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

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

Gold seekers Thomas Nevin, John Thorpe and Duncan Chisholm 1869

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