Promises are often hard to keep. I should have known better back in 2009, when I published 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter', that promising a follow-up book about his and Isabella Ramsay's children would be a challenging exercise. As a descendant of their daughter Ann I started first with her story ('Southwark Luck', 2012). Recently I updated the 2009 book with 'Sentenced to Debt'. Details for both books are listed below.
Today I'm making a minor start on the rest of the family with this cameo picture of the short life of Robert and Bella's eldest child.
Elizabeth Forrester was born in the infant colony of New South Wales on 16 March 1794 but it’s unclear whether she was born near Parramatta or on her parents' new farm at Cornwallis, beside the Hawkesbury River.[1] Her parents definitely lived at Cornwallis by early September 1794 and when her sister Margaret was born there on 2 April 1795 both girls were taken on the long and dangerous journey to Parramatta to be christened.[2] On 25 October 1795 Rev Samuel Marsden dabbed holy water on the infants under a large spreading tree, as the church of St John's was yet to be constructed. He misinterpreted Robert's Scots-Irish accent and recorded the surname as Foster.
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| Elizabeth's and Margaret's Baptism Record Registers, St John’s Parramatta, SAG 55, SLNSW |
When her mother died around February 1807, Elizabeth would have been about twelve years old. Onto her shoulders fell the primary responsibility for housekeeping duties inside the family home and childcare duties for her younger siblings. These numbered seven, until baby Isabella went to live with the childless Bushells.[3] Forrester family finances were tight after the 1806 floods and there would have been pressure on Elizabeth to find paid employment as a servant or housekeeper, her next younger sister Margaret being available as a backstop housekeeper at home.
The convict James Chapman now enters Elizabeth's story. Tried at Portsmouth in January 1801 and sentenced to a seven year term, he arrived in the colony on 11 March 1802 aboard the ship Glatton.[4] At the 1806 Muster he was a prisoner employed by ‘Mr Arndell’.[5] This was Thomas Arndell, formerly a medico but now a free settler with a farm near Portland Head several miles further down the Hawkesbury. Although Chapman was literate (proved in 1814) he did not sign an address written to the Rev Samuel Marsden by 300 principal inhabitants of the Hawkesbury on 1 January 1807, as he was still a prisoner.
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| Chapman's Signature on 26 December 1814, Marriage Registers, St Matthew’s Windsor, SAG 53, SLNSW |
When Chapman's sentence expired in 1808 and he could make his own life for himself, he was around 28 years old and Elizabeth would have been about 14 years old. Soon they were married. The ceremony would have been held on the ground floor of the government granary at Windsor, a space used as a place of worship on Sundays and as a school on other days.[6] James would have signed on the dotted line, but there’s no evidence that Elizabeth ever received any schooling.
A record of their marriage has never been found, suggesting that it took place before the commencement of the parish registers for St Matthew’s. The first marriage recorded therein was on 18 April 1810. By the 1811 Muster when she was about 16 or 17 Elizabeth had definitely married, her entry as Elizabeth Chapman, ‘free’ and born in the colony, immediately preceding James Chapman’s.[7]
Elizabeth and her new husband lived beside the river on the Atkins grant just downstream of Wilberforce, in the house once belonging to James Metcalf. Perhaps he had facilitated the Chapman-Forrester match. His house was not far from the Arndell property where Chapman had recently worked, and Metcalf had once worked for Elizabeth’s father at Cornwallis. When Metcalf’s assets were sold off in March 1811 to satisfy creditors, his former house was described as ‘late Chapman’s’.[8] The property was bought at auction for ₤33.10s.0p by Richard Ridge, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law. Ridge and Chapman may have been in business together as Chapman was a shoemaker by trade and Ridge had bought shoemaking items at an auction in Windsor in February 1811.[9] Most likely they also worked with Paul Bushell, the man raising Chapman’s young sister-in-law Isabella Jane Forrester. Bushell was known to be the proprietor of a shoemaking business at Wilberforce from about 1814 to about 1828.[10]
After the floods in late March 1811 James Chapman seems to have moved his home and shoemaking activities into the town of Windsor. Here he found himself in trouble over debts to William Baker, once a Second Fleeter, now a hard-nosed businessman. On 22 July 1811 James Chapman issued a Cautionary Notice declaring invalid a Promissory Note of Hand he had drawn in favour of William Baker as it was James’ intention to ‘resist payment of the same’.[11] James’ plan came to nought. On 23 October 1811 James Chapman of Windsor transferred to William Baker of Windsor, for £32.0.0 consideration, a house & 38 rods (about 9½ acres) of ground situated at Windsor. The document was signed by Chapman and witnessed by the Chief Constable Thomas Rickerby and a man named Bolton.[12] The latter is assumed to be John Bolton, who was in a farming partnership with William Ezzy at Cornwallis but soon ran off to Sydney with Ezzy's wife Jane.[12a]
Chapman must have had some substance in his English background because, in May 1812, two notices appeared in the Sydney Gazette advertising that a letter had arrived from England on the Clarkson for James Chapman. It was awaiting collection at the General Post Office in Sydney.[13]
Chapman’s financial affairs were in general disarray. On 13 February 1813 a notice in the Sydney Gazette advertised that at Windsor on the following Saturday, on the premises of James Chapman, a quantity of household furniture, the property of James Chapman, would be sold by the Provost Marshal unless events intervened beforehand.[14] The said Provost Marshal was currently his wife's brother-in-law Richard Ridge. [14a] Their shoemaking partnership had not worked out! This might mark the time when Paul Bushell stepped in to the shoemaking business, presumably helping Richard Ridge and not Chapman.
