| Notes |
- ANN CLARKE was about 17 years of age when she was convicted at the Borough Court of Liverpool Quarter Sessions on 3 April 1809, together with another female prisoner, Elizabeth McCallum, of stealing two pieces of printed cotton and sentenced to be transported for 7 years. Her partner in crime was sent to gaol for two years, and others with similar offences got only three or six months. Ann must have been punished more severely on account of her record. She had only just been released from having served six months in gaol for stealing three cloths and other articles. Interestingly, at the time of her previous conviction on 26 July 1808 the next person listed in the report of the Liverpool sessions was Mary Clarke who was sent to prison for three months for stealing cloth. (Was she a sister? Ann named her eldest daughter Mary.) Furthermore, Ann was also sentenced to gaol for another offence on the same day as she was sentenced to be transported, that time it was for stealing, in company with Mary Long, twenty yards of check.
It was nearly a year before her transportation ship departed from England on 23rd March 1810. The voyage of between five and six months was about average or a little longer than average for convict transports at that time. It is not known what happened to Ann Clarke when she first arrived on the ship "Canada" on 8 September 1810. She could have been six months pregnant, but the date of birth of her first child, John, is uncertain and the father unknown. Somehow she coped with the situation and began a long and successful struggle for survival of herself and her children in extraordinary and rapidly changing circumstances.
Sometime late in 1813 Ann Clark met Alexander Mackenzie and on 23rd August 1813, Alexander and Ann's daughter, MARY MCKENZIE came into the worl
In March 1814 when Mary was six months old Alexander was ordered to leave New South Wales with an advance party of the regiment which was being sent to Ceylon. Ann was most probably living with Alexander and when he left for Ceylon she was no longer "on stores", that is, she was not being supported by the government. The rest of the 73rd regiment moved to Ceylon later in 1814. This was the time when the British established effective control of Ceylon by sending a military force to intervene in a dispute between the chiefs and the king who was overthrown. Ann appeared in the NSW colonial muster records later that year as a single person living in Sydney with two children and without government support.
Alexander completed his term of service while the regiment was in Ceylon and he was discharged there on 16th December 1815. Instead of returning home to Britain he went back to NSW, writing twice to Ann apparently with the intention of rejoining her in Sydney. Whatever Ann's situation was, things obviously did not work out for them at the time.
Alexander received approval to select a grant of 80 acres of land from Governor Macquarie and went to Van Diemen's Land alone about July 1816. His original land somewhere along the North Esk River in the White Hills area was measured but not formally granted. It appears to have been exchanged for two adjacent blocks, supposed to have been 40 acres each, which are found on old maps on the left bank of the North Esk River downstream of Corra Linn, near and just below Paterson's Island, in what was later the district of St Leonards. The district was then known as Paterson's Plains.
Alexander began to develop the land while he worked in Launceston as an overseer of convicts. It was from this occupation that he became known as Sergeant Mackenzie. He received a cow in 1817 as a grant from government stores and by the time of the 1819 muster he had 32 cattle and crops on the land. He might have been able to gain assistance by virtue of his position as an overseer. In any case the land was relatively well developed with 40 acres in wheat as well as running a reasonable number of cattle a year or so later.
Meanwhile Ann had got into further trouble with the law, having been convicted on 1st July 1816 with larceny at the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction and sentenced to 7 years in Newcastle. She was transported aboard the "Elizabeth Henrietta" which departed for Newcastle on 9th January 1817.
Whilst in Newcastle she formed a new partnership with a convict named James Wells with whom she had a child, William, who was baptized at Newcastle 3rd August 1818.
At about the same time she may have received a letter which prompted her to go to Van Diemen's Land to join Alexander. There is confusion about who received this letter as there were 2 Ann Clarke's in NSW at the time, both of whom left for Van Diemen's Land in late 1818. Our Ann Clarke is known to have been in Hobart in October 1818 when the population muster recorded her as residing there with three children. Another Ann Clarke is recorded as leaving New South Wales on the "Prince Leopold" with two children, arriving in Hobart on 20th December 1818.
