The Bradford Observer reprinted a letter of 14 August 1861 from one Frederick King, Government Emigration Agent for Oxford and the neighbourhood. He wrote that ‘two years ago he sent out three families of agricultural labourers from the village of Upton, in Berkshire, whose average earnings did not exceed 9s. {£47} per week’ and that he had received a letter from the wife of one, Martha Smith. This is the story of that family and some of the other emigrants.
Luke Smith
Luke Smith was born in Upton on 14 February 1827 , the eldest son of James and Mary Smith née Payne. At the time of the 1851 census, James and Mary were living with their seven children aged between 1 and 23, and a 77-year-old pensioner James Painter, probably a member of Mary’s family. James and Luke Smith were described as labourers, James Painter an annuitant.
In about 1852 Luke married Martha Wheeler and they had a son, Luke junior, born 8 August 1852 (baptised 29 August), followed by Louisa in about 1856 and Ann in 1858.
Evidently Luke must have become aware of the government’s emigration scheme, perhaps met Frederick King, and obviously decided to find another life overseas. On 23 February 1859 Luke, his wife Martha and their three children, together with Luke’s younger brother Richard and Martha’s younger sister Mary Wheeler, set sail from Southampton bound for Australia. Their ship, the Glentanner, under Captain Wilson, was a 610-ton wooden vessel built in 1842 in Aberdeen by Alexander Hall and Sons for Jardine Matheson & Co. to transport tea and opium, but soon fell into use transporting migrants to Australia, New Zealand, West Indies etc.
Sketches On Board an Emigrant Ship
Life in steerage on the Glentanner must have been grim. She was only 130’ long and 26’ in the beam, but on that voyage she carried 243 immigrants as well as about 300 tons of merchandise. The voyage took 19 weeks – quite long compared with a typical trip of 100 days or so. It had taken her 83 days to reach the latitude of the Cape, total passage 132 days, and she had not touched port on her way.
Measles and scarlet fever prevailed, and there were 23 deaths, including 4 adults; there were also 9 (8?) births during the voyage – The Brisbane Courier reporting this in somewhat monetary terms as “reducing the total loss to 14”. En route, a seaman named Thomas Brown accidentally fell from the rigging and was drowned.
On a previous voyage, two years earlier, the Glentanner had run into a very heavy gale off the Cape, and was thrown on her beam ends. The mainmast head had given way as well as the mizzen topmast and jib-boom, which carried away the fore-top gallant mast and fore-topsail yard, fore-topsail, outer and inner and flying jibs, fore and main-top gallant sails, main-top-mast stay sail, and cross-jack, and split nearly all the sails. When the masts went down the ship righted herself, but it was not until the following day that she could be got before the wind, and then she could only spread her foresail and fore-top-mast staysail. A seaman, Augustus Silva, was killed in the accident when he was knocked off the mizzen top-gallant yard.
The Smith family arrived in Australia on 7 July 1859, at Moreton Bay (Brisbane), and the ship was given a clean bill of health. In the list of immigrants, Luke and his family are recorded as Wesleyan – Luke 31, Martha 29, Luke 7, Louisa 3 and Ann 1. Richard and Jane were both 19, C of E. Luke could read, while Richard, Martha and Jane could both read and write.
Two years on, and life was obviously treating them well, as Martha described in her letter to Frederick King, enclosing an ‘elegant embroidered bonnet ribbon’ for his wife, and a present for his daughter. She wrote “By the time we have been here two years I hope to have a dairy of ten cows, all my own, within two miles of the town. We have already bought and paid for fourteen acres of good freehold land, with a cottage upon it, and at present we have got several cows, and little Luke has bought himself a young bullock. We have also got £17 10s 0d. in money by us {£1700}, which Luke says is more than we would ever have had if we had stopped in England all our lives.”
Martha went on to write “her husband keeps from drink well, and says a labourer’s lot in England is to work hard all his days, with half a bellyful of victuals, and all the land he gets is after he is dead, about 6 feet by 2 in the churchyard; but if a man is steady in Queensland he can soon get a farm and plenty of cattle of his own… Thanks God we can’t see Wallingford workhouse now, which was always my dread that I should come to it in my old age.”
