Duncan Forrester of New South Wales Corps

When ‘Robert Forrester, First Fleeter’ was tried at the Old Bailey in London in 1783 he said he was a stranger in that city. Looking for clues about his origins, at first I wondered whether the New South Wales Corps soldier Duncan Forrester was somehow connected to Robert. 

NSW Corps Re-enactment, Ebenezer 2009, © Louise Wilson

Many coincidences tempted me to think this way. After Robert was transported with the First Fleet to Sydney, arriving there in January 1788, Duncan enlisted in the newly-formed NSW Corps on 8 August 1789 and arrived in Sydney with the Second Fleet in June 1790. Once Robert was a free man, he and Duncan both travelled to Norfolk Island on the Atlantic, arriving there on 4 November 1791, and both sailed from Norfolk Island for Sydney on the Kitty in 9 March 1793. Robert did not move from Sydney to the Hawkesbury until after Duncan's burial in Sydney on 20 June 1794.

Yet, if the men had been connected through kinship, surely Robert would have named one of his sons in honour of Duncan.

No age was given when Duncan Forrester was buried in Sydney on 20 June 1794, so tracking his likely place and date of birth is problematic. Of the very few Duncan Forrester births listed various online parish records, only two are listed in the time frame 1740-1780, both siblings from the same family in Scotland. The first Duncan died young. If the second surviving Duncan became the soldier Duncan Forrester, he would have been 44 years of age when he died.

Duncan Forrester of Caltown, South Leith, Edinburgh

The two Duncans and their siblings were born at Caltown and baptised at South Leith, the harbour area of Edinburgh, Midlothian, all being children of a heelmaker named William Forrester. The witness for the baptisms was a shoemaker named John Forrester of Caltown. This was another tempting clue, as many of Robert’s circle in Australia were shoemakers. The only other Forrester appearing in the baptism registers for South Leith between 1740 and the end of 1770 was Ralph Forrester, a bottle blower of Leith.

These three Forrester men are likely to have been the brothers John (born 1715), William (born 1722), and Ralph (born 1728) who were christened in Glasgow, Lanarkshire as members of the large family of Alexander Forrester and Mary Govan.

After the brothers moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh, William married his first wife Margaret Smith in South Leith on 9 December 1742. William was recorded as a heelmaker in Caltown at the baptisms of his children, who were:

1. William Forrester, born in Caltown on 17 November 1743 and christened in South Leith on 21 November 1743.
2. Jean Forrester, born in Caltown on 11 December 1745 and christened in South Leith on 15 December 1745. Jean died in infancy, before 1752.
3. Duncan Forrester, born in Caltown on 11 November 1746 and christened in South Leith on 14 November 1746. The child was possibly named after an Andrew Duncan, another Caltown heelmaker, who might have been his father’s business partner. Young Duncan died before May 1750.
4. John Forrester, born in Caltown on 11 October 1747 and christened in South Leith on 13 October 1747.
5. Duncan Forrester, the second child in the family with that name, born in Caltown on 12 May 1750 and christened in South Leith on 16 May 1750. 
   Presumably he was the Duncan Forrester who married Jean Proven on 2 December 1775 at Linlithgow, West Lothian, not far away.[1] One child is recorded for them in the IGI - Agness, born on 26 September and christened on 6 October 1776 at Linlithgow.[2] Her father was described as a ‘workman at Kingscavell’, which was a small town just outside Linlithgow on the road towards Edinburgh. Witnesses to the baptism were Alex. Murray and Andrew Graham, who witnessed a number of baptisms and were probably parish officials. Parish records contain many baptisms for the children of ‘Dragoon in 10th Regiment’, and ‘soldier in South Fencibles’ and mention is also made of the ‘1st Royal Regiment of Dragoons’.
   Online parish records indicate that no more children for Duncan and Jean Forrester were baptised in this parish, or any other Scottish parish, suggesting that one of the parents died, or the father was absent from home. Duncan’s wife and daughter still seemed to be alive, so did Duncan enlist as a soldier and fight in the American War of Independence?
6. Jean Forrester, born in Caltown on 31 January 1752 and christened in South Leith on 7 February 1752.

