The close Evandale relationships of the town’s main founder Kennedy Murray and his two Lucas brothers-in-law James and Thomas Lucas c1818-1854 (etc)
[Jan 2025 post to the Nathaniel Lucas facebook group]
As many of you know, Peter Mackay’s excellent research and related book “A Nation Apart: The Lucas Clan in Australia’ suggests that the ‘Lucas Clan’ may well be modern Australia’s biggest family tree. The largest lineage derived from Nathaniel Lucas and Olivia Gascoigne happened to be via James Lucas. This was verified as 10,259 descendants at the time of Mackay’s 2004 book – but owing to the laws of exponential growth, likely to be significantly more by now. You may have forgotten that James’ wife was Elizabeth Murray – also born on Norfolk Island. Elizabeth was born at Kingston in early 1802 whilst James was born in late 1798. Both were married the same day (in January 1819) as brother/brother-in-law Kennedy Murray and another Norfolk Islander Sarah McQueen (daughter of NI’s premier first settlement teacher Thomas McQueen) in Port Dalrymple (Launceston) in 1819 by Launceston’s (and northern VDL/Tasmania’s) ‘first chaplain’ John Youl.
The Lucas family have likely been a bit little better organized in their record-keeping, and perhaps a lit bit more ‘procreative’ in the regularity and size of their off-spring or descendants than the overall “Kennedy Murrays’ family tree. But perhaps by not much (as I discuss also in my upcoming book). In addition to the offspring also of Elizabeth and also her sister Thomas Lucas’s wife Margaret Sydes (KM’s half-sister), there have been the sizeable progeny of Elizabeth’s brother Kennedy – and his other half-brothers William and James Murray. The verifiable Murray family tree has some big gaps in it but is still not too far behind the inter-linking Lucas tribe.
Am aware that Peter and other Lucas family historians (as well as genealogists) have a very partial knowledge and awareness of the Lucas family in early Tasmania (and especially at Norfolk Plains and its ‘overflow’ at Evandale). So wanted to make other Lucas descendants aware of how James and Thomas in particular (but also likely some of their other Lucas siblings and descendants) have been recognized in my book as likely playing significant roles in the ‘lost and forgotten history of early Evandale’ that I think is pivotal not just to early Tasmania but early Australia more generally.
Thomas and Margaret spent the 1830s in Evandale before moving to Geelong c1840. James and Elizabth moved to Victoria in 1854 from Evandale. After having been based on and off in Evandale – or Murray’s Prosperous Village as it was then known – since the 1820s, they lived there consistently I think from 1838 through to 1854 in the house they built early on at the Murray Prosperous farmlands (the ’29 Murray Steet’ site I am pretty certain). This was when Kennedy Murray accompanied not just his sister and a brother-in-law but one of his closest friends (James) for around 35 years [see the 1852 ‘Steamer Shamrock’ voyage that James, Kennedy and the close family members when they not just visited Thomas and Margaret at Geelong but explored the early Victorian goldfields].
Instead of going on, wanted to share a few relate excerpts from my book which tries to do justice to the Murray-Lucas connection at Evandale and Norfolk Plains in the early 19th Century – and hopefully some of this relevant to various Lucas descendants – who might not fully appreciate this connect.
Some relevant excerpts:
An except from “2. Background: From Norfolk Island to Norfolk Plains in ‘Tasmania’ (1813) “
As Bruce Baskerville has commented, the recent bicentenary of the transfer to Van Diemen’s Land of the last group from the Norfolk Island first settlement (and the formation of ‘Norfolk Plains’) produced many memories for descendants. Bruce recognized that the non-sustainable size of the small farm grants meant the end for many of this group as incoming wealthy settlers like the Archers swallowed up the land for large pastoral runs. One big exception to this was how the history of the adjoining Evandale should be viewed as a ‘Norfolk Plains overflow’ – also recognizing that many of the next generation did take up the torch of the Norfolk Island imprint on the first generation of native-Australians. One such story involves my 2 X great grandfather Kennedy Murray Jr and his lifelong friend as well as brother-in-law (and three times a neighbour) George Collins. Both grew up on the beaches of Kingston before coming to Norfolk Plains together on the Lady Nelson.
James Lucas was another Murray brother-in-law as most of the large Lucas family (who had moved to Sydney years earlier) moved to join their friends at Norfolk Plains. James and several other sons (along with mother Olivia along the Tamar) got farmland grants in the area soon afterwards. Olivia apparently was motivated in part to make the move to rejoin her old friends Elizabeth Haywood/Collins/Lowe (George’s mother) and Anne White/Sydes (KM’s mother).
The 1813 move to Tasmania’s Norfolk Plains from Norfolk Island
The slow but persistent deportation of the Norfolk Islanders to the South between 1806 and 1814 should be much better known and appreciated, as should the deep emotional connections their descendants maintain with their ancestral island. Stimulated by the World Heritage listing 2010 and the approaching bicentenary of the 2013 deportations, the lost world of the Norfolk Plains is awaiting rediscovery.
– Bruce Baskerville (2011), ‘Bound for the Norfolk Plains’, HistoryMatrix
Like most of the other re-settled Norfolk Islanders eligible (most of whom received similarly sized small farm grants), Richard Sydes was in 1813 granted 50 acres of land (Parcel 33) along the South Esk to the immediate North-East of present-day Longford. This was one of the original 50 farms of the Norfolk Plains re-settlement [1]. The original pre-1813 survey of these 50 farms was organised by Macquarie to entice the last remaining Norfolk Island group. It appears to have been prepared by G.W. Evans who definitely was responsible for the related C1 1814 map that was signed off by Macquarie on 30 April 1814 [AF396-1-1325]. Evans also produced the map of the 1818/1819 general survey of ‘Port Dalrymple farmlands’ which can be accessed at the following Trove link https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-231304508/view.
