The Batt family was unknown to us when we started searching and arose from our searching the Phillips family. Catherine Batt was the daughter of a Van Diemen’s Land convict Henry Batt and who became the wife of another Van Diemen’s Land convict, William Phillips, and there starts an amazing story, simply staggering in the hardship and life challenges faced by this amazing woman. Transfer to Phillips for this story.
The following Batt story is about farm labourers, convicts and gold. We are sure there is more to be told.
LABOURING ON THE LAND IN HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND, 1740.
One Robert Batt b1734 lived at Kings Somborne, Hampshire, England. Kings Somborne is about 12km West of Winchester and 20km north of Southampton. Robert was an agricultural labourer and married Mary Philips in 1760. Mary died in 1796 and Robert in 1804 at Kings Somborne. Their children were Mary, William, James, John, Christian and Sarah. All of the children were born at Kings Somborne.
Eldest son William, b1760, married in 1786, Ruth Mathew’s b 1768 and they had seven children, two girls and five boys. They were Sarah b 1790ca, William b 1794, John 1796, Mary b 1798, Thomas b 1800, James b 1805 and Henry b 1808. Now comes the interesting part of the story.
TRANSPORTATION TO HELL
Henry Batt was a ploughman working around King’s Somborne. He couldn’t read or write and in 1831 appeared before the Civil Assizes in Southampton, charged with stealing a gunlock. A gunlock or flintlock was an essential part of a firearm of the time and was needed to fire the gunpowder. As an interesting historical aside, several Batt’s from Barton Stacey and Grateley, hamlets just to the North of King Somborne, were involved in the Swing Riots of 1830. These riots were related to the difficult times being experienced by the agricultural peasants, who had lost common land during the enclosure period and were shockingly under paid by the ruling class landlords. May be Henry was also involved with his local cousins; who knows?
In the prosecution’s case it was noted that Henry had also, some year previously, been charged with poaching, only to be acquitted, through lack of evidence. On this occasion, however, Henry was found guilty of stealing the gunlock and on 26 Feb 1831 sentenced to seven years in custody and transportation to the New South Wales Colony. Henry was placed in a hulk at Devonport, Plymouth and then transported to Van Diemen’s Land, then part of the Colony but now Tasmania, on the 389 ton bark the William Glen Anderson, which departed Southampton on 31 May 1831 with 179 other convicts, all chained in the lower hold, arriving in Hobart on 1 Nov 1831. Henry was 23 years old when he arrived, described as ‘ruddy and freckled’ and 6ft in height. In 1832 Henry was work assigned, as was the practice at that time, to Captain Mathew Foster for a year and then in 1833 to the Van Dieman’s Land Company and in 1835 returned to Captain Foster. He served his time with only one incident, that of stealing a sheep and profiting from the theft, of which there was insufficient evidence and he was only warned to be on best behavior. Henry appears to have served out his sentence in work assignment to this colony farmer as an agricultural labourer. Captain Mathew Foster, incidentally, was not only a farmer but also the Chief Magistrate and Colonial Secretary & Controller General of Convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, at this time.
MARRIES IRISH AND GOES GOLD SEEKING IN VICTORIA
On completion of his 7-year sentence Henry Batt, who was a protestant, married Mary McCarthy, an Irish immigrant and domestic servant, at the Roman Catholic Church in Hobart on the 12 Aug 1838. Henry had most likely met Mary well before 1838 during his various work assignments. Mary had a child Sarah at the time of the wedding, born that year. There is no evidence relating to the father, but certainly could have been Henry. Over the next eight years the couple had eight more children and they were: Catherine b1839, Samuel Francis b1843, Mary Ann b1844, Ellen b1845, Elizabeth Ann b 1842, James b1847, Margaret b 1846 and William b1851. Mary McCarthy was born in Fermoy, Cork, Ireland in 1815. At the age of 22, Mary, a single woman, departed Cork on the ‘Bussorah Merchant’ a 3 masted sailing ship and travelled to Tasmania with many other single women, who had been promised work in the new colony.
