Memories ... February 6

Anniversary of a Birthday:   

(For my 'Family Anniversaries' page)

Today is the anniversary of the birthday of my Great Great Grandfather, Henry Johnson Brown.

I have written a longer, more detailed post about Henry previously (those who are interested, please follow this link: The Story of Henry Johnson Brown  )  ...

but for this 'Memories' post, I will shorten his story considerably to just include the more important events in his life.

Whitehaven, by the sea, in England

• Henry was born in 1820 in Whitehaven, Cumbria, England.

• His parents were Henry Johnson Brown and Eleanor Gowan.

• When Henry was born his father Henry was aged 38, and his mother Eleanor was 30.

• Henry was the third of five children born to Henry (Snr.) and Eleanor.

Assisted Immigrant List

• At the age of 20 Henry emigrated to Australia.  He and his younger sister Sarah came as bounty immigrants aboard The Royal Consort in 1840.

• Back in England, Henry had worked as a printer but on arrival in Australia, he found employment with Clark Irving on Ellengowan Station in 1841.

• Henry then went on to obtain work as a cook on Ward Stephen's Runnymede Station. 

• He met Caroline Browning, an English immigrant, while working at Runnymede and they were married in 1846.

• There was a considerable age difference between the spouses ... Henry was 25 and Caroline was 15.

• They went on to have 12 children over a twenty-year period.

• In early 1849, Henry and Caroline left Runnymede Station and found work at neighbouring Lismore Station with William Wilson for a little while.  

• They did not stay long at Lismore Station however.  Between the end of 1849 and the end of 1850, Henry and Caroline had moved to several areas including Stanthorpe (which as the time was part of New South Wales) where Henry worked on Maryland Station as a watchman.  He was also working as a part-time hawker.

• By the end of 1850 they had returned to the Richmond River area and Henry began work at Bald Hill (later known as Bexhill) as a timber cutter and dealer.

• Timber cutting was notoriously hard, dangerous work and the lifestyle associated with this work was also difficult.  Henry and his family, like others at the Bald Hill camp, had to live in huts or tents without basic amenities.

• Henry lost interest in this life and became interested in becoming a timber dealer.  He had taken his family back to the Lismore area by 1852 and had set up a saw pit on the river back, engaging men to work with him.

• He purchased logs, milled them and then sold the timber locally as well as out of the district.

• Henry built a home for his family and a few years later, around 1854, extended it into Lismore's first hotel named the Cedar Squarers' Arms.

• He obtained a liquor licence but continued working as a timber merchant.

• Henry became the proud owner of several more blocks of land in the town of Lismore, before debt problems raised their ugly head in 1867.

• Tragically, Henry died quite suddenly in 1868, aged 48, before his insolvency case could be settled.

• Most of the land Henry had bought was lost to creditors, and his family was left in rather dire circumstances.

The Story of Patrick Cusack

This is the story of my paternal Great Great Grandfather Patrick Cusack (1831 - 1876).  

Patrick has the distinction of being the one and only convict in my direct line of ancestors.  Many Australians now take pride in being able to say they have a convict in their family tree.  Previous generations may not have been so proud of this heritage, but this has changed over the years.

Given that a penal colony was established in Australia in the late 18th century expressly for the transportation of convicts, chances are many white Australians have a convict ancestor.  Around 162,000 convicts were sent here over a period of about 80 years, between 1788 and 1868.

Transportation was a form of criminal punishment most commonly used in the British legal system for dealing with men, women and children who had been convicted of theft.  It was a harsh punishment, as it was basically exile.  The majority of convicts never saw their homeland again, or their families.

Map of Limerick published in the 1840s, showing Askeaton not far from the mouth of the Shannon River

My convict ancestor, Patrick, was born in 1829 in Askeaton, County Limerick in Ireland.

The church baptism record shows he was born in March, his father was Michael Cusack and his mother was Mary Green.  From the evidence I've found so far, it seems there was only one sibling in the family already when Patrick was born.

Brother John had been born around 1823.

Sister Honora was born later in 1831, when Patrick was 2 years old.

Patrick and his siblings grew up in the time when the Catholic majority of Ireland lived in poverty under oppressive British rule.  In the 1840s in Limerick, there were widespread potato crop failures, followed by the subsequent horrors of the Great Hunger, which led to an incredible number of deaths due to disease and starvation.

Ireland Prison Register

In 1848, the course of Patrick's life was to change considerably.  At the age of 19, Patrick and his brother John, aged 25, were convicted of larceny - larceny of a sheep!  As can be seen in the Prison Register entry above, this was the first crime for the brothers as it states "never convicted before".  The brothers were obviously not experienced criminals, considering they were caught during the execution of their very first crime.  I wonder if the incident was a bit of a lark gone horribly wrong, or was it the desperate act of brothers trying to provide food for the family given the conditions they must have been enduring during and after the Great Hunger?

Of course it's difficult to say whether or not the crime was instigated by hunger or simple stupidity one hundred and seventy years after the event!  I would hope that it was the former, considering I'm speaking about one of my direct ancestors!

