| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Susannah Lucas

Page history last edited by Elaine Phillips 3 years, 3 months ago

 

Daughter of Richard Lucas.

 

Susannah Lucas was born around 1796-97[1] at Tenbury in Worcestershire. Her father was Richard Lucas[2], a labourer  (although on her death certificate her father’s occupation was given as farmer).

 

1818

Susannah Lucas (a spinster) married James Phillips (a bachelor) at Crayford[3] on 1st August 1818. The register shows that neither party required the consent of parents to marry, which indicates they were both over the age of 21 at the time[4].

 

1841

James (40) & Susannah (45) are shown living with their family in an area of Dartford referred to as ‘The Banks’ by the census enumerator[5].

James is listed as a labourer (later records give more detail about his profession, recording this variously as ‘Trimmer at Iron Foundry’[6],  ‘Moulder’[7] and either Watchman or Matchman depending on your reading of a later marriage certificate[8]). All the family are born in Kent with the exception of Susannah, who is listed as being born outside the county. It appears that one other person lived in the same house, a 60 year old woman, Johanna Webb, who was born in Kent[9].

 

1845

Susannah Phillips became a widow when her husband, James Phillips, died in 1845[10].

 

1848

Susannah Phillips married Thomas Tebay, a smith, at Plumstead on July 23rd 1848[11]. Both parties were shown as resident at Plumstead at the time of the marriage. Thomas’s father, William Tebay, was a wheelwright.

 

1851

After re-marrying Susannah (45) can be seen living at West Hill, Dartford with her husband Thomas Tebay (25), a blacksmith who was born at Wateringbury, Kent. Two of her children, Charles and John Phillips are living with her.

 

1859

Thomas and Susannah Tebay emigrated to New South Wales (Australia) on the Dirigo under the assisted immigration scheme[12]. The Dirigo sailed from Liverpool on 20th December 1859. Also on board were John Phillips and his wife (Susannah’s son and daughter-in-law). The Dirigo arrived in Sydney on 13th April 1860. Further details can be found in the article Emigration to Australia.

 

1865

There is an advertisement in the Yass Courier dated 24th June 1865. The notice is as follows:

CARRIERS HOME INN

GAP ROAD

Thomas Tibey (Tebay) late of Picton, begs to acquaint the public and carriers that he has opened the above house with a large stock of the best Wines, Spirits, etc. He has also opened a Blacksmith’s and Wheelwright’s establishment, and is prepared to execute every description of work with despatch, and on most moderate terms.

CARRIERS HOME INN

JUNE 23RD 1865

It seems that Thomas Tebay and/or Susannah never owned the property – it was probably owned by a "Mr Grovenor" who seems to have let it on a lease for £60 p.a. to a Mr Thomas Hillier. The most likely scenario is that Thomas was the licensee and probably employed by Thomas Hillier. In 1867, after Susannah’s death, the licence for the "Carriers Arms" was transferred from Thomas Tebay to Henry Wilson.

 

A description of "Carriers Home Inn" or "Carriers Arms", which is almost certainly the one we are interested in, is as follows[13]:

"contains 1 parlour, 1 bar, taproom, 5 bedrooms, a kitchen with 2 apartments, 6 stall stables with lofts, and shed at the back. The Inn was on 28 acres and 24 perches" (1 acre is 160 perches).

 

As an aside, here is some background information about Mantons Creek:

 

Mr Frederick Manton Esq. (1799–1863) was among the earliest pastoralists on the Yass Plains. Several thousand acres of his grant surrounded the stretch of the Old Hume Highway now called Yass Valley Way. Manton called his station ‘Mon Réduit’ (French for ‘my hideout’ or ‘my cubbyhouse’), perhaps recalling a town in Mauritius. He departed the district in 1839 for Melbourne, where among other enterprises he erected the first flour mill. The State of Victoria claims Manton as a pioneer; before a border was drawn at the Murray River, Manton and others looked to Melbourne as their metropolis. 

He left a manager to run his farm, half a dozen sons, and his liberally bestowed name. Not only is the Parish named the Parish of Manton, but the ridge cleft by the Hume Highway is Mantons Ridge, the peak to the south-west with telecommunications towers atop is Mount Manton, and to the east is Mantons Road. Manton Public School, which stood there, closed in 1947 and the classroom became shearers’ quarters: this is sheep country. 

This is also bushranger country. Travellers were regularly ‘bailed up’ near Mantons Creek: a neat irony, since Joseph Manton, gunsmith of London Town, was the father of Frederick Manton Esq., pastoralist of Yass Plains, and Ben Hall’s Gang wielded stolen ‘Joe Mantons’ whenever possible. In the late 1870s, when the railway was extended from Gunning to Yass, a tent city of workers sprang up at Mantons Creek. The locality became notorious for sly-grogging, prostitution, and highway robberies. Many local bad characters congregated there, complained the police, though the navvies were ‘a decent body of men' In 1900, the Federal City League inspected the Yass District, and Manton almost became a suburb of the Australian capital. The Manton locality was bypassed by the Hume Highway in 1994, and the Yass Valley Way is now a tranquil, though not unused, rural road. About half-way along it the Manton Park Estate, which offers modest house blocks for sale, seems set to become a dormitory suburb for the increasing number of commuters between Yass and the national capital. 

[14]

 

It is suggested[15] that Susannah (nee Lucas) may be related to the Lucas family, descended from a "first fleeter" named Nathaniel Lucas of London transported for 7 years, that settled in Yass some years earlier.  The argument for it is that she may have been attracted to the area because she had the social support of relatives.  This needs to be researched.

