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