The South Leith parish records I consulted did not contain relevant burial records, but it seems that as well as several of his infant children, William Forrester’s first wife Margaret died young.

Robert Forrester of Caltown, South Leith, Edinburgh

After the death of his first wife Margaret, William Forrester married his second wife Anne Hamilton in South Leith on 7 January 1756. They had three children:

1. Barbara Forrester, born in Caltown on 30 November 1756 and christened in South Leith on 12 December 1756. She married Murdoch Campbell in South Leith on 11 August 1792.
2. Thomas Forrester, born in Caltown in March 1758 and christened in South Leith in March 1758. The specific dates were unreadable on the microfilm I consulted.
   I did not track his life but he seems NOT to have been the Thomas Forrester who was buried on 13 March 1806 at St John's Parramatta, NSW.[3] This man was an adult who lived at Parramatta, and was therefore most unlikely to be related to Robert Forrester, as a close relative would surely seek to live near Robert at Windsor, NSW. Thomas Forrester of Parramatta was not classified as either a soldier or a convict when he was buried, and was not included in the 1800 - 1802 Muster, suggesting that he arrived after 1802. He was probably the convict named Thomas Forrester who arrived aboard Coromandel on 7 May 1804, to serve a sentence of fourteen years imposed at his trial at Warwick on 24 March 1803. No further details are contained in the relevant convict indents.
3. Robert Forrester, born in Caltown on 8 June 1761 and christened in South Leith on 15 June 1761. This baptism record does not exactly fit with the known facts for Robert Forrester of the First Fleet, whose date of birth was most likely between 1757 and 1759.

This 1761 Robert was definitely a younger half-brother of the 1750 Duncan Forrester, who is presumed to have arrived in Sydney as a soldier in 1790 and died there in 1794. But was the 1761 Robert 'our' Robert, the First Fleeter? It seems not.

DNA testing conducted in 2018 has yielded the surprising tentative result that ‘Robert Forrester, First Fleeter’ is most likely the Scottish-born son of an unmarried Forrester woman and a man named John McGaw. Further Y-DNA testing is underway. If true, Robert appears to have adopted his mother's surname. Final conclusions about Robert's origins will be published in the Second Edition of 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter'.  

Having now decided to scrap the theory that Duncan and Robert might have been related, I won’t be including Appendix 4 from the First Edition of ‘Robert Forrester, First Fleeter’ within the Second Edition of the book. It will free up space for new material located during the past ten years. But, just in case it might help other researchers, my genealogical research into Duncan is preserved here in this blog post.

The updated version of the book will have the new title 'Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter'.

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[1] PRs, Linlithgow, West Lothian, Marriages, LDS Film 1066634

[2] PRs, Linlithgow, West Lothian, Births & Baptisms, 1674-1799, LDS Film 1066632

[3] NSW V18062037 Reel 2A/1806

Robert Forrester's Origins

Generally speaking, Forrester is a northern English/Scottish lowlands surname, but Robert was arrested in London, and proclaimed himself as a stranger in London, providing a flimsy basis for determining his birthplace.

Despite extensive consideration of the three traditional genealogical points of reference (place of birth, date of birth and marital status), Robert’s origins remained unclear when 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter' was published in January 2009. Various options were summarised in Appendix 1 of that book and are re-published in this post to 'preserve' the lines of enquiry, although they are now rejected as possibilities.

Working back from his stated age of sixty nine at the time of his death in February 1827, this being a notoriously unreliable genealogical indicator, he was born between 15 February 1757 and 14 February 1758. If his recorded age of twenty four years when he was incarcerated in the hulks on the Thames is reliable, his date of birth was around 1758 or 1759.

Robert Forrester's Headstone, Windsor, NSW

Back in 2008, of the thirty or so specific baptism entries in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) for the years 1757, 1758 and 1759, only three contained the correct spelling of this surname, and many of the other twenty seven were the sons of fathers with given names like Jonathan, Ridgway, James and Francis, names not chosen by Robert for any of his own sons.

