WESTRALIAN SCOTS: Scottish Settlement and Identity in Western Australia, Arrivals 1829-1850
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WESTRALIAN SCOTS: Scottish Settlement and Identity in Western Australia, arrivals 1829-1850 Leigh S. L. Beaton, B.A (Honours) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University 2004 I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary institution. …………………………. (Leigh Beaton) i THESIS ABSTRACT Before the end of 1850, Scottish settlers in Western Australia represented a small minority group of what was, in terms of the European population, a predominantly English colony. By comparison to the eastern Australian colonies, Western Australia attracted the least number of Scottish migrants. This thesis aims to broaden the historiography of Scottish settlement in Australia in the nineteenth century by providing insights into the lives of Westralian Scots. While this thesis broadly documents Scottish settlement, its main focus is Scottish identity. Utilising techniques of nominal record linkage and close socio- biographical scrutiny, this study looks beyond institutional manifestations of Scottish identity to consider the ways in which Scottishness was maintained in everyday lives through work, social and religious practices. This thesis also demonstrates the multi-layered expressions of national identity by recognising Scottish identity in the Australian colonies as both Scottish and British. The duality of a Scottish and British identity made Scots more willing to identify eventually as Westralian Scots. Westralian Scots: Scottish Settlement and Identity in Western Australia, arrivals 1829-1850 CONTENTS ii THESIS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii-iv DEDICATION v LIST OF TABLES vi MAPS: Scotland and Western Australia vii-viii INTRODUCTION 1 1 Scottish Arrivals 1829-1850 26 2 Scottish Settlement in Western Australia 57 3 Scots and Work 79 4 Scottishness in the Family and Household 130 5 Religious Identity 188 6 Scottish Correspondence 232 7 Scottish Interactions: Britishness, cultural pluralism 265 and relations with Aboriginal Western Australians CONCLUSION 297 APPENDIX A 307 List of arrivals 1829-1850: Scots settling permanently in Western Australia APPENDIX B 313 List of arrivals 1829-1850: Individuals unable to be identified as settling in or leaving the colony APPENDIX C 314 Scots Who Died pre-1850 - settlement unknown APPENDIX D 315 List of arrivals 1829-1850: Scots who left colony APPENDIX E: Scottish settlement by districts 317 APPENDIX F: John Adam's Indenture 325 BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii This thesis is above all testament to the efforts made by the first Scottish migrants in Western Australia to leave traces of their identity. Over the course of the past three or so years, their lives have introduced me to a different section of Western Australia's past. Their lives and stories have informed and entertained me as well as exposing me to the various regions of Western Australia. In my travels around the state tracing identity in homesteads, families, the naming of the landscape and especially in cemeteries, I have come to really appreciate Western Australian history in a more intimate way. For this I am indebted to the Scottish individuals who are a part of this thesis. Throughout my doctoral studies I have been aided by the kindness of many people and without them this thesis would have not been completed. I am extremely grateful for the assistance given by the staff of the J. S Battye Library of Western Australian History and the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh. I am also thankful to the Murdoch University History staff. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Michael Sturma, my principal supervisor throughout, for his encouragement and dedication to my studies and providing me with many opportunities to teach at Murdoch. Thank you also to Dr. Jan Gothard for her encouragement throughout the writing of this thesis, especially at the end. Thanks also all other staff in the department for their encouragement and support. Other academics outside of Murdoch University also played an important role in my research and writing. In particular I would like to thank Dr Frank Bongiorno and Dr David Roberts from the University of New England in New South Wales. Both offered support and encouragement throughout my research and published an article on my research in the Journal of Australian Colonial History. iv There are many individuals and organisations around Western Australia who all collectively added immensely to the completion of this thesis, from the various local historical societies to individuals descended from Scottish families mentioned in this thesis. I would like to single out Pam Ayers, Patty Bartrim and Roy Adam for their help and insights into their families. Thank you to my friends and family in Western Australia and Scotland, particularly my parents, Sandra and James. Thank you to my brother, Steven, sister-in-law, Dale and nephew, Nicholas. To my Granny Esther, Aunt Cath and the Middlemass family, Auntie Alice and Uncle Jim and Deborah Straw. And to my