THE BRIENS OF SEVEN HILLS

Chapter 1.

Ann Parker in England

My Dear * * * *,

This is going to be a story all about little Ann Parker and her husband Daniel Brien.  They both came out from England as convicts, Daniel Brien in 1791 and Ann Parker in 1807, so long ago, and I hope that you will like it so well that you will read it from the beginning to the end.

What do those stars mean ?

Well, you see that they stand for the letters of your name, the name of the girl or boy who is reading this story, and you must put the letters in for yourself, because I cannot do it for you, as I do not know the names of any of the girls or boys who may be reading this story.

So, if your name is Jack, or if it is Joan, the number of stars will be all right for you, but, if your name is Joyce or Katherine or Herbert, all you have to do is add as many stars as you like.  But if your name is Joy or Jim, what you must do is take away a star, and there you are.  When you have changed the stars into letters of your name, you will see that the story is really and truly written for you, my Dear * * * *.

Suppose that I were to ask you to tell me all about your own home, you would say, "Why ? That's easy enough", and you would tell me what kind of house it was, and where it was, and. perhaps, who built it, almost without stopping to think.  And then, perhaps, you would go on to tell me all about the garden and the fruit trees, and the fowl yard and the dog kennel, and where the cats and their kittens live.  You know all about it.

And, if I were to ask you about your School, it would be just the same.  You might have everything at your finger tips, and you could tell me all about the classrooms and the playgrounds, where the boys play cricket and football, and the girls, basketball and softball.  But, if I were to ask you to tell me all you know about little Ann Parker or Daniel Brien, the man whom she married, do you really know anything ?  I am sure that most of the girls and boys, who are their grandchildren, so many generations distant, do not know anything about them at all.  They lived so long ago that nobody seems to know anything about either of them, although they are really and truly yours.

Their story is being written by me because they were my Great Great Great grandparents, and I hope to tell you here all about them so that you will be just as proud of them as I am.

It is a very sensible idea, my Dear * * * *, to begin at the beginning, and most people do that, except those who like to begin at the end of the story, and that takes away all the fun.  If you read a fairy tale, and you know how it ended, you will miss a great deal of pleasure and wonder, and when it comes to the end, when the Prince marries the beautiful Princess and they live happily ever afterwards, you would say, "Oh, I knew all that", just because you did not begin at the beginning.

So let me begin my story at the right end, which is the beginning, and not at the wrong end, which is the end.  It sounds a bit queer, but it really isn't so.  If you look at Chapter 6, you will see that it is all about a man of whom you have never heard, because you have not met him in the earlier part of my story, for he really killed our Grannie in 1865.

You are about to learn your own history.  What made Britain great ?  You teacher will be telling you all about the Romans from Italy coming over to England before the birth of Christ and their staying there as conquerors for 400 years.  Then you have the Normans from Normandy in France who landed in England in 1066 with William the Conqueror and who killed our King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.  The Vikings from Denmark and Norway were attacking the east coast.  Then the Spaniards in Spain even sent their Great Armada of 130 big ships, full of soldiers, to conquer England, and how they were driven off by Sir Francis Drake and other famous seamen in 1588, and they were forced to sail right around the British Isles, and few of them ever got back to Spain.  And there was the great sea battle at Trafalgar in 1805, where Admiral Lord Nelson and his Royal Navy defeated the combined French and Spanish Fleets.  And, finally, there was the great battle of Waterloo in Belgium in 1815 when the British Army under the Duke of Wellington, with the help of the Prussians, finally defeated the French under Napoleon.

But that is not my task.  I hope to tell you more about your own history, that of Ann Parker first, because she did not meet Daniel Brien until she came to New South Wales.

Her family came from Devon in the south-west of England.  It was always warmer there because it was in the south, and it did not have the cold and wet weather that the people suffered in the north.  It was almost like the Queensland of England, although not quite so warm, and they had snow in Devon during the winter.

