land grants Tasmania 1850s – Tasmanian photographer

Captains, emigrants and convicts: the summer of 1842-3 in Hobart, VDL

October 10, 2021

Among the 220 bounty emigrants who disembarked at Hobart from the Sir Charles Napier on 29 November 1842 were members of the JUDD family from Barkway, Hertfordshire (UK). Parents Thomas Judd snr and Elizabeth Judd nee Cane [var. Cain] arrived with eight of their children: Elizabeth, Thomas, John, Ann, Rebecca, Susan, Martha and Henry. A remarkable account of the voyage and the tragedy which followed was documented by twenty-year-old Thomas Judd in his diary, from departure in August 1842 to arrival and aftermath, in January 1843. Twenty five years later, Hobart photographer Thomas J. Nevin would hear about this family from one of his sitters, Joseph THOMAS, farmer of Cygnet who married a daughter of the JUDD family, Rebecca Judd, in 1852 only to lose her in childbirth in 1864 … More Captains, emigrants and convicts: the summer of 1842-3 in Hobart, VDL

Rosanna Mary Domeney nee Tilley at Thomas Nevin’s studio 1870s

November 7, 2019

Rosanna Mary Domeney’s father John Tilley, licensed victualler who died in 1850, had stipulated that his Trustees Thomas Mezger and Christopher Basstian provide for the maintenance and education of his daughter Rosanna Mary until she married or turned 21 years old, whichever came first, and that the profits from his estate be passed to her for her exclusive use and not of any husband, should she marry. However, when her mother died in 1848, the properties she had inherited from both parents were registered jointly on the Valuation Rolls in both her name and that of her husband William Lemuel Domeney once she was married. Her Hobart address was 75 Warwick St. Hobart by 1872, the year she most likely visited Thomas Nevin for a portrait at his studio. In 1876 she sought to convey the land and four properties described in Title Deed No. 06/2114, dated 15 August 1876 to Trustees William Robert Giblin (1840-1887) and William Ansty Knight “with the concurrence of the said William Lemuel Domeney” her husband, and when both Trustees were deceased by 1889, she transferred their interest to Henry William Chapman and Henry Priest who offered the Warwick Street properties for sale within months of Rosanna Domeney’s death in 1907.. … More Rosanna Mary Domeney nee Tilley at Thomas Nevin’s studio 1870s

Gold seekers Thomas Nevin, John Thorpe and Duncan Chisholm 1869

September 17, 2018

It may have been an April Fool’s Day joke or it may have been a bonanza. The Tasmanian Times, which regularly published information for and about photographer Thomas J. Nevin and his father John Nevin snr throughout the decade of the 1860s, may have wittingly or otherwise informed their readers on the first day of April, 1869, that Thomas Nevin and his fellow gold seekers, John Thorpe jun, former licensee of the Bush Inn at Port Cygnet, and Duncan Chisholm, school master at Rokeby, Clarence Plains, were confident enough of finding sufficient gold deposits in the area to suggest that a subsidy from local residents would encourage them to continue with further exploration. … More Gold seekers Thomas Nevin, John Thorpe and Duncan Chisholm 1869

Captain Goldsmith, James Lucas and Peter Fraser: 500 acre leases 1853

March 19, 2017

The exact location of Reef Point in the Parish of Pedder, county of Buckingham, in the south east of Tasmania around the city of Hobart, the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and Bruny Island areas, is not clear from original documentation. Three 500 acre lots – Lot 195, Lot 196 and Lot 197 – were leased to Colonial Treasurer Peter Gordon Fraser; Derwent River pilot James Lucas; and master mariner Captain Edward Goldsmith respectively. Being sequentially numbered, these lots must have been adjacent. … More Captain Goldsmith, James Lucas and Peter Fraser: 500 acre leases 1853

John Nevin senior’s land grant 1859 at Port Cygnet

March 12, 2017

In 1859, John Nevin snr was granted ten acres one rood and seventeen perches in the parish of Bedford on the Huon River near Cygnet, about 60 kms south west of Hobart, but it appears he never moved his family from Kangaroo Valley to take up permanent residence on the grant. He may have used the land, however, to cultivate orchards, grow vegetables, and make jam for export. In 1870 he exhibited marrows at the Industrial Bazaar at the Hobart Town Hall. In 1873 he presented an exhibit of peat to a meeting of the Royal Society of Tasmania, and in 1877, he exported jam on the Southern Cross to the colony of Victoria. The peat may have been extracted from Kangaroo Valley, known originally as Sassafras Gully in the 1840s, a valley rich with the type of flora that grows as ‘wet’ and/or mixed forest in Tasmania. … More John Nevin senior’s land grant 1859 at Port Cygnet