RootsChat.Com
Research in Other Countries => Australia => Topic started by: Jaguars! on Wednesday 14 December 16 20:24 GMT (UK)
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Hi everyone. First up, let me say thanks for all the resources listed on your site, several of them have been quite useful!
Now, I'm missing both ends of life for Miss Legass. This is what I know about her:
- living in Sutton Forest at time of marriage, age 24, married in the Anglican county chapel, county Camden, 1834.
- Marriage certificate states that she is free.
- No suitable birth certificates for Margarets with L surnames in 1809, 1810 or 1811 in NSW.
- No named passengers of that name prior to 1834 in the oz ships's index.
- Not on claim a convict site, possible substitute names are Legatt, Leggett, Lawless, Loveless.
- Traceable on the sands directory 1859 - 1866. They lived in Surry Hills during this time.
- Husband was John COFFEY (early spelling Coffee), he was in the Buff regiment and stayed on when they left Australia. He appears to have claimed land in Uringalla near Wingello in 1835 per a gazette notice.
- There are about 4 Margaret Coffeys marrying from 1861, when Mr Coffey died, to 1900. No Legasses.
I realize there may not be much more to find out, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on any further information I could get.
- Does 'free' on the Marriage cert indicate whether she was born free or a convict who was freed?
- Possible last names, this seems to be an obvious Anglicization. Perhaps most likely would be french Lagasse and variants? Someone else tells me that Legassick appears in the dictionary of British & Irish surnames. There was also a Lagace family established in Lower Canada, is this a possible connection?
- Any clues on whether she remarried or where she died, the family stayed in Sydney for the next generation, as far as I'm aware
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Hi and welcome to rootschat there is a record of a Margaret Legass birth year 1807 age 25 departure Ireland arrival date 10 August 1832 New South Wales occupation needleworker ship Red Rover ..There is a tree on Ancestry with a picture of this person and a death for her in 1906 Granville New South Wales as Margaret Coffey
Rosie
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Death certificate states she was born Wicklow Ireland and had been in NSW 74 years parents unknown ..Married John Coffey buried 31 August 1906 Presbyterian Cemetery Rookwood
Rosie
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Passenger list Red Rover 1832:
http://indexes.records.nsw.gov.au/ebook/list.aspx?Page=NRS5312/4_4822/Red%20Rover_10%20Aug%201832/4_482200006.jpg&No=1
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Margaret LEGASS 25yrs, Needle Worker, arrived Red Rover 10 Aug, 1832.
Employer: Capt CLIFT of SYDNEY.
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Death notice you can check out www.trove.nla.au
Rosie
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Death notice:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/14817079
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Burial:
http://www.rookwoodcemetery.com.au/deceased-search-engine
Margaret COFFEY 31 Aug, 1906
Area Zone: C
Section: T
Grave Number: 9012
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An interesting obit http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article126564426
Ros
Adding : she came to Australia as nursemaid to family of one of the early governors of NSW, she made the flannels for the first English cricket team to tour Australia , etc
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Details about the circumstances surrounding female immigration at the time and Margaret’s ship in particular can be found on this site:
http://www.rushen.com.au/ships.html (http://www.rushen.com.au/ships.html)
Peter
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Welcome to RootsChat :)
John COFFEY, Private in the 3rd Regiment. He served in companies 7, 6 and 5. He arrived on either the Guildford or Asia or Eliza.
He had enlisted for 7 years, commencing 25 December 1822 at Sydney.
He served at Botany Bay Head from 25 Sept 1823, Port Macquarie from March 1824, Newcastle from January 1825, Wallis Plains from January 1826. He transferred to the 57th Regiment on 24 October 1827, staying in NSW.
http://www.bda-online.org.au/files/MR6_Military.pdf
https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/series/5312
JM
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:o I stand in awe. Thank you so much for your help, I did not expect to get so much, so quickly! I'll check out all your links when I get home tonight.
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Thanks again for all your help. I've been busy updating all my summaries with all the new information and I've used the free trial at ancestry to view some of other peoples' trees.
