Saturday, September 13, 2003
Name: Thomas WELLS
Sex: M
Birth: 13 SEP 1799 in Nottingham
Death: 30 SEP 1894 in Essendon, Australia
Burial: 2 OCT 1894 Melbourne Cemetery, Australia-Wesleyan Compartment F Grave 1015(no headstone)
Immigration: 2 SEP 1848 Adelaide, Australia
Event: Ship and Arrival 1848 Harpley
Event: Christened 22 SEP 1803 St Marys, Nottingham
Occupation: Laceworker, Farmer
Religion: Anglican
Event: Born (2) 13 SEP 1803 Nottingham, England
Event: Married 1829 Havre de Grace, France
Note:
!DEATH:Victoria Australia 6100\1808
AUSTRALIAN DESCENDANTS OF THE NOTTINGHAM LACE MAKERS
Harpley 254 Dep 12 May 1848 Arr 2 Sep 1848
Fairlie 296 Dep 30 Apr 1848 Arr 7 Aug 1848
Agincourt 263 Dep 16 Jan 1848 Arr 6 Oct 1848
Originally they are British, mostly from the Nottingham
area,but a few can be traced to other areas of the British
Isles.At some time in their lives all of them went to
live and work in France, mostly in Calais, but a few
can be found in other areas of France.
In the first half of the 19th century expert machine makers
had cleverly devised machines capable of making lace,
formerly only slowly produced by hand. A booming industry
grew up in Nottingham. Traditional hand making
lace areas began to suffer. Northern France was one of these.
To survive they needed to make their lace also by machinery.
Not unnaturally the British were anxious to preserve their
monopoly of the trade and made it as difficult as
possible for their ideas and par\tents to be copied.
But in any walk of life, at any time in history, a form of
espionage can apply. Parts of machines were transported
from England to France by all manner of means. Once there,
they needed experts to reassemble them.Then some
more experts either to train the French operatives, or move to live
and work in France carrying on an industry learnt in England.
Many thousands moved. Calais became known as the Nottingham
of France.
In the year of the revolution in France in 1848, life was
disrupted for everyone, but especially for the British Foreigners.
The closing factories threw many hundreds of people out of work.
All suffered, from the top owners to the lowest operatives-those
in the bottom being nearest to desolation the fastest!
In 1848 the machine lace trade in Nottingham, quite
simply, could not absorb this kind of influx. The poor
rate, always stretched to the limit anyway could only
provide for numbers on a vast scale by one method-
increase the rates!The city fathers put their heads
together to devise a way out of this dilemma.
"Collections" were made. But this wasnt a small disaster
like a shipwreck or fire, this involved enormous numbers
of people. A one off payment would not suffice, their were
long term problems looming here.
Mass emigration seemed to offer a remarkable solution! Not
only would this lift the burden completely from the
shoulders of the Nottingham Poor Law Administrators, but
it would also preserve the livelihood of the many thousands
of workers already in the machine made lace trade there; an
industry which could in no way absorb so many hands
without threat of financial collapse.
More than this, this solution could offer hope to this mass
of people who were otherwise faced with very great
hardship, if not ultimate destitution. Immigration to
Australia offered them a chance to build new lives for
themselves and there families.
This is the bones of the story of how these three boat
loads of remarkably skilled immigrants arrived in Australia
within a three month period in 1848.
But there is even more to this story. Not all these
"French Deportees" agreed to be shipped to Australia,
many were absorbed back into their own families and
struggled until they reestablished themselves.
They were not only lace makers and they did not only
originate in Nottingham. Welsh iron workers, Lancashire
cotton weavers, and Midlands publicans and general
shopkeepers to name a few had been found. Then there
were soldiers of all trades from all parts.
The original first move-across to France from England offered
an opportunity not always available in England. Many
couples, marrying in their twenties in St Marys church in
Nottingham, left directly after,for this adventure in France.
Connections between Nottingham and France were so
close that many families already had kin or very close friends
over there. There was a great deal of coming and
going-evidence of this is easily spotted in the Nottingham
Census returns where in a long list of children, Nottingham
and France are dispersed as given birth places. It would
almost appear that some workers went on contract
that is home based but serving a term while in France only.
Recruitment was actively carried on in Nottingham. Others
went privately, the beer house keepers for instance.
Many family fortunes were both lost and won in France.
The exodus in 1848 was only an episode which resulted
in the mass emigration to Australia of so many Nottingham
folk, but after the trouble died down, large numbers of English
drifted back to France and continued to work there and commute
back to Nottingham as before.
When the government of Louis Philippe collapsed in Feb
1848 there were all kinds of ramifications throughout France.