The brothers were convicted of their first-ever crime in July of 1848, and sent to the Dublin Bridewell Prison (known as Richmond Prison) in September of 1848.  The Richmond prison was supposedly used to hold offenders convicted of minor crimes, so I guess that the brothers were not considered hardened criminals. The conditions were nonetheless, very tough.  Among the punishments that were supposedly dished out were solitary confinement, the treadmill, wearing a metal helmet to constrict the skull, and flogging!

My great great grandfather and his brother were incarcerated in that prison for almost a year awaiting the execution of their sentence, which was seven years transportation.  Whilst the Irish Prison Register, shown above, lists Patrick's age as 17 when he entered Richmond Prison, he was in fact 19 years old.  That's still quite a young age to be facing the prospect of being shipped off to a far-away country, with the certainty of never seeing your family or home ever again.  I can imagine the fear and trepidation that he would have felt when faced with this prospect.  He was however luckier than so many, so he was facing this fate in company with his older brother.

Patrick and his brother, along with over 300 other convicts, boarded a ship in 1849 that was bound for Australia.

'The Havering' left Dublin on the 4th of August 1849, and arrived in Port Jackson on the 8th of November 1849.

The report submitted by the Principal Superintendent of the Convict's Office in Sydney, dated Dec. 4, 1849, states that the convicts were quite unsatisfied with the wages that were offered once they had been assigned to an employer. It appears they were given the wrong impression about what it would be like once they had arrived and began to work.

A ticket of leave - No. 49/1081 - was issued not long after Patrick's arrival in the colonies.



In fact, as shown here, it was granted on the 30th of November, which was just 3 weeks after Patrick had arrived.



Given that this was granted so soon after his arrival, it would seem Patrick was not considered much of a threat or identified as an unsavoury sort of character.

A 'ticket of leave' was usually granted to a convict after a certain proportion of his sentence had been served. It was similar to what we now refer to as 'bail'. It allowed the convict to live in the community and work for their own wage whilst the remainder of the sentence was served. Obviously the authorities thought that the time spent in Richmond Prison back in Ireland was sufficient enough time served, and considered that Patrick was upstanding enough to join the community almost immediately.


There were conditions attached to 'tickets of leave'.  The ticket had to be renewed every year.  It had to be carried on a convict's person at all times, and 'ticket of leave' men were expected to regularly attend a religious service of some sort.  They could not leave the colony however.

As it clearly recorded on Patrick's ticket of leave, granted in November of 1849, he was to remain in the district of Port Macquarie, where he was allowed to find work or work for himself.  It appears he found work fairly quickly and was then allowed to move to the Clarence River district the following year.

This 'ticket of leave passport', dated January 1850, shows that Patrick was working for someone (the name is very difficult to decipher) in the Clarence River District and was expected to remain there for a period of 12 months.

A mere 2 years later Patrick married.

As noted in the marriage record above, Patrick married Eliza Exton in December of 1852.  He was now aged 23 and Eliza was just a couple months shy of 15!!  That was not unusual in the colonies though.  Young females did not have many opportunities and marriage was one of the better options.

Patrick and Eliza went on to have 11 children over the next 21 years.
Thomas was born in 1853.
Susannah was born in 1855.
James came along in 1856.
Patrick was born in 1858.
Ann was born in 1860.
My great grandmother Ellen was born in 1862.
Eliza came along in 1864.
Julia was born in 1867.
William was born in 1869.
Sarah was born in 1871.
Mary was born in 1874.

Information from the birth certificates for a couple of Patrick's children states that Patrick worked as a cedar cutter in the Richmond River area for most of his working life.

Cedar cutters pictured around 1860s

Cedar cutters required a licence which had to be paid every year.


This licence allowed them to fell trees on unallocated crown land, but while it gave the cutters the right to cut down and export the timber, they could not settle or build permanent homes on this land.













As a result, the sawyers and their families lived in temporary camps. Patrick and his wife Eliza began their married life at Bungabee, which was located near Lismore in New South Wales.  They then moved on to places such as Boorie and Terania Creek, all in the area around Lismore.

Cedar cutter's camp around the 1860s

The photo above shows an example of a hut in a cedar cutter's camp.  Patrick, his wife and family might have lived in something very similar. This would have been a hard life for the whole family.  At some point however, it appears Patrick managed to buy some land and set himself up as a farmer of a small landholding.

Sadly in early 1876 Patrick's youngest child, his daughter Mary, died at the age of 2.  Patrick himself died a couple of months later.

The death certificate states that Patrick had been suffering from chronic bronchitis and had been hospitalised for 10 days at the Sydney Infirmary, where he then died on the 23rd of May, aged 47.  Patrick was survived by his wife Eliza, and their ten other children.


Special Note to any family members:  If you have information to share, can I graciously ask that you do so.  Please use the comments box below or email me.  It may prove to be invaluable to the story and provide future generations with something to truly treasure.