|
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) |
|
|
Date(s)
of Marriage(s) |
|
|
Place(s)
of Marriage(s) |
|
|
Children
- names and dates of birth/death if known |
1st
Family
2nd
Family
|
|
Education
|
Literate |
|
Occupation(s) |
Gardener,
later servant in England. Agriculturalist and labourer in South Australia,
gold miner and labourer in Cathcart, Victoria. |
|
Interests/Activities |
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|
Religion/Churches
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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) |
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|
Sources
of information |
BDM,
property and shipping records, Trove. |
|
Principal
Researcher |
Joan
Wilcox |
|