All banking was frozen, all industries[including lacemaking]was
stopped, and there was fair amount of ill feeling
towards the British and other foreign populations employed
in France.Thousands and thousands of Britons went home
from all kinds of industries...textiles, steel and road building in
particular. It would seem that in some places there were actual
threats against the English, and while this doesn't seem true of Calais,
we do know that a lot of French Masters had a lot of pressure
on them to employ only French. The state of the lace trade in
Nottingham at that time was abysmal and thousands of the population
were in poorhouses. There was no way that the families
of Calais would find employment in Nottingham which is
where they mostly came from. A group of 113 families held a
meeting in a church in Calais and decided to petition the British
Government to allow them to migrate to Australia.
The petition was drawn up, and eventually passed by the
government, and with the help of a group of do gooders,
the families came on the aforementioned ships. Although
the petition stated that they would like to go to Australia,
the Harpley was the only one that did. It was actually a
general immigration ship that they got passages for the
families in direst need on.
It is of some interest that those families broke every rule that
applied to assisted immigration, bar being of good health.
Thomas was 42 and Sarah 36...40 was the maximum age
on general runs. They had a large family, also against
the rules because experience had taught that large families
often carried the kids diseases that spread like wild fire
through other large families, and were, of course, deadly,
and secondly because large families of small children gave
the small colony no return for their investment for a year the
needed manpower, and right that minute.
Thomas Wells, his wife Sarah(nee Creswell), and their 10 children arrived in
Adelaide on the Harpley in 1848.
Both the Wells and Creswell families can be traced back
to the Nottingham area to at least 1700, the Wells then
living at south Wilford. Mary Flower, later Thomas's maternal
grandmother, was also a member.
It is not clear when the Wells family migrated to France or
which members made the move. David and Rebecca
Creswell and family, of which Sarah was the eldest,
probably arrived around 1825, as their second son, William
was born in Sneinton, near Nottingham in August 24
and their last child, Elizabeth, at Montreuil in France in 1826.
It is probable that the family was living in Calais 2 years later
when Sarah eloped with Thomas Wells, The couple had been
forbidden to marry as Sarah was barely 16 and Thomas was
twice her age. David and Rebecca suffered a crushing blow in
1833 when they lost three of their children during the months
of May and June.
Thomas and Sarahs first child, Richard was born in Caen in
Normandy at the end of March 1829. The birth certificate states
that Thomas was a lace worker and that he and Sarah were
married in Normandy. A witness was Thomas Peet, and English
fabricant residing in theRue de St Jean. The Wells were then living
in the Rue de Bretagne, close to where William the conqueror,
Duke of Normandy is buried. Two further children, Thomas and Rebecca,
were born in the same town. Sarah was born in Havre de Gras(now Le Havre)
in 1834. Though the birthplaces of Emma and William, who followed in the
next four years, are not known, the family was living in Calais before
November 1841, when John, the seventh child was born. A month later,
Sarahs father, David Creswell, died at the age of 50. The Creswells
address at the time was La Grande Rue.
James Wells was born in Calais in 1843 and Anne in 1846, when
the family was living in the Rue de la Fayette. Elizabeth, the tenth
child was born at the Rue de Four a Chaux just a few weeks before
the Harpley sailed for South Australia.
Little is known of their time in South Australia except that 3
more daughters, Eliza, Alice, and Fanny were born there between
1848 and 1854. It is believed that Thomas obtained some land and
ran dairy cattle, perhaps along the banks of the Torrens, near Thebarton,
where many of the Harpley passengers are reported to have settled,
or possibly by the Sturt river closer to Glenelg. Rebecca, their
eldest daughter, worked for a time as a ladies maid, and
married William Burroughs Bradshaw, her employers son
at Morphett Vale in February 1849. The family moved to the
Ballarat goldfields some time after the birth of their second
child in November 1851. Rebeccas older brother, Richard
married Ann Cope, the daughter of Henry and Ann Cope
at Morphett Vale in 1853. The Cope family had also
arrived in the Harpley. Anns uncle was a reciver for the
gold sent back to Adelaide by the diggers who had gone
to the Victorian Goldfields. There is an uncormfirmed report
that some of the Wells men were involved in the first gold
escort to leave Mt Alexander with gold consigned to Adelaide in
early 1852. Richard and Ann Wells moved to Ballarat where
they opened a bakery some time before the end of 1854.
Their first child was born the following year.
