The Hiley Y-DNA surname project newsletter

Today's post features the latest edition of the Hiley Y-DNA surname project newsletter.

If you have any queries, comments or suggestions then I would be very pleased to hear from you. You can contact me directly at christopherhiley@hotmail.com or you can post a comment at the bottom of the page. You are welcome to forward the newsletter to anyone you know who might have an interest in the project.

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley and their family (Part 8 - Mary Hannah and Beatrice Annie)

Two girls in the family, Mary Hannah and Beatrice Annie, lived into adulthood. They both outlived all their brothers.

They each married local Walsden men, who were both called John and worked as Picker Makers at Stoneswood Picker Works.

Picker Makers at Stoneswood Picker Works
(Photo shown with permission of Pennine Horizons Digital Archive)

A picker was a strong leather attachment used in weaving looms to move the shuttle back and forth. These were essential items for the weaving process in the textile industry. Picker makers made them from Buffalo hide and the photo shows men at Stoneswood with their buffalo hides. Todmorden was one of the most important areas for its production in England.

Mary Hannah and her husband John Stansfield had 3 boys and a girl. They lived on Bacup Road near the Picker Works at Stoneswood. Beatrice Annie and her husband John Fielden had 3 boys. They lived on Sourhall Road off  Bacup Road.

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley and their family (Part 7 - Thomas Arthur)

Thomas Arthur was the oldest of the 12 children. He married Ann Selina Lobb in 1899 and the couple lived next door to his parents John and Mary in Throstle Street, Walsden before moving to Littleborough. The couple had 6 children before war broke out.

Thomas Arthur was a very late entry into the War. This entry appeared in the Rochdale Observer on 22nd June 1918.

Grade 2 was a common designation for men who passed the medical examination but were not deemed fully fit for front-line duties. We don’t know why Thomas Arthur enlisted at such a late stage of the War but he joined the RAF on 13th August 1918.

His enlistment document tells us quite a lot about Thomas Arthur, including some physical details which aren't available for his four brothers.

Thomas Arthur was attached to the RAF Reserve Depot which was a key unit for training and managing personnel. He worked in the Heaton Park Dispersal Unit in Manchester. This had the capacity for demobilising up to 3000 men per day.

He enlisted in August 1918, the war ended in November that year, he was transferred to the RAF reserve in February 1919, and finally discharged in April 1920.

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley and their family (Part 6 - Richard)

Richard was the youngest boy in the family. This is the record of his baptism in Inchfield Bottom Methodist Chapel in Walsden, like his older brothers and sisters.

 

The diagram below shows the service periods of the 5 brothers involved in the War. Although he was much younger Richard went to the Front before both Charles William and Ernest Jackson. The diagram shows the short length of time each of the other 4 brothers spent fighting. Richard’s service was about twice the total length of time served by all his brothers together.

Richard joined the same regiment, the Devonshires, as his brother Ernest Jackson, but he was in a different battalion, the 1sts. He is referred to in a number of newspaper reports, shown below.

The top one was part of the report shown in the last post about Charles William applying for an exemption. In fact the information about Richard having gone through the Dardanelles campaign is wrong because the 1st Devonshires weren’t involved in that part of the world.

The 2nd one is part of the report of Ernest Jackson’s death in July 1916, and shows Richard back in England at that time.

And finally a year later, in the report about Charles William’s death, we learn that Richard is still serving, and attempts were being made to release him from duties.

It appears that those attempts were not successful because Richard saw out the War. Although he had lost 3 brothers it was obviously felt that the British Army couldn’t manage without him. Richard’s medal card showed that he was entitled to the Victory medal, the British War medal and the 1915 Star. In the remarks it stated that he was placed in the Z reserve. After World War I, the Class Z Army Reserve was a temporary measure to hold discharged soldiers who were not yet eligible for full demobilization. They were required to return if called upon, but were otherwise free to return to civilian life. It was abolished the following year.