The short life and childless marriage of Elizabeth Chapman née Forrester ended with her death in Windsor on 25 August 1814. If she died in childbirth we will never know. The John Chapman who died in September 1814 was not her son but a 5-year-old child from the Liverpool district, a son of Robert Chapman.
The St Matthews burial register describes her as Elizabeth Chapman of Windsor, born in the colony, aged 20, the wife of James Chapman.[15] In St Matthew's Churchyard her headstone describes her as Elizabeth Chapman, daughter of Robert and Isabella Forster. The wording ‘daughter of’, not ‘wife of’, suggests the headstone may have been paid for later by Elizabeth’s siblings, after her father Robert, brother William, nephew Robert and sister-in-law Lucy were buried alongside her. Elizabeth's siblings did not care to mention their former brother-in-law.
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| Elizabeth's Headstone at St Matthew's C of E, Windsor, Photo by Louise Wilson |
Elizabeth's husband quickly 'moved on', as the saying goes. He was recorded as a shoemaker in the 1814 Muster, free and 'off stores', meaning that he was able to support himself.[16] He remarried on 26 December 1814, only five months after young Elizabeth’s death.[17] His new wife was the convict Mary Ann Carpenter, recently arrived from London on the Broxbornebury to serve a seven year sentence for theft and currently a servant of Windsor's schoolmaster and parish clerk, Joseph Harpur. She re-offended in New South Wales and was sent to Newcastle in November 1820 to serve a 12-month colonial sentence.
She returned to Sydney and James Chapman was a labourer in Windsor in 1822, again living with his second wife.[18]
At the next Muster he was a shoemaker in Wilberforce, his wife no longer present.[19]
He was not included on a ‘List of Owners and Occupiers of Houses and Land
within the Hawkesbury-
Sixty-year-old James Chapman died in Windsor on 11 June 1840 and was buried next day at St Matthew’s Windsor, nowhere near his first wife.[22] Despite the claims made in various online family trees, there is no record of any children for James Chapman by either of his wives.
******
Elizabeth's parents earned their own special place in history when the European settlement of Australia commenced in 1788. Read all about their adventures in 'Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter', available online through BookPOD. Elizabeth's sister Ann features in the book 'Southwark Luck', also available through BookPOD. The story of Elizabeth's sister Margaret and brother-in-law Richard Ridge is in active preparation. Tales of Elizabeth's brothers and youngest sister are in draft form but the final versions are yet to come.
[1] Louise Wilson, ‘Sentenced to
Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter”, (South Melbourne, 2020), pp 119-121
[2] Elizabeth Foster, Baptism record, 25 Oct 1795, St John’s
Parramatta, SAG Film 55, SLNSW
[3] ‘Louise Wilson, ‘Sentenced to
Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter”, (South Melbourne, 2020), pp 252-253
[4] Convict Indents, NSW, James Chapman, NSWSA: NRS 12188, [4/4004],
Reel 392
[5] Carol J
Baxter, (Ed), Muster of New South Wales
and Norfolk Island, 1805–1806 (ABGR in assoc with SAG, Sydney 1989), line A0823, p 23
[6] Ritchie, Evidence to Bigge
Reports, Vol 1, p 152, Evidence of Rev Robert Cartwright describing the
local places of worship at the start of 1810
[7] Carol J
Baxter, (Ed), General Muster of New South
Wales, Norfolk Island and Van Diemen’s Land, 1811 (ABGR in assoc. with SAG,
Sydney 1987), p 23
[8] Col Sec Special Bundles No 5, NSWSA:
NRS 898, (ML [C197]), Reel 6040, p 25, 30 Mar 1811
[9] Col Sec Special Bundles No 5, NSWSA:
NRS 898, (ML [C197]), Reel 6040, pp 3-5, 13-15, 17, 22, Feb 1811
[10] ‘Louise Wilson, ‘Paul
Bushell, Second Fleeter’, (South Melbourne, 2010), pp 132-137
[11] Caution, Syd Gaz, Sat 27
July 1811
[12] Old System Records, NSW Land Registry Services, Reference numbers to be provided
[12a] Classified Advertising, Syd Gaz, Sat 2 Jan 1813, p 4
[13] Syd Gaz, 9 May
1812, p 4, col b, and Syd Gaz, 23 May 1812, p 4, col c
[15] Elizabeth Chapman, Record of death 25 Aug 1814, St Matthew's C of
E, Windsor, Film SAG 54, SLNSW
[16] Carol J
Baxter, (Ed), General Muster of New South
Wales, 1814 (ABGR in assoc. with SAG, Sydney 1987)
[17] Marriages, St Matthew's C of E, Windsor, Film SAG 53, SLNSW
[18] Carol J
Baxter, (Ed), General Muster and Land and
Stock Muster of New South Wales, 1822 (ABGR in assoc. with SAG, Sydney
1988), p 86
[19] Carol J
Baxter, (Ed), General Muster List of New
South Wales 1823, 1824, 1825 (ABGR, a Project of SAG Sydney 1991), p 94
[20] List of Owners & Occupiers of Houses & Land Within the
Hawkesbury-Nepean District, 1827, Mitchell Library Ref 908/88 (b)
[21] Keith
Johnson & Malcolm Sainty, Census of
New South Wales, November 1828 (Library of Australian History, Sydney
1980), p 87
[22] James Chapman, Burial Record, St Matthew’s Windsor, 12 June 1840, No
1243, [NSW Register
of Baptisms, Burials & Marriages Pre 1856], Ref
V1840780 24A/1840
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