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While today’s youngsters are thinking about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten 12 months old Mary Wade must have been vastly completely different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship certain for Australia: considered one of 2 hundred and fifty or so women, half way to an odd land. Their female convict ship The Lady Juliana, a half of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and found guilty of stealing one other child’s garments. Her dying sentence, commuted to transportation for all times, was bitter sweet. Mary had escaped the gallows however would never see her family again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous circumstances at Newgate Prison. Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict was one of fifty ladies fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor bathrooms. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her situation improved. All convicts were moderately fed and given heat beds. Only five girls and two youngsters died through the eleven month voyage and the condition of those that arrived within the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the pressure on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip despatched many new arrivals including Mary, to a spot described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave delivery to a daughter. She had two extra youngsters with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the family was living in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship but by no means returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and arrange home near the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took ownership of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived fortunately until Harrigan’s dying in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty yr previous Mary died at house. She had given delivery to twenty one kids. In her lifetime, her household had grown to incorporate 5 generations and over three hundred descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants quantity in the tens of thousands, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten year previous convict Mary Wade was facing an uncertain future. Today, she is acknowledged as considered one of Australia’s founding mothers.