Tracing a convict ancestor
Graeme Briggs faced a tough task — finding someone called John Smith
I AM descended from an English convict who was transported to Tasmania in 1833.
Stories handed down said that when he was convicted, he changed his name to avoid bringing shame to his family. Unfortunately, the name he chose was the most common of all English names — John Smith.
What we know from historical records is that he was tried in the Devon Assizes (Exeter) on March 16, 1832 for housebreaking. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, however this was commuted to transportation for life.
The house he broke into is in Combe Raleigh in Devon and belonged to the local sexton. It has since been converted into two flats.
On April 30, 1833, the ship Atlas left Plymouth, England, with the convict John Smith on board and arrived in Australia on August 24, 1833. He was then sent to the town of Ross, Tasmania.
Nine years later, on August 3, 1842, he married Mary Dale and they had 17 children. My great grandfather, Arthur Spurway Smith, was the 11th of those children. John died in Campbell Town, Tasmania, on December 1, 1875, and is buried in Ross.
But who was the real John Smith?
In 2009, my wife and I visited Tasmania and found his headstone in the Old Ross Burial Ground. At that time there were not many headstones still intact, but remarkably his was. At some stage it had been damaged and repaired, but was just readable. The inscription indicated that he was from Dunkeswell, Devon.
His conviction records indicate that in 1833 he was aged 25, giving him a birth year of 1808. His death record indicates an age of 66 in 1875, giving a birth year of 1807. However, online searches didn’t show a John Smith born in Dunkeswell around that time.
The next clue is that most of his children had a middle name of Spurway. Even his wife’s headstone gives a middle name of Spurway.
Online searches for Spurway show that a John Spurway was baptised on October 2, 1808 in Dunkeswell, at the age of three weeks. His parents were John and Thomasin Spurway. Interestingly, Thomasin’s maiden name was Smith and this is likely where the name John Smith came from. It would be so easy to simply choose his mother’s maiden name as his own new last name.
However while highly likely, it is not proof of ancestry.
Fast forward to 2018 and Ancestry DNA had been around for six years. I felt it had now far enough advanced to be useful, so I did an Ancestry DNA test. Because not everyone inherits the same amount of DNA, I arranged DNA tests for my two brothers.
The results were spectacular. The DNA tests showed two “common ancestor” matches to John Spurway and Thomasin Smith.
One is to a descendant of William Spurway and the other is to a descendant of Henry Spurway and both these are brothers of John Spurway born in 1808.
This is the final proof that I needed and I now know my ancestor John Smith was in fact John Spurway.
Now I can trace his lineage.
On August 3, 1842, he married Mary Dale and they had 17 children