Old Prospectors of South Australia - people connected to Prospect, South Australia
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Name (FAMILY NAME, Other Names)

COLLEY, James

Date of Birth

8 April 1804, baptised 15 April 1804

Place of Birth

Cottisford, Oxfordshire, England

Date of Death

6 February 1879

Place of Death

Ararat, Victoria, Australia

Place of Burial

Ararat Cemetery

Arrived in South Australia (date/ship etc.)

Duchess of Northumberland, left London 6/8/1839, arrived Adelaide 19/12/1839

Addresses/Dates in Prospect Council Area

Section 349, allotment 51, western half. 1839 until about 1845.

Addresses/Dates outside Prospect Council Area

Cathcart, Victoria from 1858 to his death

Names of houses (if any)

 

Parents - names; DOBs etc (if known)

Joseph Colley, b. 1781, Fritwell, Oxfordshire, England, married Mary Smith 29/1/1804 St George Hanover Square, London.

Spouse(s) - including maiden name; DOBs etc. (if known)

  1. Mary Allan, born 1801, Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire, England, died en route to South Australia in 1839 (details not known but possibly in South Africa, where the ship docked for some time.)
  2. Mary Elizabeth Ball, b 1823, Finsbury, England, died 25/12/1897, Murtoa, Victoria

Date(s) of Marriage(s)

  1. 6 /2/1826
  2. 18/3/1840,

Place(s) of Marriage(s)

  1. Parish church, Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire, England
  2. Trinity Church, Adelaide, South Australia

Children - names and dates of birth/death if known

1st Family

  1. Thomas Colley, baptised 9/4/1826, Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire. Died 24/6/1877, Burra Hospital, Kooringa, South Australia
  2. (Charles) Henry Colley.  Baptised 28/12/1828, Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire. Died 19/4/1843, Prospect, South Australia
  3. Elizabeth Colley, later Davis, later Kenn, baptised 23/1/1831, Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire. Died 1904, Victoria
  4. Joseph Colley, baptised 14/12/1834, Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire. Died 15/1/1845 Adelaide Hospital, South Australia
  5. Mary Colley, born November 1836, buried 20/6/1838 Ellesborough 1838.
  6. James Colley, born February 1839 Ellesborough, died at sea 29/10/1839.

2nd Family

 

  1. Eliza Louse Colley born 26/1/1841, Prospect. Died 24/2/1842, Prospect, SA
  2. Frances Emma Colley, later Gaywood then Waugh, born June 1842 in Prospect, SA. Died 26/3/1926, East Malvern
  3. William Bennett Colley born 15/6/1845, Hampstead SA. Died 29/1/1927, Ararat, Victoria
  4. Clarissa Augusta Colley Gillen born 26/10/1846 Hindmarsh, SA. Died23/7/1942 Coburg, Victoria.
  5. James Ball Colley born 7/4/1848 Prospect SA. Died 1937 Broken Hill, NSW
  6. Mary Elizabeth Colley McDonnell born 31/12/1849 Prospect SA.
  7. Anne Jane Colley Harris 19/7/1852 North Adelaide, SA. Died 1948 Stanwell, Victoria
  8. Henry William Colley 1854 Adelaide. Died 1943 Ballarat, Victoria
  9. John Smith Colley 22/6/1856 Hindmarsh, SA. Died 1947 Geelong, Victoria

 

Education

Literate

Occupation(s)

Gardener, later servant in England. Agriculturalist and labourer in South Australia, gold miner and labourer in Cathcart, Victoria.

Interests/Activities

 

Religion/Churches

 

Notes (points of interest etc.)

James Colley was born in Cottisford, Oxfordshire, in 1804 but his wife Mary Allen had been born in Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire and that is where they married and all their children were born.

 

James Colley was a servant at Chequers, now the country residence of British prime ministers, but then owned by Robert Russell Greenhill. Greenhill died in 1836 and left James Colley an annuity of £20 a year. Family legend has it that he also “inherited” a pipe and walking stick that had belonged to Oliver Cromwell. As it turns out, Greenhill was, indeed, a descendent of Oliver Cromwell.

 

In 1839 James Colley and his family sailed to a new life in South Australia but tragedy struck when both his wife and youngest child, a babe in arms, died on the voyage.

 

There is no record of Mrs Colley’s death on the voyage, or immediately after their arrival. She must have died, however, because, only three months after their arrival in Adelaide, James Colley married Mary Elizabeth Ball, the 16-year-old daughter of David Ball; the two families had met on the ship to Adelaide. They were married at Trinity Church Adelaide on 18 March 1840 by Charles Beaumont Howard, Colonial Chaplain.  The witnesses were David Ball and Eliza Jacobs.

