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JAMES PEAULET- Convict
Scarborough
this story is under review by Membership Team
Family research indicates that JAMES
PEAULET (Pewlet, Pulet, Pewlett, Poulet) may have
been born in London about 1763 to parents John
and Mary. Nothing is known of him until he was
tried by the Second Middlesex Jury before Mr Justice
Heath at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey at the
Sessions which began on Wednesday, 7th
July, 1784. A statement: “James Peaulet was still a boy
when he was tried at the Old Bailey for stealing and
sentenced to seven years transportation” would not have
been correct if his date of birth was actually 1763.
The Old Bailey Trial 690 record states: “James
Pulet, Peter Woodcock, Nicholas English
and Francis Joyce were indicted for feloniously
stealing, on the 16th
June last, one silver watch, value 50s, one metal chain
& seal, value 1s, and one gold seal, value 40s, the
property of
Letitia Bowman in her dwelling house”
The only item that was not recovered was the gold seal
and therefore had to be dropped from the charge.
All four were found guilty of stealing to
the value of 39s with each to be transported for seven
years. Their occupations and ages were not recorded.
Peaulet was sent to
Australia on the Scarborough, a transport which
reached Sydney Cove on 26.1.1788 along with the rest of
the First Fleet. The ship’s master was John Marshall
and the surgeon, Denis Considen. Built in 1782 it
was 111 feet 6 inches in length and 30 feet 2 inches in
breadth with a height of 4 feet 5 inches between decks
and weighed 418 tons. It was a two-decked three-masted
vessel, rigged as a barque and owned by three
Scarborough merchants, Thomas, George and John
Hopper.
The system of payment was that convicts
were to be transported, clothed and fed, all inclusive,
for 17 pound, 7 shillings and 6 pence per head.
Embarkation was at Portsmouth and the ship was 183 days
at sea and 68 days in ports on the way. The longest time
at sea was the 67 day section between the Cape and
Botany Bay).
After unloading its convicts and spending
over three months at Port Jackson Scarborough
sailed in early May for China and eventually reached
England with a cargo of tea. It then sailed to Port
Jackson with the Second Fleet in 1790 and was finally
broken up in 1798.
John Cobley,
in his Sydney Cove 1788 refers (page 15) to an
incident which took place on 6 March 1789. After a party
of convicts had been attacked on the way to Botany Bay
by Aborigines and one killed, sixteen convicts left
their work without leave and set out to take revenge.
They too were set upon with one killed and several
wounded. After an enquiry the next day their true
intent, not as stated “quietly picking tea” was revealed
and seven of them were given 150 lashes in front of the
provision store in the presence of all convicts and
ordered to wear “iron on the leg” for a year. A few
weeks later, on 4 April four of the others, including
James Peaulet, apparently suffered the same punishment.
Records from the Settlers’ Muster
Book 1800 show that at 20 June as an emancipated or
expired Convict James had a grant of land at Musgrave
Place (McGrath’s Hill) on which he farmed 20 pigs, had
10 acres under wheat and 6 acres of other crops. He had
no stock claim on the Government.
In the following year James Peaulett
is recorded as having 40 acres held (granted 20.6.1800
by Governor Hunter), 11 cleared and 12 under
wheat/maize, and 5 hogs. It is noted that there are
three as family (just who the three were is not
determined), who are self supporting and Off Stores
By the 1802 lists he is bracketed with a
Samuel Wheeler with 14 acres cleared, 8 acres of
wheat, 3 of barley and 4 of maize. They had 7 hogs and 8
cows and 20 bushels of maize on hand. It was noted there
were 2 women, 1 child and 1 servant.
James fathered two children with Sarah
Robinson who in the 1806 document Samuel
Marsden’s Female Muster was listed as a
concubine. She was a convict who arrived on 12 June 1801
aboard the Earl Cornwallis a transport ship of
784 tons that had been built in London and carrying 193
males and 95 females on the voyage out. Apparently 27
males and 8 females died on the trip which lasted 206
days, having left in November 1800.
Sarah
Robinson was born in Wilmslow, Cheshire, England in 1783
and it was in that county or perhaps nearby
Staffordshire that she was convicted of stealing and
sentenced to 7 years transportation. Records show that
Sarah became James Peaulet’s housekeeper on her arrival
in 1801 but there is no record of a marriage having
taken place, hence her listing as concubine in 1806.
Of the two children, only the elder,
Sarah Agnes Peaulet, b 1804, survived. The
younger child, James Peaulet, b 1807, died two
days after Sarah’s marriage to Third Fleet convict
Joseph Craft in 1810 at St Philip’s Church Hill by
Rev William Cowper. Sarah and Joseph had five
children and after Joseph’s death in 1830, Sarah then
married another convict, Joseph Dawkins in 1840.
Joseph had arrived in the colony in 1818.
Around the time of Sarah’s marriage James
Peaulet was apparently sentenced to 6 months jail for
pig stealing.
Sarah’s daughter, Sarah Agnes, did not
live such a long life but had two marriages and ten
children. The compilers of these historical notes both
descend from the last of these children, Eliza
Elizabeth Dixon, born in August 1850 at Dinner
Creek, Mangrove and baptised two months later at
Gosford. Eliza died as Eliza Ferguson at Grafton in 1931
The Register of Births, Deaths and
Marriages 1810-1823 from St Matthews Church Windsor
shows the record of Sarah Agnes’ first marriage to
William Webb in 1820. The 2017 “White Gloves” event
at Hawkesbury Regional Museum allowed guests at the St
Matthew’s Bicentenary to see the register in person. It
is interesting that Sarah used her mother’s maiden name
of Robinson rather than her father’s name of Peaulet. It
is also to be noted that Sarah, William and their
witness John all signed with an ‘X’.
James Peaulet married Elizabeth
Williams on 14.6.1809 at St Phillip’s, Sydney but no
children were born of the marriage. The 1814 Muster
shows number of children as two, but whose they were, or
their names, are not given. Elizabeth had been born in
the Colony so she must have been a young bride. However
Mollie Gillen, in Founders of Australia, states
that this marriage was annulled as it was declared
illegal by the convict clergyman, Henry Fulton, because
it was performed by a J.P. and not an ordained minister.
In Authentic Australian Convict &
Pioneer History author James McClellands has a story
of Grono Park. John Grono, pioneer Hawkesbury
settler and boatbuilder, acquired 25 acres of Peaulet’s
farm which he purchased on 19.1.1827 from Peaulet’s
daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and William Webb. This
land also fronted the river at the junction of Peaulet’s
Creek and is believed to be the site of the Grono Park
homestead
James passed away on 26 August 1820 and
was buried two days later at Pitt Town (Reg. 4761 V2B)
as James Pewlett, aged 57 years. He was buried from St
Matthew’s (C of E) Windsor. Mollie Gillen in her book,
Founders of Australia agrees that he was
buried at Pitt Town but gives his age as 62.
Peaulet is one of three First Fleeters
supposedly buried in the Hawkesbury region, see
Dispatched Downunder, by Ron Withington, page 44. At
the time of writing no Fellowship Commemorative Plaque
has ever been installed at Pitt Town cemetery since no
evidence of the Peaulet burial is to be found there.
The Windsor Parish register 1810-1856
Index shows Peaulet as “free, came out as a prisoner”.
There is a thought that he may have been buried in an
unmarked grave reserved for convicts, however at the
time of his death the designation “free” would normally
have cancelled out any convict connection. No details of
family or birth place or reason for death appear in the
register.
Compiled from information supplied by
#8011 Des Burke and #8286 Heather Threlfall
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