LIST 17 - 1805 MUSTER - NORFOLK ISLAND
The second muster presented for Norfolk Island is the 1805 Muster which took
place in February of that year and reputedly contained the name of every man, woman and child present on the island at that date. The list printed here
contains a subset of those people, namely 224 members of the First Generation,
219 colonial born children and 5 childhood arrivals. There were 88 males and
136 females and again the question has to be asked, what happened to all the
boys?
The information presented on each child includes:
family name Christian namedate of birth
place of birthparents' names
parents' civil status at the time of the child's birth parents' marital status at the time of the child's birth age grouping
whether on or off stores surname as it appears in the original document reference number linking the entry back to the original source document. The list is presented alphabetically ordered; firstly on the child's father's
name, secondly on the child's Christian name. This was done to preserve
the family groupings. Just what determined the order of the names on the
original muster has not been decoded at this time.The date & place of birth and parental details are all "value added"
information not found in the original muster.
By 1805 the oldest of the colonial born would have been 17 years old, on the
cusp of adulthood (of course some of the childhood arrivals would have been
older). Seven of the First Generation children were already classified as
adults, "free man" and "free woman":Thomas Ellis(Cole) - 15 years
Thomas Riseby(Gibson) - 13 years
George Wood(Oakley) - 14 years
Elizabeth Baker(Huffnell) - 16 years
Sarah Lee (Mitchell) - 19 years
Elizabeth Munday - 17 years
Susannah Whitaker(Harrison) - 16 years
The two Thomas's were training as government apprentices, George Wood was
confusingly referred to as both free "man" and orphan "boy". Elizabeth Baker
was married to Michael Hayes and already had a child with Aaron Davis. Sarah
Lee was married to James Mitchell, Elizabeth Munday was already a mother
too and living with William Cartwright.
There must have been some reason why these seven children were singled out
as adults, when there were several others who were just as old or older; Hannah
McCarthy was 17, Mary Garth 16 and Mary Goodwin 15. The two mothers is
understandable and the two apprentices maybe, but the others ?
The children of officials (Thomas Hibbins) and of the military (John Barrisford,
Samuel Beachey, Duncan Cameron, Samuel Marsden, John Munday, Daniel Standfield,
George Whitfield) are listed under their father's surname. As in the 1802
Muster, in the original document, all the children with convict mothers,
are listed under their mother's surname at the time of her arrival on the island.
Exceptions to this rule being the children of; George Clayton, Thomas Farr,
Thomas Hodgets, Stephen Martin, Joshua Peck, John Robley & John Wheeler.
Perhaps Hodgets and Robley could be explained by the fact that they married
their wives at Port Jackson before coming to the island and John Wheeler
was married in England.
The parents of just two girls have not been determined:
Mary Mullins [D0747]
Ann Scott [D0681]
The fathers of five children have not been discovered at this time:Mary Davis [D0906]
James Hannaway [D0728]
Susan Mortimore [D0729]
Mary Ann Wainwright [D0883]Ann Wishaw [D0814]
nor the mother of:
Ruth Cameron [D0723]
The dates of birth of a further four children are unknown:
Susan Garth [D0766]
Ann Lynch [D0757]
Joseph Stanley [D0831]
James Whitfield [D0914]
although further research may bring these to light.
"Place of birth" has three possibilities; born on the island "NI", born
on the mainland "PJ", born overseas "CF". The vast majority of the children
were born on the island, (except for the children of the military and civil
officials) indicating just how stable the population of the island was.
Table 17.1. - Place of BirthPlace No. %
----------------------------Norfolk Island 190 85.9
Port Jackson 29 12.9
United Kingdom 5 2.2
There were 91 children "on stores" and 135 were "off stores". It was mentioned
in the discussion of the 1802 Muster of Norfolk Island that there were a whole
raft of children not mentioned in that muster because they were "off stores",
well in the 1805 Muster here they all are !
As noted and regretted in the 1802 Muster, the exact ages or dates of birth
of children are not recorded, they are merely lumped into one of three
groups; "above 10 years", "above 2 years", "under 2 years". And this only
applies to the children "on stores", for the children "off stores" the situation
is even worse with the one all inclusive group of "child of all
descriptions". No help to the genealogist here.
Why John Billet should be described as a "child under 2 years" when he was
5 would appear to be an error.
From information derived from other sources there are a couple of 'corrections'
made to entries in the muster. James Clark has been changed to Jane Clark(Buchannan)[D0637]. Catherine Bartlett has been changed to William
Bartlett(Cullen)[D0911] - since a Catherine already exists in the muster.
Hezekiah Brown has been changed to Kezia Brown(Adams)[D0852], in passing
Kezia's use of the surname Brown is something of a mystery.Of the 161 children in the 1802 Muster, 119 appear in this muster.
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