Because of the continuing food shortages in Sydney Town at that stage, the general expectation of this group was that they should grow wheat and other food crops (maize, barley, rye and oats as well as potatoes, etc). This might be supplanted by some stock – perhaps a few pigs or even cows as well as horses. But from the start these farms were too small to support an alternative pastoral focus on sheep flocks as well as cattle herds of later and much more successful incoming free settlers such as Thomas Archer (following in the footsteps of John MacArthur and others in NSW). Archer (like his friend James Cox a few years later) had access to political as well as financial resources that the Norfolk Islanders generally did not to build his Woolmer’s farm (e.g. with cheap assigned mass convict labour as well as his initial 1700 acres grant from Macquarie in 1817). To make matters worse, the early promise of the small farms to produce wheat and related crops was soon largely dashed by smaller yearly returns from both their land and markets to NSW (which had also been initially promising before the growing competition in Sydney Town after the NSW settlements were opened up beyond the Blue Mountains and elsewhere).
As Bruce Baskerville has appropriately commented about the older emancipists in the Norfolk Islander contingent of the initial Norfolk Plains re-settlement: “Despite their weariness and resentment they tried to conform to expectations, following instructions to grow wheat on the Norfolk Plains then seeing their hard work dissipate before their eyes as plant diseases and soil exhaustion wreaked a slow catastrophe. Some fell victim to melancholy and nostalgia as they saw friends and family succumb to alcoholism, carelessly accidental deaths, decaying farms, lassitude and crime while around them newer emigrants rode the Empire’s rising demand for wool and the beginning of a wool boom that would last for decades” [2].
All this is background to how it was that many of this group eventually followed Kennedy Murray and his extended family to Evandale as this Murray village (unlike the Norfolk Plains community centred around that later emerging Longford) grew into a sizeable town [3]. But Baskerville’s conclusions do not accurately do justice to either the enterprising efforts of many of this group (in the early years at least), or how a number of the children of the initial settlers (like Kennedy Murray and George Collins) were able to recognise and exploit out two key ideas. One was that pastoralism (not just ‘crop-growing’) was the key to future ‘thriving and not just surviving’ in early rural Australia. Second, it was also important to seek and get the right support for further land grant applications that could support sheep herds in similar fashion to Thomas Archer, Captain Barclay, and (as we will see below) Kennedy Murray’s early mentor James Cox of Clarendon. Thomas Archer’s brother William also came that year and from family and related support was able to buy out some of the first struggling Norfolk Plains farmers from Norfolk Island to form the large and later very successful Brickendon (still operated by Archer descendants today).
So, whilst Baskerville’s comments may apply to some of the older emancipist settlers given smaller grants in 1813, as exemplified by the lives at Evandale of Kennedy Murray, his brother-in-law George Collins and other extended family and friends, we do not think they generally apply to the ‘native-born children of the Norfolk Island-cum-Plains Settlers’. It could be argued that, perhaps more than other comparable example at the time, this particular group of ‘close-knit native-born children were really the exemplary ‘blueprint’ of the democratic vision of a future Australia held by Macquarie and others – marrying the idyllic ‘lost Pacific Ocean paradise’ of Norfolk Island into the new economic opportunities for settlement. The fair-minded and visionary Macquarie saw before anyone else that such a model could and should come from the emancipists and native-born Australians and not just the emerging often ‘privileged and elitist’ networks of the NSW Corps and their settler friends.
Two of Kennedy’s other brothers-in-law (James and Thomas who married sister Elizabeth and half-sibling Margaret) were from the similarly energetic and enterprising Lucas family – that along with the story of Kennedy Murray (and also that of his brother-in-law George Collins and Collin’s other brother-in-law David Gibson) exemplified the early promise of Norfolk Plains that would eventually be better realised in the adjoining Evandale district. Father of the clan Nathaniel had moved to the mainland Sydney from Norfolk Island after his appointment by the new Governor King (the earlier commandant of the Norfolk Island settlement who had relied so much on Lucas from the start) as Master Builder of Sydney. As well as later building the 1816 Mint in Macquarie Street, Lucas had earlier built the first windmill at Sydney Cove. After his initial appointment he was also appointed the emancipist Superintendent of Carpenters in Sydney from 1808 and, as well, received a sizeable land grant for a farm at Liverpool (which remained the Sydney base for the family over subsequent decades). Nathaniel later worked closely with another ex-convict the architect and stonemason Francis Greenway on St Lukes Church Liverpool – one of the many buildings which were part of the now much valued Macquarie building program in the early colonial settlement.
In 1817 two of the older Lucas brothers William and Nathaniel Jr came to Port Dalrymple to build the first Windmill in Van Dieman’s Land (as their father Nathaniel Lucas Sr had done in Sydney). This was on the spot of the still-named Windmill Hill of Launceston which is adjacent to the site of the original 1807 Government Cottage of the early Port Dalrymple settlement. They obviously reconnected at this time with other former Norfolk Islanders. In September 1818 they joined their mother Olivia and four other siblings in making the move to Port Dalrymple, whilst elder brother John remained to run the family farm and also mill there. This was just a few months after her husband Nathaniel Sr’s tragic death following an argument with Greenway and also an apparent illness which may have caused both events. We think that (along with the new economic opportunities attracting the Lucas brothers) the chance to re-join two of her oldest friends from Norfolk Island (Ann White Sydes and Elizabeth Haywood Howe living as ‘next-door neighbours’ again at Norfolk Plains) was perhaps a key factor in also Olivia’s decision to make a permanent move there with most of the family. After this, four of the brothers took on land grants (see above) or acquired additional lands in the Norfolk Plains or adjacent areas. Guided by William (also a boat-builder earlier on as well as a carpenter trained by his father as most of his brothers were) and partly financed by John in Sydney, James and Charles Lucas (with the assistance of brother-in-law Charles Williams) later built the family’s own boat The Olivia to transport and (with John’s direct assistance also) sell their Norfolk Plains produce in the lucrative market of Sydney [4].