A selective analysis of these baptismal records follows, and one marriage for a Robert Forrester with the correct spelling has been reviewed. Others may disagree with the conclusions drawn, and may care to research every single option.

When he came into contact with the law, Robert was living in the major parish of St Giles in the Fields in London, and although he claimed at his trial to be a stranger there, this could have been untrue. If so, finding his baptism in London would be a long, slow process. Many of the parish records for London have not yet been added to computerised indices, so many possibilities for the birth of a Robert Forrester in London may be hidden in the extensive microfilmed records at the London Metropolitan Archives or the City of Westminster Archives Centre.

Option 1

The first correctly-spelled Robert Forrester baptism which has been indexed was recorded at Founders Hall. Lothbury. Scots Church London in September 1757.[i] Some descendants claim him as the First Fleeter, but this researcher has studied the parish records and does not agree with that conclusion. That particular child was the second of six children born to a tallow chandler named Robert Forrester and baptised at the family home, York Buildings, Buckingham St, Strand, no mother’s name being given. The Strand was very close to St Giles in the Fields, so the geographic link is strong. The tallow chandler must have been a man of some means, as all his children received private baptisms at home. The other sibling names in that particular family were Stephen, Joseph, Rebecca, Elizabeth and Susanna.

Although the general location and spelling of the surname is correct, economic circumstances and naming patterns suggest that the family concerned is almost certainly NOT relevant to Robert Forrester of the First Fleet. Unless the tallow chandler had fallen on hard times or died, why would Robert Forrester live in a doss house when his own family lived close by in relative comfort? Furthermore, the First Fleeter did not choose Stephen, Joseph, Rebecca or Susanna as names for any of his later children, although he did utilise the popular girl’s name of Elizabeth. For those who disagree with the author, further examination of the affairs of the tallow chandler might yield further insights.

Option 2

A second Robert Forrester with the correct surname was baptised a long distance from London, in Newcastle on Tyne on 5 March 1759. His parents were Matthew and Mary. His background needed further analysis, using original parish records, but the name Matthew aroused suspicions and none of his daughters was named Mary.

Option 3

An interesting third option was the Robert Forrester baptism on 10 April 1757 in Marblehead, Essex, Massachusetts.[ii] Many families of Scottish origin had moved to America by this date. At that time Marblehead was an important fishing and trading port not far from Boston, where the famous ‘Boston Tea Party’ of 1773 symbolized the start of demands for independence from Britain. Proposing that Robert might have been an American-born ‘refugee’ in London in 1783 is not a far-fetched notion, as large numbers of displaced American loyalists moved northwards to Canada or across the Atlantic to Britain after America’s War of Independence resulted in defeat for the British and their supporters.

This child’s baptism record gives the parent names as John Forrester of Nerne (the seaport Nairn?), Great Britain (Scotland) and his wife Abigail née Oakes, who were married in Marblehead on 3 January 1750.[iii] His other siblings were John, Samuel and Francis. John, the eldest boy, was married in Marblehead in 1775 but soon died (fighting in the war?), as his widow Eleanor remarried in 1779.[iv] Of these names, only John turns up in the family of the First Fleeter Robert Forrester.

Family naming patterns were not promising, but further investigations seemed necessary. The 17 volume publication ‘Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War’, on CD, did not contain any mention of any Robert Forresters, or any variations of that surname. Assistance was sought from the Reference Librarian at Lynn Public Library, Massachusetts.[v] She searched through the library’s information concerning the revolutionary war, viz: 'Rolls of the Soldiers in the Revolutionary War 1775-1783' by Vermont; 'British Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England 1774-1789' by Norton; 'Mary Beth Encyclopedia of the American Revolution' by McKay; 'Loyalists in the American Revolution' by Van Tyne; and 'Claude Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution' by Lossing, Vols I & II. Again, there was no reference to anyone with a name like Robert Forrester.