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley and their family (Part 5 - Charles William)

Today's post tells the story of Charles William, the third of the brothers to lose his life in WW1.

Charles William Highley

When Charles William was born in 1889, Ernest Jackson was 10 and John Henry was 12. Before the War his life followed a similar pattern to his older brothers – working in the Cotton Mill as soon as he was old enough, then marrying a local girl and starting a family. The article in The Todmorden Advertiser above says that he was well-known in the district. He married Mary Carr on 20th March 1915 and their daughter Miriam was born in May the following year. Shortly after this Ernest Jackson was killed so Charles William had lost both his two older brothers who had gone to fight in the War.

In September 1916 Charles William applied for an exemption to being called up. A separation allowance was a payment to soldiers who were separated from their family due to serving in the war. He was given an exemption until 30th November that year. The other brother mentioned is Richard who survived the war and is the subject of the next post.

The following January Charles William enlisted in Todmorden with the 15th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, known as the 1st Salford Pals.

When Charles William joined the Battalion in France they were fighting in the Somme region, but at the beginning of June they travelled by train to the extreme northern end of the Western Front, on the Belgian coastline at Nieuport. In a book on the Salford Pals the author Michael Stedman said that ‘the area provided the best opportunity for personal cleanliness that anyone could remember. At rest, behind the lines, a brief stroll took the men to the seaside, fishing, bathing and taking the sun.’

But away from the seaside in the frontline trenches there was heavy fighting and Charles William was killed in action on 22nd June.

Charles William was initially buried in a French Military Cemetery but after the war a number of graves were brought in from the battlefield and nearby smaller cemeteries and he was reburied at Ramscappelle Road Cemetery.

The burial return shows that he was identified by a piece of his boot which was stamped with his service no. 27557.

Ramscappelle Road Cemetery, Nieuport

Charles William's gravestone

Charles William was the last of the 3 Highley brothers to die. No two of them served at the same time in France or Belgium and the total time spent abroad between the three of them was only about 11 months.

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley and their family (Part 4 - Ernest Jackson)

Ernest Jackson, born in 1879, was two years younger than John Henry.

He worked at Friths Mill in Todmorden. At different times he is described as a Cotton Mill Hand, a Cotton Mill Labourer, a Cotton Warehouseman, and a Cotton Weaver. At one time there were well over 50 mills in Todmorden and Walsden. Most of the big industrial chimneys have now gone and the mills have been demolished, or stand abandoned, or have been converted for other purposes.

Ernest Jackson married Harriet Ann Helliwell in 1907. They had 4 children – Florence, Edith, Frank and Mary. Mary was born in May 1915 and in July that year Edward Jackson enlisted in Halifax with the 8th Battalion Devonshire Regiment. His brother John Henry had died 8 months previously and his parents must have had misgivings about another son going off to fight.

The 8th Battalion had been formed soon after the start of War in August 1914. They embarked for France in July the following year just as Ernest Jackson started his training in Exeter. The Battalion was immediately involved in fighting on the Western Front.

In October Ernest Jackson had 8 days leave away from Exeter and then sailed for France on 15th December 1915. He spent 2 months in hospital suffering from strain but was discharged in February 1916 and sent back to the Firing Line. At this time the Battalion were situated in a village near Albert in the Somme region.

Ernest Jackson had been back with his battalion for only about 4 months when he was killed in action on 1st July 1916. This day was the 1st day of the Battle of the Somme. There were over 57000 British casualties with over 19000 soldiers killed.

The 8th and 9th Devonshires had the task of attacking German trenches below the fortified village of Mametz. They left their assembly trench and reached an area between Mansel Copse and the main road but the Germans had placed a machine gun in the cemetery in Mametz, a place called ‘The Shrine’. The Devonshires were exposed and caught by the machine gun fire and suffered heavy casualties. Ernest Jackson’s battalion suffered 2 officers killed and 47 other ranks killed or missing plus 7 officers and 151 other ranks wounded.

