Family History of Jan Somers 

My name is Jan Somers (nee Morgan) born 16th Feb 1950.  My Nanna on my mother's side was Gertrude Beatrice Skeggs (nee Bell).   My Gandmother on my father's side was Isabella Morgan (nee King) and my husband Ian's mother’s maiden name was Mortimer.  And that was about as much as I knew of my ancestry.  The only thing even remotely connected to my distant past was a rumour of a convict in the family on my father’s side.  It was a standing Morgan family joke that John Morgan, a very distant relative, was a convict who died when he fell from a hearse somewhere near Ipswich in the new colony of Australia, more than a century ago.  We never knew whether he was our great-great-great-grandfather or just a great-grandfather, and with such a dubious title as convict, no one seemed to care or want to know more about him. Throughout my childhood the myth was perpetuated and even enhanced to include the unknown fact that he was drunk when he fell from this hearse.  We even surmised that he was transported on a convict ship after being convicted of assault for brawling in a Welsh pub, as we knew the name Morgan had Welsh origins. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Gone but not Forgotten: In 2000, Leisha Muir was commissioned to write a book Gone, But Not Forgotten - Ipswich Cemetery 1842-1868. It included a paragraph about "a" John Morgan and noted that he was sentenced for life after his conviction for sheep stealing at the Herefordshire Assizes in March 1834 and arrived in Australia on 6th April 1835 on the Lady Nugent. In 1839, he worked for the North family at Carrington near Port Stephens then went with the North brothers to Fairny Lawn (now Fairney View) near Ipswich Queensland. He married Ellen Glynn who had arrived in 1852 from Clare, Ireland on the Rajah Go Paul.  They had twins, John and Ellen but Ellen died at 4 weeks.  On Friday 6th June 1856, John Morgan Snr died three days after he fell from a horse.  Knowing now that the North family were Irish, it was easy to understand that “horse” in the Irish brogue could easily sound like “hearse”.   This article prompted my Uncle Ted to do more research into our convict John Morgan, hoping to disprove the notion that he really was a convict. 

Herefordshire Court Documents 1834:  In 2002, Uncle Ted enlisted the help of my brother John Morgan who was living in England at the time, to retrieve copies of the Herefordshire court documents, hoping to disprove the information in Leisha Muir’s book.  But it was all true!  John Morgan was convicted of sheep stealing on 7th March 1834 and sentenced to transportation for life.  Amongst the documents there was even a handwritten list of the names of the convicts he came with on the Lady Nugent. Uncle Ted didn’t want to know any more.  Twenty years ago nobody wanted to own a convict.  

However, at a family reunion that same year, my brother handed out these incriminating documents to any anyone interested.  I received a batch and promptly filed them away as at that time, I wasn’t even remotely curious and nor did I have the time to study ancestry with three teenage children, a stream of exchange students and a software business to run with my husband Ian.  A decade later in 2013, my cousin Kevin asked for a copy of the court documents, and after digging them out of my filing cabinet and trying to cut A3 sheets into scannable pieces, I started to read them and I was hooked.  I wanted to know more about John Morgan.  I wanted to know about his life in Australia and Herefordshire. 

Convict John Morgan transported 1834: Research is now so easy in this age of digitised documents and I soon discovered the tragic story of a young man transported to Australia for sheep stealing.  Convict records enabled me to track his movements from Hereford Gaol in a horse drawn carriage with six other prisoners to the prison hulk The Fortitude moored at Chatham on the River Medway which took one day with several changes of horses along the way.  He was held for eight months on the hulk before being moved the short distance in row boats to the convict ship The Lady Nugent at Sheerness on the River Thames.  The ship departed on 4th December 1834, arriving in Sydney on 9th April 1835, the voyage documented by the ship's surgeon Oliver Sproule.  On arrival the convicts were immediately marched to Hyde Park Barracks where they were assigned to settlers according to their trade and from John Morgan's convict records, we know he was an ostler, a horse handler.  He was first assigned to Robert Scott who had a large horse stud at Glendon in Patrick's Plains near Singleton but after Robert Scott's dismissal and demise following the Myall Massacre John Morgan was assigned to Major William North's family who had a horse stud in Buladelah near Port Stephens NSW.  When the Norths established a horse stud at Fairny Lawn (Fairney View) near Ipswich Queensland, John Morgan moved with them.  Both Robert Scott and Major William North would have taken advantage of his horse handling skills.  