Option 4

Regarding his marital status, evidence given at his trial in April 1783 implies that young Robert was unmarried, since he shared a room in a lodging house with other men. If he was married, a wide range of possible marriages exist. Only one has been followed up: the marriage of Robert Forrester to Mary Pratt after Banns on 22 May 1780 at St Andrew, Enfield, north of the City of London.[vi] The groom was a bachelor of the parish, the bride a spinster of the parish. The groom made his mark and the bride signed, in the presence of the Vicar Richard Newbon and witnesses Thos Brewer and John Bradshaw, who both signed. Several other weddings at this church during the 1770s involved Pratt family members, but there were no other Forrester weddings. The groom must have been a temporary resident of the parish.

If the Robert Forrester who married Mary Pratt then moved to the parish of St Giles in the Fields, this was not evidenced in parish registers. There were no baptisms in the latter parish from May 1780 to February 1784 for any children of a man named Robert Forrester. The only Forrester baptism in the parish during the period March 1777 to February 1784 was for Christopher Forrester on 17 August 1783, a son of Christopher and Elizabeth Forrester, whose possible connection to Robert Forrester has not been examined.

Turning to baptisms of children with surnames similar to Forrester, the starting point must be St Giles in the Fields. This being a major London parish, the parish clerks here would have been very well educated and aware of spelling for names. The relevant parish records have been checked, but the Robert baptised there on 22 October 1758 was a son of John and Elizabeth Fewster, and the Robert christened there on 8 June 1759 was a son of Robert and Mary Forrest.[vii] Robert’s name was spelt as either Forrester or Forester in court, and it is presumed that he knew how to say his own name correctly, even if he was unable to write it, so the Fewster and Forrest baptisms at St Giles in the Fields are unlikely to have been relevant.

Although Robert was associated with a man from Ireland when arrested, indexed baptism and marriage entries provide no particular links for Robert back to Ireland.

Option 5

Given his later rapid alliance with a woman from Cumberland, Robert Forrester of the First Fleet could have been the Robert Forster christened in November 1757 at Kirkandrews Upon Esk, north east of Carlisle in Cumberland, as a son of Arthur Forster.[viii] A large group of Forresters/Forsters lived in this parish, including men named John, Henry, William, Robert and George, all being names later used in the First Fleeter’s family. However, during a time when family naming traditions were much stronger than now, none of Robert’s later sons were given the name of Arthur, perhaps casting doubt on this as Robert’s family of origin. For similar reasons, other children from this county were considered unlikely.

However, as the Forrester book went to print in 2009, the author concluded that 'these parish records now provide the best hope of ‘finding’ Robert, and detailed research by others, connecting these Cumberland Forrester/Forster family members, may yield good results'.

Note: Please Discard All of the Above Options 

The further research in Cumberland, recommended in 2009, was taken further during November 2017, and written up as one of my earlier blog posts.

Kirkandrews upon Esk, November 2017

BUT, due to further research during 2018, the theory that Robert came from Cumberland has now been discarded and it's unlikely he was baptised at Kirkandrews upon Esk in 1757. Indeed, it became clear during 2018 that none of the above five options apply to the First Fleeter named Robert Forrester.

Thanks to the analysis work conducted throughout 2018 by my fifth cousin Stuart Hamilton, another Forrester descendant, DNA testing has short-circuited the guessing game about Robert's family of origin. DNA testing has yielded the surprising result that Robert was most likely the Scottish-born son of an unmarried Forrester woman and a man named John McGaw. Robert adopted his mother's surname and appears (at this stage) to have been unbaptised. Further details will be published in the Second Edition of 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter', due to be published in 2019.

The new book won't include the genealogical details published in Appendix 1 of the old book, to save space. As explained at the start, those details are retained here, in this blog post. This change in content will leave room to include all the new perspectives on the lives of Robert Forrester and Isabella Ramsay, collected over the past ten years. See my website for basic details and updates.