Luke appears at one stage to have been employed by Mr George Faircloth, the manager of the Ipswich branch of the Bank of Australasia. George Faircloth employed architect William Wakeling and builder William Hancock to carry out the construction of Booval House near Ipswich – originally built with 14 rooms which included a bathroom, pantry, wine cellar, laundry and kitchen on a 2 acre block. Booval House still stands today.
However Luke and Martha settled in Harrisville, a rural town of about 400 people, 15 miles south of Ipswich. The brothers George and John Harris had acquired land in the area to grow cotton during the shortage caused by the American civil war, and they had erected a cotton gin in about 1862, around which Harrisville developed. The Harris brothers opened a cotton gin on part of Robert Dunn’s selection to handle the cotton coming off the Ipswich Agricultural Reserve. This land had been specially set aside in 1860 by the newly formed Queensland Government for the purpose of growing cotton when Britain’s usual supply dried up due to the American Civil War. Other businesses established themselves nearby. The gin closed when the cotton-growing venture collapsed on the return of the United States to the cotton market, but the name of Harrisville lived on at the suggestion of Robert Dunn’s youngest daughter. Her first suggestion was Harristown, but there already was a Harristown near Toowoomba, so her second choice was accepted. She later married Luke Wheeler Smith.
Luke and Martha went on to have a total of eight children – Luke, Louisa, Annie, James, Joseph, Thomas, Charles and Alice. Annie, who was only 18 months old when she left England in 1859, and survived the voyage despite the prevalence of measles and scarlet fever which killed 19 of the children on the ship, died in about 1940.
Luke died on 18 July 1879 and is buried in Harrisville cemetery. Martha died nine years later and was buried with him. Probate and letters of administration were granted in respect of Martha in the amount of £568 {£60,573} to L.W.Smith, of Harrisville, farmer, and Thomas B. Cribb, of Ipswich, accountant.
Luke junior (little Luke as his mother referred to him in her letter) obviously developed his skills with bullocks as in August 1870 he took second prize
September 1872 took first prize in the bullock-team ploughing match at the Ipswich and West Moreton Agricultural and Horticultural Society. In September 1879 he purchased a colt from ‘one of the best breeders of horse stock in the West Moreton district’ for sixty guineas.
Luke Junior married a girl from Armagh called Margaret Dunn on 12 September 1874 in Ipswich. Margaret was a daughter of Robert Dunn who owned the area of land on which Harrisville stood, and it was she who had earlier named the town.
Luke and Margaret had several children, including three sons, Percy Garfield, Robert Luke and Wylie McLeod. The brothers enlisted in the army and between them saw extremely active service in Gallipoli, France and Belgium. Percy received a bullet wound in the face at Gallipoli, rejoined his unit and contracted trench fever, then left for France where he was wounded by shrapnel in the right knee and evacuated to Etaples. Robert was wounded at Ypres, and returned to the Somme where he was again wounded. Wylie was evacuated from Gallipoli to England with trench fever and dysentry, was wounded at the Somme and thence hospitalized in Bristol, then rejoined his unit and was wounded a second time. Having again rejoined his unit he died of illness in August 1917 and is buried at Longuenesse near St Omer.
Later Emigrants
Frederick King wrote that in consequence of Martha’s letter, he started off ‘her father and mother and several families of relations, numbering altogether 28 people’, by The Persia, which sailed from Plymouth in August 1861 and landed Brisbane 3 December. Some records have been lost, but those that remain include Lucy (14) and Mary (18) Wheeler, Martha’s sisters and both recorded as servants. Several from Upton were farm labourers, including Job Greenuff (Greenough), 24, Ezekiah Pope (25), William Dearlove (20) and his wife Dorothy (18) and their infant Sarah, Stephen Geary (17), and Mary Geary (14), a domestic. A large part of the Geary family joined them, comprising William (43), Martha (43), George (10), Ellen (7) and Charles (1), although Charles died on the voyage.