 

James Colley and David Ball bought a block of land together in Prospect: Section 349, allotment 51. James Colley and his young wife settled on the western allotment, adjoining Prospect Road, with James’ four children. Losing no time, Mary Colley gave birth to Eliza Louise on 26 January 1841. Eliza was baptised 28 February 1841 but died a year later.

 

At the time of the 1841 census, there were 24 families living in Prospect, a total of 109 people. James Colley's household was recorded as consisting of one male - between 14 and 35 (he was in fact 37), 2 males under 14 (Thomas and Henry), and one male under 7 (Joseph).  There were also two females, one under 14 (Elizabeth), the other under 7.  The younger female was, presumably, James and Mary's first baby, Eliza Louise. Interestingly, Mary herself is not recorded as being in the Colley household on census night. Nor are her father or brothers anywhere to be found in the census returns.

 

South Australian records indicate that James’ son Henry, aged 15, died of consumption on April 19 1843.  His father, describing himself as a labourer of Prospect Village, registered the death on April 28.  Less than two years later, on 15 January 1845, James's son Joseph also died. He was only nine.

 

The blows kept coming. In 1846, James Colley’s only surviving son from his first marriage, Thomas, was twenty years old. He was charged with stealing from a young woman a purse containing six shillings, a gold pencil case and a silver fruit knife. He pleaded guilty. Two witnesses spoke for his previous character including the father of the young woman; he asked for mercy for young Thomas. To no avail, for Thomas was sentenced to five months hard labour and a further month of solitary confinement.

 

On a happier note, Mary Colley went on to have eight more children born in or near Prospect and all lived to a ripe old age.

 

In the South Australian Almanac and Directory of 1847, while David Ball is listed as resident in Prospect Village, James Colley lived in Little Adelaide. That was part of Prospect Village, but the land James Colley had bought was not in Little Adelaide. It may be that he had already sold his land to David Ball.

 

James Colley left South Australia for good in 1858. The Colley family seems not to have flourished in Prospect. James and Mary lost their first baby in the very early days. James’ two sons from his first marriage died of forms of tuberculosis, often associated with deprivation and poor living conditions; when young Joseph was treated in Adelaide hospital in 1845, he was described as destitute. By 1852, James Colley had transferred his holding to Henry William Ball.

 

If life was a struggle, it is not surprising that James Colley was tempted by the lure of gold. A Mr Colley is recorded as having sailed on the "Havilar" bound for Portland and Melbourne on 21 September 1854, possibly James Colley on his way to the goldfields. The mass exodus of South Australian men to the Victorian gold fields, leaving their families behind in South Australia, left the South Australian government exasperated.  All too often, the families became destitute and reliant on poor relief.  In desperation, the Governor of South Australia asked the authorities on the gold fields to publicise lists of families now reliant on government handouts. The Victorian Police Gazette of 31 August 1855, eleven months after "Mr Colley" set sail, showed that Mary Colley, aged 37, of Brompton, mother of eight children, arrived on the Duchess of Northumberland, was receiving relief.  Her husband had been "away about twelve months.  Sent thirteen pounds." James must have got the message and returned home, for his youngest son, John Smith, was born in June 1856.

 

Two years after James Colley returned to Prospect from the Victorian goldfields, "Mr and Mrs Colley" and their children were recorded in the South Australian Recorder as travelling steerage to Portland on board the White Swan, 330 tons, on Tuesday, March 16, 1858. 

 

By this time, Mary had 8 children of her own, most under the age of 14. They sailed for a couple of days to Portland, which was unlikely to have been a joy ride. Worse was to come, for they went the rest of the way in a bullock dray. There were no proper roads and it would have taken them weeks to get to Ararat. Gold had been found less than two years earlier, and Ararat was really just a shanty town. Most of the people there would have been men, many of them Chinese. (The first strike was by a couple of Chinese men, en route to somewhere else.)

 

 

Mary Colley’s father, David Ball, was already in the Ararat area; he had bought land at Burrandeep, Cathcart. James and Mary Colley also settled in Cathcart and, according to legend, Mary ran a little shop. James Colley lived in Cathcart for the rest of his life, dying in 1879 at the age of 75.

Local Government experience (if any)

 

Sources of information

BDM, property and shipping records, Trove.

Principal Researcher

Joan Wilcox

 

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