Thanks to the Global Moderator for merging the threads.
Good to read that our OP has been able to join the dots with some official NSW records, as that’s a great way to start towards establishing contact other family history buffs interested in the families in rural NSW in the years prior to WWI.
May I again mention
that the introduction to Robert Hughes book shows he led a team of researchers who investigated convictism in NSW, Norfolk Island and Tasmania. Hughes, of course, was based in New York, as an Art Critic among his many talents. There are many other well qualified researchers who have investigated the WA convict records. WA’s convictism was different from all other transportation systems in that it was at the request of the colony, it was only men, it was focused on rehabilitation and it was long after all the other British colonies in the Antipodes had rejected convictism. As an aside, as Thomas could read and write, he was able to communicate with his UK family via the usual mail service. He was earning an income while under sentence.
Australian Joint Copying Project filmed the W.A. convict records back in the 1940s, and those records had been available to researchers long before then and continue to be readily available at many public libraries both here in Australia and in the UK. Ancestry has uploaded some of the images in a commercial partnership arrangement with the Archives in W.A.
The parish registers of St Lukes, Junee (re the 1891 marriage) were filmed back in the 1980s and those images provided to the National Library of Australia and to SAG, Sydney at that time. They continue to be readily available. The parish register will contain the information that the bride and the groom provided to the clergyman and which the NSW BDM does not yet include in their summary registration of that marriage.
One set of grandparents for one of my parents and one set of grandparents for one of the parents of my third cousin are, of course, the same two people. My third cousin’s OTHER set of grandparents are descendants of the couple who married in 1891 at St Lukes Vicarage, Junee, NSW. So my second cousin has been interested in family history for many many decades, long before it became a fashionable hobby. There is no reason for any RChatter to assume that any descendant of the couple who has an interest in family history is somehow unaware that Thomas had been convicted of the manslaughter of a policeman. There is no reason for any RChatter to assume there’s any need to sensationalise or to supress that long held knowledge or to introduce expressions like ‘can of worms’. He is simply one of many ancestors of the current generation, no more and no less. He is not one of the many ancestors of the children of Ellen and her husband Edward Hunter.
Perhaps some RChatters have shared PMs that may have been read as discrediting me personally. If so, then to me, that is disappointing to the concept of RChat. It is not something that distracts me. I have simply taken the RChat option to block them from sending any further PMs to me. There are seven RChatters on that ignore list, most have been there for years.
I am sure that when my 3rd cousin has the time that they will consider if they wish to contact our OP to compare research on their shared ancestors, the parents of Thomas whose NSW death cert notes his 44 years in NSW and 14 years in WA.
I notice the OP has marked the thread complete.
JM
Add:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/136294920 Canberra Times 14 March 1987.
... Much that is written and said about this book is quite misleading. This is not the ‘definitive’ work on the history of transportation. It lacks a thesis and adds little that is new to our understanding. Much of what is interpretative is taken from the work of others. Hughes does have some documents ‘never before consulted’ but professional historians have done considerable work on convicts over the last 30 years and have in fact used a number of documents featured. ... 