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Messages - Brutus

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1
Lancashire / Re: James Sidebottom (or Sidebotham)
« on: Thursday 09 March 17 11:32 GMT (UK)  »
Hi Felicia,
    You have some of the names right, but it's a bit different and more complicated.  Easy to put right from memory, if I still have one!!!
    A female convict named  Elizabeth Dean (or Deane) was transported on the (in)famous "Lady Juliana", and a convict named Anthony Bryan (or Brion or Brian) on the "Surprise", both arrived Oz circa 1790.  That is what is nominally called the "second fleet", except it wasn't a fleet.  They got together somehow, and had a child Mary, and 3 more.  (That I know of).
    Their daughter Mary Bryan married a William Phillip Furber, who arrived on the 'hell ship' "Neptune".  The marriage was at a very young age.  They had 1 child, George Furber.  Then Furber died, and Mary Furber, nee Bryan, married John Sidebotham, who was calling himself John Smith by then, at Paramatta.  As far as I know John Smith didn't have a previous wife, and certainly no legit children.
    Then he got into more trouble, and was transported to Newcastle, the penal colony for the penal colony.  Once there, he impressed the commandant, Morisset, and was made Chief Constable.  (He seems to have decided at that point that "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".   Much follows from there.
    About his death.  I'm not entirely sure of the final details, but he was buried in what was then the Cathedral Cemetery.  Then, some years later, the old Cathedral burned down.  An ignorant or corrupt administration, before the existing much larger cathedral was built, 'bulldozed' the whole place.  (Or whatever they did in those days, probably a team of draught-horses with a scoop).  The headstones were all dumped somewhere, and there was something in recent media about them being recovered and re-erected somewhere, but I haven't kept up with that.
Regards,   "Brutus"


2
Lancashire / Re: James Sidebottom (or Sidebotham)
« on: Tuesday 28 February 17 09:48 GMT (UK)  »
Hi Felicia,
      Glad to hear from another descendant  of Sidebottom, alias Smith.   How are you connected? That is, from which of his numerous children, etc.
      To the best of my knowledge, no photos of him exist, and though photography was invented before he died, box-brownie cameras certainly weren't.  There is, however, a copious paper trail, some of it readily accessible via the NSW Archives.
       If you make two more posts, we can correspond privately by the personal message (PM) system.
Regards,   "Brutus".

3
Lancashire / Re: James Sidebottom (or Sidebotham)
« on: Tuesday 08 March 16 10:53 GMT (UK)  »
Hi Tina,
Sorry to take so long.  Glad you have got a copy of the Will.
I have a transcript of the letter done by somebody else, (with another interesting bit on the same page).  I also looked the letter up on Trove, (Maitland Mercury), and did a screen grab and then ran it through my image processor, the result is fairly legible, and might be better than the copy you have.
Will contact you by the PM system, and give you my email address, it might be easier to exchange information that way.   
Brutus

4
Lancashire / Re: James Sidebottom (or Sidebotham)
« on: Saturday 27 February 16 13:36 GMT (UK)  »
    Thanks, Garstonite for pointing out the discrepancy in the birth/death of that James.  It looks like it must be another.  It's seven years since I made the original post, and about twenty seven or more years since I did much research in that quarter.  Back then, one did ones research by peering at microfiches in council libraries, or at indexes at the archives reading room in the Sydney CBD (now moved to western Sydney), and copies of anything were done by Xerox.  Also by writing letters to the State Archives, enclosing a cheque, and popping the letter into those red boxes which used to be on street corners.  Computers ran an operating system called CPM, Wordstar was the only word-processor worth talking about, and the internet was dial-up.
    However, as to whether his name was James Sidebottom at all, I remain reasonably sure that it was, so he must be another.  Unfortunately, there are quite a few.  The correspondance with Governor Macquarie is fairly definite, and it would have been a very dangerous game to try to delude Him, and get a pardon under false pretences.  You would need to like the feel of a rope around your neck to try that on.
    On the subject of his character, an attitude of John Smith bashing seems to have developed in recent years, mostly coming from some authors at the Newcastle Uni, and distributed by the Maitland Council Information service.  What is obvious is that there was considerable jealousy from members of the "establishment", most of whom were not doing as well as Smith was.  A number of recent publications completely ignore the fact that he was also guilty of philanthropy!!!  There exists a public letter from several of his tenants thanking him for remission of a quarter's rent, after a flood.  There are numerous cases where he had a hand in improving the quality of roads, or farming practices.  A correspondent of mine, a descendant of James, his eldest son, informed me that on one occasion, when some relative of their's was bankrupt and all his possessions were being sold off, John Smith bought up the property at a bargin basement price, then when the man had made a recovery some years later, sold it back to him at the price he had given at the bankruptcy sale.  Then there is the very substantial assistance he gave to Caroline Chisholm.   
    Any view on his "crimes" should also consider the social structure which existed in the early 1800's, all the 1700's and earlier.  The members of the "establishment", called the "quality" by the great unwashed, could commit murder and get away with it, at worst a hurried departure to the Continent and few years exile was sufficient.  This is well illustrated by the complete failure of the attempt by some to bring the captain of the "Hell Ship" the 'Neptune' to justice.   Conversely, the theft of a scrap of cloth by one of the common herd was sufficient for a death sentence.  Conversely in another direction, it was entirely possible to committ a social solecism of such magnitude that the offender was cast into the outer darkness, particularly if the offended person was in high places.