John Morgan's movements around the new colony could be tracked by his Ticket of Leave issued in 1843, allowing him to travel from Port Stephens to Buladelah near Dungong to Moreton Bay and Fairney Lawn. In 1848 he received a Conditional Pardon - a free man to travel anywhere in the world - except England and Ireland!  He chose to stay with the North family and amassed a small fortune of 20 horses, each worth about the same as a house. 

John Morgan’s wife Ellen Glynn: The story of John’s wife Ellen Glynn was equaly tragic.  This young 19 year old Irish lass came to Australia in 1852 on the Rajah GoPaul to escape the potato famine and had been at Fairny Lawn when she married the fatherly figure of John Morgan, 27 years her senior.  In 1855, twins John and Ellen were born, but baby Ellen died at 4 weeks.  In 1856, John died and Ellen was left alone in a new land with the 11 month old surviving twin John Morgan.  

In 1862, Ellen married David Jackson and had three children.  But tragedy struck again.  In 1871, their daughter Ellen drowned in a school tank age five. In 1886, her second husband David Jackson died age 55 from peritonitis. In 1893, her son William, a brilliant footballer and dux of Ipswich Grammar died of a lung infection aged 29.  Her third child David outlived her, just, and died an alcoholic at the relatively young age of 43 in 1913.  But in 1903, poor Ellen Jackson (late Morgan, nee Glynn) succumbed to the ravages of her tragic life and went to the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum as a homeless person, with “no money and no property”, incapable of looking after herself.  She died in 1906 in questionable circumstances resulting in two death certificates which confused everyone until the mess was sorted just recently. Her son John Morgan married Catherine Suthers in Ipswich in 1878 and founded the Morgan dynasty in Ipswich from their house at Smith Street. And that’s another story!

Searching for John Morgan’s birthplace:  Despite knowing the life and times of our convict John Morgan in Australia, I was no closer to finding his birth place.   I knew everything about him and his descendents from 1834 to the present day but nothing about his prior life in Herefordshire. He had pleaded guilty to sheep stealing so there were no witness statements to give us a clue as to who saw what when.  And nothing in the local newpapers, the Hereford Journal and Times other than two line statements about the conviction.  The hamlets of Stretford and Yarpole were mentioned in the court documents, but it was in the context of “late of” meaning that’s where he last lived, not where he was born.  

After 4 years of research I had found at least 20 John Morgans who were born in the area around Hereford between 1809 and 1812, based on his age of 25 at the time of his conviction in 1834 and his age of 44 at the time of his death in 1856.  None of these John Morgans seemed relevant as most were still alive in the 1841 UK Census. I accumulated more than four thousand Census, Birth, Death and Marriage records and the closest I could get was a John Morgan born in Allensmore in 1809 - even visiting this place on a cycling trip to England  in 2016.  But I was never sure it was him, and I diverted my ancestry research to my mother's side, finding Uncles whom I never knew who had been Killed In Action during World War 1.  Most of the War Records were held at the London Archives, if they survived the World War 2 bombing raids on London.  I had previously looked there for information on John Morgan but only found documents I already had received from the Herefordshire Archives or those regarding the Lady Nugent which I already knew from Australian Convict records.  But on a whim, I decided to have another search for my convict John Morgan.

John Morgan and the 1834 Petition: After using different searches in the archives, I stumbled across an abstract for a petition submitted to the London Home Office in 1834 with 108 names requesting leniency for our John Morgan.  I bought a copy of the handwritten document and spent almost a year deciphering names. With the help of Pigot’s Directory of Herefordshire for 1830 and 1835 and cousin June’s deciphering skills, I found the address and profession of most of the petitioners.  The names were in three columns.  

The first column listed names of legal people associated with the case as well as many from the Monkland area.  The second column were farmers and freeholders from Wigmore and the third were merchants and tradesmen from Leominster.  This was a huge breakthrough.  But nothing pinpointed his exact birth location though the header of the petition claimed he was “late of Wigmore”. 

