The Wyatt family name was known to us when we started our searching as was the associated Jaensch family name but why they were connected was not at all clear. This search, as with many others, takes us into the lives of people living the Australian colonial history. Elizabeth Wyatt was Rhonnie’s matrilineal great great grandmother.
The Wyatt family name is reportedly derived from the old English ‘Wigheard’, basically meaning a person brave in war or a warrior. The distribution of Wyatt families in 1891 was largely (15%) in Somerset and Devon; concentrated in the south-western peninsula of England.
FARMERS AND COAL MINERS IN SOMERSET AND AN ADVENTUROUS WOMAN
We have traced our Wyatt family back to James Wyatt, a yeoman, who was born in 1769 at West Harptree in the Mendip Hills, Somerset, England. A yeoman was a person who owned title to land by order of the King or his Lords. James Wyatt married, when he was 25 years old, in 1794, a 14 year old Mary Cantile b1780, of High Littleton, daughter of Joseph Cantile and Rachel Simms of that village. James and Mary continued farming at West Harptree for another 50 years. We can only trace two of their children; George b1795 and Griselda born 1797. James Wyatt died in 1847 and Mary in 1849.
Son George had become a coal miner by 1841, noted in the first census records we have, and had married Ann Vater in 1819, her family also from High Littleton. The couple lived at Hallatrow, a small hamlet of High Littleton after they had married. As his father James was still farming the land at West Harptree George, at an early age, would have had to look for paid employment. The North Somerset district around High Littleton was central to the Somerset coalfields, which had been worked since the 15th Century and therefore the most likely to provide well paid employment for George. He probably started in the mines around 1805-10 and continued after he was married in 1819. In 1833 the Grey Field Coal Company was established at High Littleton and this was considered a major mine and therefore a large employment generator for the district. This was almost certainly where George and eventually his boys were employed. George and Ann had eight children and they were Richard b1819, Robert b1823, James b1825, Ann b1829, Elizabeth b1832, George b1835, Elijah b1838 and John b 1841. All of these children were born at Hallatrow and were still living and working in that district in 1851, with the exception of Elizabeth. The boys Richard, Robert, James, George and Elijah, like their father, were coal miners and daughter Ann was a domestic servant in Bath. Elizabeth does not appear on the census record for this year 1851. However, the evidence suggests that Elizabeth may also have been a domestic servant, working in Bath, some 13kms distant, along with her sister Ann, when she sought and gained an indenture to a resident of the Colony of New South Wales.
Elizabeth Wyatt sailed to the south coast of the Colony of NSW, soon to become the separate colony of Victoria, in 1848. She was 16 years of age. Our next record of Elizabeth is four years later, in 1852, when she is 20 years old and married, that year, to a German immigrant, Charles Jaensch. Elizabeth had probably worked in the indentured service for the previous 4 years and some thoughts on where that might have been will be developed along with the story of her married life as Elizabeth Jaensch.