Because so many Australians have ancestors who at some point passed through Tasmania, chasing marriages here is big family history business. Genealogical tourists like to visit the churches where their people were married, as well as the cemeteries in which they might be buried.
Such researchers face many old Tasmanian myths along their way. One is that convicts were quietly allowed to marry here without too many questions being asked about spouses left behind overseas.
Besides the usual documentation of marriage certificates and registers, however, there is sometimes another layer of evidence. Historically, a marriage promise was generally prefaced by another promise. The marriage promise was the till death do us part business. The preface was a promise that any prior spouse was already dead.
Proving this is the case of John Rainford, one of many Tasmanians who swore himself free to wed. On March 16, 1846, Rainford promised – as historical record attests – that to the best of his knowledge “there is not any Impediment of Kindred or alliance or any other lawful cause” that prohibitedhim from marrying Mary Ann Shandley that same day in St Joseph’s Church, Hobart.
This story came to my attention through a volume of such pre-marriage promises in the archives of the Archdiocese of Hobart. Formulaic and repetitive, these past promises are of occasional interest to historians. Sometimes the names are more clearly written that the actual marriage documentation, helping with spelling. Sometimes a place of residence was recorded, helping to locate a person. The evidence revealed by these marriage promises, is usually just a blip in a bigger story, not the story itself. Rainford’s case, however, was different, in a myth-busting sort of way.
I noticed his pre-nuptial attestation because there were extra papers affixed to it. One gave details of his arrival – on the ship Georgiana in 1829 – and recorded a query: “Married or Single?”
Transported to Van Diemen’s Land for robbery, Rainford had certainly mentioned a wife and children and mother-in-law upon arriving in Hobart. His convict records document as much. Clearly the priest was somehow alerted to this. Written perpendicular to and over the top of Rainford’s arrival information in the church records was another sentence which suggests the priest then cross-checked John’s story with the colonial authorities. “Stated on arrival that his Wife & Children with Mother in Law”, it said, echoing the language of the convict record.
Rainford was a butcher, and his last place of residence prior to getting locked up was Manchester. His convict sentence ran the gamut of drinking, absconding and “being found in a disorderly house”. He got lashes and hard labour and such like for his various infractions. Freedom gradually arrived via a ticket of leave and a conditional pardon. Perhaps he had a reputation that made the priest want to be sure to dot and cross all the right ecclesiastical eyes and tees. Because his prospective bride was also a transportee, and still under sentence in 1846, John had to get official permission to marry. The government granted this without problem. But ecclesiastical law needed placating too, and Fr Butler clearly wanted to make sure he wasn’t about to collude in an act of bigamy.
Which brings us to the other document affixed to this case. Written by a Hobart-based lawyer’s clerk, Thomas Pearsall, this was a signed statement offered as evidence for John Rainford’s past life. Pearsall declared most “solemnly and sincerely” that he knew Rainford and “was acquainted with him by having personally seen him in Manchester about 17 years ago”. So far, so good. Pearsall also declared being there “about 12 years ago when a Funeral was going up the Street towards the Old Church and was then informed that it was the Funeral of Mary Rainford”. Even more compelling – Mrs Rainford had apparently died a few years after John had been transported.
Satisfied, the priest married John and his new bride, and the documents were filed away.
A few months later, another priest needed similar proof for Bridget Franklin. She too had been transported for theft, leaving behind a spouse and several children, this time in Dublin. She too had a convict record dotted with infractions like absconding, ominous references to time in “the Factory”, and a time she was “Drunk disturbing the Public Peace & using Indecent Language”, for which she did “hard Labour”. Her husband, her convict records also note, was “John Franklin, Pensioner”.
Fortunately for Bridget, someone was at hand who could testify to having known Bridget and her former husband in Dublin. He could recall John Franklin being a pensioner, and something else of importance. “I was present at the Funeral of the aforesaid John Franklin”, he conveniently affirmed, “who died in the City of Dublin on the 3rd of May 1843.” He signed his statement, and the priest affixed it to the promise. With that done, Bridget married again.
Most pre-marital promisers managed to skip through the formalities without generating such documentation, at least not with the same permanence. Family historians interested in Tasmania should not become too hopeful based on these rarest of proofs. But nor should they despair. These promises are evidence that even in the 19th century the world was smaller than it might at first seem. It was not too much to hope that you might bump into someone who knew for a fact that your last spouse was dead.
Nick Brodie describes himself as a professional history nerd. He has a doctorate in late medieval vagrancy law, is a leading expert on the history of poor boxes, and is the author of acclaimed popular histories Kin: A Real People's History of Our Nation and 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings. His latest book is The Vandemonian War: The Secret History of Britain's Tasmanian Invasion, which uses a wealth of new archival material to re-write Australia's most infamous colonial war.