Thomas, Sarah, and the rest of the family in South Australia
appear to have made the move to the Ballarat goldfield
some time after the birth of Fanny, theit third Australian
child, in June 1854. James, then about 11 years old
claimed to have watched the battle of the Eureka Stockade
in December 1854 from a nearby tree.
Richards bakery was at Specimen Hill, somewhere nearby.
Legend has it the family drove their cattle overland to Ballarat,
losing some on the way to aboriginal spears, and on arrival they
camped on the pastures around Yuiles swamp(Lake Wendouree).
From there they appeared to have followed the gold leads
down the Yarawee in the area around Magpie, where Thomas
set himself up as a dairyman on Winters Flat, supplying the
miners in the area. Their second son, Thomas, who married
Catherine McIntyre at Geelong in 1855, took out a miners right at
Magpie. Catherines first child was born there in 1856 and on
Christmas Eve the same year Sarah gave birth to her 14th and last
child Frederick Flower Wells.
In February 1859 Sarah married Matthew Hutchinson, a
widower at nearby Bunyinyong and the following year her
sister Emma married Isador Yde at Bunyinyong. Both
families selected land in the district when it was opened
up for small scale farming around 1863 and continued
to live there for 20 more years..
Initially both Hutchinson and Yde both had trouble
gaining title to their lands because miners petitions
held up their applications. Mathews grant was finalised
in 1873, subject to mining rights, but Isadors land was
not surveyed until 1880.
Thomas senior also took advantage of the new laws and
selected land on the banks of the Leigh River at durham
lead some miles south of Bunyinyong in 1863. Here
he built a home for his family, which still included nine
unmarried children. This farm was to remain in the hands
of the family for approximately 100 years.
Richard and Ann left Ballarat and opened a bakery in
the small township of Durham Lead, not far from the
Wells farm. In June 1866 Ann died, leaving one surviving child
Richard Loscoe Wells just turned 11. Richard senior was
able to continue running the bakery, his son doubtless
brought up by his uncles and Aunts. Richard Loscoe was a
little older than his uncle Frederick. In 1868 Richard
was married for the second time, to Alice Dutton in Ballarat.
Descendants of their 4 children are still living in the area around
"the Durham". Richard lived there until his death in 1880.
In the ten years after Thomas and Sarah settled at Durham
Lead six of the remaining children married, either at Durham
Lead or in Bunyinyong, and continued to live in the area,
as did the older ones. The Wells seemd to have been a close knit
family. Only one, John, left the area in this period. About
1865 he went to New Zealand, married at Woodstock, a
small gold mining town in the South Island, in 1871, and begat a
large family, descendants of whom still live in the district.
He died there in 1925.
Of the family who emigrated to South Australia in 1848, Anne
was the first to die. In 1847 she died in childbirth leaving her
husband, Dionysius Wallis, with two young children to care for.
Two years later, Sarah, the mother of the Wells family, died in
Ballarat at the home of her daughter, Alice, the West Ballarat
fire Station. Alice had married William Perry, the
station keeper, in 1873. The Perrys continued to live in
Ballarat until Alices death in 1896.
After Sarahs death in 1876 the family started to disperse. Apart
from the loss of their mother it is probable that changes
in the economy of the district played a part in this.
Gold was no longer available at shallow levels and work on on or
connected with the mines was more difficult to obtain.
In that year James took his family to Barrys Reef, a gold
mining town near Ballarat. Elizabeth with husband Henry
Waters and a young family, also moved there.
The Waters, however did not remain long but migrated to Tasmania
where they settled. Some of their descendants still live in Waratah.
Rebecca Bradshaw bore her 16th and last child at
Bungaree near Ballarat in 1874. Subsequently the family
moved to Gol Gol near Wentworth where Sarah and her
3 year old son died in 1877. At Wentworth where they
are buried, William erected a worthy monument to his wife.
William Wells, after his marriage to Kate Bland had settled
at the Durham and worked as a carter in the mines. In
1880 William and Kate loaded their 6 children and all
their possesions ionto a horse drawn dray and travelled overland to
Gol Gol, where irrigation was opening up prospects for orchardists.
They arrived after the day the Bradshaws oldest son Charles
was drowned in the Murray River. One of their own sons
was to drown in the river some years later. William worked
hard to establish a farm, supplementing his income with
whatever work came along, including trapping rabbits to
help out the housekeeping. Kate, or Nurse Wells as she was
called, gave her services as the district midwife, often
rowing across the river and walking miles through the
bush, usually without payment. William and Kate
remained in the district until their deaths in 1924 and 1935.
