Mary A HATTAM
| First name | Mary A |
|---|---|
| Last name | HATTAM |
| Country of Origin | Cornwall, England |
| Date of Birth | 1823 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1854 |
| Submitted by | Marlene AUSTIN |
Story
Thomas Hattam, bapt. 19/11/1797 Kenwyn Cornwall was the firstborn child of parents John Hattam b. c1781 and Rebecca nee Mitchell bapt. 21/3/1773 Budock, later from the Chacewater area. Rebecca’s parents were William Mitchell c1724-1798 d. Falmouth, m. 1753 St. Gluvias, Cornwall, Charity George 1725-1819 d. Constantine. Thomas and his two sons were blacksmiths, as was Thomas’ father John. Thomas and Jane Harpur (bapt. 12/2/1794 to parents Stephen Harpur and Jane Rabey at Kenwyn) married 18/4/1822 also at Kenwyn and their children were –
Mary Ann Hattam 1823-1898 who emigrated to Australia and in1855 married William Sampson.
Elijah Stephen Hattam 1825- who married in 1848 Jane Harper, but he seems to have died about 1850, as his widow remarried in 1854 and she emigrated to Australia.
Agnes Harpur Hattam 1827-1905 married in Chacewater 10/8/1848 to John Tonkin, an engineer, b. 29/8/1821, and they and 2 of their children emigrated to South Australia where they had another 9 children, Agnes dying in 1905 aged 78.
Jane b.1831?
Thomas Mitchell Hattam 1835-1934 emigrated to South Australia and married Elizabeth Jane Henwood in 1858 at Kooringa near Burra, and they had 8 or 9 children. He had a big white beard, and was 99 years old when he died.
Rebecca Hattam 1838- emigrated to South Australia with her brother Tom and their parents, and married John Williams in 1859 when she was 21, lived at Moonta Mines, but had no children.
So Thomas and Jane Hattam had at least 5 children, 24 grandchildren and 54 great-grandchildren. They lived at Kadina in the copper triangle of South Australia.
Conditions had been tough in Cornwall, with mines closing down and no alternative employment, and the failure of the potato crop in the 1840s still a bad memory. The British Govt. encouraged emigration to the colonies by an assisted passage scheme, to ease the burden of overcrowding at home and the shortage of workers overseas. The voyage out was probably not much fun on any ship, once they got used to shipboard life then the calm of the tropics and the mountainous seas of the roaring forties. There was no escape from death and disease. The voyage weeded out the weak, the unfit and the unlucky. It would have been tedious with everyone tired of each other’s company, tired of the ship, tired of the voyage. Tempers flared, fights erupted, ethnic tensions surfaced when they found themselves (often for the first time) among people from other parts of the UK who spoke differently and followed different religions.
The first to emigrate to South Australia had been Mary Hattam and her younger married sister Agnes and family, arriving on 4/1/1854 on the DAVID MALCOLM. Agnes was 6 mo. pregnant on arrival, so Mary would have been of great assistance to her on the long voyage of over 3 months. They were in Burra by April 1854 when Agnes’ third son was born. After Cornwall’s greenness they would have found Australia’s vast distances, heat, glare and flies very wearying at the end of summer.
Agnes’ husband John Tonkin undoubtedly appreciated the job opportunities in the newly discovered rich mining areas of South Australia, and Agnes and her sister Mary must have sent back glowing reports of life there, because the girls’ parents Thomas Hattam, miner, and Jane and their remaining adult children Thomas (20 single miner) and Rebecca (17 servant) also emigrated, arriving on the AGINCOURT on 4/12/1855.
Mary in the meantime had married William Sampson on 7/7/1855 at Kooringa (Burra) and her first child was born on 21/9/1855 shortly before her parents arrived. They eventually had 4 sons (1 died young) and 1 daughter.
Mary’s parents Thomas and Jane Hattam died in the area of the Wallaroo/Moonta copper field, Thomas on 24/6/1869 aged 71 at Kadina, and Jane, 76, less than 12 months later on 25/5/1870 at Moonta Mines.
Their son-in-law William Sampson died 10/4/1876 at Kadina aged 56, and Mary lived for several years next door to her daughter Jane Trenberth at Kapunda (where Jane had been born 37 years before) until one stormy night in 1898 when Mary was sitting warming herself by her fire, the wind blew the flames onto her long dress and she was severely burnt, dying the next morning aged 75.