Around 1852 Henry and family left Van Diemen’s Land and sailed for the new colony of Victoria, where gold had just been discovered. Henry would have heard about the gold strikes whilst in Hobart and like many others, thought he might try and make his fortune on the alluvial diggings. We have no idea how successful or otherwise Henry was with his fossicking, but by 1854, the family were living at Kyneton, in the centre of the gold fields district, with Henry back farming.
In this year, 1854, Henry and Mary’s daughter Catherine, who was 14 years old, had married 34 year old William Phillips, who was, like her father, an ex-convict from Van Diemen’s Land. The marriage took place at Kyneton and the marriage certificate states that the brides father Henry is a farmer at Kyneton.
William Phillips and Henry Batt arrived in the new Victorian colony at about the same time, certainly in late 1852, and both made their way to Kyneton, which was the first major coach stop on the gold fields, by 1854. Did they know each other from Van Diemen’s Land? We have no answer for that but certainly they were close by 1854 with William, who was working as an agricultural labourer, marrying Henry’s daughter and the families being in close proximity for several years after that event.
Two years later, in 1856, Henry Batt is recorded as living and farming at Spring Creek (now Hepburn Springs). Later again, at about 1860, he and Mary moved to Yandoit with son-in-law William and daughter Catherine. In fact, Henry’s wife Mary died at Yandoit that year, in 1860. It seems likely that Henry was never a land-owning farmer but probably farm managed for absent land-owners. Certainly, Henry Batt appears to have been an active citizen in Yandoit, because he signed a petition in 1862 for a local common to be provided for that community.
Henry remained at Yandoit for another 30 years, until 1890 when he became ill and was moved to the Castlemaine Hospital, where he died. It is reported on Henry’s death certificate that ‘Henry Batt, labourer of Castlemaine, died of old age at the age of 80 on 4 Aug 1890 at the Castlemaine Borough Hospital’. He is buried in the Australian General Cemetery in that town. Henry, throughout his life was a hard-working labourer on the land.
BATT SON FINDS GOLD
As a final note on our Batt family. Henry and Mary Batt’s sons Samuel and James also moved, with Henry and Mary, to the Yandoit area around 1860. They were keen prospectors because in 1874 Samuel was reported in Department of Mine records as having found a 124 oz nugget of gold at New Nuggety Creek, Yandoit, which he sold for £400. This enabled Samuel and then wife Emily to buy land and build a ‘fine’ stone house at American Gully, on the Yandoit Creek Rd, which became known as ‘The Pines’. In 1875 Samuel signed a petition, for a State School to be built at Yandoit Creek to better provide for the education of their children, which in Samuel and Emily’s case would eventually be 11. Their children were Alice, Emma, Sarah, Mary, William, Samuel, James, Catherine (died at birth), Catherine Agnes, Henry and Walter.
In 1899 the Melbourne Argus of 28th January that year reported another gold find by Samuel Batt of 168 ozs, which he sold this time for £950. Despite owning land Samuel had clearly maintained his prospecting role over a 30 year period.
PUBLICAN AND WINE SELLER
Samuel Batt was quite a rich man and at some point prior to 1913 took out a licence to run the new Bridge Hotel on the Daylesford Road, next to the Yandoit Creek crossing, owned by the Fitzgerald Brewery Co. About this time brother James moved into ‘The Pines’ and Samuel and wife moved, as proprietors, to the Bridge Hotel, Yandoit, which he ran until 1916. Interestingly Samuel runs fowl of the law a couple of times because he is selling unlabelled wine, suspected as local ‘grappa’, for which he was fined 5 shillings; but seems to have been a regular occurrence at the time with the new colony trying to set some rules. In 1916 because of a failing business attributed to the war and loss of customers Samuel relinquishes his licence but almost immediately applies for a wine bar licence, which is approved and was still running in 1918 with the help of local Italian immigrant wine growers. The road bridge now at this site (no hotel) in Yandoit is named ‘Batt’s Bridge’ after Samuel and family.
