Posts with the name Trezise in them are by far and away the most read on this blog, meaning I know there are a lot of Trezises and their descendants out there! So, what’s the truth in the story about the Trezise brothers coming to Australia?
In short, I can’t find any who accompanied John B to India, let alone travelled on to Australia directly alongside him, however, of Christiana and William Trezise’s 10 children, two died in childhood and four of the eight others went to Australia plus one to Wales. Of the four who went to Australia, two had previously been to the US:
- James arrived in Vic in 1858
- Joseph arrived in Vic 1865 (previously in USA)
- Henry (NZ via Victoria, and previously in USA) 1865
- John B arrived Vic 1868
- Christiana to Wales after 1865 before 1871
I can’t find evidence that any of the other three who came to Australia were ever in India with John. The two who travelled to Australia together are Joseph and Henry, who had previously been living in America. I also wonder if I were to look at what occurred once they all got to Australia, whether John B wasn’t the only one to move to Tasmania for a time, so perhaps the “two brothers” story picks up on that time – but that’s most definitely for another day!
Even accounting for the children of the 3 who settled in Victoria, there are more Trezises in Australia than just the descendants of William and Christiana. I mean, if your ancestor is a Trezise from St Just, there must be a family connection, but it’s not as immediate as simply a bunch of brothers travelled over here. Even within this family group there were inlaws – Henry’s wife, Johanna Oat’s sister Jane and husband also travelled to Australia, arriving 18 July 1853, before any of the Trezises had left home! (Johanna and Jane’s mother was a Tonkin, a name that also appears in regards to Trezises in Victoria). At least one of Elizabeth and Henry Guy’s children also went to Victoria in the 1860s – it’s a bit never ending once I start recognising names…
While we might say that what unites all the Australian Trezises is mining, here’s a great round-up of the Trezises who owned Australian pubs or hotels. https://meandmybigmouth.com.au/trezise-hotel/
Children of Christiana and William Trezise
WILLIAM c1818 – death c1819
Shows on some ancestry trees. I haven’t researched him.
ELIZABETH c1820
Married Henry Guy in 1839 and stayed in the St Just area. She’s certainly in the 1851 census but can’t be easily found in the 1861. I’m not 100% that she’s the one who died in 1858, but it’s pretty common on ancestry to have that date – an Elizabeth Guy did die in Cornwall in October that year.
Her son William Trezise Guy ends up with a hotel in Victoria.
Info on her here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~family_history7/trezise/trezisefamily.html
WILLIAM c1822
By the 1861 census William is married to Mary Oats and living in St Just with their 3 children, plus Mary’s brother and SIL (or perhaps two of her siblings?) John and Grace Oats (listed as visitors). While being an Oats, Mary isn’t a sister of Johanna who married her brother Henry Trezise.
William and Mary are still here in 1871 (including John Oats still being with them), so he’s unlikely to have gone to Australia in his 60s? Everyone else on ancestry has him dying on 26/12/1887, which does link to a record for a death of William Trezise born c1821, but, well that was a pretty common name in that part of the world at that time!
CHARLOTTE 1824
Charlotte married Thomas Penaluna. I’m assuming this is her, as her kids’ names are the standard ones for the family, and her younger brother James seems to live with them during the 1851 census.
By 1861 Thomas is not there (perhaps died in 1857). Charlotte seems to be listed as married, but she’s working! Country House woman, whatever that is – Google is no help.
She’s in the 1871 census in Cornwall, with her and her 19 year old miner son William Trezise Penaluna listed as boarders with Ann Johns. Still listed as married (as opposed to Ann who’s listed as “w” which I assume is widowed). Still working.
No one seems to have any info on what happened to her after that. She’s NOT the Charlotte Trezise born St Just c1828 who went to Victoria, stayed with a relative and married a Tonkin – she shows up on the 1841 English census as a separate girl, plus that marriage was 1855.
A Charlotte Penaluna died in Manchester in 1889..?
JOSEPH 1826
1851, Joseph was a tin miner living at home, then ancestry seems to suggest he’s married to Ann Eddy the same year. They cut it fine, with the marriage being 21 June 1851 and their daughter Catherine Ann being christened in May the following year.
They then disappear from the record.
Joseph dies in Victoria in 1896. The death checks out with the correct parents and birth year so I’m happy the he went to Australia.
There’s a passenger record that puts him, Ann, three children and his brother Henry entering Victoria from the UK in 1865. I thought for a long time that this might be a different brother (hand writing always makes it hard), as if he’s 34 in 1865 then he was born c1831 rather than c1826. How accurate are these records? The 1851 census was just prior to their marriage, with each of them at home in St Just with their parents, so no way of checking if the children in the shipping record make it more likely that this is the right person. However, an obit of their daughter Catherine puts her as having come to Aust with her parents as a twelve year old, which matches.
What happened in the “gap” in the record between 1851 and 1865? Is there a chance that Joseph was the brother who went to India with John – if there was one.
There’s nothing in the Indian records.
I couldn’t find any of them in the 1861 UK or Wales census – and I even checked Ann’s parents, who, while living in a three-generation household, don’t have Ann or any of her children with them. If they were in the UK in 1861, then they’re totally separated to the point that they have disappeared into other people’s households.
I had the children’s approximate birth dates from the shipping record (depending on how trustworthy that is). I couldn’t find births of their other two children (Elizabeth c1859 and Joseph c1863) in the UK or Wales or Australia…
I looked on the Victorian BDM info for Elizabeth and Joseph, and their place of birth was not listed on their death certificates.
Not sure I ever spent so long investigating people I’m so tangently related to, however, it seems by consensus rather than evidence, that Elizabeth Eddy Trezise and her brother Joseph Henry Trezise were born in the USA. This makes sense in that they travelled to Australia with their uncle who I knew also had been in the USA.