     Tina, I will contact you via the private message system when I have scanned the Will'  It's 10 or more pages, and very complicated. It may be a few days before I get to it as we are rather busy at present.

     Heywood, thank you for your interest. I think I have everything which has survived regarding the earlier trials.  An academic cousin of mine, who hangs out at Oxford, was pushed by her mother into doing an extensive search.  She sent me a number of newspaper reports, and the prosecutor's bills, but was told by Lancaster archives that the documents of the actual court proceedings had been stored in a cellar during WWII to protect them from German bombers, and the cellar had been flooded, and the contents pulped.   Unfortunately, that is just the material which could have told us the crucial details about our James Sidebottom.
Regards, Brutus

5
Lancashire / Re: James Sidebottom (or Sidebotham)
« on: Thursday 25 February 16 05:42 GMT (UK)  »
      Thank you for replying, it's nice to know somebody is interested in the fascinating James Sidebottom, alias John Smith, saga.  I have found twelve children for "John Smith" and Mary in total, two died shortly after birth, and Alfred Sydney is certainly the last of the surviving ten.  However, the twelve are almost equally spaced, most at the usual 2 year, +/- a little bit spacing, which was so common in those days.
      I don't know much about Alfred Sydney, I have not closely investigated him, as I am descended from Sophia, the eldest daughter and second child.  I have found births/ baptisms of ten children listed for Alfred, of which three died in infancy, but that's all I know about him.  Does this agree with your findings?? 
      I do have a paper copy of "John Smith's" will, which might reveal something more about Alfred. I can't remember all the details, I was more interested in Sophia's small share, a annuity of 20 pounds.  However, I recently tidied up a lot of my FH stuff, and I haven't a clue where it is at the moment!!   If you are interested I'll try to dig it out and scan it.
Regards,    Brutus.
   

6
Technical Help / Re: Windows XP RIP!
« on: Sunday 13 April 14 15:15 BST (UK)  »
All computer users should realise that Microsoft is just trying to increase it's already gigantic profits, and quite probably many hardware sales-merchants are trying to cash in too.
Everyone should realise that some enthusiasts are still using computers running Windows 2K !!!!
XP will not die quickly, and it is probably the best operating system that Microsoft has produced, and that is not saying much.  Vista was a disaster, Win 7 still inferior to XP, and Win 8 in the middle.
Certain points should be known:
(a) Computers don't just get slower.  What happens is (i) too many programs get held in a 'ready' state, so that they chew up computer hardware time without doing anything.  Including a lot of utterly stupid programs like games, and lots of completely unnecessary bells and whistles.  (ii) the hard disc files become 'fragmented', that means all the files are broken up into little bits chained together, and the poor hard disc spends ages 'seeking' the bits.  (iii) the thing called the 'registery' gets so knotted up it takes ages for the OS to find anything.  (iv)  etc, etc, etc.  Most problems are software problems, hardware problems do occur, but are relatively infrequent.
(b) The solution to this is to get a program which unravelles the mess, OR re-load the operating system.  That is not as difficult as it sounds, BUT you MUST have the original CD from which the OS came, and have the long, apparently meaningless 'Key' which unlocks everything. (25 digits or so).  When you bought your computer, you bought that too, and you should have got it, but some hardware merchants hang on to it.  Keep it in a safe place.  Making one copy for archival purposes is permitted.
(c)  New computers, new hardware that is, are faster, but almost always the raw speed isn't needed.  It's the craze for games, HD videos on line in real-time, etc, etc, which is driving it, not the needs of family history.

