Australia
A major of the 39th Foot who had commanded his regiment at Orthes came out in charge of the guard on a convict ship, with his wife and baby daughter in the cabin. He never went home.
Eight days before the ship
Chatham St Mary the Virgin baptised Charlotte D'Arcy on 31 March 1826 — born 29 April 1825, father entered as “George Pitt D'Arcy, Bt: Major 39th Foot”, mother Maria, abode Chatham.
On 8 April 1826, eight days later, the surgeon of the convict ship England received aboard a detachment of the 39th commanded by "George Pitt D'Arcy, B. Major". They christened the baby, and then they sailed. The Chatham register → documented
This is the part of the pedigree that does not need defending, and it turns out to be the best part. The man at the bottom of the English line is not a footnote: he is a Peninsular War officer who commanded the 39th Regiment in a general action, and the colony's newspapers said so when he died.
The convict ship England, 1826
The surgeon superintendent's journal and the ship's record give the voyage almost day by day. The journal has now been identified at the National Archives and it is ADM 101/26/1 — "Medical journal of the England, convict ship, for 18 March to 29 September 1826 by George Thomson, Surgeon and Superintendent". Until 10 September 2026 this archive cited it only as "the surgeon's journal". It names Major D'Arcy four times.
| 8 April 1826 | "Received on board a detachment of the 39th regt. of foot
commanded by George Pitt D'Arcy, B. Major, consisting of
39 men (including 2 sergeants and 3 corporals), 6 women and
7 children. Victualled on board and found fit for embarkation."
Two corrections here. This
page previously said 30 men, from a secondary account; the catalogue's
transcription of the journal itself says 39, and the coincidence with
the regiment's number is presumably how the error started. And his rank on the day is
B. Major — brevet major, not yet substantive. |
| Cabin | "Cabin passengers included Mrs. D'Arcy and family and Mrs. Reay." — the wife and children sailed with him |
| 14–21 April | 148 male convicts taken aboard at Woolwich from the Justitia and Ganymede hulks |
| Spring 1826 | the phrenologist Mr De Ville came aboard and examined all 148 convicts, "and gave a memorandum of the inferred character of each individual" |
| 3 May | down the river, anchored at Gravesend |
| 6 May | pilot discharged in the Downs |
| 17 May | the convicts broke into his luggage — "a crate of dinner ware, and a box of soup stored in the fore hold, belonging to major D'Arcy, and stolen several articles". John Wells and William Kerr were suspected and tried by petty officers |
| mid-voyage | a mutiny scare. Three knives were traced to a convict who had threatened the surgeon. "Major D'Arcy gave the necessary orders to the guard how to act in case of an alarm", and the master armed the crew with cutlasses. The surgeon then told the prison deck that if violence were offered he "would instantly direct them to be put to death" |
| 16 August | "guard, crew and convicts healthy … Major D'Arcy recovered from his attack of the gout" |
| 18 September | arrived Port Jackson — 135 days, no deaths |
In July 1849, at Parramatta, a coroner's jury sat on his body and returned a verdict putting the cause of death at "gout which had flown to the head and caused apoplexy".
Two records, twenty-three years and half a world apart, neither aware of the other, describing the same man's same complaint — and the second one killed him. The obituary →
Master: John Reay. Surgeon superintendent: George Thomson, R.N., whose first convict voyage this was and who called it one of the more troubled of 1826. Ship built at Chepstow, 1813.
Thirty-four years in the 39th, and a gold medal that went to the wrong man
He served in the West Indies, in North and South America, in the Mediterranean, and in the Peninsula under Wellington from 1811 to the end of the war. His obituary lists the actions:
| Action | Date | His part |
|---|---|---|
| Vitoria | 21 June 1813 | second in command |
| The Pyrenees | July–August 1813 | second in command |
| Nivelle | 10 November 1813 | second in command |
| Nive | 9–13 December 1813 | second in command |
| Garris | 15 February 1814 | the 39th named in Wellington's despatch |
| Orthes | 27 February 1814 | commanded the regiment |
| Aire | 2 March 1814 | engaged |
| Toulouse | 10 April 1814 | third in command |
At Orthes on 27 February 1814 the command of the 39th fell to him because Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce was wounded early in the action. He received a gold medal for it. And then this:
The Major received a gold medal for his prominent services in the battle of Orthes, but singular to relate, after a lapse of four years, the reward of his merit having been sent by mistake to Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce.
Four years to reach the man who earned it, because it had been posted to the officer whose wound gave him the command in the first place.
The obituary, and what it does not quite say
At Parramatta, on Sunday morning, the 22nd of July, 1849, aged 69, Major George Pitt D'Arcy, formerly of the 39th Regiment of Foot; a brave and gallant soldier. Major D'Arcy served in the West Indies, the Mediterranean, through the whole of the Peninsular War, North America, and in this colony. He received a medal for commanding his regiment at the battle of Orthes.
Then the writer goes on, and the tone changes:
The decline of a life spent in the service of his country was not, we deeply regret to say, passed in the paths of pleasantness; and though philosophy taught Major D'Arcy to sustain sorrow and trouble uncomplainingly … yet those who were intimately acquainted with him had reason to know that the canker of disappointment was at his heart's core, and his smile was too often only the shroud of buried hopes. He died at the house of Mr. Walford, one of his staunchest friends, whose kindness to the deceased gentleman increased in proportion to his need of it. … one who in his lifetime tried to be the friend of all, and never injured anyone but himself.
Because the death was sudden there was an inquest. The jury put the cause at "gout which had flown to the head, and caused apoplexy" — in modern terms, most probably a stroke.