Looking backwards, there’s another shipping record entry into Vic for a Jos Trezise 12 years earlier, which gives a better estimate of correct birth – did he perhaps come out during the gold rush and then go home?
JAMES c1827
Married Sarah Rebecca Penwarden, in April 1858. They sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne aboard “Morning Star,” in July 1858, with one male infant. The child is sort of squeezed in below them on the register, which is a bit strange, but the Victorian BDM register of events at sea doesn’t have a birth on that ship, and they either didn’t keep records at the English end in that era, or they’re not online.
Their first two Australian born children were recorded as being born in 1860 when the births of their Ellen and James were recorded (in “Cres,” although James’ siblings were all in Myrtleford by this time).
James died 10 April 1890 in Barwidgee Creek (Myrtleford), Victoria.
https://www.bradyfamilytree.org/genealogy/familychart.php?personID=I93985&tree=BRADY2008
https://www.bradyfamilytree.org/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I72088&tree=BRADY2008
HENRY c1831
His wife was Joanna Oats from St Just.
He and Joanna were in the US at least between 1858 and 1865 (births of their children in Ohio) but may have arrived earlier. The family returned to the UK (likely in 1865 if they have a US born child from the same year), and in 1865 Henry sailed with Joseph and Joseph’s family to Australia. While Joanna isn’t on the ship to Australia, Henry is listed as married – like his brother, he’s listed with the wrong age. Was there a reason to give a younger age? They were paying their way, not assisted migrants.
(A crazy time to be in the US: their Civil War was 1861-65.)
Henry returned to the UK again sometime after the 1871 UK census, and sailed from the UK to NZ with his wife and children in 1874. Most of the family then remained in NZ, other than his daughter, Elizabeth Jane who was in Zeehan in 1903.
A biography of the family here: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=476763.0
CHRISTIANA c1833
Christiana married Joseph Allen in 1835. He was Cornish, but wasn’t from St Just, however the couple lived there in 1861. I’m confident that this is the correct Christiana, as again the children’s names are the family names – Margaret, Joseph and William. Interestingly, her husband isn’t a miner, but a “sawyer of timber.” Probably cutting timbers for the mines, but still. (More interestingly, a William Trezise Allen had twins in Beaconsfield, Tasmania in 1890 – I cannot however prove it’s the same William).
By 1871 they were in Lower Merthyr Tydfil in Wales – another mining area – however all the children who lived with them had been born in St just, so they’d arrived there after 1865. At this time their youngest son was an 11 year old coal miner! Life can’t have been good. In the same street there was another 11 year old boy, who was at school.
The family are in the same area in 1881 (but the page hadn’t been linked properly?).
It’s likely that Christiana died in 1890, in Merthyr Tydfil.
JANE c1835
Jane appears on some ancestry trees, but she must have died prior to the 1841 census. One tree has her birth 29 Nov 1835, St Just in Penwith, Cornwall and her death just 1 month later in Jan 1836, St Just in Penwith, Cornwall. Three is a baptism record that matches with her birth. Her death would have left John Bottrell as very much the baby of the family, with five years between him and Christiana Jnr.
JOHN BOTTRELL c1838 (my g g g grandfather)
John B was in India by 1862 (prior to the UK 1861 census), when he married Eliza Brunsden. He and Eliza arrived in Victoria in 1868 with one male infant under the age of 1, onboard the Avoca from Point Galle (Sri Lanka). The local papers were more excited by the ship brining English news, than the passengers and didn’t have much to say about who was on the ship or why.
By my reckoning, there should have been four children with them: John, Emma/Emily, Charlotte and Joseph. Victorian BDM shows Charlotte, aged 2 (2 years and 2 months according to her father), dying in Victoria in 1868 (and notes she was born in India), Emily dying in 1872 age 8 (ie born c1864 which matches Indian records, although the Victorian record says born in Vic, so a transcribing error and it’s a 3 not an 8 or it’s months..?). Perhaps John jnr and the 1872 Emma/Emily had died in India? Even if John jnr was dead, and Joseph Henry has been fast with the truth about his birth, then there’s still Charlotte being noted as a male on the passenger list. There is no record of a birth on the ship.
How trustworthy are the Indian records when it comes to keeping track of the families of soldiers? Were deaths recorded? Have records been lost, or the transcriptions incomplete?
Did the older children go to the UK as per all children’s books of the era, and then join John and Eliza later? Would still need 2 infants to travel? Charlotte must have died soon after arrival, and if Joseph was only tiny he would have been with Eliza. Could the 1 be a 2?
So, I should be looking for John, Emily and Charlotte travelling from UK to Vic at a similar time (or Charlotte alone)? In 1868 they’d have been 5, 4 and 2 but I can’t find any records of other Tresize or Trezise children entering the country, however there are only really good records for Victorian ports.
I mean, the big unanswered issue here, is that the only reasons we know that Joseph Henry was born in India and that he was even the son of John and Eliza, is because he apparently said so. No records link them together? Full record of his marriage might?
Ps another thing I learnt while looking into this, is that it’s possible the William Trezise’s mother was a Noy, like his own wife, which would be why sometimes they appear as William Noy Trezise and Christiana Noy Trezise – nothing to do with him being all modern and taking his wife’s name 😉
UPDATE: I just came across this article about a post-1857 Solider Settler Scheme for officers from the Anglo-Indian army in Tasmania. I’m pretty sure the Trezises weren’t officers, and I can’t find any North West Coast connection for them, but possibly they came to know Tasmania as a place that officers emigrated to, and that could have influenced their own emigration decisions. This article suggests that Tasmania had been seen as a destinations for retiring Anglo-Indians for generations.
The First Ball I Took Your Mother To 