Ormiston House, Accommodation, Strahan, Tasmania

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Christina Henry migrated in 1857 with children James, in company with wife Elizabeth, Mary, Peter, Beth, Christina and Frederick Ormiston aged 11 years.

  At this stage it may be pertinent to state that as yet the reason for Frederick to be given the name of Ormiston is not yet known.  There is a village just south of Edinburgh named Ormiston and there may well be a connection.

  After their arrival in Victoria, John Henderson Henry and sons (and brother Arthur and wife Anderina) set up as merchants at Forest Creek.  It was perhaps the gold rush in Victoria that attracted the Henry family to migrate but soon after arriving, John Henderson Henry moved to Sydney leaving his sons in Victoria. Tragically, John Henderson Henry died in 1856 at Camperdown, NSW, before Christina and the remainder of his family could join him.

It would be very easy to digress at this stage and delve further into the disbursement of the Henrys.  However this is a story specifically relevant to Ormiston House and we will concentrate on the parts that Frederick Ormiston Henry played in the establishment of a new life in Australia, and in fact, Tasmania.  Suffice to say that brother John moved to Tasmania and set up the Don River Trading Company in Devonport.

After leaving school in Victoria, F. O. (as we shall refer to him from now on), managed the Malmsbury branch of  J & W Henry (Merchants); namely his brothers John and William.

From 1868 to 1880 F.O. visited Fiji and New Zealand and was engaged in business during that time.  In 1880 he visited Tasmania, probably at the suggestion of brother John, and came to the West Coast at the start of the mining boom.

It is here that we will leave the Henrys.  We will continue the life of F.O. and Strahan later in the book.

  The Convicts

It is with great pride that Australians of today can trace their ancestral links to that of the First or Second Fleet.  Not so in Victorian times.  There was a stigma associated with being descended from any convict, First Fleet or any 'chained arrival' for that matter.  This was an attitude that prevailed until earlier this century when society in Australia realized the contribution that the convict system had made in the formation of this nation.  We must remember that the transportation of petty criminals was a method by which the British legal system attempted to purge their communities of so called 'riff-raff'.  In a class orientated society, such as it was, the commonwealth regarded these unfortunate, mainly poverty-stricken families, as being totally undesirable and to be 'got rid of'.

Initially the punishment was transportation but the up and coming wealthy landowners of the new colony could see the potential of free labor.  The Government of the day could also see the building of infrastructure costing much less with the unpaid labor of the transported convicts.  This was at a time when the prison system in England was overloaded and the prison hulks in the Thames at bursting point.

And so it was that two convicts, Andrew Goodwin and Lydia (Letitia) Munro became victims of the oppressive judicial system and embarked on a journey that would culminate in a marriage to the wealthiest and most affluent man on the West Coast of Tasmania.

We are fortunate that these two 'First Fleeters' have been the subject of much historical research by Irene Schaffer and Thelma McKay in their book "Exiled Three Times Over!".

Andrew Goodwin, and William Butler were tried at the Old Bailey on 7th July 1784  for the theft of £200 of lead from a building.  They were sentenced to transportation for seven years with Andrew being held on the prison hulk Censor until transportation three years later on 4th February 1787, aboard the Scarborough bound for Botany Bay.

Lydia Munro, in company with Ann Forbes, were convicted of stealing ten yards of printed cotton, valued at 20 shillings, and were both sentenced to be hanged.  There was a reprieve and the sentence was commuted to seven years transportation aboard the Prince of Wales.   After arrival in the new land, a daughter, Mary, was born to Lydia and baptized on the 19th July 1789.  Andrew Goodwin was named as the father and they were married in 1790.  Two days after their marriage they were sent to Norfolk Island aboard the Sirius.

After a productive period on Norfolk Island their term had expired and they left for Port Jackson.  First, Lydia with baby son, John in November 1794 and then Andrew with their two daughters Mary and Sarah in March 1795.  But within a short period of time they returned to Norfolk Island as free persons and by 1807 Andrew had a farm valued at £80 with a house and 23 acres.  Despite this productivity they once again moved when the authorities enforced five evacuations from Norfolk Island to the infant penal colony on the banks of the Derwent River.

The Goodwin family arrived in Van Dieman's Land aboard the Porpoise on 17th January 1808 with seven of their children.  Their last daughter Letitia was born in Tasmania.  Andrew died in 1835 and Lydia in 1856 and they were both buried at St. David's Cemetery, Hobart Town.

Sarah Goodwin married Benjamin Briscoe in 1808 at the age of 16.  Benjamin had arrived as a convict on the Calcutta in 1804 and in 1807 had received 300 lashes for absconding from the colony.  After being granted land at Clarence Plains, Benjamin was accidentally drowned in 1819.  The next year Sarah married Mark Ashby Bunker, a convict who was transported for sheep stealing and who arrived on the Castlereagh  in 1818.

In 1828, at the age of 35, Sarah applied for the land granted to her late husband.

Sarah and Mark had eight children.  Their seventh born was Hannah Amelia on 3rd April 1833 at Clarence Plains.  Hannah married William Lewis in April 1851 at Colebrook, Tasmania.  They had ten children, the seventh born being Mary Alice who with other members of her family moved to Strahan.  Frederick Ormiston Henry and Mary Alice Lewis were married at Port Sorrell in 1887.

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