One discrepancy: every 1849 notice gives his age as 69, which puts his birth at about 1780. The family tree says 18 February 1783. Queued →
Two wives, and neither of them married him in 1810
The family tree records him marrying Maria or Mary Le Meassier and Maria (Catherine) White — both at Chatham, both in 1810. A man cannot marry two women in one town in one year, and the archive flagged it as unresolved. It is now resolved, and the tree is wrong twice over:
First: Miss Ludlam, September 1805
Not 1810, not 1806, and not Le Mesurier — Le Mesurier was her mother's maiden name, which is exactly how it got into the tree as though it were hers. She is the mother of Frederick Robert, christened at Chatham on 2 July 1811.
Second: Maria White, about 1819, County Wicklow
In Ireland, not Chatham, and nine years later than the tree says. She is the mother of Charlotte Maria, Catherine Maria and George Lindsay — and she is the "Mrs. D'Arcy" in the cabin of the England.
"Captain George d'Arcy", son of "Lieut Colonel d'Arcy", married "Miss Ludlam".
That is worth more than the marriage date. It is an independent, contemporary, printed statement that George Pitt D'Arcy's father was a Lieutenant-Colonel D'Arcy — which is exactly what Robert D'Arcy was in 1805, on his way to Major-General of Engineers. Until now the father–son join rested on the family tree. It now rests on a newspaper printed while both men were alive. What that does and does not prove →
All of which settles a question this archive had left open: Frederick Robert D'Arcy the surveyor is a half-brother, not a full brother, to the direct ancestor. Twenty-four years and two mothers separate them — and George Lindsay's own christening entry proves it: St James's, Sydney, 5 November 1829, "father George Pitt Darcy, mother Maria".
The headstone says the 9th
Frederick Robert D'Arcy's monumental inscription at Toowong reads: "Eldest son of Major George Pitt D'ARCY late of 9th Regiment". Every other source says the 39th.
The 39th wins, and not narrowly. Six independent newspapers in 1849 — in Sydney, Maitland and Hobart — say 39th; the surgeon's journal of the England in 1826 says 39th; Frederick Robert's own death notice, placed by his family two days after he died, says "Major George Pitt D'Arcy, 39th Regiment"; his half-brother's obituary in 1901 says "the old 39th regiment"; and his service is given as 34 years in the 39th. The same transcript also dates his death to 10 September where the notice says the 19th, so it is wrong twice. A monumental mason cutting "39" and losing the 3, or a transcriber reading a worn stone, accounts for it easily.
Three corps, and a boy dead at nineteen
He was the third of the ten children of Major-General Robert D'Arcy of the Royal Engineers, and the family put its sons into three different corps.
Joseph, and the Persian officers
Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph D'Arcy (1780–1848), Royal Artillery, went to Persia in 1811 with Sir Gore Ouseley's mission to reform the Shah's army, and the Persian victory over the Russians at Solṭānābād in February 1812 was credited largely to his guns. He brought five Persian students back to England — and the Records of the Royal Military Academy record what happened next:
Lieutenant-Colonel D'Arcy, Royal Artillery, who had some Persian Officers under his care … having applied to have them educated at the Royal Military Academy, the Master-General referred to the Lieutenant-Governor … who replied that great inconvenience would result were they instructed with the Cadets, but they might attend the Musters as private pupils; they were ultimately placed with Mr. Christie, 4th Mathematical Master.
His eldest son was named George Abbas Kooli D'Arcy at the Shah's request, and became governor of the Gambia and of the Falkland Islands.
Constantine, Royal Engineers
Christened at St Michael, Barbados, on 18 February 1786 — the record names Robert and Jane. He followed his father into the Engineers: second lieutenant 1 February 1804, lieutenant 1 March 1805, and then Connolly's Roll simply says "Died at Chatham, 6 5 1805". Five weeks after his promotion, aged about nineteen.
The family tree says he died in Barbados. He was born there; the Corps register says he died at Chatham. Queued →
Frederick Robert D'Arcy — the surveyor who helped map Melbourne
Born Chatham 1811, christened there 2 July; withdrawn from Sandhurst by his family to emigrate; sailed for Sydney on the Albion, 3 November 1828, two years behind his father. About 1830 he became a draughtsman in the New South Wales Surveyor-General's Department under Major Thomas Mitchell.
In late 1836 Governor Bourke sent three surveyors — Robert Russell, Frederick D'Arcy and William Darke — with thirty-six convicts to the Port Phillip District, to chart the shore of Port Phillip Bay and plot the course of the Yarra River.
That survey is the ground plan of Melbourne. He worked afterwards in the Blue Mountains, at Rylestone and Merriwa, and finally in Queensland; his modern biographer describes an explorer of rougher country than any other early mainland surveyor, and a man who "lurched from one disaster to another". He went through the Insolvent Court at Hartley in 1852. The papers →
His death notice settles the date, which the Toowong transcript gets wrong along with the regiment:
D'ARCY.—On the 19th September, at his residence, Spring Hill, Frederick Robert D'Arcy, licensed surveyor, eldest son of the late Major George Pitt D'Arcy, 39th Regiment, aged 63. [Sydney papers please copy.]
He was buried at Toowong — in the same city and the same decade as the half-brother whose line this archive follows. Brisbane →
Andy Macqueen, Frederick Robert D'Arcy: Colonial Surveyor, Explorer and Artist, c.1809–1875. Macqueen dates his birth to about 1809; the Chatham christening of 2 July 1811 and the "aged 63" of his death notices both support 1811–12. Recorded, not resolved.