Towards the 1880s Melbourne was becoming a magnet
not only for overseas immigrants but for people from
former goldmining towns where work and money
had become harder to come by. Eliza and her husband
James Geddes left Sebastopol where they had been
living, around 1877 moved to Melbourne and settled in
Carlton. Eliza died at Fitzroy in 1936. Fanny, her youngest
sister, and the only one not to marry, moved to the
city not long after the Geddes, possibly about the time
that Frederick, who was till on the farm married
Sarah Louise Lloyd. Fanny seems to have made
her living as a dressmaker.
She was living in Prahran when she died in 1889 soon
after her 35th birthday. Thomas Junior had jopined the
railways and had also shifted to Melbourne
by this time. He was living in South Melbourne in
1894 but moved soon after to West Brunswick where
he died in 1900.
Landsales boomed in Melbourne during the 80s
and enormous sums of money were invested by
overseas financiers. Standards of living where high
and the magnificent buildings erected at that time
spoke prosperity and confidence. Emma and Isador
Yde gave up farming and moved to Melbourne
this period. Isadore died at Richmond in 1895 and
Emma in Croydon in 1919. Sarah Hutchinson left
the farm amd Mathew, who did not want to leave
the land, and moved into a home built for her in Essendon
by 2 of her sons. She died there in 1910 and is buried in Coburg.
James and his family remained at Barry's Reef until
1887 then moved to Ascot Vale, a suburb of Melbourne. They
arrived a day before the fireworks to celebrate Queen Elizabeths
Jubilee took place. With work hard to find in the depression years
of the early 90s when the land boom had come to
a sad end, James and his eldest son, Herbert, tried their
luck in Queensland for a short while, but evidently without
much success. They returned to Melbourne and sonn afterwards
Herbert borrowed enough money for a steerage
passage to Western Australia which was booming due
to the discovery of gold. In 1896 James, with financial help
from Herbert brought his whole family to the west and they
settled in North Freemantle. James died in Freemantle in 1924.
Father Thomas moved to Melbourne around 1890 to live
with his daughter Sarah Hutchinson at Essendon. He died
there in 1894 and is buried in the Melbourne Cemetery.
Frederick, the youngest member of the family, stayed on at the
farm. He and Sarah Louisa had seven children. The oldest
son was drowned in the Leigh river in 1894 at the age of 12.
Sarah Louise died in childbirth in 1897. Frederick, with the
help of his eldest daughter, brought up his family on the farm.
He died in Ballarat in August 1942 and is buried in the
Bunyinyong cemetery. The farm remained in the family until 1966
when after a succession of drought years it was sold.
Descendants of Frederick and Sarah still live in Bunyinyong.
Funeral details of Thomas Wells. The follwing is taken from
an extract of the funeral records of Joseph Allison, Funeral
directors. The company is currently operated by
W Rose in Burwood, Victoria.
No2 Ledger 1886-1894 Folio 350
Name of Deceased; Thomas Wells
Date of Death? Sep 30 1894 Age 93
Where died Dorcas St, Sth Melbourne
Funeral Leaves Not Recorded
What Denomination Wesleyan
What Compartment F
Number of Grave 1015
What Cemetery Melbourne General
Day of Burial 02/10/1894
What kind of coffin 5 foot 10 inches lined and mounted
Address Agatha St, Essendon
Funeral Notice
WELLS- The friends of the late Thomas Wells are respectfully invited
to follow his remains to the place of Internment- The Melbourne General
Cemetery. The funeral will leave the residence of his daughter,
Mrs Hutchinson, Agatha St, Essendon, this day, Tuesday, at 3.30pm.
