Amelia Day b1875 was Rhonnies patrilineal great grandmother and the daughter of John Day and Hannah Chellew of Beaufort, Victoria. John Day had been born in Hitchen, Hertfordshire, England in 1847 and arrived in the Victorian Colony in 1852 with his father Thomas, step-mother Maria, and his siblings William b1840 and Timothy b1845. We will start this family history with father Thomas.
Thomas Day, was born in Hitchen, Hertfordshire, England in 1810, the son of Ann Day b1777, who in 1841 was a widow. Thomas had at least three siblings that we are aware of and they were John b1814, Elizabeth b1816 and Ann 1819.
Thomas was an agricultural labourer, from his early years and married at 19 years, at Hitchin, in 1829, to Elizabeth Muncey, also from that town. Their country life continued at Hitchin, with children being born at regular intervals.
On census night 1841 Thomas and Elizabeth were living at Back Street, Hitchin, with their children Lydia b1831, Jane b1833, Elizabeth b1836, and William b1840. They had another child Esther b1838, but she had died the following year, in 1839. Over the next six years to 1847 the couple had three more children and they were Benjamin b1842, Timothy b1845 and John b1847. Benjamin died in 1849.
Ten years later, at the 1851 Census, Thomas is staying at the ‘Bushell to Shipe’, Public House and Lodging House in Hitchin, with his sons William and Timothy. William was 10 years old and was already working on the land, as an agricultural labourer, with his father. Thomas was recorded in the Census as a ‘widower’, but that was not true, as we shall see shortly. On that same census night, daughter Jane, who was 17, was living on her own at 49 Back Street, Hitchen and working as a laundress. While daughter Elizabeth was staying with her Uncle and Aunt, William and Sarah Muncey; she is 15, and assisting her Aunt as a charwoman.
On the 10th May 1852, at St Mary’s Church, Hitchin; Thomas, now aged 40 years, married again. This time to Maria Kimpton Harradance, b1827 and who was also from Hitchin and was the daughter of John Kimpton and Maria Harradance. Winesses at the wedding were Thomas’s brother William and Maria’s father John. In September that same year, 1852, Thomas and new wife Maria and three of the children, William, Timothy and John, set sail from Birkenhead, aboard the ‘Marmion’ and arrived at Portland in the new Colony of Victoria in December. Thomas and family were unassisted migrants on their own ‘recognizance’.
Back in England in 1861, there is a strange twist, as the Census shows daughter Elizabeth, now 25, living with her mother Elizabeth at Highbury, Hitchin, and both are single and working as needle-women. It appears that at some point around 1850 Thomas and wife Elizabeth had separated and it was ‘convenient’ for Thomas to call himself a widower, when he wasn’t. There are no records of any divorce. The remaining boys clearly stayed with Thomas and the girls with their mother.
So, let’s get back to the Colony of Victoria. On arrival at Portland, Thomas and the boys would have been seeking farm labouring work and we can see, from the couple’s colony born children’s birth locations, that they initially moved along the coast to Warrnambool and then North into farming land. Thomas does not appear to have sought out gold digging but who knows. Over the next 18 years Thomas and Maria had 11 more children. These children were Esther b1854, James b1856, Rhoda b1857, Emma b1859, Thomas Edward b1861, George b1862, Mary b1864, Annie b1866, Ellen b1867, Edward b1869 and Rose b1870. Daughter Esther was born at Warrnambool, East along the coast from Portland. Shortly after that the couple moved North into sheep and farming country, with Rhoda and James being born at Raglan, and Emma at Back Creek. All the other children, starting with Thomas in 1861, were born at Beaufort. At some point, probably in the early to mid-1860’s Thomas and Maria probably applied for a land selection and were successful. Thomas died at Beaufort in 1892 at the age of 81 and Maria in 1896, aged 69.
Our ancestral line continues through John, the youngest of the three English born boys, whose mother was Elizabeth Muncey. So, what do we know about these three sons?
Son William did not marry, worked at farm labouring until he died, at 21 years, in 1861. Timothy married Alice Thompson and was a farm labourer at Beaufort until they moved to Ballarat in the late 1890’s. The couple had four children, Alice b1873, Mary Ann b1876, Alfred b1878 and Betsy b1881. Mother Alice died at Ballarat in 1899 and is buried there, with Timothy, who died in 1927.
The third English born son, John, and Rhonnies ancestor, also followed his father into farming. He married Hannah Major Chellew in1872. Hannah had been born in 1852 in Adelaide, South Australia and had travelled to Victoria with her parents, William Martin Chellew b1825 and Prudence Major b1826. Hannah’s siblings were Elizabeth b1873, Nellie b1878, William b1880 and John b1884.
John Day and Hannah had six children and they were Elizabeth b1873, Amelia b1875, Nelly b1877, William b1880, and John Edward b1884, but who died that same year. All the children were born in the Beaufort district. John Senior died in 1884 at Beaufort, when he was aged only 36. Hannah lived to 67 years and died at East Melbourne.
Our family line continues through John and Hannah’s daughter Amelia Day, who married Louis Jaensch at Beaufort.