Across The Sea To Australia- Part One - James

Across the sea to Australia: Part One I would imagine that most families in the UK have ancestors who decided to move overseas, be it to the USA, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa or Australia. In my family there have been two notable ancestors who took the plunge and emigrated to Australia. This is the story of the first...

James A Willis [1864-1931?] When my father first began to trace our family history in June 1978 he began by compiling a questionnaire to give to his father. This produced some good information, but when asked about his own father (my great grandfather) my dad's notes read that: "he had two brothers, James (the youngest) and George. The birthdate of James is unknown, but my father wrote that he went to Australia when he was about 20 years old "...and was never heard of after that"!

At the time of my dad's research in the late 1970s this was pretty much a brick wall. But since the advent of the Internet it has been much easier to investigate ancestors who went to live overseas. Since contacting other relations in Australia I have been able to make use of the resources available at the Australian end to look into what happened to James Willis. A friend of the Harveys - Carol Hess - has been undertaking some research on my behalf. However, before she began I updated her on the information I had managed to obtain so far: 1. I knew that James was born in Dover, Kent sometime between 1862 and 1875 (he was the youngest and therefore born after Alfred Thomas, who was known to have been born in May 1864; his father George died in 1875). A search through the Birth Registrations for Dover for the periodproduced just one result: a 'James C Willis' whose birth was registered in the third quarter of 1866. 2. In the 1871 Census James is 7 years old and living with his family at St Radigund's Road, Dover. The 1881 Census has a James Willis boarding at Coombe Farm, Buckland, Hougham, Dover where he is an Agricultural Labourer. His given age is 17, again indicating 1864 as a year of birth. He does not appear in any of the subsequent Censuses. Not all that much to go on, I realise. But I gave Carol in Australia this information, plus the names of James' parents and awaited anything she would come back with. After a few weeks the current situation is this: Carol found some spare time and had a good look through the UK Censuses and BMDs for the family and noted in the 1851 Census that they were named WILLIS (indexed as WILIKS). She then searched the BMDs for both variations and believes she has found all ten children of George and Mary Ann Willis (James' parents). It appears that the male children were all given a second name. She believes that the James I am searching for was James Augustus WILLISS registered in Dover in March 1865. [I had missed this entry in the BMDs as I had been looking for only the correct spelling of our surname.] This discovery sent Carol back to the Immigration List for Queensland to have a second look at a James A Willis who arrived there in 1886 on board the Jumna, an entry she had earlier discounted

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because of the second name. He is the only James Willis of suitable age in any of the Immigration Indexes for the states of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

HMS Jumna, c1885

The next step took Carol to the library to check the microfiche for the relevant voyage of the Jumna and discovered a James A Willis who was aged 22 in 1886 (and therefore giving a birth year of 1864). His occupation was 'ploughman' and the Country of origin was Kent, England. He was an 'indentured labourer' who disembarked in Mackay in Northern Queensland. [An indentured laborer was under contract of the employer for some period of time, usually four to seven years, in exchange for such things as ship's passage, food, land and accommodations.] Carol then checked the Queensland Marriage Index and found only 1 James Willis in a suitable time frame. He was married on 27 August 1887 to Mary Ellen WALTERS. Carol says that from here the trail becomes 'somewhat murkey' [her phrase!]. James and Mary had one child - Alvera Rachel Sophia, born 5 October 1889. But Mary then went on to have four other children with a George Jackson. All five children were registered with the Willis surname, and cross-referenced with Walters and Jackson. These latter four children took the name of Jackson, with only Alvera keeping the name of Willis. Alvera was married on 11 April 1909 to Samuel John Smith. What happened to James after that is not certain. Carol tells me there are several electoral roll entries for a James Willis, a miner, in North Queensland towns. There are several James Willis deaths recorded, but none George as the father's name, and only one with unknown parents. That James Willis died 8 February 1931. He was a miner and, according to the electoral rolls, lived alone for many years. Carol wraps it up by saying: "I really do think this could be your man. He disembarked in Mackay and after an apparent broken marriage stayed in the north for many years". I shall be pursuing some of these leads - the first being to obtain a copy of the marrige certificate for James Willis and Mary Ellen Walters. The search continues!

© Paul Willis, TheWillisTree.me.uk This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

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