Kennedy Murray was one of the ‘extended Lucas family’ who would have attended the June 1830 funeral in Launceston of ‘Lucas family matriarch’ Olivia Gascoigne Lucas [5]. The Launceston Examiner (14 June, 1830) reported that “She was attended to the grave by a numerous assembly, a great part of whom were related to her, by descent or marriage, amongst whom were 5 of her sons and 4 daughters, with their respective husbands and wives, and their relatives on both sides, and also numerous grand-children [i.e. many of her known 115 grandchildren – see later discussion]. It was a faint resemblance of the Patriarchs of old”. Ann White Sydes had died years earlier in 1820. If she had lived as long as Kennedy Murray Sr (who died in Evandale in 1852 surrounded by a large extended family) then such comments would likely applied to her as well with her large number of known grandchildren; and likewise, to Elizabeth Haywood Lowe, Olivia and Ann’s old friend from the Island (and early Colony convict days) who also united with them at Norfolk Plains.
Elizabeth Haywood Lowe died at Launceston in November 1836, surrounded also by dozens of grandchildren produced by son George Collins as well as Elizabeth Nicholls Gibson and Margaret Nicholls Hayes (whose daughter married Henry, son of John Glover, and therefore whose granddaughter married Ann White’s grandson William, son of Kennedy Murray). Elizabeth Haywood Lowe’s last husband Joseph did also prosper reasonably well alongside his successful stepchildren. [Sometimes in partnership with them (including George Collins at the future Evandale), he also accumulated further lands for pastoral activities]. He made it to the age of 82 before his death notice in the Launceston Examiner (13 Sept 1853) acknowledged that “hewas one of the first inhabitants in the colony, and perhaps the oldest resident in Launceston”. In any case, it would surely not be inaccurate to say the re-connection of Ann, Elizabeth and Oliva (the re-united ‘Matriarchs’ of their inter-linked families) at Norfolk Plains was a key foundation for the subsequent emergence of Evandale as also a ‘Norfolk Plains overflow’.
Kennedy’s sister Elizabeth had married James Lucas on the same day (18th January 1819) that he (Kennedy) had married another Norfolk Islander Sarah McQueen in Launceston’s St. Johns Church. On 18 Jan 1819, Kennedy Murray married Sarah (born 15 July 1805 on Norfolk Island) at St. Johns Church in Launceston and their first-born child Sarah was born towards the end of that year. Sarah was the stepdaughter of Thomas McQueen the former convict schoolmaster at Norfolk Island. McQueen had originally arrived on Norfolk Island in November 1791 on the same ship as Ann White it seems. Over time on the Island (and later in Sydney as well as in Port Dalrymple after 1810, Murray’s father-in-law McQueen had developed a general reputation of the most proficient teacher in the colony [6]. McQueen possibly taught a young Kennedy Murray there. In any case his guidance also at Port Dalrymple (and that of Murray’s literate as well as caring stepfather Richard Sydes) may help explain how Kennedy Murray became literate enough through ‘self-learning’ to write his own land grant applications well before he took on the District Constable position – which clearly required such skills [7].
Another sister Margaret some years later married James’ younger brother Thomas. This was before they also (like James and Elizabeth and their large family) moved to live at the future Evansdale circa 1830 to join not just Kennedy and Sarah but also older sister Ann-Mary and husband George Collins. Collins (son of Elizabeth Haywood Howe and brother of Elizabeth Nicholls) was another Norfolk Islander who received a large grant adjacent to his close lifelong friend as well as brother-in-law Kennedy, and also built a neighbouring cottage close by in 1826 to form a ‘joint pivot’ of an emerging extended ‘family and friends’ village at that stage. As exemplified by Kennedy and George’s respective 1831 land grant applications, like other early free settlers with land grants they were obliged by the Colonial Government to use available convicts (or ‘crown servants’) as free available labor to help settle the land. These workers were accommodated in the initial hamlets built by Kennedy Murray and George Collins in the immediate area around their adjoining 1826 houses.
The main difference then between the future Evandale and the superficially similar ‘villages’ that had also emerged at Clarendon, Woolmersand even Barclay’s Cambock was that the latter were rather built for a future emerging community rather than a temporary workforce. The early ‘adjoining hamlets’ of the future Evandale was a shared community involving extended family and friends (as well as the required convict workers). So, from the start Murray especially had a commitment to the future community surrounding him that was clearly lacking in comparable hamlets of mere convict or even emancipist workers on other larger farms at the time.
After several years of struggling on his Norfolk Plains farm like many of his friends, Kennedy Murray’s step-father Richard Sydes secured a position in the Port Dalrymple Government Blacksmiths that was initially located in Launceston and then were moved to George Town in early 1818. This was after Macquarie (who re-named the former Outer Cove at the mouth of the Tamar on his 1811 visit) in 1816 formally made Georgetown rather than ‘marshy’ Launceston the official Centre of the Port Dalrymple settlement [7]. One position was superintendent of the new settlement Government Blacksmiths. And the second position was an inspector of Works. Family records indicate that after his move there in 1818 Sydes soon bought land and built a house on Macquarie Street. Related records further indicate that in early 1816 Kennedy Murray also began working worked with or under his step-father as a blacksmith’s assistant at Launceston and remained there for just under two years.