I have a question about this gazette notice. I thought that it implied that John Coffey was buying this land, but the statement at the start of the start of the notice implies it is being auctioned. Does anyone know what the system was here?
Header:
(http://i.imgur.com/YhOxQrN.jpg)
Claim:
(http://i.imgur.com/gWiz7sZ.jpg)
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You may find the following guide will be helpful.
https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide-1788-1856
you can find parish maps here: http://images.maps.nsw.gov.au/pixel.htm
More info :
http://heritagegenealogy.com.au/blog/land-ownership-timeline/
and
http://www.insidehistory.com.au/2013/03/expert-qa-researching-australian-land-records-with-carole-riley/
JM
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At the lpi website, and at the parish maps for Uringalla, you could seek out the one with a file reference : 10195501.jp2
You could find Robert Campbell's 600 acres and look to the western side of those acres.
Here's a snip that may be helpful as it will have reference numbers for the land titles system in operation after the Robertson reforms of 1861 etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Land_Acts
JM
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Bio on Robert CAMPBELL, the chap mentioned with those 600 acres. :)
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/campbell-robert-1876
JM
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NSW Government Gazettes are free to search 24/7 via the National Library of Australia's TROVE :) :)
https://www.nla.gov.au/research-guides/finding-government-gazettes/new-south-wales
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ ;)
JM
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Yep, that's how I found the gazette notices in the first place!
So given that the 5s/acre that Mr Coffey had paid was deposit on the land, does that mean that the fact that it was sold via public auction would have been a formality to comply with the law?
Looking up the parish maps now.
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From the NSW Archives guide linked earlier :
No free land grants after 1831
In a despatch dated 9 January 1831, Viscount Goderich instructed that no more free grants (except those already promised) be given. All land was thenceforth to be sold at public auction (HRA 1.16.22) and revenue from the sale of land was to go toward the immigration of labourers. Likewise the practice of granting land as "marriage portions" to the children of colonists was discontinued (HRA 1.16.353, 793). The new regulations were notified in a Government Notice of 1 July 1831 and published in a Government Order dated 1 August 1831.
Following this, land was sold by public auction without restrictions being placed on the area to be acquired . After 1831 the only land that could be made available for sale was within the Nineteen Counties. This restriction was brought about to reduce the cost of administration and to stem the flow of settlers to the outer areas
Argyle was one of those 19 Counties. The only option available at that time for a person to become the first 'owner' of that Crown Land was to buy it at a Public Auction. If you look at the other notices in that same section of that particular Govt Gazette you will see that 5 shillings per acre was the usual offering. John Coffey was simply following the 'rules' of the day as set down by the Colonial Office (in London) and administered by the NSW Governor and his (non elected) Legislative Council.
JM
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Good evening
I have just discovered that Margaret Legass is my g.g.grandmother and reading there posts has been wonderful.
However if Margaret was born in 1807, arrived Sydney 1832 (25) married in 1834 and died in 1906 ... wouldn't she be 99 and not 94 as stated on the death notice?
Might she have been born in 1812 and was only 21 when she arrived in Sydney, to match her 94 years of age when she passed away?
I look forward to searching and researching this new ancestor, discovered via DNA ...
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Hi Roses,
What I found when I did this research is that the ages on the records are not always accurate. People forgot, or fudged their age for all sorts of reasons (Brides deducting a couple of years to look younger than their husband seems to be a common one.) Death certificates are particularly bad because they are filled out by relatives who might not know all the information. One of her grand daughters has three different ages between the birth, marriage and death certificates!
It's probably best to use dates from the earlier records. I think the emmigration record is best since Margaret herself supplied the date and there is no reason for her to change it.
If you're on Ancestry.com, someone has created a huge and very solid family tree with lots of pictures and records. IIRC, it's labelled the 'Bowtell-Stokes' Family tree. They thought that Margaret was most likely from the foundling home in Cork, but I had to stop there and haven't had the time to research further (much as I would like to ;D). It does mean that what she thought was her age might not be accurate either and she might not have had a birth certificate.