Charlotte Ashcroft Family Tree » Mary Hitchen (1786-1855)

Personal data Mary Hitchen 

• She was born in the year 1786 in Halifax, Lancashire, England.
• She died on September 12, 1855 in Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia, she was 69 years old.
• A child of David Hitchen and Mary Lane

Household of Mary Hitchen

She is married to James Buckley.

They got married on August 5, 1805 at St John's Church, Halifax, Yorkshire, England, she was 19 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Ann Buckley  1819-1905 

Notes about Mary Hitchen

Bio notes: Mary Hitchen (Hitchin) was born on 15 January 1786 to David and Mary Hitchen at Warley near Halifax in Yorkshire and was baptised on 26 February 1786 at the Warley Congregational Church. Warley is about 20 miles from Shaw & Crompton , near Manchester and they were all villages with mills for woollen & worsted textile production.

By order of the Overseers of the Poor on 14 June 1805 she was removed from Crompton, on the grounds that she was a single woman, being now pregnant of a child or children which is or are likely to be born a Bastard or Bastards and was returned to her home town of Warley.

Probably to avoid any repetition of this, two months later on 5 August 1805, James and Mary were married in St John’s Church, Halifax. Both made their mark, indicating they were illiterate.

Her next recorded child George Buckley was born in 1809 in Crompton and the fate of the baby she carried in June 1805 is unknown. All her English children were born in Shaw and Crompton. In between children, she too may have worked as a cotton weaver.

A general economic depression set in immediately after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, with the cotton industry in particular facing many problems plus a glut of labour worsened by returning soldiers. Wages halved and thousands of workers became unemployed and the antiquated and inadequate system of poor relief was overwhelmed. James and Mary would have been in reduced circumstances and must have reached the point of desperation.

James was indicted on 10 December 1816 together with James Bardsley, for stealing calico and cloth to the value of 4d. He was convicted of larceny at Lancaster Quarter Sessions on 22 January 1817 and sentenced to transportation for seven years.

Mary was no less desperate to feed her family after James had been taken into custody and may have been the Mary Buckley sentenced to 6 months imprisonment for larceny at the January 1817 Liverpool Sessions. She was certainly the Mary Buckley convicted of larceny at the September 1817 Lancaster Quarter Sessions at Halifax and, like James, she was sentenced to transportation for 7 years. At the time she had five children aged from one to twelve.

She was sentenced 9 months after her husband but arrived in the Colony two months before him. She boarded the ship Maria on 17 March 1818 with her four youngest children (Abraham remained with his grandparents to complete his education) and arrived at Sydney on 17 September 1818.

Mary (with her four children) was forwarded to the Female Factory at Parramatta, a brand new building built that year, with Francis Oakes as Superintendent. It was set up for dressing raw materials like flax and wool, spinning and weaving cloth and manufacturing clothing. About 200 female convicts were employed during the day but it could only accommodate about 60 overnight, so the others were therefore, in common with the male convicts, obliged to find lodgings for themselves; but in order the better to enable them to do so, they are allowed half of the day to work for themselves.

James was assigned as a servant or labourer with Superintendent Rouse at Parramatta and obviously managed to make arrangements that allowed him to live with Mary and the children together as a family. They had five more children born at Parramatta between 1819 and 1826.

In 1823 he was granted a block of land: lot number 6 on the north side of Argyle Street, Parramatta.

James and Mary both received their Certificate of Freedom on the same day, 16 March 1826. He was described as 39, a weaver, 5 ft 5 in tall, dark sallow complexion, brown hair, hazel eyes. She was described as 40, a servant and cotton weaver, 5 ft 2 ¼ in tall, ruddy complexion, brown hair and hazel eyes.

In the 1828 Census they were a Protestant family living at Parramatta with 7 children from George 20 to William 20 months, but Mary 14 and Elizabeth 12 are not listed – they were probably already working somewhere as servant girls? They had 1 horse & 3 cows. They later moved to the Windsor area, where James was a Nailor (a nail maker or, more likely, a person who maintained the teeth [nails] on carding machines for fleeces prior to weaving).

James died at the age of 50, on 22 Aug 1836 in the Windsor area and was buried in St John’s Church yard, Parramatta.

Eldest son Abraham came to Australia in 1840 as a “bounty” assisted passage immigrant, an Engineer/Blacksmith brought out by AB Smith & Co. He was 36 by that time and brought with him his wife Frances and 4 children from William 15 to Elizabeth 2.

In the 1841 Census, Mary Buckley is listed as a female aged over 60 and living 1 male married, 1 female married, 1 male other free person, 1 female other free person, occupying one wooden house finished and inhabited.

Mary died at the age of 69 on 12 September 1855 and was also buried at St John’s Parramatta.

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Timeline Mary Hitchen

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