Age- 2 October 1894
Father: William WELLS b: 1774 in Nottingham
Mother: Sarah Ann FLOWER b: 1773 in Nottingham
Marriage 1 Sarah CRESWELL b: 1813 in Nottingham
Married: 1829 in Havre de Grace, France
Children
Richard WELLS b: 29 MAR 1829 in Caen, France
Thomas WELLS b: 1830 in Normandy, France
Rebecca WELLS b: 25 NOV 1832 in Caen, France
James WELLS b: 15 FEB 1833 in Calais, France
Sarah WELLS b: 1835 in Le Havre, France
Emma WELLS b: 1836 in France
William WELLS b: 1838 in France
John WELLS b: 7 NOV 1841 in Calais, France
Anne WELLS b: 8 FEB 1846 in Calais, France
Elizabeth WELLS b: 31 JAN 1848 in Calais, France
Eliza WELLS b: 25 JUL 1850 in Adelaide, Australia
Alice WELLS b: 1852 in Adelaide, Australia
Fanny WELLS b: 21 JUN 1854 in Adelaide, AUS
Frederick Flower WELLS b: 1857 in Buninyong, Australia
Sex: M
Birth: 13 SEP 1799 in Nottingham
Death: 30 SEP 1894 in Essendon, Australia
Burial: 2 OCT 1894 Melbourne Cemetery, Australia-Wesleyan Compartment F Grave 1015(no headstone)
Immigration: 2 SEP 1848 Adelaide, Australia
Event: Ship and Arrival 1848 Harpley
Event: Christened 22 SEP 1803 St Marys, Nottingham
Occupation: Laceworker, Farmer
Religion: Anglican
Event: Born (2) 13 SEP 1803 Nottingham, England
Event: Married 1829 Havre de Grace, France
Note:
!DEATH:Victoria Australia 6100\1808
AUSTRALIAN DESCENDANTS OF THE NOTTINGHAM LACE MAKERS
Harpley 254 Dep 12 May 1848 Arr 2 Sep 1848
Fairlie 296 Dep 30 Apr 1848 Arr 7 Aug 1848
Agincourt 263 Dep 16 Jan 1848 Arr 6 Oct 1848
Originally they are British, mostly from the Nottingham
area,but a few can be traced to other areas of the British
Isles.At some time in their lives all of them went to
live and work in France, mostly in Calais, but a few
can be found in other areas of France.
In the first half of the 19th century expert machine makers
had cleverly devised machines capable of making lace,
formerly only slowly produced by hand. A booming industry
grew up in Nottingham. Traditional hand making
lace areas began to suffer. Northern France was one of these.
To survive they needed to make their lace also by machinery.
Not unnaturally the British were anxious to preserve their
monopoly of the trade and made it as difficult as
possible for their ideas and par\tents to be copied.
But in any walk of life, at any time in history, a form of
espionage can apply. Parts of machines were transported
from England to France by all manner of means. Once there,
they needed experts to reassemble them.Then some
more experts either to train the French operatives, or move to live
and work in France carrying on an industry learnt in England.
Many thousands moved. Calais became known as the Nottingham
of France.
In the year of the revolution in France in 1848, life was
disrupted for everyone, but especially for the British Foreigners.
The closing factories threw many hundreds of people out of work.
All suffered, from the top owners to the lowest operatives-those
in the bottom being nearest to desolation the fastest!
In 1848 the machine lace trade in Nottingham, quite
simply, could not absorb this kind of influx. The poor
rate, always stretched to the limit anyway could only
provide for numbers on a vast scale by one method-
increase the rates!The city fathers put their heads
together to devise a way out of this dilemma.
"Collections" were made. But this wasnt a small disaster
like a shipwreck or fire, this involved enormous numbers
of people. A one off payment would not suffice, their were
long term problems looming here.
Mass emigration seemed to offer a remarkable solution! Not
only would this lift the burden completely from the
shoulders of the Nottingham Poor Law Administrators, but
it would also preserve the livelihood of the many thousands
of workers already in the machine made lace trade there; an
industry which could in no way absorb so many hands
without threat of financial collapse.
More than this, this solution could offer hope to this mass
of people who were otherwise faced with very great
hardship, if not ultimate destitution. Immigration to
Australia offered them a chance to build new lives for
themselves and there families.
This is the bones of the story of how these three boat
loads of remarkably skilled immigrants arrived in Australia
within a three month period in 1848.
But there is even more to this story. Not all these
"French Deportees" agreed to be shipped to Australia,
many were absorbed back into their own families and
struggled until they reestablished themselves.
They were not only lace makers and they did not only
originate in Nottingham. Welsh iron workers, Lancashire
cotton weavers, and Midlands publicans and general
shopkeepers to name a few had been found. Then there
were soldiers of all trades from all parts.
The original first move-across to France from England offered
an opportunity not always available in England. Many
couples, marrying in their twenties in St Marys church in
Nottingham, left directly after,for this adventure in France.
Connections between Nottingham and France were so
close that many families already had kin or very close friends
over there. There was a great deal of coming and
going-evidence of this is easily spotted in the Nottingham
Census returns where in a long list of children, Nottingham
and France are dispersed as given birth places. It would
almost appear that some workers went on contract
that is home based but serving a term while in France only.
Recruitment was actively carried on in Nottingham. Others
went privately, the beer house keepers for instance.
Many family fortunes were both lost and won in France.
The exodus in 1848 was only an episode which resulted
in the mass emigration to Australia of so many Nottingham
folk, but after the trouble died down, large numbers of English
drifted back to France and continued to work there and commute
back to Nottingham as before.
When the government of Louis Philippe collapsed in Feb
1848 there were all kinds of ramifications throughout France.