On 4th July surviving comrades of those killed returned to the trench where so many soldiers had been cut down and created an original war cemetery. 163 officers and men from both the 9th and 8th battalions were buried there.

Despite the losses the attack was successful and Mametz was captured.

Ernest Jackson's gravestone

Devonshire Cemetery, Mametz

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley (Part 3 - John Henry)

John Henry was born in 1877, the second of John and Mary's children. By the age of 14 he was working as a Cotton Weaver in a mill in Walsden.

John Henry married Grace Speak in April 1900. A son Jesse was born later that year but died of measles at only 8 months old. They had 2 more sons, Herbert in 1909 and Jack in 1913.

It appears that John Henry and Grace had a stormy relationship, at least early on in their marriage. In December 1900, under a heading of ‘An Ill Matched Walsden Couple’, The Todmorden District News reported on a case where John Henry was summoned for assaulting his wife. Grace had gone to the Conservative Club where John Henry was playing billiards in order to fetch him home. She claimed that her husband had hit her outside the club and then again when they got home, all of which John Henry denied. He claimed that Grace had got her mother, brother and sisters to come and take all their wedding presents away to her mother’s house. The case was dismissed and the Mayor said that they must go home and live together again.

John Henry also appeared in the local paper in connection with cricket. He played for Knowlwood in the Calder Valley League, opening the bowling and batting at no. 3.

John Henry was already a reservist in Walsden with the 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment so when war was declared in 1914 he was ready to serve straightaway. The regiment was part of the 11th Brigade in the 4th Division. They sailed to France on 22nd August. His battalion was involved in the Battle of the Aisne and the Battle of the Marne and then moved north to Flanders in the sector on the French/Belgian border north-east of Armentières. The Battalion was heavily involved in the Battle of Armentieres at the end of October. This action was part of the fighting called ‘The Race to the Sea’ where the Allies fought to prevent the Germans breaking through to the Channel ports.

John Henry died at the 10th Field Ambulance at Le Romarin on 1st November 1914 of wounds received in action. He had been in France for only 2 months.

He was initially buried in a little cemetery at Fortrie Farm in Neuve-Eglise and then reburied after the war at the Trois Arbres Cemetery at Steenwerck.

John Henry's gravestone

Trosi Arbres Cemetery, Steenwerck

                           

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley (Part 2 - the children)

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley had 12 children:

Thomas Arthur 1875 - 1952
John Henry 1877 - 1914
Ernest Jackson 1879 - 1916
James Edward 1882 - 1887
Mary Hannah 1885 - 1964
Sarah Alice 1887 - 1890

Charles William 1889 - 1917

Fred 1892 - 1892

Martha 1892 - 1892

Richard 1893 - 1953

Beatrice Annie 1896 - 1974

The 1911 census showed that John and Mary had had 12 children born alive of whom 5 had died. James Edward died at age 5, Sarah Alice at age 3, and the twins Fred and Martha were born prematurely and died after a few hours. There is no record that tells us more about their 12th child.

Nine of the children were baptised in the Inchfield Bottom Methodist Chapel in Walsden. The Chapel closed to worshippers in 2010.

Inchfield Bottom Chapel, Walsden

Three of the boys were killed in the First World War - John Henry, Ernest Jackson and Charles William. The next few posts will look at their lives before the War, where they fought and where they are commemorated, and what happened to their families afterwards.

Two boys, Richard and Thomas Arthur, took part in the War and survived. They both married and had children. Mary Hannah and Beatrice Annie both lived into adulthood, married and brought up families.

At the time of his marriage to Mary Ann Bray in 1874 John was living at Throstle Terrace in Walsden. His parents Thomas and Sarah had moved there at some time before the 1871 census was taken. From that time until about 1932, a period of over 60 years, there were various members of this Highley family living at Throstle Terrace.

