Genealogy Data Page 262 (Notes Pages)

Individuals marked with a red dot

are direct ancestors of Paul Francis Sherriff
For privacy reasons, Date of Birth and Date of Marriage for persons believed to still be living are not shown.

McGee, Mary Jane {I05221} (b. ABT. 1842, d. UNKNOWN)

Death: UNKNOWN

Reference: 5221

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Glover, Robert H {I05222} (b. ABT. 1864, d. UNKNOWN)

Death: UNKNOWN

Reference: 5222

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Glover, Ernest W {I05223} (b. ABT. 1866, d. UNKNOWN)

Death: UNKNOWN

Reference: 5223

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Glover, George E {I05224} (b. ABT. 1868, d. UNKNOWN)

Death: UNKNOWN

Reference: 5224

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Glover, Francis J {I05225} (b. ABT. 1871, d. UNKNOWN)

Death: UNKNOWN

Reference: 5225

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Withers, Peter {I05226} (b. ABT. 1807, d. 1871)

Note: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Parc/9893/peter2.html

In January 1831 a 23 year old shoemaker, Peter Withers, was sentenced to death. He had taken part in a riot by farm laborers the previous November in the little village of Rockly in Wiltshire, in Southern England. During the commotion, Withers had injured a special constable. When the verdict was announced, a local newspaper, The Dorset County Chronicle, reported that the prisoners and their grief-stricken families broke down and wept. Even the judges cried. A petition for a more lenient sentence brought a reprieve, however, and Wither's sentence was commuted to transportation for life to the Australian penal colonies.

His offense was recorded as "cutting and maiming". Peter and his fellow convicts were initially kept aboard a rotting "prison hulk"--an old ship used as a temporary place of detention--in Portsmouth harbour, before the convict ship H.M.S. Proteus arrived to take them away. It was from the Proteus that Peter wrote the letter extracted here to his young wife, Mary Ann.

Peter's was the fate of many farmworkers in the early 1830's who, faced with unemployment and starvation for both themselves and their families, spontaneously rioted, village by village, all across southern England. They smashed the threshing machines, set fire to hayricks in the field, and delivered threatening letters to oppressive landlords in the fictitious name of "Captain Swing". Such a reaction was predicted some years before in 1826 by the politician William Cobbett, who reported:

"This is the worst used labouring people upon the face of the earth. Dogs, hogs and horses are treated with are civility...there must be an end to it...and that end will be dreadful."

Although transportation was a severe punishment, it turned out to be a reprieve from the horrors of rural England. For many men and women it meant the chance of a new beginning on the other side of the world. But for Peter and Mary Ann it meant a sudden painful separation after only two brief years of marriage. Mary Ann was faced with the grim prospect of no income and a family of two children to support or--were she to join him--the rigors of the longest sea voyage in the world.
Before the ship Proteus sailed, Peter wrote a letter to Mary Ann full of grief at the thought of their separation, and the harsh fate that had befallen them:

"My Dear wife believe me my Hark [heart] is almost broken to think I must lave you behind. O my dear what shall I do i am all Most destracted at the thoughts of parting from you whom I do love so dear. Believe me My Dear it Cuts me even to the hart and my dear Wife there is a ship Come into Portsmouth harber to take us to the New Southweals."

Mary was fortunate to receive such a touching testimonial of her husband's love--a rare artifact of his time and place. Few of the men sailing with Withers could write more than their own names. When Peter and Mary Ann (nee Hobbs) married on October 28, 1828, Peter was the only person present, apart from the minister, who could write his name on the certificate.
In his letter, Peter urged Mary Ann to try to raise passage money by going "to the gentlemen": clergymen, the local magistrate, shop owners, landlords, or anyone who might help sponsor her. Her only other hope lay with the government. Technically, a wife could follow a transported husband once he established himself in the colony. But such cases were rare--for most victims of the system, transportation meant a lifetime's separation from their loved ones and family. Peter tired to reassure her:

"It is about 4 months sail to that country...we shall stop at several cuntreys before we gets there for fresh water I expects you will eare from me in the course of 9 months...You may depend upon My keeping Myselfe from all other Woman for i shall Never Let No other run into my mind for us tis onely you My Dear that can Ease me of my Desire. It is not Laving Auld england that gives me it a laving my dear and loving Wife and Children, May god be Mersyful to me."

Mary Ann did not reply to Peter's letters. She herself could not write and probably could not raise the money to pay someone to do it for her. With at least nine months interval between letters--the time it took for the voyage to Australia and back--a great deal could happen, and it took her 11 years to contact her husband. As late as 1833, Peter still hoped that he and Mary Ann might somehow be together again. He wrote to his brother, telling him how well things had turned out for him. He had

"a good Master and Mistress...Plenty to eate and drink as good as ever a gentlemen in the country..."

and added:

"...so all the Punishment I have in the Country is the thoughts of leaving My friends, My wife and My Dear Dear Children, but I lives in hopes of seeing Old England again.

But with no news from Mary Ann, Peter finally made the decision to marry again,

"a partner which would be a comfort to me in my Bondage."

When Mary Ann finally wrote to her husband seeking a reconciliation, some 1 years after their separation, she was too late. But even though Peter had taken another wife, he wrote kindly and with honesty to Mary Ann:

"I have no property of my own but my wife have property which she will have in the course of two years and then we have agree to help you an[sic] the children if God spares our lives. I know that for to eare that I am married is a hard trial for you to bear, but it is no good to tell you a Lye