All banking was frozen, all industries[including lacemaking]was
stopped, and there was fair amount of ill feeling
towards the British and other foreign populations employed
in France.Thousands and thousands of Britons went home
from all kinds of industries...textiles, steel and road building in
particular. It would seem that in some places there were actual
threats against the English, and while this doesn't seem true of Calais,
we do know that a lot of French Masters had a lot of pressure
on them to employ only French. The state of the lace trade in
Nottingham at that time was abysmal and thousands of the population
were in poorhouses. There was no way that the families
of Calais would find employment in Nottingham which is
where they mostly came from. A group of 113 families held a
meeting in a church in Calais and decided to petition the British
Government to allow them to migrate to Australia.
The petition was drawn up, and eventually passed by the
government, and with the help of a group of do gooders,
the families came on the aforementioned ships. Although
the petition stated that they would like to go to Australia,
the Harpley was the only one that did. It was actually a
general immigration ship that they got passages for the
families in direst need on.
It is of some interest that those families broke every rule that
applied to assisted immigration, bar being of good health.
Thomas was 42 and Sarah 36...40 was the maximum age
on general runs. They had a large family, also against
the rules because experience had taught that large families
often carried the kids diseases that spread like wild fire
through other large families, and were, of course, deadly,
and secondly because large families of small children gave
the small colony no return for their investment for a year the
needed manpower, and right that minute.
Thomas Wells, his wife Sarah(nee Creswell), and their 10 children arrived in
Adelaide on the Harpley in 1848.
Both the Wells and Creswell families can be traced back
to the Nottingham area to at least 1700, the Wells then
living at south Wilford. Mary Flower, later Thomas's maternal
grandmother, was also a member.
It is not clear when the Wells family migrated to France or
which members made the move. David and Rebecca
Creswell and family, of which Sarah was the eldest,
probably arrived around 1825, as their second son, William
was born in Sneinton, near Nottingham in August 24
and their last child, Elizabeth, at Montreuil in France in 1826.
It is probable that the family was living in Calais 2 years later
when Sarah eloped with Thomas Wells, The couple had been
forbidden to marry as Sarah was barely 16 and Thomas was
twice her age. David and Rebecca suffered a crushing blow in
1833 when they lost three of their children during the months
of May and June.
Thomas and Sarahs first child, Richard was born in Caen in
Normandy at the end of March 1829. The birth certificate states
that Thomas was a lace worker and that he and Sarah were
married in Normandy. A witness was Thomas Peet, and English
fabricant residing in theRue de St Jean. The Wells were then living
in the Rue de Bretagne, close to where William the conqueror,
Duke of Normandy is buried. Two further children, Thomas and Rebecca,
were born in the same town. Sarah was born in Havre de Gras(now Le Havre)
in 1834. Though the birthplaces of Emma and William, who followed in the
next four years, are not known, the family was living in Calais before
November 1841, when John, the seventh child was born. A month later,
Sarahs father, David Creswell, died at the age of 50. The Creswells
address at the time was La Grande Rue.
James Wells was born in Calais in 1843 and Anne in 1846, when
the family was living in the Rue de la Fayette. Elizabeth, the tenth
child was born at the Rue de Four a Chaux just a few weeks before
the Harpley sailed for South Australia.
Little is known of their time in South Australia except that 3
more daughters, Eliza, Alice, and Fanny were born there between
1848 and 1854. It is believed that Thomas obtained some land and
ran dairy cattle, perhaps along the banks of the Torrens, near Thebarton,
where many of the Harpley passengers are reported to have settled,
or possibly by the Sturt river closer to Glenelg. Rebecca, their
eldest daughter, worked for a time as a ladies maid, and
married William Burroughs Bradshaw, her employers son
at Morphett Vale in February 1849. The family moved to the
Ballarat goldfields some time after the birth of their second
child in November 1851. Rebeccas older brother, Richard
married Ann Cope, the daughter of Henry and Ann Cope
at Morphett Vale in 1853. The Cope family had also
arrived in the Harpley. Anns uncle was a reciver for the
gold sent back to Adelaide by the diggers who had gone
to the Victorian Goldfields. There is an uncormfirmed report
that some of the Wells men were involved in the first gold
escort to leave Mt Alexander with gold consigned to Adelaide in
early 1852. Richard and Ann Wells moved to Ballarat where
they opened a bakery some time before the end of 1854.
Their first child was born the following year.
Thomas, Sarah, and the rest of the family in South Australia
appear to have made the move to the Ballarat goldfield
some time after the birth of Fanny, theit third Australian
child, in June 1854. James, then about 11 years old
claimed to have watched the battle of the Eureka Stockade
in December 1854 from a nearby tree.
