AUS-Tasmania-L Archives

From: Garry A Wilson <>
Subject: [AUS-Tas] Re: SELSBY
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 02:27:22 +1000
References: <200309041328.h84DSU5v015026@lists2.rootsweb.com>

Jools

Noted your earlier enquiry but was busy with a few other things!

Anyhow, sorry - not able to help much with this one. Very few of the VDL general musters have the children's portion surviving and even where it does, eg in 1818, in Hobart, more often than not its just the mother's or father's name and number of children which is all that's given. The musters in Launceston appear to have been taken a little more methodically and the surviving convict portion for 1818 has children of convicts by name and complements somewhat the extant free portion of the muster for the following year where free children are named. I suspect that in some years, especially in Hobart, perhaps the
children were not even mustered. The work we have done on the hitherto totally unrecognised 1814 muster (for Hobart only unfortunately) is actually useful in that it also provides names of children (both convict and free), although there are anomalies which can only be explained by accepting that very young children (those not yet actually named?) are more often than not listed under one of their parent's names which looks a bit confusing at first. But all of this is before your lady arrived anyway.

In fact, we haven't done much yet after 1819, at least as far as the musters go, although we do have an extensive list of all the convicts up to 1825. For the present, we are trying to consolidate the population up to 1819 and identify the strays etc, so there's very little that I can tell you about Hannah Selsby other than she came on the Providence as you previously mentioned. In fact I wasn't aware until you mentioned it that she came with three children, not having looked specifically at her transportation record yet, where I presume that gem of information will be found. Musters, shipping, bdm, HTG, Knopwood and
Col Sec Records to mention just a few of our primary sources are keeping us pretty busy even up to 1819. Doesn't seem to be much hope of us meeting any sort of bicentenary publication deadline which would have been nice <grin>. But we'd rather get it right than rush it out LOL. There was a lot of shoddy work published around 1988 at the time of THE Bicentenary which suggests to me that some people just took the opportunity to publish because the occasion warranted it. Well we prefer not to, even if means that the project gets less hype.

There are a couple of specific children's musters undertaken for the purpose of establishing schooling requirements, around 1821/2 and again around 1827 I think from memory, but again we haven't looked at these in any detail yet (and I think I discovered my copy of the latter is incomplete anyway). So it will be back to the drawing board for that one when the time comes to transcribe LOL.

Sorry that we can't be of much help for the time being. But we will note Hannah Selsby and if anything turns up, let you know.

Regards

Garry

>
>
> Subject: Re: [AUS-Tas] Anne SELBY/SIBLEY & Hannah SELSBY - Help????
> Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 18:00:35 +1200
> From: Julie Skellern <>
> To:
>
> We've certainly used more than indexes.....
>
> but it is the muster rolls that may name Hannah SELSBEYs daughters.......
> and I was hoping that Garry might look his up for us. Us being - me the
> primary researcher living in NZ without access to most of what you've
> suggested, and my cousin who does live in Hobart and whose ancestress it is
> - who has tried looking (I'm sure) at burial records and all publically
> available material.
>
> Soooooo Meryl - where are the indexes to previously unindexed stuff????
>
> Having just spent nearly three months researching in UK repositories - at
> primary sources on all my lines - I know how eternally grateful I am for ANY
> indexes at all. Even with inherent faults - they are the best tool for
> locating data. Without the IGI, the search in parishes is daunting to say
> the least, tedious, time-consuming and more often than not un-productive. I
> will NEVER complain about anyone's indexes at all and Tasmanian Family Link
> is a problem because of the links, and presumptions - not because it's an
> index!!!
>
> Jools
>

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• [AUS-Tas] Re: SELSBY by Garry A Wilson <>