It is not easy to trace people back to their ancestors in the Middle Ages for, until the Churches were ordered in 1598 by the Government to keep proper records of baptisms, marriages and burials, the records are not easy to find.  Our earliest ancestor, of whom we know, was Robert Madge, who was a landowner in the Parish of Buckland Filleigh.  He was born in 1587, and he was married in the little Church of St. Mary there in about 1609 to a lady who was born in about 1589.

The County of Devon was all divided up into Parishes, some small, some large, but none really big.  Here in Australia we have cities, towns, boroughs and shires, each with their own boundaries.  We have parishes too, but they are used only to describe how our land has been divided up by the Government.  But, in Devon, nearly every Parish had its own little Church which may have served a couple of villages.

Even as late as 1842, this Parish was only about 3037 acres in area, and it had about 275 people living there.  It even existed at the time when William the Conqueror came over to England in 1066, but it was not until about 1275, when Sir Nicholas de Filleigh obtained the manor, did it receive its place name.

The Devon Record Office holds all the records of these old Churches, and that for St. Mary's starts in 1620, although the Church had been there since about 1250.  But all that we know about our people is that the Madge family were important people there in 1587.

But you must remember that, as we go back in time, we come to an enormous number of relations.  You have two parents, four grand parents, eight great grandparents, and sixteen great great grandparents.  The number doubles with each generation, and it is quite impossible to keep trace of all of them.  And, because there are no good Church records before 1587, we have to rely on what people wrote in books or on documents, such as wills.

The Madge family even had its own Coat of Arms, bearing the motto "To Persevere".  So I had better come down quickly over five generations to John Madge, born in February, 1703, whose wife was named Elizabeth.  Their children were Robert, 1728, Ann, 1730, Hannah,1733 and Thomas, 1736, all born in a nearby Parish called Zeal Monachorum.  The Madges had been there since 1632.  Zeal Monachorum means "a cell of monks", and that Parish was there even in the time of King Canute in 1035.  The Church of St. Peter there takes us back to a big yew tree which had been there for about 1300 years, and its records start in 1594.

But I now want you to read about Ann Madge, who was born there on 21st December, 1730, for she was baptised in the font of St. Peter's in December of that year, the start of  a venture that was to lead her grand daughter to Australia.  For it was she who married John Parker at the little Church of St. Bartholomew in another small Parish called Nymet Tracey.  That Church is supposed to have been built by Sir William de Tracey as an act of penance for the murder of St. Thomas a'Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170 in the Canterbury Cathedral.  It is possible that the carved head of a Norman Knight, now to be seen above the south door of the Church, is his likeness and that it was placed outside the building because of his crime.  I hope you are not getting lost, but this is all your own history.

The Marriage Register of the Parish of Zeal Monachorum, showing the marriage of John Madge and Elizabeth Chapple on 17th November, 1695

This John Madge had been baptised on 15th February, 1703 at St. Peter's Church at Zeal Monachorum, and the record reads, "John, the son of John Madge, an alms man, was baptised the 15th day of February, 1703."  It looks as though the Madge family was on the dole at that time.

The Register of Baptisms of the Parish of Zeal Monachorum, showing the baptism of John Madge on 15th February, 1703.

The Register of Baptisms of the Parish of Zeal Monachorum, showing the baptism of Ann Madge on 21st December, 1730.

We do not know anything about the Parker family before John Parker married Ann Madge on 26th January, 1754.  

We do not have any record of his birth or baptism.  Ann would have been 24 years of age at that time.  Their children were Elizabeth, 1754, John, 1756, Ann, 1761, William, 1763, Thomas, 1768, Richard, 1770, and George, 1775.  They were all baptised at Bow, meaning that that was done at the Nymet Tracey Church.  We are interested in Ann Parker who was baptised at Bow on 10th March, 1761.

John Parker's family seems to have settled in one of the eighty houses around the little Church.  In about 1789, daughter Ann Parker, then 28 years, had a baby daughter whom she named Ann.  We found that out when we read the christenings in the Church of St. Bartholomew, where it states, in 1791 "Ann, (Base Child) of Ann Parker (Pauper)".  

