William Free's Life in Australia.
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Life in England
The Frees came from Haslingfield in Cambridgeshire in England. Haslingfield is a small village located some 5 miles south of the university town of Cambridge. The 1851 edition of 'A History, Gazeteer and Directory of Cambridgeshire' showed that Haslingfield's population at the turn of the century was 387. This had grown to 689 by 1841 and included the farmers William Coxall and William Finkell both of whom were probably related to William Free's mother Mary Finkell. Mary was born in Haslingfield on 2 June 1805. Her parents were John Finkell and Elizabeth Harrop. Click here to see a complete listing of the known members of the Free, Finkell and other related families.
William's father, Samuel Free, was baptised in the same village on 18 July 1802. He married Mary Finkell at the All Saints Church of England in Haslingfield on 18 November 1824. The marriage was witnessed by Sarah Susannah Smith, Elizabeth Finkell (probably Mary's younger sister although it could have been her mother) and the registrar John Pearse. The couple lived at Haslingfield after their marriage and until their deaths in 1879 and 1882 respectively.
William Free was baptised at Haslingfield in Cambridgeshire on 2 March 1829. The 1841 census shows him, aged 12, living at Haslingfield with his parents and siblings: Mary (15), Elizabeth (12), John (8), Harriet (6), Sarah (3) and Ann (1).
William married Louisa Chapman, the eldest daughter of George Chapman and Rebecca Dilley, at the Haslingfield parish church on 16 November 1848. He was a bachelor shepherd aged nineteen years, she was a spinster who lived in Barrington. The marriage was witnessed by John Free and Jane Barnard where all parties signed the certificate with a cross or mark. Click here to see their marriage certificate. After their marriage the couple lived in Barrington where their first child, Rebecca Louisa Free, was born on 29 June 1849. The 1851 census showed William, aged 22, living at Barrington with Louisa (19) and Rebecca (1). The couples' second child, John, was baptised in Barrington on 13 April 1851.
William and Louisa and their two children emigrated to Australia from England on the Lady Kennaway under the British Government's assisted emigration scheme paid for from the proceeds from the sale of land in the colonies. It is likely that they were recruited by Josiah Johnson who served as both an official for the Chesterton Union and an agent for the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (CLEC). While the government paid for their passage, either the union or the parish of Haslingfield probably helped them pay their application fee, purchase the clothes and other items they were required by the CLEC to take with them, and cover the cost of travelling from Cambridgeshire to the emigrant depot and departure port of Southampton.
The Lady Kennaway sailed from Southampton on 9 May 1853 and arrived at Hobson's Bay at Port Phillip in Victoria on 15 August the same year.The family's subsequent life and times in Australia are described in Life in Australia.
William and Louisa were not the only people from their extended family in Cambridgeshire to emigrate to Australia. Click here to read details about some of the other families who went.
William Free's siblings
What of William's siblings? Samuel and Mary Free (nee Finkell) had nine children in addition to our William, all of whom were born at Haslingfield. Three of these died at relatively young ages: Mary Anne (15), an earlier William (1) and Elizabeth (14). Two of William's younger sisters, Harriet and Ann Free, married James and Daniel Coxall at Haslingfield in 1856 and 1859 repectively. Harriet and James, who was a publican and farmer, lived all their lives at Haslingfield and, like Harriet's parents, had ten children there. According to Douglas Coxall's Coxall Family History from 47 to 1992, one of these, Frederick James Coxall, 'ran away from home at the age of 14. He arrived in Islington in London where he worked [initially] as a ship fitter and later at Wenlock Brewery'. Douglas continues that 'at least two and possibly three of his descendants emigrated to New South Wales and South Australia'.
Carol Burrows tells us that another of their sons, Arthur Coxall, married Rosetta Nelson at Haslingfield at the turn of the century and had three daughters two of whom eventually lived in Cambridge. James Coxall died in Haslingfield in 1910. His wife Harriet pre-deceased him by 13 years and according to Peter Coxall appears to have died in mysterious circumstances: 'Her bonnet was found floating in the village well on 1 May 1897. James, Harriet's husband, had a violent temper and threatened to kill one of his sons [Frederick] who left Haslingfield and settled in the Hackney area of London'.