Richards bakery was at Specimen Hill, somewhere nearby.
Legend has it the family drove their cattle overland to Ballarat,
losing some on the way to aboriginal spears, and on arrival they
camped on the pastures around Yuiles swamp(Lake Wendouree).
From there they appeared to have followed the gold leads
down the Yarawee in the area around Magpie, where Thomas
set himself up as a dairyman on Winters Flat, supplying the
miners in the area. Their second son, Thomas, who married
Catherine McIntyre at Geelong in 1855, took out a miners right at
Magpie. Catherines first child was born there in 1856 and on
Christmas Eve the same year Sarah gave birth to her 14th and last
child Frederick Flower Wells.
In February 1859 Sarah married Matthew Hutchinson, a
widower at nearby Bunyinyong and the following year her
sister Emma married Isador Yde at Bunyinyong. Both
families selected land in the district when it was opened
up for small scale farming around 1863 and continued
to live there for 20 more years..
Initially both Hutchinson and Yde both had trouble
gaining title to their lands because miners petitions
held up their applications. Mathews grant was finalised
in 1873, subject to mining rights, but Isadors land was
not surveyed until 1880.
Thomas senior also took advantage of the new laws and
selected land on the banks of the Leigh River at durham
lead some miles south of Bunyinyong in 1863. Here
he built a home for his family, which still included nine
unmarried children. This farm was to remain in the hands
of the family for approximately 100 years.
Richard and Ann left Ballarat and opened a bakery in
the small township of Durham Lead, not far from the
Wells farm. In June 1866 Ann died, leaving one surviving child
Richard Loscoe Wells just turned 11. Richard senior was
able to continue running the bakery, his son doubtless
brought up by his uncles and Aunts. Richard Loscoe was a
little older than his uncle Frederick. In 1868 Richard
was married for the second time, to Alice Dutton in Ballarat.
Descendants of their 4 children are still living in the area around
"the Durham". Richard lived there until his death in 1880.
In the ten years after Thomas and Sarah settled at Durham
Lead six of the remaining children married, either at Durham
Lead or in Bunyinyong, and continued to live in the area,
as did the older ones. The Wells seemd to have been a close knit
family. Only one, John, left the area in this period. About
1865 he went to New Zealand, married at Woodstock, a
small gold mining town in the South Island, in 1871, and begat a
large family, descendants of whom still live in the district.
He died there in 1925.
Of the family who emigrated to South Australia in 1848, Anne
was the first to die. In 1847 she died in childbirth leaving her
husband, Dionysius Wallis, with two young children to care for.
Two years later, Sarah, the mother of the Wells family, died in
Ballarat at the home of her daughter, Alice, the West Ballarat
fire Station. Alice had married William Perry, the
station keeper, in 1873. The Perrys continued to live in
Ballarat until Alices death in 1896.
After Sarahs death in 1876 the family started to disperse. Apart
from the loss of their mother it is probable that changes
in the economy of the district played a part in this.
Gold was no longer available at shallow levels and work on on or
connected with the mines was more difficult to obtain.
In that year James took his family to Barrys Reef, a gold
mining town near Ballarat. Elizabeth with husband Henry
Waters and a young family, also moved there.
The Waters, however did not remain long but migrated to Tasmania
where they settled. Some of their descendants still live in Waratah.
Rebecca Bradshaw bore her 16th and last child at
Bungaree near Ballarat in 1874. Subsequently the family
moved to Gol Gol near Wentworth where Sarah and her
3 year old son died in 1877. At Wentworth where they
are buried, William erected a worthy monument to his wife.
William Wells, after his marriage to Kate Bland had settled
at the Durham and worked as a carter in the mines. In
1880 William and Kate loaded their 6 children and all
their possesions ionto a horse drawn dray and travelled overland to
Gol Gol, where irrigation was opening up prospects for orchardists.
They arrived after the day the Bradshaws oldest son Charles
was drowned in the Murray River. One of their own sons
was to drown in the river some years later. William worked
hard to establish a farm, supplementing his income with
whatever work came along, including trapping rabbits to
help out the housekeeping. Kate, or Nurse Wells as she was
called, gave her services as the district midwife, often
rowing across the river and walking miles through the
bush, usually without payment. William and Kate
remained in the district until their deaths in 1924 and 1935.
