I have good paperwork once he got to Australia thanks mainly to work done by other descendants. We know Thomas Rushton and his wife Amelia had at least eight children who died in early childhood – six sons, Charles, John, John Tatlock, John, Robert and George, and two daughters, Sarah and Eliza. Amelia herself died in 1797, aged about 44. Their daughter Henrietta and her husband William Chippindall travelled as free settlers to Australia to join Thomas, only for Henrietta to die in childbirth about 18 months after arrival. I am descended from one of her sons. I found Thomas's bankruptcy in a list in "London Magazine: Or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer Vol 3" for 3 Apr 1784. I hadn't heard he was in Macclesfield but that is probably him. Maddy, do you have any more about that certificate of conformity? He was caught with the dodgy pound notes in Stockport in 1802 which is why he was tried in Chester, so we knew he had left Liverpool by then. We know that once in Australia he took as a second (common-law) "wife" Elizabeth Smith, convicted in the Old Bailey in 8 Jul 1789 of stealing a pair of linen sheets & other goods and given seven-year term. Such unions were not unusual in Sydney at the time. He was quite famous in Sydney because he was given charge of the Parramatta brewery, so that aspect of his life is reasonably well-known, but not his early life. There is a suggestion that he might have been the brother of Edward Rushton, the blind literary figure and abolitionist, but I have no proof of that because despite everyone's best intentions no-one has been able to establish Thomas's birth details. There are several births in the OPC database that could be him based on birthdates calculated from the passenger list on the Calcutta etc. Thanks for your help and quick response. I will keep trying until I can pin down his birth as that will hopefully open up more avenues to explore. Geoff.