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[i] PRs, Founders Hall Lothbury & Scots Church London Wall, Film MS 4962, Guildhall Library, London

[ii] From website Vital Records of Marblehead, MA, http://www.ma-vitalrecords.org/EssexCounty/Marblehead/BirthsEtoG.html#F

[iii] From website Vital Records of Marblehead, MA, http://www.ma-vitalrecords.org/EssexCounty/Marblehead/MarriagesDtoG.html

[iv] Ibid

[v] Lisa Kulyk-Bourque, Reference Librarian, Lynn Public Library, www.refquest@noblenet.org

[vi] PRs, St Andrew Enfield, Middlesex, England, LDS Film 585399

[vii] PRs, St Giles in the Fields, London Metropolitan Archives

[viii] IGI, on Website www.familysearch.com

On the Trail of the Forresters in Cumberland

I haven't forgotten Robert Forrester and his family, despite the infrequent posts on this blog. Far from it. I’ve just spent a month in England, including four days in and around Carlisle, trying to work out whether he originated in Cumberland, an English county on the border with Scotland.

Having eliminated a number of other possible options for his home district in Appendix 1 of my book 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter', on page 324 I flagged Cumberland as worthy of further investigation. (This book, published early in 2009, is now out of print but has been replaced by 'Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter'.)

Was he, in fact, the Robert Forster who was born at Kingfield, Nicholforest and baptised at Kirkandrews upon Esk on 13 November 1757? (There'll be more on the Forster vs Forrester surname later in this post.) This was a baptism complying exactly with the right range of dates for the First Fleeter's birth, according to his early prison records and his age at death. The Robert born at Kingfield seemed to be the youngest member of a Forster family living at Kingfield at that time, with an older brother named William and another possible brother named John.

Location of Nicholforest, Cumberland, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholforest

I started my research in the Carlisle Archives with the idea of tracing all the men with a name like Robert’s (Forrester/Forester/Forster/Foster) to see which of them might have disappeared out of the district, just as Robert’s partner Isabella Ramsay had disappeared from hers after her trial at nearby Carlisle. But during the 1780s and 1790s a number of Roberts remained in the Kirkandrews and Nicholforest area, marrying, having children and being buried, and there was no way of telling one from the other.

During the three days I spent in the Carlisle Archives I was fortunate to meet Chester Forster, the former Chairman of the Friends of Cumbria Archives and a local expert on the Forrester/Forester/Forster/Foster families of the specific parishes I was researching. I was able to tap into his years of research. He kindly emailed me his parish records of these families. Now that I am back in Melbourne, I need to do much more cross-checking within these parish records, especially the death records.

More importantly, Chester offered to show me round the district on the fourth day, Saturday. My marvellous Yorkshire friends and hosts Sir Stephen & Lady Pamela Brown and myself, in one car, followed Chester and his wife in their car to all the places mentioned in the parish records I’d just spent days poring over. It was invaluable as an experience and I’m very grateful to Chester - and the Browns.

Chester Forster (left) explains local history to Sir Stephen Brown

We started with the church of Saint Andrews beside the river Esk (Kirkandrews upon Esk), today located within Scotland. The church is a surprise package in itself, so Spartan on the outside, yet so Mozartian on the inside.

Kirkandrews upon Esk

Interior of Kirkandrews upon Esk

Further along the valley we crossed the river back into England and moved on to Kingfield. Even Kingfield’s ‘gatehouse’ was impressive.

Kingfield Lodge

Our wonderful guide Chester came from this area so he walked up the driveway to the main house and spoke to the owner, Mr James Thomson-Schwab, who readily gave permission for us to enter and photograph his property. This was despite the presence of the local gentry who happened to be gathered there that day for a ‘shoot’. It was exceedingly obliging of the owner.

Evidence of the Pheasant Shoot

We drove in and I was astonished. Surely Kingfield had not once been Robert’s home? It was far too grand.

Kingfield House

The parish church for the Robert Forrester born here in 1757 was at Kirkandrews, but close to Kingfield was the chapel of ease known as Nicholforest. We stopped at Nicholforest, which was not a separate parish back in 1757, nor was this church building in existence at that time.