The photo below shows Throstle Terrace and the Lanebottom Wesleyan Methodist Chapel and Sunday School.

The houses on the roadside were 935 - 945 Rochdale Road. At the back was Throstle Street (numbered 8 to 18). The whole block was known as Throstle Terrace.

935 - 945 Rochdale Road

Throstle Street. No. 8 at the end

John and Mary Ann Bray Highley and their family (Part 1 - John and Mary)

This is the first of a series of posts telling the story of a Walsden family of Highleys broken apart by the First World War.

John Highley was born in 1852 and was a direct descendant of David Hiley born in Warley in 1700. His parents were Thomas and Sarah (nee Jackson). The census of 1851 shows the family living on Todmorden Road, Bottoms, Walsden, with Thomas working as a Steam Loom Weaver (Cotton). 

John was one of 7 children. By 1861 the family had moved to Victoria Terrace in Todmorden and John, just aged 9, was already working as a Cotton Throstle Spinner. In 1871 they were back in Walsden, at 2 Throstle Terrace. John was a CottonWeaver.

Mary Ann Bray Wills was born in Cornwall in 1853 and was the oldest of 10 children. Her family, looking for work, made the epic journey to Todmorden at some point between 1871 and 1874. On 17th May 1871 this entry appeared in The Cornish Telegraph:

John married Mary Ann Bray on 4th April 1874 at Cross Lanes Chapel between Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall.

Marriage Certificate of John and Mary Ann Bray

Cross Lanes Chapel
From the Alice Longstaff Collection

Between 1875 and 1896 the couple had 12 children.

Next post - John and Mary's children

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 13 - Family illness, trips to Greenodd, and brother Sam

Today we revisit two previous posts from the Blog.

 

The first one is John Hiley's article "From satanic mills to the roots of heaven" which recounts tuberculosis striking the family and holidays in the Lake District.

The second one is of some of Henry's memories of his older brother Sam, who died in 1929.

Click on the link below:

Hiley Family History Blog: April 2021

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 12 - Henry's stepmother Grace Annie

Today we return to the memoirs of Henry Hiley.

His mother Ethel (nee Heap) died in March 1923 when Henry was 4 years old. His father Harold then married Grace Annie Heyworth in December 1925 when Henry was nearly 7.

Father married again, I think that was in 1926. How on earth he persuaded any woman to take on a husband, five children, do the housework, and help with making the pies, I shall never know. Anyway she did, we all liked her. Perhaps it was better than being what you might call a war widow because so many women who should have got married - there were no men for them. Over a million British men had lost their lives in the 1914-1918 war. Father engaged Mrs Sutcliffe. She lived on the opposite side of the street, and she came in to help with washing up and a little bit of cleaning.

Henry with Grace Annie

Grace Annie, Harold and Henry

Harold and Grace Annie

Edith Hiley - a life dedicated to the welfare of others

This is taken from an obituary of Edith written by her friend Angela McKenzie:

After some time and much thought Edith decided the Probation Service was the career for her. Such was the good relationship she invariably established with clients, that one murderer whom she had on licence, invited her to his wedding. There are countless life stories of those whom she met in her professional life to testify to the esteem in which she was held.

Not only was she highly thought of locally, but she had the opportunity of even greater promotion to the Home Office, but in typical humble fashion, she eschewed this, preferring infinitely the day to day contact with the people around her in the place where she lived and worked - Halifax.

Just as there seemed nowhere in this country she had not visited either on her bicycle or in her car, or through work, so was her journeying into faith via Methodism, Roman Catholicism and finally Anglicanism. Her life was spent searching for truth which she personified.

Edith was a founder member of Relate (known in those days as the Marriage Guidance Council), having trained for this type of work in London. She was also a founder member of the Ludlam Trust which helped the families of men in prison. For many years she was a member of the Supplementary Benefits Tribunal.

