Am extremely grateful for the useful help and information already given on this site from expert members. Cannot get to Kew (from Australia) and still need a bit more help.
Can anyone visiting Kew please help me/family to establish how our earliest ancestor to arrive in Sydney came to do so? Assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Background: 8th Royal Irish Hussars, Pte Charles DALTON, R/No 1136, Enlisted 02 Mar 1850.
Supposedly discharged Calcutta 08 Sept 1863 – after 12 years and 70 days (with Good Conduct Badge). By my calc’s, though, that ought to have had him discharge on 14 May 1862 – unless there’s some altering factor in his service (he did go AWOL 17 Jul – 09 Aug in 1852).
The records available to me give no indication of when, or how, or if he returned to England from India.
The shipping records in the Sydney Morning Herald and Aust Gov’t resources for the day of what we believe was Charles’s arrival in Australia do not mention him by name among those passengers that the vessel sailed with when it left England, and he is not listed among those who were picked up along the way in India and at the Port of Galle (in the then) Ceylon – in fact the report of the Northam’s travel only mentions Bombay – Calcutta does not feature!
It is generally believed that Charles (and his wife-to-be, Jessie Fitzsimmons) were somehow/somewhere caught up in the haste of H/E Lord Lisgar, Sir John Young’s departure from London and his rapid travel to Sydney (without his ADC or escort), and that both Charles and Jessie were listed as personal servants to His Lordship. Charles and Jessie quite likely were the unnamed “Man and Maid Servant(s)” shown in the arrival-list of passengers on board the “Northam” on 22 March 1861.
Of course, when you do the sums using Charles’s Service time, his enlistment date, the supposed date of his discharge, and the believed date of his arrival in Sydney, things just don’t add up. We cannot positively identify him entering Australia on any other date.
Anybody with a bit of spare research time would receive mine and other descendants’ undying gratitude – and I’ll send them a copy of my bio-narrative of Charles Dalton’s life after Crimea as soon as I can close this final chapter if you could please check through the 8th Hussars Muster Rolls for the first two quarterly musters of 1850, and determine the exact date of Charles Dalton’s enlistment on the form 5 or form 7? (I’m sure that Lawrence Crider is correct when he says the date should be 02 Mar 1850.) And second, could you please make a similar check of 8th Hussars regimental musters for 1860-63 to try to find Charles’s date of discharge on the form 20 or form 24.
As there were two Daltons as Privates in the 8th Hussars (Charles 1136, and William 1467) in the Crimea and later in India some confusion of information concerning each/both has been found.
It is our belief that somehow, Charles may have been seconded to H/E’s personal staff and that he may have been discharged “in-absentia” at a later date. We’re hoping that a “lookup” might clarify the situation.
In hope, Dalton Neville
