Australia was just one migratory destination among many others in the nineteenth century, all operating within vast networks of global migration. It was not only Europeans who were being relocated. Many individuals from India, for instance, were moved to other British colonies throughout the nineteenth century. Millions of impoverished Chinese also left their homeland through indenture of one kind or another. Africans were forcibly transported in vast numbers to the Americas, while millions of penalized Russians were exiled to Siberia. The tentacles of organized global migration during this period led to the displacement of countless people worldwide.
Millions of poor and marginalised Europeans left their homes for the new world. Volition varied enormously. There were varying degrees of agency at play in deciding to leave. The “choice” an individual took was always taken in light of some wider context.
This is an account of the lives of the forebears of the author’s parents, Lionel Jones and Patricia Reilly. The focus is on the nineteenth century, prior to the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901. Lionel and Patricia’s forebears are presented within the context of a wider history. Multiple genealogies of the Western District are interwoven to tell a larger story.
In family history writing there is often a reluctance to address the realities of social class in early Australia. In the first half of the nineteenth century perhaps the main social divide was between master and servant. Many of the forebears in this family history were servants and laborers working for those who were better off. Some readers may consider it unedifying to portray forebears as members of an underclass. An illiterate emancipist bullock driver or a prostitute does not have the same cache as “grazier” or “pioneer settler from a respected family of local farmers”. People like to be descended from the big house or at least from the ranks of the respectable middle class.
When a family advanced socially, it was considered better to compose a narrative that aligned with the newly elevated status of the family. It was considered expedient to downplay a stigmatized past. Nevertheless, many Australians have impoverished immigrants or transported convicts as forebears. Emancipated convicts rarely documented their lives, which meant a background in the penal system gradually faded from view. Families choose to emphasize forebears of more reputable backgrounds in order to project a certain image of the family. Deciding what to leave out is seen as important as choosing what to emphasize.
For many poor people, emigration to Australia may have constituted a last hope. The spiel of the emigration agents, the blandishments of one’s relatives, the pressure of one’s landlord, or the sermonising of parish worthies in England may have led a person to conclude that it was better to board a sailing vessel for the colonies.
The settlement of Australia was a deliberate process driven by government policies. Those in charge of populating the colonies drew on decades of global experience to achieve specific outcomes. In the settlement of the Western District, there are analogies to plantation systems that happened elsewhere in the British empire, such as the Plantations of Ulster or the sugar and cotton plantation of the Caribbean and mainland America. The Crown was involved in the Transatlantic slave trade for centuries and was heavily invested in slave ownership in the Americas. By 1807, the British Crown was the world’s largest buyer of slaves.
The key to understanding events in the Western District lies in pastoralism. The distinctive features of squatter pastoralism in the Western District, much of it with a genesis in Tasmania, eventually spread across much of the continent, profoundly influencing Australia’s national history. The squatters and other proprietors succeeded in the Western District because they were backed as agents of the Crown.
From the 1820s, the British government issued grants of pastoral land in Van Diemen’s Land to select groups of individuals. Within this group of free settlers were many who subsequently transferred a part of their pastoral enterprise to mainland Australia. Across the generations, some of the same squatter families were involved in pastoralism throughout Australia, spreading from one remote frontier to the next. The gradual takeover of the continent for pastoral pursuits was methodical, and occurred step by step from one place to another.
In the nineteenth century the squatters in the Western District held substantial power and wielded local authority. They were the noble “free settlers” lauded in the history books and at civic events. Considering that our forebears lived in the shadows of the squatter and proprietor class, it is important to understand who these antagonists were and how they operated. The genealogies of men and women of the squatter class are included in this document as a means of providing context to the genealogies of our more modest family.
A process of systematic state sponsored genocide occurred in the Western District, similar to what had previously occurred in Tasmania. There is a direct link between the genocide in Tasmania and what subsequently occurred in the Western District. The two locations are inextricably linked in this regard. In this family history, the pivotal role played by the Crown’s agents in both settings is emphasized. The British state was involved throughout the process. How and why the genocide unfolded and identifying those responsible is not particularly difficult to uncover. The archive contains the names of the key figures. The key decisions taken by the state are known. Family business networks can readily be traced.
The difficulty for family history lies in the control exercised over the standard narrative. When examining Australian histories authored in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the free settlers are typically portrayed as those who arrived in this country through their own volition and who exhibited the resourcefulness needed to succeed in the business of being our quintessential pioneers. Many of this class were the appointed leaders of civil society and laid claim to their right to set the moral tone for the community.
British class structures were transferred to Australia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, albeit in modified form. The class system and social mobility in both Britain and its colonies were closely tied to the expansion of the Empire, to imperial trade, and to the armed forces.
Many early government officials were squatters. Honorary magistrates of districts were drawn from this community. They were required to be loyal servants of the Crown, often serving on municipal bodies and in colonial legislatures. It was they who built the mansions which dotted the countryside. The distinction between government agents and private entrepreneurs was often quite blurred.
