Margaret Southern

6

Vicki on 4th January 2018

There is a facebook group called John Parkes and his descendants. For ancestors of Margaret Southern and her husband John Parkes to connect and share information.Please see the link below https://www.facebook.com/groups/291589151236736/

54

Phil Hands on 25th September 2017

Tried and at the Lancaster Quarter Sessions on 27th April 1803, for theft in Manchester on 21st January of one linen shift , one shift , and one linen apron worth, which were the goods and chattels of Jane Eastwood", she was sentenced to transportation for 7 years. Left England on 2nd January 1804. Ship:- the 'Experiment I' sailed with 2 male and 136 female convicts on board of which 6 females died during the voyage. Arrived on 24th June 1804. No authenticating records could be found of how Margaret spent her first few years in the infant Colony, but it is known that of the female prisoners brought by the "Experiment 1" in 1804, 21 convalescents were sent to Sydney's General Hospital, and the majority of the others went to Parramatta. The women sent to Parramatta were housed in a large dormitory, which had been built over the men's gaol in 1804 to accommodate some sixty convicts. Although no verifying records could be found it is believed that convict John Parkes ('Barwell' 1798) and Margaret Southern met and married in 1806, for they were certainly living together by then, as their first child Mary Ann was born on the 9th November 1807. As John was still working on the dockyards at this time he would in all likelihood have lived nearby at the Rocks, and perhaps Margaret was an assigned servant to one of the well-established families then living at the Rocks. John continued working on the dockyards for some years after his sentence expired in March of 1803, and during this time Margaret bore him two more children, Sarah born on the 10th April 1809, and John born on the 5th August 1810. John did not bother to apply for his certificate of freedom until the 20th February 1811, signifying the degree of importance he accorded this piece of official red tape. Another 10 children were to follow between 1812-1827. On 24th March 1859 a great hush descended on Parkestown, as the Girl from Manchester closed her eyes for the last time. Her funeral service and burial, took place on the twenty fifth of March at St. Peter's Church of England, Cook's River Road (now the Prince's Highway) St. Peter's. The funeral service was one of the most heavily attended services ever to be conducted at St. Peter's Church. Margaret's death seemed to signal the end of Australia's days of hunger, floggings, convicts and chain-gangs, as a new and promising future gradually opened up for all. John Parkes's village was still called Parkestown as late as 1895, when rate-payers presented a petition to the Minister for Works, ford bridge to be built over the Cook's River to connect Parkestown with Fern Hill (Hurlstone Park) Railway Station. The name Forest Hill came into use about 1905, and the suburb adopted the name of Earlwood about 1918.