Two of William's other sisters also lived all their lives in Haslingfield. Sarah Free (1837-c1909) married Phillip Morris in Little Eversden in 1857 but continued to live in Haslingfield, having nine children there between 1858 and 1877 (the year of Phillip's death). Alice Free (1841-1925) married Thomas Oakey in Haslingfield in 1860. The censuses indicate that the couple, who had no children, may have lived for a time at Chrishall in Essex (where Thomas worked as a farm bailiff). They were back in Haslingfield by 1891 where Thomas had either purchased or was running Quarry Farm. By this time they had living with them an orphan girl, Alice Collins, who had been born in London in 1881.
William Free's brother, John Free, seems to have married twice; first to Ann Miller in Haslingfield in 1855, and following Ann's death in 1866, to a Lydia Unknown. Unlike most of his siblings, John left Haslingfield soon after his marriage and lived most of his life in St Giles in Cambridge where he worked as a publican and carter and had at least six children.
William's youngest sister, Mary Ann Free was also twice married. Her first husband was probably Josiah Claydon with whom she had three children before his death in Essex in 1871. The UK censuses show that one of their sons, William Claydon, served as a private soldier in the 3rd Dragoon Guards.
In 1874 Mary Ann re-married, to Isaac Hardman, a goods porter and caprolite miner who had been born at Barrington in Cambridgeshire. At the time of the 1881 census, Isaac and Mary Ann were living at 100 Leicester Street in Little Bolton in Lancashire. They had with them Mary's daughter by her first marriage, Alice Claydon, and three of their own children: Ann (3), Samuel (2) and Louisa (3m).
One of their descendants, Dave Hogue from Newberg in Oregon in the United States, tells us that the family emigrated to Canada in 1890 and farmed at Purple Valley in the province of Ontario. The 1901 Canadian census shows Mary and Isaac (pictured in the photo on the right) living at Albamarle in the Bruce (north) district of Ontario. Also present were two of their children: Samuel (21) and Eleanor (18).Their other daughter, Louisa Hardman, had married David Hogg (later Hogue) at Lion's Head in Ontario on 19 July 1898. By the time of the 1911 census, Mary and Isaac and their two unmarried children had moved to Toronto.
Mary Ann died at Toronto in Ontario on 25 November 1913, aged 70 years. Dave tells us her 'funeral service was at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Wiarton, Ontario and she was buried at Colpoys cemetery which is on a hill above Colpoys Bay in Ontario'.
Dave continues that his grandparents David (Dave) and Louisa Hogue nee Hardman had four children: Annette (Nettie), Mary Louisa (Louie), Leslie David, and Wilfred Earl (Tip) Hogue (Dave's father). Dave Hogue snr worked for a time with the Canadian National Railways before becoming a cement contractor. With the onset of the First World War, he joined the 49th Battalion of the Alberta Regiment on 14 January 1915 ('just ten days after the 49th began recruiting'). He died in Kent in England of stomach cancer on 6 November 1915, three days before his battalion left for France. The family now wonder whether he knew he was dying and had joined up to ensure his wife would receive a service pension.
Louisa's sisters, Ann and Eleanor (Nellie) Hardman, married respectively Samuel Barnard Spragge and Valentine Albright. Val also joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force, lying about his age in order to get in. After the war, Dave continues, 'uncle Val relocated to Vancouver, Washington and worked at the Swift plant in North Portland, Oregon. One of the ironies of life is that my maternal grandfather transferred to the Swift plant in 1909 and worked there until he went to work for the shipyard in 1942...I doubt he met uncle Val. I met him and aunt Nelly in the late 40's, when they came to visit aunt Louie. He had been long retired and they lived in Ocean Park, Washington where he died in 1952. Aunt Nellie died there in 1949'.
After the war Louisa Hogue nee Hardman sold her Canadian holdings and moved, with her four children, to Portland in the United States so that she could be near her beloved sister Nellie. She died there in 1932. Her grandson recalls with affection: 'If you look at a picture of my grandmother Louisa you think she is real dignified, while she was really down to earth. There were water fights that were usually started by her. The water fights involved all her children and there were no holds barred. [My father] Tip loved them'.
Image sources:
Haslingfield parish church and gravestone both from private collection. Note that the gravestone is of John Free (1831-1875), the youngest son of Samuel's brother William Free (1788-1855) and his wife Elizabeth Higler (1790-1854), and John's seventeen year-old niece Harriet Elizabeth Free, the daughter of William and Elizabeth's youngest daughter Ann Free.
Isaac and Mary Ann Hardman nee Claydon nee Free, courtesy of Dave Hogue.
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