According to one family historian Reg Murray (1995), Kennedy was relatively well-paid there (being paid just over 42 pounds per annum) and the position clearly allowed him to develop some confidence about his future as well as time to consider whether he wanted to remain a blacksmith like Sydes or pursue some of the new opportunities opening up for pastoral farming in Van Dieman’s Land as well as in NSW at the time. So, by late 1817 when Sydes agreed to move to Georgetown, it seems that at this time Kennedy decided to try and make a go of farming – returning to live full time on the family farm at Norfolk Plains near family and friends.
We know that by the time of his 1818 application (dated 23 April) Kennedy he was also assisting or working for others from the base of the small family farm at the heart of Norfolk Plains. This is most likely how he and also Collins as well as the Lucas brothers came to ‘know’ influential pastoralist James Cox (possibly through Cox’s close friend Thomas Archer at nearby Woolmer’s estate). Although as well as getting his own farming land grant in the future Evansdale district in 1814, Cox also was alternately based in Launceston from 1817 as a wholesale merchant supplying the government commissariat with produce from other peoples farms as well as his own (so he may have met Kennedy Murray when he was also working in Launceston at that time). It was in 1817 that he was first appointed a JP (and thus a recognised ‘magistrate’) by the colonial government. In any case it is clear that (a) their paths crossed significantly and enduringly, and that (b) subsequently Murray was able to get James Cox’s firm support for that April application – and also in terms of a recommendation clearly grounded in some kind of direct knowledge or experience. In other words, however well Cox personally knew Murray at that stage, it would also have been also the additional trusted character testimony of others well known to Cox in the Norfolk Plains community who also knew Kennedy that would have been relevant. This would have given Cox the needed confidence to put his signature to a supportive testimony for a not insignificant or unimportant document (a land grant application) being sent to the Governor of the colony who was also a very experienced and senior Army officer over many years.
It was therefore as a relatively literate nineteen-year old native born colonial (exuding youthful self-confidence already grounded in some substance) that Murray submitted an application to Macquarie on 23 April 1818 with the following direct plea – “This memorialist… most humbly begs your excellency will be pleased to grant him a farm at this settlement together with such other indulgences as a free person born in the colony”. James Cox’s father William was one of Macquarie’s closest and most ‘rewarded’ associates in Sydney (not just commissioned to supervise the building of the road across the Blue Mountains but a key figure assisting Macquarie’s building programs at Windsor and elsewhere in the NSW settlement). His influence no doubt helped ensure James also (like himself at Bathurst and Windsor, etc) received a large grant in the Port Dalrymple when he applied for this in 1814. This was after the English born-and-raised James was inspired by a visit to Thomas Archer when he stayed at Archer’s Woolmers farm as well as visited the local Commissariat offices where Archer also worked for the government.
2 Re: the story of the schooner The Olivia, see Robyn Hardina (2020). The Olivia: Her shipwreck, life and losses, 2ndedn, Bib ID: 8568468. Unfortunately, the Olivia was shipwrecked on a voyage from Port Dalrymple to Sydney. On 19 Nov 1827 it hit a sandbank at Twofold Bay on the NSW far south coast whilst being skippered by Elizabeth Murray’s husband James Lucas. As another Murray brother-in-law Thomas Lucas wrote in a letter to his brother John in Sydney in a letter published in the Sydney Gazette on 11 Dec that year – “I am happy to inform you that our brother James arrived here safe last night who with, all the crew, had a providential and wonderful escape from the wreck and savage natives. They journeyed by land for 21 days, 14 of which they subsisted upon half-a-pint of wheat each. I am sorry, however, to have to inform you, that the schooner went to the bottom on a sandbank at Twofold Bay with all her cargo, consisting of wheat, maize and three tons of potatoes…”.
3 Re: the story of how the Lucas Clan (including also many Murray descendants via the 16 children from Elizabeth Murray’s marriage to James Lucas) also became one of the bigger family trees in modern or post-settlement Australian history, see Peter Mackay (2004). A Nation Within a Nation: The Lucas Clan in Australia[ISBN 957971710]. This book in (in which Mackay suggests that the Lucas family might actually be the biggest modern Australian family tree) includes a section focused on overlapping family trees with the ‘Kennedy Murrays’.
4 Thomas McQueen was appointed schoolmaster at Port Dalrymple on 6 Nov 1810 and was approved to receive a 60 acre land grant also in central Launceston at that time. Sarah’s mother was Catherine Jones. She had had had a relationship with a Drummer in the NSW Corps Francis Howe which produced five children (three of them born in Sydney before moving to Norfolk Island in early 1805 (where Sarah was then born) – two of them dying there before the family moved back to Sydney in April 1809. A month later Howe tragically drowned with son Francis Jr. Catherine Jones then linked with McQueen (perhaps via the Sydney community of ex-Norfolk Islanders) who married her on 23 July 1810 – some months before McQueen’s appointment as the Port Dalrymple schoolmaster. Sarah clearly took on McQueen’s name when the family moved there. She had eleven children with Kennedy before she died of illness at Prosperous House in 1839 aged just 33. Kennedy likely became re-acquainted with Sarah when he was working in Launceston as an apprentice blacksmith under his own stepfather Richard Sydes (Sydes and McQueen would have known each from years together at Norfolk Island).
