family tree.

Surnames of direct relatives include Aitken, Bayley, Bird, Booth, Brown, Budseer, Cole, Collins, Cook, Cunningham, Forrester, Graham, Innes, Johnson, Macfarlane, Muir, Napier, Ramshey, Shaw, Smith, Stewart, Tindale, Vasey and Wilson.

Diagrams showing members of each family in our Tree have been added to Blog entries to make it easier to see where individuals fit into the total 'picture'. Email if you would like a copy of these in a larger format. The diagram below shows direct ancestors only. Since it was published research has revealed many more ancestors and it will be updated in due course. In the meantime explore Parts 1 to 7 of the blog to find all known ancestors.

ABBREVIATIONS & OTHER DETAILS

1. Birth dates given are often actually baptism dates, which usually (but not always) took place within a few months of the birth. b1800 = either born or baptised in 1800. Birth dates help identify people with the same name.

2. Ages given in the annual census were sometimes rounded to down the nearest 5 which explains some inconsistencies. Also at times, some people have understated their age and in some documents ages were recorded incorrectly.

3. Direct relatives are in bold print and have a prefix. GGF= Great Grandfather GGGP= Great Great Grand Parent which relates to our generation. (An extra ‘G’ will need to be added for the next generation).

4. Place of Birth (e.g b1800 Port of Menteith) people variously gave either the name of the local hamlet, the name of the locality (eg farm or manor) or a nearby town which explains some inconsistencies. Some of the streets/localities mentioned no longer exist.

5. Distances are measured in miles (m) in the UK and kilometres (km) in Australia.

6. Other abbreviations: EBI=English Birth Index, ABI = Australian Birth Index, EMI= English Marriage Index, EDI = English Death Index, Vic BDM=Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages and AER = Australian Electoral Roll, ag lab= agricultural labourer

7. Spelling variations of names and places in official records was very common eg Bayley/Bailey, Macfarlane/Macfarlan

8. The numbers used in chapters and subheadings are used to list all children in their order of birth. e.g. 8.10 is the tenth child in that family. Letter sufixes (e.g. 8.3a) are used for notes about descendants of that person or further notes about their lives.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

This Family Tree is a work in progress. Additional information will be added in future, when it becomes available, and errors will be corrected. Check back for updates from time to time. Additional information including digital copies of newspaper cuttings, memories, photographs and other documents are welcome. Please send these, or suggested corrections to Andrew and Heather at boardman.moss@gmail.com or ask for other contact details.

THE CONTEXT: LIFE IN THE 1700'S

Many of our earliest known ancestors were born in the 1700's. Life was very different then and for those that could read, the headlines were different too. Here is a brief timeline to help place our ancestors in the context of world events.

• 1707 Scotland and England became the United Kingdom of Great Britain on May 1.
• 1712 The power of steam started to revolutionise industry and transport.
• 1714 Some religious conservatives feared the consequences if people were left free to choose their religion
• 1746 Jacobite risings ended in defeat at the Battle of Culloden in Scotland. 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' escaped back to France and thousands of supporters and sympathizers were executed, jailed or transported.
• 1750 Around 60,000 slaves exported from Africa per year over the next fifty years.
• 1770 James Cook sailed to Australia.
• 1773 Boston Tea Party followed by the American War of Independence
• 1778 France declared war on Britain.
• 1788 Britain's prisons were overcrowded. The 'First Fleet' established the Colony of New South Wales.
• 1790 Executing women for treason by burning them at the stake was abolished in England.
• 1793 Louis XVI was executed and France proclaimed a republic.
• 1800 England's population of 5 million in 1720 increased to around 9 million.
• 1800 Britain became an industrial power. Average life expectancy was around 40. Although many members of our family died young, especially as infants, the majority made it to middle age and many survived into their sixties and beyond.
  
• 1800's A fictional "better-off" family drank water that had a cow taste, because its source was a country brook. Meat was rare. Dental care was poor and people ate with wooden spoons. Candles were rarely used because they cost too much. Children slept two (or more) to a bed on straw mattresses. 
• By the early 1800's more people were learning to read, especially in Scotland and England, but the bulk of the population were illiterate and could not sign their names. Interestingly, most members of our family tree were literate and could sign their names. Many of their signatures are shown in the blog.