Towards the 1880s Melbourne was becoming a magnet
not only for overseas immigrants but for people from
former goldmining towns where work and money
had become harder to come by. Eliza and her husband
James Geddes left Sebastopol where they had been
living, around 1877 moved to Melbourne and settled in
Carlton. Eliza died at Fitzroy in 1936. Fanny, her youngest
sister, and the only one not to marry, moved to the
city not long after the Geddes, possibly about the time
that Frederick, who was till on the farm married
Sarah Louise Lloyd. Fanny seems to have made
her living as a dressmaker.
She was living in Prahran when she died in 1889 soon
after her 35th birthday. Thomas Junior had jopined the
railways and had also shifted to Melbourne
by this time. He was living in South Melbourne in
1894 but moved soon after to West Brunswick where
he died in 1900.
Landsales boomed in Melbourne during the 80s
and enormous sums of money were invested by
overseas financiers. Standards of living where high
and the magnificent buildings erected at that time
spoke prosperity and confidence. Emma and Isador
Yde gave up farming and moved to Melbourne
this period. Isadore died at Richmond in 1895 and
Emma in Croydon in 1919. Sarah Hutchinson left
the farm amd Mathew, who did not want to leave
the land, and moved into a home built for her in Essendon
by 2 of her sons. She died there in 1910 and is buried in Coburg.
James and his family remained at Barry's Reef until
1887 then moved to Ascot Vale, a suburb of Melbourne. They
arrived a day before the fireworks to celebrate Queen Elizabeths
Jubilee took place. With work hard to find in the depression years
of the early 90s when the land boom had come to
a sad end, James and his eldest son, Herbert, tried their
luck in Queensland for a short while, but evidently without
much success. They returned to Melbourne and sonn afterwards
Herbert borrowed enough money for a steerage
passage to Western Australia which was booming due
to the discovery of gold. In 1896 James, with financial help
from Herbert brought his whole family to the west and they
settled in North Freemantle. James died in Freemantle in 1924.
Father Thomas moved to Melbourne around 1890 to live
with his daughter Sarah Hutchinson at Essendon. He died
there in 1894 and is buried in the Melbourne Cemetery.
Frederick, the youngest member of the family, stayed on at the
farm. He and Sarah Louisa had seven children. The oldest
son was drowned in the Leigh river in 1894 at the age of 12.
Sarah Louise died in childbirth in 1897. Frederick, with the
help of his eldest daughter, brought up his family on the farm.
He died in Ballarat in August 1942 and is buried in the
Bunyinyong cemetery. The farm remained in the family until 1966
when after a succession of drought years it was sold.
Descendants of Frederick and Sarah still live in Bunyinyong.
Funeral details of Thomas Wells. The follwing is taken from
an extract of the funeral records of Joseph Allison, Funeral
directors. The company is currently operated by
W Rose in Burwood, Victoria.
No2 Ledger 1886-1894 Folio 350
Name of Deceased; Thomas Wells
Date of Death? Sep 30 1894 Age 93
Where died Dorcas St, Sth Melbourne
Funeral Leaves Not Recorded
What Denomination Wesleyan
What Compartment F
Number of Grave 1015
What Cemetery Melbourne General
Day of Burial 02/10/1894
What kind of coffin 5 foot 10 inches lined and mounted
Address Agatha St, Essendon
Funeral Notice
WELLS- The friends of the late Thomas Wells are respectfully invited
to follow his remains to the place of Internment- The Melbourne General
Cemetery. The funeral will leave the residence of his daughter,
Mrs Hutchinson, Agatha St, Essendon, this day, Tuesday, at 3.30pm.
Age- 2 October 1894
Father: William WELLS b: 1774 in Nottingham
Mother: Sarah Ann FLOWER b: 1773 in Nottingham
Marriage 1 Sarah CRESWELL b: 1813 in Nottingham
Married: 1829 in Havre de Grace, France
Children
Richard WELLS b: 29 MAR 1829 in Caen, France
Thomas WELLS b: 1830 in Normandy, France
Rebecca WELLS b: 25 NOV 1832 in Caen, France
James WELLS b: 15 FEB 1833 in Calais, France
Sarah WELLS b: 1835 in Le Havre, France
Emma WELLS b: 1836 in France
William WELLS b: 1838 in France
John WELLS b: 7 NOV 1841 in Calais, France
Anne WELLS b: 8 FEB 1846 in Calais, France
Elizabeth WELLS b: 31 JAN 1848 in Calais, France
Eliza WELLS b: 25 JUL 1850 in Adelaide, Australia
Alice WELLS b: 1852 in Adelaide, Australia
Fanny WELLS b: 21 JUN 1854 in Adelaide, AUS
Frederick Flower WELLS b: 1857 in Buninyong, Australia
