Week 7: Outcast #52Ancestorsin52weeks

Following on from the last topic of ‘Social Media’, I am going to continue with the story from 1811 of James McAra, my 3 x great uncle. He was found guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh of the culpable homicide of his brother, Alexander, my 3 x great grandfather, and was’ banished for life’. In other words, he was deported to Australia. A real outcast.

You might think that would be the end of his story as far as my research was concerned. You would be wrong. There were a multitude of records kept on prisoners sent away. Here are a few of them:

Australian Convict Transportation Registry
UK Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books
NSW and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Musters
NSW Australian Convict Indents
NSW Australian Colonial Secretarys' Papers
NSW Australian Convict Register of Conditional and Absolute Pardons
Tasmania, Australia, Deeds of Land Grants

From those, a story started to emerge. Convicted in January 1811 to be sent to Van Dieman’s Land, James was imprisoned in Edinburgh, before being transferred to Woolwich, Kent in the July. It is the following summer, May 1812, before he is put on the convict transportation ship ‘Indefatigable’ to sail to Australia, a journey of some six months. He arrives in Hobart Town in October 1812.

A lot has been written about what sort of a life these convicts would have. Those with a trade were encouraged to follow it and settlers owning a 100 acres of land had to take on one convict as labour. James had worked in the iron mill in Cramond and we know he continued his metalwork as he is cited as a whitesmith.

He lived and worked in Sorell, one of Tasmania’s oldest towns, which had been settled as a farming community in 1808, four years before James arrived. James died there in 1840, but not before he was pardoned for his crime by the Governor, been given a parcel of land for himself in 1836 and saved an important townsperson from being killed by outlaws! A somewhat colourful life, but not one I think he expected or would have wanted to have. The demon drink that had led him to attack his brother was also given as his cause of death. Recent research found his will, leaving his land to be shared between two daughters of a friend.

All of this gives me a better understanding of the man who had been cast out, not just from his family – he left behind a wife and six children – but from society for his dreadful deed. The trial report has witnesses saying he was normally a mild man, but one who had been pushed a bit too far. His tombstone is witness to the fact that, even if that may not be true, he seemed to have redeemed himself somewhat in his years as a convict.

(Source: shared by Ancestry member)

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Week 50: You wouldn't believe it! #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

I have already written about my 3 x great uncle, James McAra, who was sentenced to deportation at the High Court in Edinburgh in 1811. His crime had been to attack his brother, my 3 x great grandfather, Alexander, with an iron bar during an argument, with Alexander being badly hurt and dying a few days later. James was an iron worker by trade in Scotland and continued this trade in the small town of Sorell in Tasmania. We cannot know much about the life he led in Sorell, but he is mentioned in a variety of documents. For example we know he was given a Free Pardon by the Governor of Tasmania and New South Wales in 1836. He also acquired some land in 1839, which, in his Will, he left to daughters of a friend. We know his affection for 'drink', which had led to the fatal fight back in Scotland, never left him as 'excessive drinking' was given as cause of death on his death certificate. However his tombstone bears witness to the fact he was well-liked and a 'good and h

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