Recent content by JoPro

Thank you so much, I'd love to hear back when you get to review your papers. By the way, did you keep the hard drive that gave up on you? It's amazing what some people can do retrieving info from old hard drives. I hope you're lucky!

Thank you so much, Lady P, that's interesting, and I appreciate you scanning in that document. And I think you're right that he wasn't in the merchant navy. I had another look at the record I found in the National Archives: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16553897 My guy...

Thanks so much, that's really interesting. I was wondering how he might have ended up joining the merchant navy. Do you have a source handy for what you stated, that there were recruiting parties? Did they set up stalls at the markets?

Thank you for asking, Lyn, and no, he definitely did not return to England. I’ve looked at the Parish records through Ancestry. I’m pretty sure it was 1800 or a few years before. If he was indeed in the merchant navy, then he would have been 13 or 14 at the time. Was that too young to be in the...

Thank you In all the documents where his ‘native’ place is mentioned, it’s always stated as ‘Birmingham’. Does that mean he was actually born in Birmingham? I imagine he could have been born in the surroundings of Birmingham too, and moved there early on in life, and then still given his native...

Hello all. So exciting to see this forum exists. I'm writing a book on a convict from Birmingham named Joseph Wilkes (a silversmith/sailor) who arrived in Australia in 1820 and had a rather interesting life. He was convicted and sentenced to transportation in Warwick for larceny committed in...