Church of St Nicholas, Nicholforest

The road took us onwards past The Nook, where other Forresters had lived.

Signpost for The Nook (Nuik)

Once again, Chester walked down a laneway and once again obtained permission from the owners for me to take photographs.

The Nook Farmhouse

We ended up at Stonegarthside (sometimes written as Stingerside, always pronounced Sting-aside!) which Chester says is generally acknowledged as ‘the ancestral seat of the Forsters and that Forrester is interchangeable, depending upon the hearing of the vicar.’ (This spelling variation is also apparent in the early convict records for Robert Forrester.)

The house looks formidable and well evokes its local history. The district has a long history over many centuries of border clashes, as Scottish reivers (raiders) swept in from the north. Back in the sixteenth century the Forster/Forrester clan chief’s daughter married into the Armstrong clan which Chester described as ‘the most notorious of the Scottish reiving clans’.

Stonegarthside

The extensive farmyard lies between the house and the road, somewhat shielding the main house from view.

Stonegarthside Farmyard

Stonegarthside's bird life was also impressive.

Puffed up like a turkey – local pride at Stonegarthside

As we left the district for a very late lunch at Longtown we passed by Netherstonegarthside or Nether Stonegarthside, half a mile from the main property.

Netherstonegarthside

My first reaction to seeing Kingfield and Stonegarthside was to doubt that ‘our’ Robert was the 1757-born son of Arthur. The Forresters seemed to have been local gentry and the housing seemed far too grand to be the former home of the man we have always pictured as a humble First Fleeter.

However many other clues pointed to this district as Robert’s place of origin. For a start, in his new country Robert took up with Isabella Ramsay almost as soon as they met, although both were married to others. Did their bond form so quickly because they shared the same home district and regional accents, powerful comforts in the alien land of Australia to which they had both been banished?

Second, Robert bestowed upon his sons the given names which were very common in the parish of Kirkandrews upon Esk - Robert (after himself), John, Henry and William. A grandson was named George. These very traditional English names were not common in other potential places of his birth, including Scotland and America, or even among Forrester families living in London, where Robert said in 1783 that he was ‘a stranger’.

Third, when I spent a day driving around the geographically quite large parish of Kirkandrews upon Esk and its ‘offspring’ Nicholforest, I was struck by how similar was the landscape to the Hawkesbury Valley at Windsor. Both areas were once heavily-forested, and the evidence remains. There is a strong emphasis on farming and it seems it was ever thus, with the population of this affluent rural area seemingly as thinly spread as it would have been at the Hawkesbury in Robert’s day.

Rural Scene near Stonegarthside, with river in view

And there was the local parish church Kirkandrews, perched high above the river Esk just like the church of St Matthew overlooking the Hawkesbury River.

Kirkandrews is built on high ground beside the River Esk

As we drove along and I gazed at the landscape, my intuition kicked in – ‘If Robert came from here, no wonder he loved his farm by the Hawkesbury so much and wouldn’t give it up, no matter how many floods he endured. The district reminded him of home.’

There was a major stumbling block however, a giant flaw in the logic of my theory. The Robert Forrester baptised at Kirkandrews upon Esk in 1757 was the son of a man named Arthur, another very English name. Following naming traditions common at that time, any son of the Robert born here in 1757 should have been named Arthur, in honour of his grandfather. But First Fleeter Robert had no son named Arthur. I hung onto one shred of hope – Robert may have rejected long-standing cultural traditions if there was bad blood between him and his father.

And therein lay a possible explanation. As well as the Scottish reiving families, some English families living along the border were reivers too, causing feuds within and between English families. Were father and son on opposite sides of a clan-related feud? Did this explain the First Fleeter’s choice of names for his four sons and the absence of a son named Arthur?

