John Cecil of Tidenham transported to Australia 1821 (General)

by sidtoomey01 , Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Thursday, May 06, 2021, 20:41 (1295 days ago) @ sidtoomey01

Hi John,
I apologise for my delay in responding with the information i had found but initially i wanted to present it methodically. This caused a bit of a headache for me as it kept expanding and maybe not making much sense at your end when your received it.
Then i ran out of time as my wife and i are supposed to be going to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney for a week starting this Sunday. As well, one of my sons and his family are finally able to come visit us next Wednesday from New Zealand where they live.
Now a Covid case has been discovered in Sydney with unknown source. When this happens all the State and NZ Governments get nervous and frequently close their borders which would leave us stranded in Sydney or forced to pay for two weeks hotel quarantine in Brisbane on our return. All our plans are up in the air. Sounds disastrous, but compared to the rest of the world, we have been lucky.
So I decided to send what i have in a bit of a disjointed fashion.
Also i have outsmarted myself with this message as i cant attach any maps etc.

With your search for John Cecil in Australia are you mostly interested in his possible descendants and the DNA aspect ? or are you interested in his life in Australia ?

If i know which, then i will know whether you may be interested in what i have found during my search.

His movements once he was assigned to Mr O'Brien of Richmond and subsequent depasturising licences, place him on the frontier of settlement in NSW where at the time, infrastructure would have been pretty well non existent so registering a marriage or a birth wouldn't have been possible for the years we have records of him.

The Blue Mountains west of Sydney were only crossed in 1813, a "road " (very very basic)built over the mountains in 1815 to Bathurst and before 1830 expansion of settlement wasn't supposed to happen outside the original 19 Counties of NSW. King County where the 971 Acres land Grant was happened to be on the very western edge of the 19 Counties. However, wealthy business people and settlers in Sydney still sent shepherds and livestock into the bush West of the mountains to graze stock and squat on large tracts of land in the hope of gaining title once infrastructure caught up. Ticket of leave convicts were often the shepherds. This is where John Cecil fits in.

He definitely didn't buy the 971 Acre land Grant. I have found proof to this. The first owner was a William Kerr who bought it in 1837. However, I believe John Cecil was there, very, very, close by.

I found another two convicts who were shepherds who were in the same area at the time and they went on to become early settlers in the Yass district and have left written records of their lives or local historical societies have written about them so i hope to explore this more.

Also i believe i have found John Cecil's Mr O'Brien. There was a general muster of inhabitants in the colony in the Year 1825 but John Cecil's name was missing from it so i started browsing through the names hoping to find a transcription error. I found a John Cail with same arrival date, same ship, and assigned to Mr Henry O'Brien of Appin. He and his brother Cornelius have left records and writings. They owned and grazed land in the districts John Cecil had depasturising licences for. I had seen newspaper articles/notices for this O'Brien on "Trove" and kept him in mind hoping to find a connection so for me this looks promising.

There were 144 convicts on the ship "Adamant" and in three different lists of convicts on board, i cant find a record for a John Cail.

In a separate search for similar convict family names, i cant find a "Cail" although "Cahill" brought up several names. However none of those were on the "Adamant".

the 1825 Convict General Muster index i found John Cail on was an alphabetical handwritten list so it was compiled from numerous other lists from the different districts of the colony. Handwriting and spelling being what it was, i think it possible for mistakes to be made.

None of this helps you with your DNA search but i find the events surrounding John Cecil interesting, making for enjoyable searching.

I hope you find it interesting as well.

Sid Toomey