 

1866

Susannah Tebay died on October 1st 1866 at Carrier’s Home, Manton’s Creek, Yass[16], New South Wales (Australia) from pneumonia of the right lung[17]. Susannah was buried on 3rd October 1866 at the Church of England Burial Ground in Yass.  See photos of Yass below:

 

 

1. St Clement's Yass & what is left of the Church of England Burial Ground of the time of Susannah's death.

 

 

2. Only a few gravestones have survived the "clean-up" that occurred about 40 years ago.

 

 

3. This is the site of the Carriers Home, Manton Creek.  It is said there are a few ruins under the bushes.

 

After Susannah’s death Thomas appears to have re-married in 1867 and had several children[18]

 

Children:

 

 

Footnotes

  1. Susannah is shown as 45 in both the 1841 and 1851 census, giving an approximate range of 1796-1806 for her year of birth. As we know that Susannah would have been 21 or over in 1818 (in order to marry without parental consent) this gives us a date range of 1796-1797 for her year of birth.
  2. Susannah's father is named on the marriage certificate for her second marriage in 1848
  3. Source: Marriage Certificate. Both parties were shown as being 'of this parish' on the entry in the parish registers.
  4. From the introduction of Hardwicke's Marriage Act in 1753 until 1823 anyone under age the age of twenty-one had to obtain the consent of their parents to marry. The Parish Registers of Crayford show where marriages required consent, but this marriage did not.
  5. A couple of doors away, there is a labourer called Simon Phillips (20) who is shown living amongst another household. Simeon was baptised in Dartford on 9th October 1815, the son of Richard and Ann Phillips - a line that originates from Sutton at Hone. He was buried on October 16th 1843. There is no evidence that he is an immediate relation.
  6. This occupation is recorded on the marriage certificate of his son, James Phillips, in July 1881.
  7. This occupation is recorded on the marriage certificate of his son, John Phillips, in December 1859.
  8. This occupation is recorded on the marriage certificate of his son, Charles Phillips in July 1853. Although we have looked at both the entry in the GRO records and the original Parish Register entry we have been unable to read this occupation clearly enough to make a definite reading.
  9. The 1841 census uses marks to indicate inhabited houses and this shows that Johanna Webb was living in the same 'inhabited house' as the Phillips family. Hannah Webb of West Hill appears as the informant for the birth of John Phillips on 22nd August 1840 (when the birth was registered on 29th August 1840) and as a witness to the marriage of Susannah Phillips and Thomas Tebay at Plumstead on July 23rd 1848. The appearance of Hannah in relation to the family in 1840, 1841 and 1848 at different locations (Dartford and Plumstead) suggests that she is a close family friend or a relation. It is possible that Hannah (born around 1781) could be the sister of James Phillips (1789-1845). James and Susannah Phillips named their first child Hannah in 1821, which gives further weight to the theory that Hannah Webb is James' sister. However, it now seems likely that Johanna is Joanna Spradbrow baptised in 1781, Sturry, Kent, who married Richard Webb in Sturry in 1799, and had a child David Thomas Webb baptised in Plumstead in 1814 (Source IGI).
  10. Source: Burial Register, Dartford.
  11. Source: Marriage Certificate. The witnesses were Hannah Webb and George Manning.
  12. Source: Persons on bounty ships (Agent's Immigration Lists) - NSW Archives Series 5316, Microfilm Copy SR Reel No. 2139. Susannah's age is given as 50 and Thomas' age as 36. Although Susannah's age is much younger than our Susannah would have been, the age given is reasonably consistent with the age supplied at their marriage and in the 1851 census.
  13. Information obtained from the Yass & District Historical Society 3 March 2009
  14. From “The Old Hume Highway - History begins with a road” published by NSW Roads and Maritime Service, 2013
  15. Yass & District Historical Society
  16. Yass is a rural town with a population today of 5500 surrounded by sheep grazing country. It is located on the Yass River, a tributary of the Murrumbidgee. Yass is 282km south-west of Sydney and 62km north of Canberra. The town developed from a settlement on the south bank in 1830 and became an important stopping place on the road from Sydney to Melbourne. In 1848 the township had 274 inhabitants. The area was troubled by a bushranging gang which harried travellers and mail coaches in the district in 1863-64 (the railway didn't arrive until 1876). Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/New-South-Wales/Yass/2005/02/17/1108500200174.html
  17. Source: NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages - Historical Index, Registration Number 1866/007352. The certificate records that Susanna Tebay (64) suffered from her last illness for 14 days and that the medical attendant had last seen her on 25th September 1866. Susanna's father was named as Richard Lucas, a farmer but the mother's name was stated as being unknown. The informant was Thomas Tebay, the husband of the deceased, of Manton's Creek (the certificate also stated that they had married at Plumstead, Kent, England in July 1848). The death was registered in Yass on 3rd October 1866. The death certificate stated that Susanna was born in Worcestershire, England and had been in the colonies for 6 years (New South Wales). At the time of her death there were four children from her marriage still alive (this must actually have been her marriage to James Phillips, not Thomas Tebay) - 3 males and 1 female. We assume this to be James, Thomas, John and Eliza.
  18. Thomas Tebay married Eliza Puckett at Yass in 1867 (Registration Number 3343/1867). This certificate has not been ordered and our assumptions are based on the information provided from the index.

Comments (1)

Elaine Phillips said

at 2:22 am on Jan 16, 2012

With regards to the loss of gravestones at the Anglican Church in Yass, a member of the Yass community told me that most of the gravestones still exist - as the surrounds to a Yass Council employee's swimming pool! They were laid face down, so there is a faint hope that some day, some of the stones could be retrieved.

You don't have permission to comment on this page.