Travelling Brothers

This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt “immigration”.  In addition, I have been investigating the Shephard family recently after finding some DNA Matches with some distance cousins.

My ancestor George Shephard was born in Charleton, Devon, England on 4 September 1835.  He was the fifth child of John Camp Shephard and Priscilla Goodyear.  I have previously written about Priscilla.  John and Priscilla’s other children were Jane, Susan, George (who died age 2 in 1829, so the name was reused), Mary Ann and Samuel.  Prior to marrying Priscilla, John was married to her sister Susanna.  Marrying a dead spouses sibling was a forbidden degree of affinity at the time but it happened, anyway.  John had 5 children with Susanna, John, Maria (died age 2 in 1817), Maria (born shortly after her sister of the same name died), William and Phillip.

Charleton is a parish in an isolated corner of Devon, near Kingsbridge and about 20 miles from Plymouth. It is a rural community on a river estuary.  In the mid-1800s, small farms were being taken over by larger farms and people were leaving the area, including George and his three of his brothers.

George

George Shephard was the first of the brothers to migrate.  He was a 21-year-old carpenter, perhaps having just completed his apprenticeship.  He could read but not write.  He left England on 24 February 1857 on board the Herefordshire, along with 410 other passengers. 159 of the passengers were single man (over the age of 12) and many of them from Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. George travelled as an assisted immigrant, so his passage was paid for by someone else but I don’t know who, I don’t have those details.  I do know that he was in good health on the voyage and had no relatives in the colony.  The journey lasted 92 days, the ship arriving in Sydney, New South Wales on 27 May 1857.

Three years after his arrival in New South Wales, in 1860, George married Rebecca Jane Wells, the 16-year-old daughter of an Irish soldier, Ezekiel Wells.  George and Rebecca had 10 children, including my ancestor Mary Priscilla Shephard.  The family settle at Brucedale, a farming area near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales.  The family is memorialised by a dot on the map called Shephard’s Siding, consisting of some wheat silos by a train track.  George died in 1896, aged 61.

Phillip

Only a month after George departed England, his half-brother Phillip Shephard, age 36, was in Plymouth boarding a ship, the Tudor, with his family:  his wife Elizabeth, age 31; daughter Sohpia, age 6; and Samuel, a baby.  The Tudor left Plymouth on 28 March 1857 and arrived in Melbourne on 30 June 1857. Phillip was also a carpenter who could read and write; I wonder if he apprenticed his much younger brother.

Phillip and Elizabeth had daughter Rhoda Shephard, born 1860 in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Sadly, Phillip died two years later in 1862, in Bacchus Marsh.  His wife and children returned to Devon, England, after Phillip’s death.

John

Perhaps George and Phillip send word about life being better in Australia.  In any case, late in 1858, George’s half brother John set of for Australia with his family.  John was 43 years old at the time and working as a labourer.  He could write.  He travelled with his wife Mary, age 40; sons James, age 9; William, age 6; Phillip, age 3; and daughters Joanna, age 11; Sarah, age 21; and Mary, age 15 (this is the order they are listed in the shipping record).  They sailed on the British Empire from Plymouth, arriving at Moreton Bay, Queensland, on 4 Feb 1859.

About a year after their arrival in Queensland, John and Mary had twin daughters Elizabeth Jane Shephard and Emma Sophia Shephard, born in March 1860.  The family stayed in Australia and have numerous descendants, some of whom I have found DNA connections with.

Samuel

The final brother to migrate was, the youngest, Samuel Shephard.  Samuel, a 33-year-old farmer, boarded the Clyde with his family in Plymouth on 15 September 1876.  His 7-year-old daughter Helena died in 1875 and I wonder if that might have prompted the family to make a change.  With Samuel on the ship were his wife, Mary Weymouth, age 26; son George Henry, age 9; daughter Fanny Louisa, age 5; and son Samuel Ernest, age 1.  They arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, in December 1876.  There were 413 passengers on the ship.

Mary Weymouth Shephard died in 1899 at Hindmarsh, Adelaide, South Australia.  Samuel remarried a short time later to Jane Read.  He died in 1913, in Prospect, Adelaide, South Australia.

William

The final bother who lived to adulthood, William Shephard, did not migrate to Australia.  He married twice and lived to be over 80, in Devon.

None of the sisters left England.  Susan Shephard had an illegitimate child who was passed off as Priscilla’s child.  She then married twice.  Mary Ann worked as a tailoress and was unmarried as of 1881. I don’t know what happened to Maria, I don’t have any record of her after her baptism.

One thing that particularly caught my attention in this story is that each brother migrated to a different Australian colony.  I do wonder if they kept in touch and visited each other after they left England.

 

Notes on lineage: Me > Mum > John Macdonald Charley > Walter George Charley > Mary Priscilla Shephard > George Shephard