5 Although often linked to an area at the mouth of the Tamar River, Port Dalrymple was never a particular town (as some assume) but always a general district extending along the Tamar River and also to the South of this. The general settlement called Port Dalrymple was founded in November 1804 overseen by Colonel William Paterson – a then senior officer of the NSW Corps. Under Paterson this was initially situated at Outer Cove (later re-named Georgetown). However, Paterson soon decided on a move to the Tamar River head 50 klm south and initially named Patersonia before Paterson re-named this Launcestonin honour of the Cornwall birthplace of then Governor King. When Macquarie toured through in 1811 he decided to re-locate the main settlement back near Outer Cover (re-named York Cove) at an adjacent site he called Georgetownafter King George III. Work began on Georgetown in 1815 with the seat of government in Northern Tasmania formally move there in 1819. There was quiet resistance to the move brought to head by Bigge’s challenge to Macquarie about this (linked to his ‘enquiry into colonial administration’). But nothing really changed until after Macquarie departs in 1822. In 1825 the Van Dieman’s Land Lieutenant Governor George Arthur formally moved the northern headquarters back to Launceston. [see https://launcestonhistory.org.au/history-of-launceston/a-timeline-of-launceston/ ]
[From chapter 8 [v8. The retirement of a native-born Australian ‘gentleman’, local community leader and significant Tasmanian pioneer: The early 1850s ‘heyday’ of Kennedy Murray (and Evandale)]
The 1852 Kennedy Murray ‘sabbatical’ – The initial trip to Melbourne and Geelong (and the ‘Victorian goldfields’)
In 1852 a year or so before his retirement, Kennedy Murray took what appears to be his first and only extended ‘sabbatical’ or holiday from his job as Evandale Chief District Constable. This was at a time when many settlers as well as emancipists had the ‘gold fever’. The initial and further discoveries of gold in Victoria had attracted much attention in Tasmania. But it also followed a smaller surge of ‘settlers’ departing for the Californian goldfields in the late 1840s. This included the family of Bart Soden – long-term Evandale postmaster as well as a close brother-in-law of Hannah Goodall Murray.
In 1852 Kennedy Murray joined a group of extended family (and some other Evandale locals) who travelled to Melbourne to investigate the new opportunities. Along with many emancipists evidently intent on a permanent move, Murray and his group were part of a full passenger list on the February 18 voyage of the steamer Shamrock that left Launceston for Melbourne. And then just a month later he departed alone for San Francisco on the barque Cape Horn. Early 1852 marked the beginning of the ‘flood’ of gold-rush migrations to Victoria and also Australia (and a related exodus from Tasmania). For instance, the proprietor of the Eureka hotel (Bentley) who was reportedly involved in the incident that helped spark the 1854 ‘Eureka stockade’ rebellion was also a VDL emancipist. He therefore likely also came across to Victoria on the steamer The Shamrock at some earlier stage.
A summary item in the local Launceston ‘arrivals and departures’ Shipping Intelligence report for February 1852 records that Kennedy Murray was one of twelve passengers on board who had also paid to transport with them a ‘horse and cart’ (see below). Two others on that list were Murray’s closest lifelong friends (as well as ‘brothers-in-laws’) – George Collins and James Lucas. Murray’s son William Kennedy Murray was part of the group. And as well as three other Lucas family members (sons of James) there were apparently some other Port Dalrymple (i.e. Longford) Lucas cousins from the Hogget and Cox marriages to Lucas women. Another of the 12 passengers listed in the article was Benjamin Cocker.
This particular voyage of the Shamrock consisted of about 300 listed passengers (POL220-1-1P290-5). About 140 of these (i.e. almost half) were emancipists apparently intent on leaving VDL permanently. At least some of the various other ‘free settlers’ were also planning to make a move. One of these was the former Evandale ‘Prince of Wales hotel publican’ William Peck mentioned in an earlier chapter. Peck soon settled at Portland where Launceston solicitor Henty and others had first settled in the late 1830s – dying there in 1858.
We know that the Shamrock returned to Launceston almost immediately afterwards to get the next load of those keen to travel to Melbourne. The Shamrock was an early 200 ton ‘iron steamer’ built in Bristol as a special commission by the UK government for the Australian colonies. It first arrived in Port Jackson in October 1841. After initially plying the route to and from Brisbane (Moreton Bay) from Sydney for several years, it then started to make a regular voyage from Sydney to Launceston and Melbourne. And then as the Victorian gold discoveries especially attracted the Tasmanians, it increasingly focused on the Launceston to Melbourne route by the 1850s. This was before being de-commissioned and sent to China in 1856 where it sank soon afterwards.
Kennedy Murray, George Collins, and James Lucas were all united in their common family connections to Thomas Lucas and wife Margaret nee Sydes (Kennedy’s sister) – who had been based in Geelong since 1840. They and other family members on this trip apparently headed to Geelong for a reunion on their arrival. Thomas Lucas and family had been joined at Geelong in the late 1840s by James Lucas and Elizabeth nee Murray’s eldest son James Jr. James Jr had also previously been based at Evandale since the early 1830s. He had also been living in Geelong some years by the 1852 visit, and had married Hannah Tainton in February 1849. Like his father and uncles, James Jr was a trained builder in the Lucas family tradition and assumedly involved in the emerging Victorian ‘building industry’ before and perhaps after the goldrush.
