From Convicts to Free-Men: The Haynes Family's Journey to Australia

[Groundhog]

Recently I've taken a bit of an interest in my family history. About a decade ago my uncle traced our history on my mothers side, tracking us first to France in the 1800s, and then to Norway back in to the 1700s. I haven't spoken to him about It much and I was too young to be interested back when he did all the research, but I intend on find out more on this next time I speak to him.

As far as I'm aware no one has done the same for my father's side. My father died when I was very young, and my relatives on his side live in another part of the country, so I don't have a lot of contact with them. I had been told when I was about 7 or 8 that our ancestor was a convict on one of the English convict fleets that travelled to Australia in the 18th century. I don't know if this is true or not, but I decided to research in to it and see what I can find. The results will be posted in this thread.

[Groundhog]

The logical thing for me to do would be to work from the current day backwards; finding the birth/death/marriage certificates for my known relatives, then searching back until the 18th century. This was my original plan, but the historian in me started reading up on the convicts that shared my family name, and I found there were quite a few. There is a wealth of knowledge available online regarding the convicts and I dug around and found out little bits and pieces about some of them and made notes. It was then that I decided it would be much more fun to do this in reverse.

Basically, I am going to start with the first fleet and find out all the details I can on the convicts with the surname Haynes as well as it's common derivatives (Haines/Hanes), then move forward with the second and third fleets through to the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, after I feel I've exhausted the likely candidates, I'm going to start ordering birth/death/marriage certificates of my known relatives - which is easily done thanks to this great site - and work back and see if any of the men I've detailed turns out to be an actual relative of mine.

Of course, it is entirely possible that none of these men are ancestors of mine. Haynes is a none-too-uncommon surname (though the y in place of the I is a little more obscure), and the records remaining are not complete. It is also possible that we never in fact came over to Australia as convicts, and may have migrated over here during the gold rush of the 19th century, and I may had been simply told that we had been convicts to excite me when I was young. We may also have been English government officials or soldiers that travelled out to Australia with the convicts. I don't know what became of these official types or how long they generally served here and how many opted to stay. I would definitely consider it more than likely that we were originally convicts however, and the abundance of the Haynes name gives me some hope that this will prove to be the case.

[Groundhog]

The First Fleet

British prisons were overflowing. The Industrial Revolution that had taken hold of Europe had seen an increase in petty crime, and the British jails could no longer hold all the offenders. Previously they had been shipped to the United States, but the American War of Independence (1775-1783) had brought this to an end. Large derelict ships, known as hulks, had begun to be used as floating prisons, but a long-term solution had to be found.

Alternatives to the United States were explored, and it was decided that the East Coast of Australia - then known as New Holland - which had been mapped by Englishman Captain James Cook only a few years before in 1770, would be the location of their new penal colony. On the 13th of May 1787 the fleet left Portsmouth for Australia. There were 11 ships in all - 2 Naval escorts, 6 convict vessels, & 3 store ships - carrying around 1,420 people in total, 775 of which were convicts.

It was perhaps one of the greatest sea voyages of all time, and took 252 days of travel in poor conditions. Miraculously, a mere 48 people died on the voyage, despite the myriad of problems (scurvy, disease, lack of supplies, navigational problems) encountered on the journey. When the ships docked at the spot known as Botany Bay, very few could have imagined the hardships they would soon face, nor the society that they were about to found.