As a member of the Halifax Parish Church she took communion to the housebound and visited many parishioners over several decades, giving succour and comfort to those in need, and having fun with the younger members of the congregation.

Beauty, music, books and discussions of deep issues were also among her loves.

Though it may have been said as a joke, she was known as "Miss Halifax" - everyone seemed to know and love her.

It is often said about someone when they die that we will not see their like again. In Edith Hiley's case this is true. Every life she touched was indeed glorified. Her last home was in Trinity Fold. Her active and varied life, with its unique contributions and total integrity, can best be summed up as a dedication to the welfare of others.

Edith at Bolton Abbey

Edith with three of her grand nephews

Edith Hiley - working for the National Children's Home

Henry continues his memories of his sister Edith and her time with the National Children's Home after leaving school.

Her saving, apart from her own spirit, was her joining the Girl Guide movement in Rochdale, in the company run by Sister Dorothy Moodie at the Champness Hall, a Methodist Mission Church. I seem to remember that Edith taught Sunday School.

I do know that she applied for a place at the training school in Highbury of the National Children's Home and was admitted, the youngest recruit, just twenty one years old, to the very first training course. Previously, the sisters had joined and learned 'on the job'. Her first appointment was to the Frodsham Branch. I cycled from Littleborough to visit her there.

Edith served at Frodsham, Harpenden, Chipping Norton and Bramhope. I remember her best at Bramhope. She was in a girls' house, pre-war, and returned after our stepmother died, so that she was nearer to our Littleborough home. Indeed, somehow or other she stood by our father, who had gone to pieces, helped to shut up our home in Littleborough and had him moved to an empty house on the Bramhope estate, to be close at hand. Then, gradually, he picked up. I was serving a three year stretch in the Mediterranean in the Royal Navy at the time.

I can only wonder at Edith's work and efficiency. You see, when she became a sister in a children's house, looking after twenty five children between the ages of five and fifteen, or thereabouts, there would be three sisters to share the work and responsibility. Very often, during the war, and shortly afterwards, Edith was the only lady caring for twenty five boys in the one 'family'. There was a little domestic help, but she seemed to me, when I was ever visiting, to do the cooking, she darned socks and mended the clothes, she supervised the going to bed and the getting up and off to school, she took the children on their afternoon walks. It was phenomenal.

The photos below, taken c.1939, are from Edith's time at Hilton Grange National Children's Home, Old Lane, Bramhope, nr Leeds.

The war eventually ended, I suppose things became a little easier, but not much. Mr Lytton, the head man in the Children's Home, encouraged Edith to apply for a Diploma Course in Social Science at Leeds University, intending her to return to the Children's Home, which she did, I think, but only for a year, working from Exeter, interviewing prospective foster parents, or couples wishing to adopt children from the Home, suiting children to the adults wishing to undertake the work. This did not last long, Edith joined the Probation Service, she was appointed by the West Riding Authority, sent to Halifax, where she spent the rest of her working life and retirement.

Edith Hiley - early years

The next few posts are devoted to Edith Hiley, a dear sister, aunt and great aunt. Edith was born in Littleborough on 9th December 1913 and died in Halifax on 30th October 2001. 

Today's post covers the time up to when she left school.

Henry wrote these notes about Edith a few days after her death:

Edith was always eager to tell us that, when I was born, she dashed into the street, excitedly telling everybody she met that she now had a baby brother. That was in January, 1919, when she was just turned five years old. We were a family of five children, the eldest was Sam, then Edith, Agnes, Mary, finally me.

The Hiley children
From L: Agnes, Henry, Sam, Mary, Edith

In the earliest times I can remember, Edith was first rate at making up stories and telling us them at bedtime, indeed at any time. I had a letter a few years ago from a lady who was a girl on our street in the 1920s, who mentioned particularly that Edith had made up stories for anybody who would listen.