The real purpose of the visit for the Lucas family was soon evident. It was in 1854 that James Lucas and Kennedy’s oldest sister Elizabeth packed up their house in Evandale and with both in their mid-50s at that time brought a number of their other adult children along with them on a permanent move to Victoria. Several of the older children remained in Tasmania but most of the younger ones followed their parents across to Victoria (including Sarah who moved rather to Maldon (a noted gold town near Castlemaine, Victoria) with husband William Arch.
James and Elizabeth (and several of their children and their own families including James Jr) ending up settling at Carngham near Ballarat. This was after the initial family move to Geelong from Evandale to join Thomas and James Jr. All this was during the early stages of the growing economic difficulties in the early 1850s in Evandale and Tasmania. This particular period saw roughly a third of the population also depart Evandale (as well as Tasmania). This was as much in search of opportunities exemplified by ‘gold fever’ as it was to do with the end of transportation and the worsening economic depression in Victoria. Most went to Victoria or NSW. But some like the Sodens and Johnsons went to California.
At least one of Kennedy Murray’s own children did make the same move. William Kennedy Murray was on the February 1852 trip. Whilst he did not make move there with his Evandale-based family, he did later (1862-1878) commute regularly to Victoria as a ‘bullocky’ plying the route from Port Albert to the Bald Hills (Seaton) goldfields. However, younger brother George Richard Murray did make the move in late 1853. All we know about his subsequent fate is the family notice in the Launceston Examiner (4 March 1854): “DIED: At Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo, Victoria on the 15th January Last. George, sixth son of Mr. Kennedy Murray, aged 19 years”. Roughly three times as much gold was found at Bendigo than Ballarat in the Victorian gold rushes that began in the early 1850s. For many years more gold was produced in Victoria than anywhere else in the world (except California). But for all those who struck it rich, there were many who did not or suffered tragedy in the process. If the Sodens had held off with their Californian plans just a few more years, we think that they almost certainly would have moved to Victoria instead.
Excerpt from Chapter 12. Evandale a ‘historic Georgian village’? Links between the Kennedy Murray (and other local) buildings and the influential ‘Vandemonian architectural styles’ of early colonial Australia
Who did Kennedy Murray get to help build ‘quality buildings’ c1820-1850?
Before turning our attention to Evandale ‘mansion-building’ in the late 1830s there are several related questions about the Murray model of Evandale Georgian cottages which might be explained. One key question is: HOW could Murray have afforded to build quality (especially stone or brick) ‘Georgian cottages’ on his farmlands (from his initial Prosperous House cottage in 1826 through to the early 1840s in particular) – covering the two known clusters (and stages) of such cottages in town? [In the late 1820s up until the early 1930s, Murray would have had relatively little ‘extra money’ at a time when wealthier district pastoralists did not generally bother with expensive housebuilding]. A second related question is: WHO could have assisted Murray when (e.g. in his 1831 land grant application) he referred to how even his various farm and hamlet community buildings (including a school) before then had been “completed in the best workman like manner”?
We think the answers to these two related questions both have to do with how some of the best qualified builders and carpenters in the whole VDL colony at that time were actually Murray’s ‘extended family’ from the tight-knit Norfolk Plains community – of which the future Evandale was effectively an ‘overflow’ as discussed earlier. We refer especially to the Lucas brothers – two of whom were particularly close “brothers-in-law” to Kennedy Murray (James married to Elizabeth Murray and Thomas married to Margaret Sydes). Both also lived in Murray’s Prosperous village at various stages as it ‘became’ Evandale.
The father of the Lucas brothers Nathaniel was the recognized ‘master carpenter’ at Norfolk Island from 1895-1805. He was then encouraged by Governor King to come to Sydney as a trained joiner, carpenter and builder of mills, boats and large masonry government buildings as well as other (including wooden) residential cottages and houses. He was appointed from 1808 through to his death in 1808 to several key superintendent government positions (supervising the lumber yards as well as all the available Colony carpenters along with key buildings that included hospitals and churches as well as ‘mills’ in the early colony). He had very efficiently and effectively trained all of his seven sons in his own various related skills. The older sons had by 1816 graduated from assisting their father to undertaking their own commissions (including at Port Dalrymple from 1816) in the construction of mills, large buildings and residential homes. For instance, after constructing Launceston’s first ‘windmill’ (as their father had done in Sydney in 1806), the older boys William and Nathaniel Jr (with some assistance from John) had also been contracted to build the new ‘Gaol’ and Anglican chapel there. With most of the rest of the family (including several older married daughters and their families – including Olivia [Jr] who had moved to Launceston with her husband much earlier in 1811) they then also moved to settle in Port Dalrymple from 1818. This was after John (after whom Lucas Heights was later named) returned to Sydney to assist his father with the Minto family farm whilst Nathaniel worked on the Liverpool ‘St. Luke’s Church’ with emancipist architect Francis Greenway.
To cut a long story short, except for John after 1817, all the other brothers from then on regularly worked as ‘builders’ (on residential housing as well as larger projects like Mills) as well as often ‘small farmers’. They did so mainly from a central Norfolk Plains base where William, James and Nathaniel had got initial small farmland grants by 1819. With William married to the daughter (Sarah) of the early beer brewer James Squire and acquiring and additional 900 acres in the North Esk area from another Sydney business partner Robert Campbell (the same Campbell who David Gibson had also partnered with for several years around this time in producing sheep) – the family also for some years alternated between ‘building work’ and small farming to supply wheat and barley to the famous Squire’s brewery in Sydney (etc). After the tragic sinking of the family boat ‘the Olivia’ in 1827 (as well as William’s move back to Sydney the previous year) and the resulting sale of the Minto family farm in Sydney after William’s death in 1828, Nathaniel, James, Thomas and George (and Charles before his tenure as Franklin Village public c1832) then all appear to have generally worked locally on the 1830s ‘Norfolk Plains and overflow building boom’ – a boom that included Evandale as well as nearby Longford.