This means that little Ann was about two years old, and had no father, and that her mother, who had no money or property, was receiving Poor Relief, and she may have been living in the Poor House in either Nymet Tracey or Bow village.  So what was in store for this little girl who must have looked like a little fairy ?

BOW (NYMET TRACEY) CHURCH - Bow lies midway between Okehampton and Crediton, in Devon. This church is found at Nymet Tracey which is half a mile from Bow, but the church is now the Bow Church.  A disastrous fire about 120 years ago claimed most of the Nymet Tracey houses, thus Bow became the village centre for the area.  Sir William de Tracey probably had the church built soon after 1170 as a penance for his part in the murder of St. Thomas a Becket, and the local dwellings then took his name.  In the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries the valleys of the Yeo and Creedy were renowned for their wool and serge.  This gained great wealth and gave locals an idea of the areas of the world which were the destination of their cloth.  It was in Nymet Tracey church that Ann Parker (b. 10 March 1761) was christened, and 30 years later her daughter Ann (b. 10 April 1791) was baptized in this church.  The Parish records show that the Mother was a "Parish Pauper" and her daughter was a "base child".  A rather sad beginning to an adventurous life.

Then Mother, Ann Parker, decided to marry Edward Wilcox.  He was a widower whose wife, Ann, and their baby had died ten days apart, in March 1792, and they were buried together in the graveyard of the little Church at Nymet Tracey.  Edward Wilcox had been born in about 1765 in the Parish of North Tawton.  

They married in St. Bartholomew's Church on 16th July, 1792.  Neither of them could read or write, as can be seen in the record of their marriage, where he made a capital E, and she made a poor capital A.  So little Ann was never taught by them to read or to write.  They had four more children:   William, 1793, Merriah, 1793, Grace 1794, and Grace, 1796.  So, our little Ann became a stepdaughter of Edward Wilcox, and she was known both as Ann Parker, and Ann Wilcox.  The whole village of Nymet Tracey would have known that and probably called her Ann Wilcox.

We know very little about little Ann's life.  When fully grown she was only five feet tall, with a pale, pock-marked face.  So she must have been a victim of a smallpox sickness when she was young.  This dreadful disease turned up all the time in those days, and it caused thousands of deaths.  But our Ann must have been fortunate in beating the smallpox.  It is a remarkable fact that, when she was only nine, in 1798, Dr. Edward Jenner noticed that none of the dairy maids, who had had cow pox, ever became ill with smallpox.  This clever man decided that there must have been a connection between the two diseases.  So he experimented with matter from a cow pox sore, and inoculated people with it.  And they all beat the smallpox.  Vaccination had been invented, and, from then on, it became compulsory.  You were taken to Court and fined if you missed having your baby vaccinated.  A new word had come into the English language from the Latin, in which "Vacca" means "a cow".  Did you know that ?

So, for the next two hundred years, the doctors were doing their best to beat smallpox, and every country in the world took part.  You may not believe this, but smallpox was beaten only in 1977, when the last case was found in Somalia, in Africa, in that year.  By the year 1980, the World proclaimed that there was not one germ left in the World of that dreadful disease.  I thought that  you would like to know about your Grannie who had been lucky enough to be cured nearly 200 years ago, but she would not have been found by a doctor then in that little village of Nymet Tracey.

As Grannie grew up, she would have been sent to work by her mother, maybe as a dairymaid or a housemaid in some big house.  I do not think what she would have had a trade of any kind.  Where would she go to learn ?

And then it all happened.  On 2nd May, 1806, she was down in the village of Tamerton Foliott, four miles from Plymouth.  For some reason or another, she was in the house of William Hulls.  She might have been his servant girl, or she may have been in his house without permission.  But she stole two bank notes, one for £5 and the other for £10, and she was arrested and taken before Mr. John Hawker, the Mayor of Plymouth, in the Guildhall.  In the next Chapter, I will tell you all about what happens to people who steal things in other people's houses.