Our mother died in 1923, Edith would be nine years old then. In a way, at that age, she became our surrogate mother, though probably not Sam's. We used to help out father in his pie making shop, I don't suppose I did much to help, but we were a close family, in and out of our neighbours' houses on the street. Three years later, our father married again. (How he managed to persuade any woman to agree to take on the work in the baking and selling of pies, looking after the house and becoming mother to five children I have never understood). Our stepmother loved us and cared for us all. Despite all the work, she likely preferred her new life to working in the weaving shed.

Mother had died of consumption at the age of forty. Sam died of the same disease at the age of twenty one. The rest of us were x-rayed, Agnes was found to be smitten as well. Edith was by this time at the Secondary School in Rochdale*. Now I am surmising. I believe that the sweatshop of our household, the deaths of Mother and Sam, the onset of the industrial depression of the late 1920s, all affected Edith's performance in school, though she did pass her School Certificate. Her History teacher called on my father, asking that Edith be allowed to continue at school, but he wanted her at home to help in the business. That time I think of as being the worst of Edith's life. She worked at home, making pies and such, and seemed to have lost heart.

* Edith won a County Minor Scholarship. She left school at age 16.

Agnes, Sam, Edith

The Life of Henry Hiley Part 11 - Victoria Street neighbours

Today we return to the memoirs of Henry Hiley and an account of the family's neighbours on Victoria Street, Littleborough in the 1920s.

The Hoyles were a great family. We called Mr Hoyle Mr Pip Pip. He worked for the council. He must have gone to school. School for him would finish when he was twelve, twelve and a half, yet on a Sunday afternoon when there used to be Shakespearean plays on the wireless he would sit and listen to them. Jim Hoyle worked as a secretary in one of the local mills, only a tiny mill. He wasn’t old enough to be called up into the Army until 1916 so that he had 2 years in the Army during the first War from 1916 until the Armistice in 1918. He’d served in the Royal Corps of Signals.

There was Maggie, we always called her Maggie. Later she didn’t like that name. She wanted to be called Margaret. She was a grand lass and she was a schoolteacher and I do believe that when Mother was very very ill and realised that she was shortly going to die that she wanted Father to marry Maggie. It never came off. She went and married Roy Godber and we liked him as well. We were often next door with the Hoyles, 74 Victoria Street. We used to play plenty of card games – Rummy and Snap and Casino, beggar my neighbour, lots of them. We used to play Ludo at home, and then we played Snakes and Ladders of course. Jim, I remember, used to like his egg fried in butter but ever he came across a blood spot in the egg he wouldn’t touch it.

No 76 Victoria Street – that’s where the Dixons lived. There was Johnny Dixon, he was the postman, and he used to like to take our dog with him on his rounds. The dog was called Paddy, a little wire-haired fox terrier, that was the guardian of us children. In fact it was so loyal to us children that if it thought anybody was threatening, particularly me, it would bite. And in fact it had to go away. I remember it going to a place in Todmorden. The Dixons had Doris, she was not very bright, and Freda, she was a buxom wench. They might both have worked in the silk mill at the bottom of the street. I don’t know.

The Parkers, they were in no 78, they were a nice family. I can’t remember Mr Parker but I remember Mrs quite well. And then there was Fred Parker. He was a postman. There was Harry Parker. He worked in an office I think. There was Emily. She was a weaver and there was Sarah. She worked in the Co-op café. She used to bake tea-cakes and cakes and suchlike.

And then the bottom house of the 5 houses in the terrace, that’s where George Henry Howarth lived. He had something wrong with his arm. I don’t know what it was. We were quite friendly and often if they had plenty of people in the house George Henry would come up and borrow a form, a bench, which if there were plenty of customers waiting their turn in the shop they would sit on this bench. George Henry would borrow it and take it down to his house so that the people who came could be seated.