By the 1830s most of the sons had large families themselves (no less than seventy children between them all). But additionally, by that time they also had twenty-seven mostly grown-up nephews (as well as nineteen nieces) based mainly in the Norfolk Plains area from the Faro, Hodgetts, Hortle and Cox marriages to the Lucas sisters. At least some of this next generation would have (in the Lucas family tradition to that point) likely been trained as carpenters and builders (and additionally as joiners and even some as wheelwrights) assisting with building projects in the Port Dalrymple area. As indicated, we know that James and Thomas were based for extended periods in their brother-in-law’s Prosperous village. This was before Thomas (along with James eldest son James Jr. and his eldest sister Ann’s family) moved to Port Phillip c1840 and James with Elizabeth and most of the rest of their sixteen children moved there from Evandale in 1854.
There is little doubt that (also with Charles moving to Gippsland in 1845 with his large family of sixteen children) that the extended Lucas family in the emerging Victoria would almost certainly have played some significant role in the building constructions (and styles) of that new colony. With their common past ‘Evandale connections’ and present ‘main Geelong base’, Murray’s brother-in-law Thomas and his sons (plus James Jr) likely assisted VDL settlers to ‘Port Phillip’ and the Western Districts (perhaps including the Russell brothers’ Clyde Company) with building needs in and beyond the early stages of expansion
Except from Chapter 14 14. Evandale as ‘home’ for not just ‘local son’ Harry Murray VC but all the Kennedy Murrays (one of modern Australia’s larger family trees)
THE FOUNDATIONAL FAMILY TREES OF ‘THE KENNEDY MURRAYS TRIBE’
The two families of KENNEDY MURRAY Sr
[1771 Dundonald, Scotland – 1853 Evandale]
Family 1. Common law marriage c1798 to Ann White (14/10/1771 London– 21/12/1820 Norfolk Plains/Launceston)
– Kennedy Murray b. 4/8/1799 Norfolk Island d.30/11/1860 Evandale
– Elizabeth Murray b. 20/3/1802 Norfolk Island d. 3/5/1878 Carngham, Vic,
Family 2. Married 14/4/1814 to Ann Parker (July 1786 London – 4/9/1862 Sydney)
– John Murray b. c1811 Richmond/Windsor d. 25/5/1847 Parramatta
– William Murray b.18/1/1815 Richmond/Windsor d.1/3/1877 Mudgee
– Henry Murray b.21/12/1816 Richmond/Windsor d. 20/10/1825 Cabramatta
– James Murray b.7/6/1819 Richmond/Windsor d.15/9/1879 Parramatta
The family from the 18/1/1819 marriage of ELIZABETH MURRAY (20/3/1802–– 3/5/1878) to James Lucas (23/10/1798-11/5/1869)
[97 known grandchildren]
We have previously alluded to the close overlap over many decades between KM Jr’s families at Prosperous/Evandale and the particular family history of sister Elizabeth’s marriage to James Lucas – also a close lifelong friend of KM Jr. In around 1838 the family had settled again in the Murray Prosperous village (after earlier being based there for some years it seems) – close also to the many Lucas relatives especially in the Longford area but also elsewhere in the vicinity of the wider Launceston districts. But by the early 1850s as a third of the population of Evandale as well as Tasmania generally departed for the Victorian goldfields, despite being already in their 50s both James and Lucas became restless. As recounted earlier, it was in 1852 that they made a visit to Victoria (with KM Jr and George Collins as well as several sons) to also see younger brother Thomas Lucas as well as eldest son James Lucas Jr. Thomas and his wife Margaret Sydes (KM Jr’s half-sibling) had moved there from Evandale c1840. And their eldest son James Lucas Jr (a wheelwright as well as also a carpenter trained by his father) had settled in Geelong in 1847 before marrying Hannah Tainton there in 1849. Soon after this trip, James and Elizabeth evidently resolved to make the move themselves to the Victorian goldfields.
James and Elizabeth moved to Geelong in 1854. And then in the next couple of years, along with James Jr and his wife (plus young sons John and Nathaniel) they moved to Carngham – another gold mining area near Ballarat. Both father and son worked as carpenters (and James Jr also as a wheelwright) in the area in the coming years. By the early 1860s James Jr had acquired two blocks of 17 acres each at Green Hill just outside the emerging town of Preston Hill. His ageing father also assisted in building family dwellings on these blocks. On 11April 1869 James Lucas Sr died unexpectedly at Green Hill. The coroner later found that he had died of an aorta aneurism. Son James Jr died next on 18 April 1871. And wife and mother Elizabeth Murray died on 3 May 1878 – at which point Nathaniel Lucas and his young family also departed from Carngham to elsewhere in Victoria (John Lucas and family had left a few years earlier).
Three of the eldest four daughters of James and Elizabeth (Oliva, Mary Ann and Ann) had married in Tasmania and decided to stay when their parents and other siblings all moved to Victoria. Another daughter Margaret had married in Ballarat in 1853 and then followed her Scottish husband Walter McKenzie to the then Californian goldfields. Eldest daughter Elizabeth and her younger sister Sarah had both moved with their husbands (brothers William and James Arch) to the same early goldfields’ town Malden (near Castlemaine). There they remained all their lives (Elizabeth dying there in 1870 but Sarah surviving until 1914). Other sisters Caroline and Emma moved to towns fairly close by in between Ballarat and Castlemaine (Daylesford and Maryborough, Vic, respectively) where both lived long lives with big families – each producing 13 children. John Lucas settled near Shepparton and was later joined in that area by Nathaniel. The other surviving child Charles Lucas moved to Port Fairy by the late 1850s and after marrying there appears to have remained in the area with his family the rest of his life.
