The General Hewitt
The archive knew this family reached Queensland. It did not know how, when, or on what. The passenger register gives all three — and a fourteen-year-old girl shipped as a domestic servant.
Eight of them sailed. On 16 December 1854 the General Hewitt put into Brisbane with 394 souls aboard, and among them were James Wakefield, his wife Hannah, and six of their children — including Miriam, then fourteen.
The family, split across three categories
An assisted-passage register does not list a family together. It lists married couples with their young children, then single men, then single women — so the Wakefields appear three pages apart, and the two eldest boys and the eldest girl aboard are entered as though they were travelling alone.
| Name | Age | Occupation | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| James Wakefield the head of the household — his county, dittoed down the page to the rest | 48 | Mason | Gloucester |
| Hannah Wakefield NOT an independent statement of her birthplace | 48 | — | — ditto — |
| Jabez Wakefield | 11 | — | — ditto — |
| Zillah Wakefield | 8 | — | — ditto — |
| Ephraim Wakefield | 5 | — | — ditto — |
| Name | Age | Occupation | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hiram Wakefield entered separately, with his own county | 16 | Plumber | Bristol |
| Aaron Wakefield entered separately, with his own county | 14 | Farm labourer | Bristol |
| Name | Age | Occupation | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marion Wakefield Miriam, written Marion — fourteen, and shipped as a domestic servant | 14 | Domestic | Bristol |
A trade, a city, and a girl of fourteen
- James Wakefield is entered as a MASON. The 1841 census at Drivers Fields calls him a Mason Journeyman. Thirteen years and half a world apart, two clerks who never met wrote down the same trade. documented twice
- The three eldest children are from Bristol. Hiram, Aaron and Marion each get their own line and their own county, and all three say Bristol — exactly where the census and the birth registration put them.
- Miriam is “Marion”, and she is a domestic servant. Fourteen years old, entered among the single women rather than with her parents, with an occupation against her name. Five years later she married William Hartley Sneyd at Brisbane. The women →
So the question the last two days have been chasing is still open. The 1841 census says Hannah was born outside Gloucestershire; the reconstitution of all 81 Gloucestershire Saniger households says she is in none of them; and the one register that might have named her county dittoed it instead. What would settle it →
Who else was aboard
The register closes with a summary in the clerk's hand.
| Married couples | 142 |
| Single men | 80 |
| Single women | 46 |
| Boys under 14 | 51 |
| Girls under 14 | 63 |
| Infants | 12 |
| Total souls | 394 |
Reckoned for victualling as 325 “adults” — children counted as halves, infants not counted at all. The counties on these pages are Cambridge, Middlesex, Somerset, Essex, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Wicklow, Armagh, Cork, Roscommon and Dublin: an English and Irish cargo of farm labourers, masons, ploughmen, bricklayers, dairymaids and domestic servants, landed at a settlement that would not become a state capital for another five years.
What this changes
- The emigration is dated. The archive has said for years that the family "reached Queensland". It reached it on 16 December 1854, aboard a named ship, with the ages of every passenger recorded. documented
- James Wakefield's trade is confirmed independently, and the family's Bristol origin with it.
- Three daughters are missing from the manifest. Eliza (born 1832), Ellen (1834) and Martha (1836) would have been twenty-two, twenty and eighteen. They are not aboard. Whether they had already married, followed later, or stayed is not known. open
- Hannah's birthplace is not here, and remains the single open question in this archive's English line.
The household they left, 1841 → · The Sanigers they did not come from → · The register scan, QSA ↗