The question now arises as to how Ann was able to travel to Hobart before completing her 7 year sentence in Newcastle. There is no record of her receiving a pardon and no record of a ticket of leave. It is possible, though unlikely, that Alexander Mackenzie might have been able to seek some sort of favour from his former commanding officer in the 73rd regiment, Lachlan Macquarie, now Governor of NSW, to have her assigned to him as a convict servant. The other possibility is that her sentence was wrongly recorded as seven years, a two year sentence would have seen her freed by August 1818 when she would have been able to travel to Van Diemen's Land to rejoin Alexander Mackenzie. In any case it is unlikely that she was in jail in Newcastle given her relationship with James Wells during the period produced 2 children.
Whether Ann and Alexander ever considered marriage is uncertain, but they were both apparently eligible when they had been together previously. Things were a little different now, because a few months before Ann left James Wells in Newcastle to join Alexander in Launceston, Alexander married a 14 year old girl named Elizabeth Murphy. Not only that but when Ann arrived in Launceston she was already pregnant with another child by James Wells, which she might not have known when she left Newcastle around August 1818.
Whether Ann and Alexander ever considered marriage is uncertain, but they were both apparently eligible when they had been together previously. Things were a little different now, because a few months before Ann left James Wells in Newcastle to join Alexander in Launceston, Alexander married a 14 year old girl named Elizabeth Murphy. Not only that but when Ann arrived in Launceston she was already pregnant with another child by James Wells, which she might not have known when she left Newcastle around August 1818.
At some stage Elizabeth Murphy went back to her parents, Michael Murphy, a former marine on the first fleet in 1788 and Hannah Williams, a convict who arrived on the "Nile" in 1801. Elizabeth was listed with the other Murphy children in the 1819 muster, made in October, and later. She was sometimes known as Elizabeth Murphy, and on 4th Feb 1822 as Elizabeth Mackenzie she married John Porter, with whom she had 6 Children. In 1837 she married William Hughes.
Ann's daughter by James Wells, Margaret, was born 10th May 1819. Ann's four children were listed with Alexander's surname in the population muster of October 1819 and four children are given as members of his household in relation to Alexander's land in the Land Holders Muster that year. So they might have settled down at last; but before the end of the year Alexander Mackenzie was dead. He died at Launceston on 9th December 1819. His burial is the first entry in the register of St. John's, Launceston.
So ends the story of the relationship between the convict girl from Liverpool and the Scottish soldier. Mary Mackenzie was only six years old when her father died. Her memories of him would depend on the period of a little over one year during which her mother lived with him at Launceston, and perhaps a vague recollection of him being in Sydney when she was three. Sandy or Sergeant Mackenzie was well remembered, Mary wrote his name in her Bible, and must have been responsible with her mother Ann for what was passed on to later generations. Mary's bible is still in the possession of the Beswick family today.
Little more than six months later, on 28th June 1820, Ann married Thomas Brennan at St. John's Launceston. Thomas Brennan had been transported for 7 years on the "Marquis Cornwallis", after being tried in the Irish county of Kildare in 1795. It was in this marriage that Ann eventually enjoyed a stable relationship of more than twenty years. She and Thomas had three children, Thomas, Elizabeth and Ann as well as the four Ann brought with her from the Mackenzie household, John (who appears to be known later as Mackenzie), Mary, William (Wells, later known as Brennan) and Margaret (Wells/Brennan).
Ann Clarke (later Brennan) died 29th July 1841, aged 49, as a result of "accident by fire". Launceston newspapers of the time report two fires a week or so earlier, on the 17th and 22nd. One at a house in Charles St. seems unlikely as it appears no one was injured. The other is possible if she died of injuries later. There was a fire at the Steampacket Hotel in which a child had died. On the other hand cooking over open fires in confined spaces was a common danger, especially to women wearing long dresses. Whichever it was, her death in this manner was saddening, for Ann had come to be regarded as above all a survivor. She had coped with extraordinary difficulties in a life that appears to show adaptability and initiative.
It would have been demanding to say the least to have been landed in Sydney at the age of 18 in the corrupt days of 1810 when Macquarie had just arrived. Incidentally, she was now at the end given her married name. Until 1828 women who had been convicts were known officially by the name under which they had been transported even if as in Ann's case it was many years after the term of her sentence had expired.
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1791 - 1847 (56 years)