So my prescription for the immediate future of XP is:
(d) Keep using it.
(e) Check the update status of your OS CD mentioned above, and make sure you have downloaded any service packs needed (ie perhaps SP3 if your CD has only to SP2 printed on it.)  Microsoft will probably (I hope) issue a "roll-up" service pack eventually, they did for Windows 2K years ago.
(f) As has already been suggested, immediately download the Mozilla Firefox browser.  It's FREE, and far better than Internit Exploder.  Far more secure, Internit Exploder was always being patched for security reasons.  Download the e-mail program Mozilla Thunderbird as well, same reason.  Almost all of the computer literati, when circumstances force them to use Windows, use these programs, or something similar, instead of Microsoft's offerings.
(g) Dump Norton as soon as possible.  Norton is in bed with Microsoft, and therefore not to be trusted into the future.  I personally use AVG, find it very satisfactory.  Their current offering includes a 'tune-up' program which solves most of the problems mentioned in (a) above.  Other vendors may do the same, I haven't needed to go any further.
(h) If you don't do banking on your computer, AVG have a limited FREE version, which does everything necessary, if what you do isn't vital.  I have five computers in my household, for various purposes, the two important ones have the fully paid version of AVG Security, the other three, like the one in my workshop, which doesn't do anything vital, have AVG Free installed, just in case something nasty appears on a CD or a USB device used to transfer data, or a rare access on the internet.
(i)  XP won't die until other companies or organisations such as Mozilla and AVG decide their products aren't being used enough to justify support any longer.  If Windows 2K is any guide, that will take many years.
(j) If you don't suffer from technology terror, by all means switch to Linux eventually, I have a dual-boot system on one of mine, using the SUSE version.  Naturally, the Mozilla organisation has Linux versions of Firefox and Thunderbird available.
(k) Another interesting point.  If you are rehashing your system, always partition your hard drive, into several logical drives, ie C: D: E: .....  depending on it's size, so that it looks like several hard drives.  You can then fool around with drive C:, without danger.  Of course, 2 or more hard drives is better, a hardware crash can still wipe everything, but it's better than nothing.  The average "Computer Man", or "Computer Shop" never does this - next time, demand that he/they does/do.  It's also more secure, all your personal files don't have to reside on drive C:, and the "my documents" directory is empty.   
   

7
Lancashire / James Sidebottom (or Sidebotham)
« on: Sunday 27 May 07 02:01 BST (UK)  »
Does anybody have a loose end of this name, who disappeared in the early 1800's ???

The Story   James Sidebottom was born c. 1789, baptised 19-12-1790, St Thomas Ardwick, then a village on the outskirts of Manchester.   Got into trouble!!!   Tried 4-5-1806, acquitted, tried 25-4-1809, re-tried 11-10-1809 apparently same offence, sentenced to 7 years in Oz.  Expensive barrister employed - got him that time!   Transported, escaped late 1811 & got back to England, (rare event), caught again in Leicester, used alias of John Smith, (escaping was a hanging offence), & sentenced to another 7 years in Oz.   Transported again, pinched something in Sydney, sentenced to the Newcastle Penal settlement.  There he appears to have decided third time proves it, & if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.   Became Chief Constable, confessed his misdeeds to Gov. MacQuarie & was pardoned 19-8-1819.   Became disgustingly rich, married, but unfortunately when he died he left it all to his sons, & one of his daughters, my ancestor, got only a 20 pound annuity.
---One of the curious factors is that he appears to have been very well educated, unusual in the late 1700's.  Built a large house, almost a mansion, named Courtland Place, so the name must have meant something to him.
---The IGI shows some names in the Manchester area who could be relatives, but I have no definite connection.
---A relative of mine searched for court documents while in England, the Lancashire archives found a few fragmentary references, as above, but the main documents for that period have been lost.

Any suggestions as to where I might find more information would be welcome, and if anybody has a lost g-x-g-uncle that would be marvellous.





 




   

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