Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

While today’s kids are thinking about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten year outdated Mary Wade should have been vastly totally different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship bound for Australia: one of two hundred and fifty or so women, half way to a wierd land. Their feminine convict ship The Lady Juliana, a part of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and found responsible of stealing another child’s clothes. Her dying sentence, commuted to transportation for all times, was bitter sweet. Mary had escaped the gallows but would by no means see her household again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous conditions at Newgate Prison. Mary was considered one of fifty women fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor lavatories. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her situation improved. All convicts were fairly fed and given warm beds. Only 5 girls and two kids died during the eleven month voyage and the situation of those that arrived in the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the strain on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip despatched many new arrivals together with Mary, to a place described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave start to a daughter. She had two extra youngsters with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the family was dwelling in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship but by no means returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and set up home near the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took possession of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived happily till Harrigan’s dying in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty 12 months previous Mary died at house. She had given birth to twenty one children. In her lifetime, her family had grown to incorporate 5 generations and over 300 descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants number within the tens of 1000's, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten yr old convict Mary Wade was facing an unsure future. https://hillstohawkesbury.com.au/mary-wade-littlest-convict/ , she is recognized as certainly one of Australia’s founding moms.

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Pub: 06 Jul 2023 13:23 UTC
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