There were distinct differences between free settlers and the various categories of non-convict arrivals. Convicts were obviously not free, at least during their initial years in the colony, but many others were not free either. Many categories of laboring people lived lives working in service to masters of one kind or another. The degree of volition these working people could exercise varied enormously. To many, serving the better off was often the only option available. In the narratives of the colonial period, a clear distinction is often made between those who arrived freely and those who came as convicts or cleared off assisted immigrants.
The standard histories of Victoria have often glossed over the contributions of the families of servants and laborers, downplaying the significance and impact of the subordinate classes. Discussion of social class in terms of one’s own family inevitably involves revealing a history of struggle and disadvantage. Stressing the subordinate nature our forebears’ relationships with the power holders can be divisive. People have differing views and often prefer to imagine that their forebears were more notable and more respectable than they actually were. There is a reluctance to recognize one’s family as representative of an underclass or as servants to an elite.
It is notable just how many of the forebears described in this family history arrived at Portland as assisted immigrants who then stayed in the Western District. Thousands of impoverished immigrants arrived in Portland in the mid-1850s. They were colonial subjects of the British Crown whether they liked it or not. Others among our forebears arrived in the colonies as transported convicts or as emigrants from Central Europe.
Migration was implemented by agents contracted to deliver services, and was a large-scale organized industry guided by policy made at the highest levels. The assisted immigration system was motivated by profit, managed by agents, and regulated by governments.
A nation is not synonymous with a state. Nations exist long before states emerge. Although the term “First Nations” is aptly used to refer to Aboriginal societies, the state arrived with the British in 1788. A new offshoot of British society was planted and nurtured with deliberation and foresight by the colonizing state. Australia was a plantation project of the British Crown and its agents, nevertheless it is not often depicted this way.
An underlying theme highlighted in this genealogy is that Australia during the colonial period experienced dual aspects of colonization. Our forebears were both the colonized subjects of the Crown and the colonizing instruments of that Crown.
The colonization process was not random or unplanned, rather it was intentional, calculated, and systematic. It unfolded according to a specific logic and through decisions made by the powerful and the privileged. The Crown, personified in the monarch, was at the apex of authority, a royal personage to whom others in the hierarchy owed allegiance.
In the early part of the nineteenth century when New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land were being populated, the era is generally known as the Regency Period. Prince George was acting as the Regent from 1811 due to the madness of his father, King George III. The Regency period was followed by the Victorian Era. All loyal subjects of the Crown were expected to show deference to the Monarch.
The genealogy of our forebears is presented based upon the metaphor of a family tree. We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and sixteen great-great-grandparents, whether or not we know who they are. The family tree helps us visualize the links connecting various family members.
The narrative begins with Lionel’s lineage and then transitions to Patricia’s. This arrangement is intentional, as Lionel’s maternal ancestors were the first to arrive in Australia, dating back to the 1820s. In contrast, Patricia’s forebears predominantly arrived in the mid-1850s and mostly arrived within just a few years of each other. Her forebears typically came from Ireland, and they remained in the Koroit district. Lionel’s family history is more complex, with ancestors arriving earlier, originating from various countries and living in different places in Victoria.
It is quite remarkable that there is at least some information on just about every one of Lionel and Patricia’s forebears who came to the Western District. There is at least some basic information about each of them. Even apparent scant information is interesting and remarkable to have. Thomas Jones, Duncan Campbell, Sarah Campbell, Johannes Weppner, Anna Fick, Killian Schefferle, Catherine Lang, Xavier Muhlebach, James Lowndes, Ann Higgins, Anastasia Donnelly, Hugh Reilly, Edmund McNamara, Mary Moloney, Brigid McNamara, James Bowman, Charles Binstead and Bridget Dwyer are all people who were born overseas but who came to colonial Victoria. They are Lionel and Patricia’s direct ancestors, as far as can be told from the record. These forebears arrived over a period stretching from the early 1820s to the late 1860s. They were born in a variety of European countries.
The family tree at the end of this document concludes with Lionel and Patricia at its base. Previous generations are labeled from A to D. The letter A corresponds to the great-great-grandparents of Lionel or Patricia, while B corresponds to great-grandparents, and C to grandparents. The narrative is focused on forebears who spent their lives in Australia or migrated here as children or adults.
The final sections of the narrative contrasts genealogical backgrounds of several upper class families with our more working-class family.
The stories told in this document are from the European side of the frontier. There is a history of violence in the shared heritage of the Western District. The Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final report, released in July 2025, found that from 1834 mass killings, disease, sexual violence, the destruction of languages and cultures, and child removals from families and communities combined to “bring about the near-complete physical destruction of First Peoples in Victoria”. Indigenous peoples in Victoria were “decimated”, with the report clearly stating: “This was genocide.”
This family history does not seek to dispute the Commission’s findings, which are in line with what many in the Southwest community knew at the time and place of the author’s childhood. Our forebears’ stories intersect with the historic injustices highlighted in the Commission’s final report, but this family history document does not attempt to ally with First Nations people, who have their own stories and their own pathways to truth and recognition.
Shadows of the Western District 