Interesting finds:
As potential customers, you will want to see some examples of the types of information you might discover.
Now lets look at some of the skeletons found in the closet of my own family tree.
The picture on the right shows the church, St Matthews Church located in New Norfolk Tasmania, in which Jeremiah married his 3rd and final wife Mary Fehely in 1855. She was 25 and he was 55. No children, from the research carried out so far, were born from this union. What happened after the marriage is yet unknown so, where they lived and what happened to Mary is yet to be discovered.
When my family decided to research the family tree back in 2007, we did not expect to find that on my fathers side, we were descended from a convicted criminal!
Now, that sounds bad and in reality a criminal is a criminal. However, digging into my 4x great grandfathers life allowed us to get an insight into why he did what he did.
Did his actions mean that he left behind a wife (my 4x great grandmother) and 2 sons? Yes. Did they end up suffering from his actions? Yes. Did he expect for his actions to have these consequences? No.
So, let me introduce you to my 4x great grandfather, Jeremiah Farmer...
​​
As you can see from the photo above, Jeremiah began his criminal activities when he was a young man in 1824. Stealing from your own brother, is not exactly what you would call having a great familial relationship. I don't know exactly why he did this but nevertheless he made an idiotic decision, got caught and was punished.
He got married to my 4x great grandmother 2 years later in 1826 then had his first son (my 3x great grandfather) John in 1828.
Then things took a turn.
_edited.jpg)
The image above states that in 1830 Jeremiah, along with others, were found guilty of demanding money with menace and putting Henry Fermor in fear of his own life.
This time in history was very difficult for agricultural labourers as new technology and machinery began to be used thus replacing the need for manual labour. Now, as my family's surname suggests, I come from a long line of 'farmers' or 'agricultural labourers' and it is still a hard profession to carry out in modern times. Back then, these men would not have had any others skills or trades and relied on this work to support themselves and their families.
With the new machinery, men would lose work and sometimes completely lose their jobs all together. Thus they did what they thought was the only thing to do and broke the machines that were replacing them then, they began to riot to demand that they should be given money that they had missed out on. These men became known as 'machine breakers'.
As you can see above, Jeremiah was caught and originally sentenced to death for his crimes however, a petition was made and signed by many people in his village asking for lenience on his sentence. They stated that he essentially gave into peer pressure and followed the other men. His original sentence was then commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania) to carry out 14 years hard labour.
The picture on the left shows the church, St Peter's Anglican Church, in which Jeremiah married his 2nd wife Margaret Carrol in 1844. This church is in Hamilton on forth in Tasmania. He was legally still married to his 1st wife, Elizabeth Eastman, who he 'left behind' in England. Margaret was 26 and Jeremiah was 45. Unfortunately, Margaret died in 1846 and no children were born between this union.
Jeremiah died in 1871 in a paupers estate of 'cancer of face'. In his prisoner physical description under 'remarks' he is listed as having a mole on the right corner of his mouth suggesting that after years of being a labourer and working outdoors, with no such things as SPF back then, he probably died of skin cancer.
Whenever I am asked, 'where is one country you would love to visit?' I always say Tasmania and many people often ask why? Although Jeremiah did wrong and was a convicted criminal, I have an understanding of why he did what he did in order to provide for himself and his family. One day I would like to be able to go to Tasmania and explore the country that, unwillingly, became my 4x great-grandfathers home.