friends Natalie, Kelly, Charmayne, Rebecca, Emma, Jane and particularly Sarah Trust. As a fellow PhD candidate her comments and advice were invaluable. Thank you to the many Murdoch students I have taught since 2001. Teaching has been a brilliant experience, continually fuelling my passion for history. My students have made this experience an enjoyable one, even though they had to suffer my endless references to Sean Connery! A special thank you to Tony. You always believed in me and gave me the support I needed. Finally, I must acknowledge the assistance given to me by Sandra Beaton and Tony Straw in searching for Scottish individuals in cemeteries. v DEDICATION To Granny Janet and Granda John TABLES Table Title Page 1.1 Birthplaces of white Western Australian population 27 vi 1859 1.2 Scottish proportion of Western Australian population 29 (European) 1832-1848 2.1 Proportion Scottish Arrivals Settling in Main Districts 61 (1829-1850) 4.1 Marriage Age Scottish settlement families 136 4.2 Mean Marriage Age 1850-1855 137 4.3 First Child Interval after Marriage 138 4.4 Total Children born - Scottish families and other WA 141 Families 7.1 White Population Western Australia 1850 278 MAP 1 GEOGRPAHICAL ORIGINS OF SCOTTISH SETTLERS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA - main districts only (Based on map of Scotland in Withers, Urban Highlanders: Highland-Lowland Migration and Urban Gaelic Culture, p. 18) vii MAP 2 MAIN DISTRICTS AND TOWNS OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA 1850 (Based on maps from frontpapers in Erickson, The Drummonds of Hawthornden and Erickson (ed) Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians, 1829-1888, volumes 1-4) 1 INTRODUCTION Histories of the first British migrants arriving in Western Australia in the nineteenth century have either treated these individuals and family groups as essentially English, or where differentiations are made as to specific national origins, particular individuals are identified with little or no reference to their broader national group. First colonists appear as British migrants collectively or as English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish individuals and what this creates is understandings of shared experiences as an entire group and then particular lives. The inherent gap here is that little is known of the shared experiences of English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish settlers as distinct national groups. Recent historical investigations into Irish experiences in Western Australia have recognised a need to account for differences in settler experiences.1 While scholarship on the Irish extends understandings of colonial lives, little is still known of the English, Welsh and Scottish and their patterns of migration, settlement and identity in the colony. It is into this historical gap that this study falls. In many ways it is also a reaction to the view of colonial Western Australia as essentially English. In the nineteenth century, Western Australia was a predominantly English colony, in terms of white settlement; in the first major population return pertaining to the Swan River settlement of 1832, English settlers accounted for over seventy per cent of the white population.2 Though there are no records for the population by birthplace in 1850, it seems likely based upon the census of 1859 that by mid- century English-born settlers accounted for at least forty per cent of the 1 For example: Bob Reece (ed) The Irish in Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 2000. 2 A Return of the Population of Western Australia at 1st July 1832, Australian Joint Copying Project microform (hereafter ACJP), J. S Battye Library of Western Australian History (hereafter BLWAH), Perth, C.O 18, reel 298, piece 10, pp. 112-156. 2 population.3 While English migrants have not been accounted for in relation to regional or local identities, histories of early white settlement have stressed the English nature of the colony, to the exclusion of other British national groups. That the first white settlers in Western Australia were predominantly English cannot be denied but not all of the settlers were English. Before the end of 1850, nearly two hundred Scottish people arrived in Western Australia, of whom close to seventy per cent lived out their lives in their new home in the Antipodes.4 Even as a small minority group, Scottish migrants were influential in the establishment of white settlements around Western Australia. Their presence as free settlers offers alternative understandings of early white settlement from Scottish perspectives. Scottish Migration Scots migrating to Western Australia were part of a nineteenth century trend taking Scots to various corners of the world, what Jeanette M. Brock calls a 'culture of emigration’.5 This trend was one that to a lesser extent existed since the seventeenth century. As Gordon Donaldson writes in The Scots Overseas, ‘during many centuries there has not been a decade when Scotland has not exported some of her people. They have gone from every part of the homeland, 3 Western Australian Census of 1859, (March 1860) Government Press, Perth.