Orphan Number: | 3163 |
---|
Orphan: | Sarah LAWSON |
---|---|
Mother: | LAWSON, Ann |
Father: | , |
Mother's ship: | |
Father's ship: | |
Age when admitted: | 3yrs |
Date admitted: | 7 Feb 1829 |
Date discharged: | 22 Aug 1841 |
Institution(s): | Queens Orphan School |
Discharged to: | R Patterson |
Remarks: | mother a convict, assigned servant in Macquarie St - father in Scotland (Could this be Euphemia Lawson?) |
References: | SWD24p123, 28, CSO5/86/1885 |
Sarah is my great great grandmother. She is the daughter of Hugh McMillan and Euphemia Lawson. The admission register incorrectly records her mother's name as Ann.
Euphemia Lawson was born on 26 Jul 1802 to William Lawson and Jean Campbell in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1821 she married Hugh McMillan, a house painter born at Paisley, Renfrewshire about 1800. Known to Edinburgh authorities as honest and decent, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to death at the Edinburgh Court of Justiciary on 17 December 1827 for throwing sulphuric acid over a neighbour named Archibald Campbell. Euphemia was married and living with her husband when taken but he was found not guilty of the same crime. She had two children who came out with her. She was convicted in, and continued to use, her maiden name which was common practice in Scotland at that time.
The two children, William and Sarah, accompanied Euphemia when she was transported for life to Van Diemen’s Land on the Borneo which arrived at Hobart Town on 8 October 1828 and they were both admitted, but separately, to the Orphan School at New Town a few months after arrival. Euphemia's conduct record paints a picture of a sad and violent life with many reports of drunkenness. Nearly twenty years after she arrived in Hobart Town she received an additional life sentence for 'feloniously stabbing Mary Worster with intent'. She was still a convict when she died a pauper at the New Town Charitable Institution on 9 Sep 1878, aged in her 70s, and more than 50 years after she was originally convicted.
More details about Sarah's life and offspring will be added in due course.
See also her brother William, orphan no 3164 and her half sister 3157/2227