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You might think that if a woman sentenced to transportation was allowed to take her young children with her, it was out of kindness. Think again. It wasn’t compassion; it was cold economics. No one in England wanted to foot the bill to care for prisoners’ kids. So off they went across the world, tiny passengers on convict ships to the colonies.
One of those mothers was my 5th great-grandmother, Mary Chadderton — born Mary Morton — and her story gives you a real sense of how messy and chaotic convict life could be.
Mary was married to a man named John Chadderton. She got herself into serious trouble after breaking into the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowse in Manchester and stealing various goods. Caught and convicted, she was sentenced to transportation — basically, shipped off to Australia as punishment.
Originally, Mary was supposed to be on the Second Fleet, but surprise surprise — bureaucratic chaos (or possibly a pregnancy) delayed her. By the time she finally boarded the Mary Ann in 1791, she had a 15-month-old daughter, Charlotte. The fact that Charlotte was listed as “illegitimate” after being baptized at St. Mary’s Priory Church in Lancaster suggests John Chadderton was long out of the picture — dead, missing, or otherwise. Whoever Charlotte’s real father was, his name didn’t make it onto any records.
Little Charlotte joined her mother on the Mary Ann, bound for New South Wales, a 15-month-old passenger with no idea what was happening. After arriving in the colony, Mary married again — this time to William Adams, a fellow convict from the Scarborough (1790). Charlotte eventually took her stepfather’s surname and became Charlotte Adams.
But Mary’s love life didn’t stop there (because why make things simple?). After William Adams died, she shacked up with a soldier from the Rum Corps, William Baker, until his death in 1824. Then she married again, this time to Benjamin Cusley, a First Fleet marine. Mary and Charlotte bounced around between Sydney and Norfolk Island — basically wherever opportunity (or survival) led them.
At just 14 years old, Charlotte was recorded as part of the First Fleet that settled Port Dalrymple (what we now call Tasmania) alongside Lieutenant-Governor Paterson aboard the Buffalo in November 1804.
It didn’t take long for those settlers to move south and kick-start Launceston — yep, that Launceston you still see on the map today.
Now, Charlotte’s relationships? About as straightforward as her mother’s. After leaving Norfolk Island in April 1810 for Port Jackson, she traveled aboard the Lady Nelson as a “woman associated” with the New South Wales Corps — which is old-timey slang for probably shacked up with a soldier. That soldier was Benjamin Butcher, an army private who’d been hanging around Norfolk Island since 1801.
Children soon entered the picture — some took the surname Howard (no clear explanation why, because colonial paperwork was basically vibes). And just to keep things spicy, there’s also official documentation saying Charlotte was married to a completely different guy, Benjamin Goulding.
Fast forward a few years to 1823, and Charlotte pops up near Launceston again, this time living with William Emery, another convict. She had even more kids, now under the Emery name.
By 1825, after a few rounds of heartbreak and who-knows-what-else, Charlotte — now styling herself Charlotte Goulding, widow — finally tied the knot officially with William Emery.
Confused yet? Good. That’s early colonial Australia for you. Life was rough. Paperwork was sketchy at best. Deaths happened like clockwork. People did whatever they had to just to survive. Relationships, marriages, names — it was all a bit… flexible.