Telford Family of Ellinbank
Each of the prospective emigrants no doubt had their own particular reasons for leaving England or Scotland for an unknown future in the “land of opportunity” but I wonder how much they really knew about conditions in Australia - did they give any thought to fact that the growing population of settlers coming from Britain was progressively depriving the indigenous Australians of their land and their culture ?
In essence all were looking for greater opportunities, financial and social, than were available to them at home.
Joseph Docker was a youngest son and was working in Southport, Lancashire as an assistant curate to his brother William with no immediate prospect of advancement and no chance of owning a farm like his father had at Newby Head where he was born. In Australia he fulfilled all these ambitions.
In 1849 his nephew ( our ancestor) Matthew Betham Docker was encouraged by his father Rev. William, to join uncle Joseph at Bontharambo specifically because William believed Matthew’s employment opportunities in England were severely limited.
The McArthur family left Edinburgh in 1835 and sailed to Sydney on the “Canton” - David and wife Caroline, Donald and wife Elizabeth, together with their mother Elizabeth (nee Wemyss) and their teen age sisters Margaret, Elizabeth and Isabella. The father Captain Donald McArthur had died in 1825 after serving as an officer in the British army for 30 years. Initially the widow's pension would have been adequate but this was progressively reduced as the children came of age. They migrated to Australia specifically to improve their financial position and thereby their social status and to find suitable marriage partners for the 4 girls. All this they achieved. In Australia the girls made good marriages and David McArthur and his sister-in-law Elizabeth in particular became well respected members of Melbourne society.
John Telford, banker, left Scotland for the very new settlement of Petone Beach ( now Wellington) New Zealand in 1839 because he had been responsible for some unfortunate financial investments by the bank he worked for, the Stirling Banking Company, and felt he needed a new start. He spent 33 years in New Zealand and his 4 sons followed him over the succeeding 10 years or so with the result that there are now a hundred or more of his descendants in New Zealand and Australia. He had apparently planned for his wife or 4 daughters to also emigrate but sadly this did not happen and he never saw them again, wife Jane having died in 1856.
John Telford’s son William came to Australia (via New Zealand) in 1852 at the height of the gold rush and took full advantage of this by becoming a trader in the gold mining town of Beechworth as well as becoming involved in a gold mining venture.
William’s wife Jeannie Orr came with her parents William and Jean, also in 1852. They spent some years on the goldfields at Mount Alexander in Victoria and so one must assume that lure of gold must have been part of the motivation for coming but probably more to the point 45 year old William had been working in a number of good positions as a farm manager but had not managed to secure property of his own - this he was able to do in Rockhampton, Queensland and made a great success of it.
EMIGRATION
For members of the Telford and Gilbert families in Australia, any understanding of our family history inevitably involves telling the story of our ancestors “over there” before emigration and of more recent family connections after immigration to Australia and/or New Zealand. All of the ancestral lines lead to Britain ( England or Scotland) and a sea voyage to Australia or New Zealand some time in the 19th century.
The earliest of these was Joseph and Sarah Docker and baby Mary who was born early on the voyage out. They left Gravesend near the mouth of the Thames on June 16th 1828 aboard the “Adams” a 2 year old 294 ton 3-masted barque with room for 11 passengers and 15 crew. Joseph Docker arranged for all 11 berths to be filled by people known to him - relatives or friends.
The voyage took 21 weeks ( almost 5 months). In later years the ships got progressively faster; when Henry Johnson made the journey in 1856 on the wooden hulled clipper ship, “James Baines” it took just 65 days ( 9 weeks). In 1878 Charles Oxtoby Gilbert and family came on the “Somersetshire”, an iron hulled ship powered by both steam and wind, taking just 54 days from Plymouth to Melbourne.
This advert in a Leicestershire paper was one of many urging people to take a ship to Australia in the 1850s - in this case the “James Baines” which Henry Johnson took just a year later - cost “14 pounds and upwards”.
Henry Johnson was a printer’s apprentice in Worcestershire but when he completed his apprenticeship there was nothing to hold him there and so in 1856 aged 23 he departed for Australia, his brother James having completed a carpenter’s apprenticeship followed in 1857. The rest of their family had moved to the Isle of Man from Cheshire around 1850. Henry put his printing skills to use for some years in Melbourne before moving to the country to pursue a career on the land firstly in western Victoria and then Tasmania.
Henry’s wife Matilda Smith came out in 1853 with her parents Thomas and Matilda. Thomas was a carrier in London but had grown up as part of a farming family in Norfolk and encouraged Henry into farming.
Alfred Gilbert spent his first 7 years in and around Leicester where he would have experienced a rural environment but then moved with his family to London which in the mid-nineteenth century was generally crowded, smelly and prone to disease. So it is understandable that he looked further afield to start his own business like his father before him when he was 24 years old. Alfred migrated in 1858 and opened a succession of stores in the Colac area west of Melbourne; several of his siblings followed.
Alfred married Mary Ann Ellis at Ballarat in 1862. She had emigrated about the same time as Alfred, aged 30; her half brother William had come out a few years earlier and her sister Ann migrated about the same time. Like Alfred Gilbert, they too were living in London although in a rather more upmarket location of Pimlico rather than Camberwell.
Generally it seems that most of the people mentioned above managed to find work, somewhere congenial to live and a life partner with which to have a family. None of them returned to Britain permanently and as far as we know few of them returned even temporarily.