It used to happen in our family particularly, there was a routine to the week, a sort of set routine to life then. Often on a Sunday we would go to Walsden for dinner. Probably take a tramcar up to Summit and then perhaps walk along the canal bank until we got to Uncle Frank’s. We might even go on the railway train. That was an excitement going through Summit Tunnel.

There weren’t always enough seats for us all to sit to our dinner so one or other of us had to stand up to eat. I of course being the youngest always had to stand up. It didn’t seem to matter all that much.

(I remember now that Freda Dixon worked as a scivy, she was a housemaid of some sort with one of the big families, one of the millowners’ families, the Harveys.) 

The photo below is of Victoria Street in 1970. The end house no. 72 (no longer a pie shop!) is where Henry and his family lived. Then, moving down the street, the inhabitants of the houses in the early 1920s were: no. 74 (the Hoyles), no. 76 (the Dixons), no. 78 (the Parkers) and no. 80 (the Howarths), all mentioned above.

The next photo was taken on 2nd September 1945. It shows, from the left) Harold Hiley (Henry's father), Roy Godber, Mary Hiley, ?, Edith Hiley, Agnes Hiley, Margaret Godber, Alec Fletcher.

Margaret (Hoyle) lived next door at no. 74 and married Roy Godber. Mary, Edith and Agnes were Henry's sisters. Alec was a friend. 

William Highley, the runaway convict

The following article appeared in The Maryland Gazette on the 21st and 28th June 1764.

Given that this was written in 1764, and that William's age was given as about 40 and that he had been in the country for about 4 years, we can say he was born in about 1724 and had sailed from Liverpool in about 1760, and was aged about 36.

It has not been possible so far to find out anything about William before he left England but we know more about his life after he was transported to the British Colonies.

William's service was bought by John Frederick Augustus Priggs of Prince George's County, Maryland but after 4 years William ran away and despite Priggs's newspaper adverts was not apprehended. 

There are records of a William Highley and his family in Virginia from 1765 onwards and since there are no other men of the same name living in the colonies at this time, this is likely to be the runaway convict from England. William married and five of his children lived to be adults. Along with his three sons William worked in the iron industry. 

William died in the 1790s. His descendants have since formed one of the main collection of Highley families in the United States today.

John Hiley the convict

Welcome to a new year of Hiley/Highley posts!

I am often asked if I have any rogues or criminals amongst my ancestors! This month there are two posts, each one about a Hiley who committed a crime and was transported to another country. But neither of the two is from my own family tree!

Today's post features John Hiley who received a life sentence for an unknown crime and was transported to Australia in 1800. So far it has not been possible to discover any details about John's life before the trip or what happened to him after he arrived in Australia.

John was convicted on 10th March 1800 at the Kent Assizes and received a life sentence, officially given as 99 years, His crime was not recorded. He was transported aboard the vessel Earl Cornwallis and was one of 296 convicts, of whom 77 had been given life sentences, and with an average sentence of 31 years.

The first convicts to arrive in Australia were part of the First Fleet, which sailed from England in 1787 and arrived in Botany Bay in Sydney in January 1788. The convicts were transported in poor conditions, with limited space and a lack of supplies. Many died from illnesses like cholera during the journey. Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britian and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. Captain Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, hoped the convicts would rehabilitate themselves and provide labour for the new colony.

From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales

The Earl Cornwallis was a three-decker East Indiaman launched in 1783 on the River Thames. She made seven voyages for the British East India Company. She then made one voyage transporting convicts from England to New South Wales. The ship set sail on 31st July 1800, was in transit for 316 days, and arrived in Port Jackson in Sydney, New South Wales on 12th June 1801. 27 male and 8 female convicts died of dysentery on the voyage and many of the survivors arrived weak and feeble. One officer and 20 men of the New South Wales Corps acted as guards on the trip.

Earl Cornwallis
By Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) - Yale Center for British Art
Paul Mellon Collection, USA, Public Domain
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36841826

Website sources

Convict Records

Wikipedia

National Library of Australia