The children from the family of James Lucas and Elizabeth Murray
1) James Lucas b.2/7/1820 Norfolk Plains d.18/4/1877 Carngham, Vic. Married 27/2/1849 to Hannah Tainton (1828 England – 9/4/1910) [9 children]
2) Elizabeth Lucas b.17/2/1821 Norfolk Plains d.5/12/1870 Maldon, Vic. Married 1/1/1848 to John Jones (1814 England – 6/11/1854) [3 children]
3) Olivia Lucas b. 9/8/1823 Norfolk Plains d. 20/4/1852 Evandale. Married 2/2/1842 Richard Reed (1818 England – ?) [3 children]
4) Mary Ann Lucas b.28/7/1825 Norfolk Plains -19/11/1877 Longford, Tas. Married 8/11/1842 to Robert Wise (4/1/1904-27/4/1904) [15 children]
5) Anne Lucas b.5/8/1826 Morven d.4/5/1904 Sheffield. Married 18/7/1846 to Edward Hammant (22/4/1823-21/2/1898) [11 children]
6) Sarah Lucas b.22/6/1829 Morven d.17/3/1914 Maldon, Vic, Married 14/8/1849 to William Arch (4/9/1821-5/4/1902) [10 children]
7) William Lucas born and died Morven 1830?
Margaret Lucas b.8/2/1834 Evandale d.7/7/1872 California. Married 5/7/1853 to Walter McKenzie (1819 Scotland – 22/11/1865 California) [6 ch]
9) Thomas Lucas 1835-1/9/1872
10) John Lucas b.28/1/1836 Evandale d.20/10/1916 Tatura, Vic.
11) Charles Lucas b.27/12/1837 Pert, Tas d.13/3/1897 Nullawarre, Vic. Married 17/6/1863 to Catherine Howes (1840 Ireland- 23/11/1934) [7 children]
12) Martha Lucas b.27/8/1840 Longford d. 9/11/1840 Launceston
[Martha and Caroline were twins born the same day. Martha died 2 months later]
13) Caroline Lucas b.27/8/1840 Longford d.13/12/1932 Daylesford, Vic. Married 10/7/1857 to James Hovey (6/1/1828 England- 1802) [13 children]
14) Emma Lucas b.8/8/1842 Evandale d.10/11/1921 Maryborough Vic. Married 25/12/1861 to George Nunn (18/8/1832 England- 11/6/1892) [13 ch]
15) Nathaniel John b.25/11/1844 Evandale d.18/7/1932 Mooroopna, Vic. Married 12/12/1870 to Frances Cheeseman (30/12/1852 UK-20/12/1919) [7 ch]
16) George Lucas b.11/6/1847 Evandale d.11/11/1847 Evandale
F.3 Children of 29/11/1830 marriage between MARGARGET SYDES (11/1/1815 Norfolk Plains – 26/7/1887 Geelong) and Thomas Lucas (17/11/1807 Sydney – 10/4/1888 Geelong) [53 known grandchildren]
1) Margaret Lucas b. 13/8/1831 Longford – d. 18/8/1852 Geelong. Married 20/6/1851 to William Petit (?) [may have died in first childbirth]
2) Richard Lucas b.2/1/1833 Evandale – d.14/1/1883 Geelong. Ist Marriage 9/11/1853 to Harriet Prestage (28/2/1834 England -11/9/1868) [6 children] 2nd Marriage 18/3/1872 to Catherine Brassell (18/11/1847 – 31/10/1915) [7 children]
3) Elizabeth Lucas b.20/10/1834 Evandale – d.17/12/1860 Geelong. Married 27/12/1853 to William Stoneham (c1813-1878) [4 children]
4) William Lucas b. 23/1/1837 Evandale – d.12/9/1926 Geelong. Married 26/8/1862 to Ellen Dwyer (c1840 Ireland – 5/1904) [5 children]
5) Olivia Lucas b. 20/12 1838 Evandale) – d. 23/5/1863 Ballarat. Married 9/4/1856 to James Long (Ireland 1830- 3/3/1916 Portland) [5 children]
6) Thomas Abraham Lucas b.14/1/1841 Geelong – d.6/3/1902 Coolgardie, WA. Married 16/10/1865 to Catherine Kenny (c1846-1911) [8 children]
7) George Frederick Lucas b. 3/3/1842 Geelong d.?
Henry Lucas b.18/3/1845 Geelong – d.12/5/1905 Geelong. Married 23/7/1864 to Margaret Moore (1845- 6/10/1889) [8 children]
9) Nathaniel Lucas b.25/3/1847 Geelong – d.24/8/1848 Geelong
10) Amelia Lucas b.13/6/1849 Geelong – d.17/7/1914 Subiaco, WA. Married 24/2/1873 to Henry Wilson (1849-19/12/1921) [6 children].
11) John Whether Lucas 1849 (?)
12) Mary Ann Lucas b.18/9/1852 – d.21/9/1913 Geelong. Married 3/4/1872 to John Walls (1851-1938) [3 children]
13) Charles Edward Lucas b.13/1/1854 Geelong – d, 22.12/1854 Geelong
14) Alice Ada Lucas b.1/3/1860 Geelong– 1d./8/1884 Camperdown, Vic. Married 8/11/1882 to William Cowper (c1860-5/9/188) [one child]