In 1783 Robert was arrested in the company of a Chelsea pensioner, a soldier wounded in the American War of Independence. It’s likely that Robert too went off to this war to fight for the English cause, as many loyal young men of good families did. Chester told me that the local regiment at the time was the 34th Regiment of Foot. But unless the First Fleeter was an officer, or a Chelsea pensioner like his co-accused, there is little chance that his name could be found in army records. I have yet to follow up that avenue of investigation at the State Library of Victoria.

To conclude, my research in Cumberland came to nothing as I still haven’t proved anything about Robert’s origins. He wasn’t literate but I don’t know (yet) whether the Kingfield Forsters were literate either. More research into parish records is needed and is underway.

As for his other qualities and attributes, I do know he was regarded as responsible because he was placed on the night watch in Sydney. He was a good shot with a gun, suggesting military service  ... or much practice at pheasant shooting! He proved himself in Australia as a good farmer, against the odds. He raised his children well, to become upstanding citizens in their own right. He was very independent of government assistance and handouts compared with many other early settlers. It’s possible that these attributes all mean he came from a good family, something never before regarded as a possibility for him.

Having now absorbed the atmosphere pervading the parishes of Kirkandrews upon Esk and Nicholforest, I’m simply left with the gut feeling that somehow this district was Robert's 'place'. A lot more delving and checking will occur before I publish my final conclusions in the Second Edition of this book, to be entitled ‘Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter’.

IMPORTANT UPDATE, December 2018:

My gut feeling was wrong. Possibly Robert came from a place with this kind of geographic  'feel', but it was not this specific place. DNA testing conducted in 2018 and analysed by Stuart Hamilton, another Forrester descendant, has yielded the surprising result that ‘Robert Forrester, First Fleeter’ is most likely the Scottish-born son of an unmarried Forrester woman and a man named John McGaw. Robert adopted his mother's surname and appears (at this stage) to have been unbaptised.

Further details will be published in 'Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter'.

Forrester Update & Paul Bushell's Grave Restoration Project

Family stuff, an operation, work on the Bushell grave restoration project mentioned below and the writing of another book have all conspired to stem my flow of Forrester news in 2015. Luckily, 'breaking news' about the Forrester family has been scarce this year. If only I could announce that Robert Forrester's origins have been discovered, allowing us to connect into a traceable family tree.

As intimated in Robert Forrester, First Fleeter, page 324, the best prospect for further research into his origins seems to be the border areas north of Carlisle in Cumberland. The parish registers of Kirk Andrews Upon Esk are suggested as a starting point. My 'things to do' list remains daunting, SO this could be a fascinating project for some other Forrester descendant. Any takers? The process would be similar to that used to trace Isabella Ramsay and described in Appendix 5 of the Forrester book. Her parents and siblings were traced through their entire life cycle in various parish records in England, but Isabella disappeared, thus connecting her pretty conclusively to the Isabella Ramsay who turned up in Australia. Close and systematic examination of parish records where the name Robert Forrester appears might only serve to eliminate possibilities, but narrowing the search zone is always helpful.

The Forrester book continues to sell slowly but steadily, through BookPOD, the Hawkesbury Regional Museum at Windsor and the Museum Bookshop at Norfolk Island. If you are helping to spread the word about this book, I thank you. Being very time poor at present, I'm no closer to publishing the book about the Forrester children except that Ann's story was told in my 2012 book Southwark Luck, also available through BookPOD. Ann's husband Charles Homer Martin had more going for him than first appeared. Similarly, I'm keen to reveal lots of positive stories about Ann's siblings.

Perhaps the main item of real 'news' is the project currently underway at the Wilberforce Cemetery, restoring the grave of Paul Bushell and other members of Paul's family, As you know, Paul Bushell and his first wife Jane Sharp raised Isabella Forrester from infancy, following the death of the child's mother Isabella Ramsay. The picture shows the surviving grave stones spread out for sorting & planning the necessary work. A new foundation slab has now been poured. To stay informed about progress with the restoration and the forthcoming ceremony to 'unveil' the grave, you'll need to visit the Facebook page Paul Bushell and David Brown Heritage Grave Restoration Project and 'Like' it.