This petition raised more questions. It was very strange that so many legalese and prominent people had signed the petition, including the chief prosecutor Thomas Mason who was top of the list and had clearly initiated the petition.  Did they think he had been treated unjustly?  Did they know some background information that wasn’t revealed in court - like did he steal the sheep for someone else.  Surely a single man with a good trade would have had housing and board provided as did many farm workers of the time and he would have had no equipment and little opportunitynity to cook a sheep!  Other questions arose.  Was he born in the Wigmore area?  And what was his connection to Leominster? I contacted Lorna Standen at the Hereford Archives who provided a tithe map of Stretford Court, the “crime scene", and saw that it was near the Parish of Monkland.

 Morgan Family and 1841 Census:  I then found the family of William Morgan living in the 3 house hamlet of Upper End Monkland in the 1841 Census of Monkland - William, his wife Ann, his mother Elizabeth and three children Mary Ann, Thomas and William.  A quick ancestry search revealed that William’s mother Elizabeth Morgan (nee Atch) was born in Leominster in 1775, had married John William Morgan in 1799, and they had two sons born in Leominster - William Morgan born in 1803 and John Morgan born in 1806. Could it be him? The family and location seemed to fit, but the age was wrong.  I had relied on his birth being between 1809 and 1812, but I had begun to realise that people tell lies about their age, or they don’t know, or there had been a transcription error.  John Morgan may not have known his age.  However, the 1841 Census also revealed that many people who had signed the petition lived near William Morgan’s family in Monkland.  I researched this for another year, thinking it was possible but not likely that I had found my John Morgan.  Until…..

The DNA match to 1775: In 2018 I took a DNA test - hoping but not expecting that it would shine light on John Morgan’s ancestry.  But after months of sifting through thousands of DNA matches - nothing! Until one Sunday morning, I saw that someone called S.D. had an ancestor called Elizabeth Robinson (nee Morgan) who lived in Dudley in 1851 and who was born about 1826 in Leominster.  I was more than just excited. I was electrified.  This match of 16.7centiMorgans on 1 strand of DNA placed me in the 5th to 8th cousin range with at least 12 degrees of separation.  

Could this Elizabeth be the daughter of William Morgan, and hence the niece of John Morgan.  The only problem was that I had never found that William had a daughter called Elizabeth Morgan and S.D had no information on her parents.  I quickly arranged for a DNA test for 3 other family members, two of whom came back with a similar DNA match. This confirmed the match could only be from my father's Morgan side of the family, not my mothers side, so now I needed to find this Elizabeth Morgan.  

Benjamin Morgan - The missing link:  Back to Lorna Standen to see if she could find any Elizabeth Morgan born in Leominster around 1826.  No, but there was an Elizabeth Morgan baptised in 1825 in the Parish of Dilwyn to parents William and Anne.  Dilwyn was only 4 kilometres to Monkland.  Meantime I found the marriage Certificate of Elizabeth Morgan in Dudley where she stated her father was William Morgan. 

 I’m close but still couldn’t link her to Monkland and the family of William Morgan.  Calling on Lorna Standen again.  Is this Elizabeth Morgan in any other Monkalnd Parish Records?  Yes!  Elizabeth Morgan from Monkland gave birth to Benjamin Morgan in 1845 and since only a few hundred people lived in the Parish of Monkland it was highly likely to be the daughter of William Morgan.

By this time I knew that William Morgan had married Ann Bedward in Leominster on 9th May 1825.  So it was likely that William and Ann moved to Dilwyn then Monkland with the young Elizabeth baptised 30th July 1825 in Dilwyn just a few miles west of Leominster.  Now it all made sense but where was Benjamin Morgan?  He wasn’t with Elizabeth and husband John Robinson in Dudley in the 1851 Census, and he wasn’t in Monkland with his grandmother Ann in the 1851 Census.  I researched the UK Newspaper Archives for anything relating to the child Benjamin Morgan, not expecting to find anything.  But there was an article in the Hereford Times about the death of a 5 year old child Benjamin Morgan who had died in the Leominster Workhouse in 1850 and after an outcry by the townspeople, his body was exhumed and an inquest was held.  Depositions were given by the staff at the Workhouse stating that the child was left there by the Grandmother who would visit him with an aunt.   Ann had to be the grandmother and Elizabeth’s sister Mary Ann would have been the Aunt. 

And so after a DNA match with 11 degrees of separation we were able to prove that our John Morgan was born in Leominster in 1806 to parents John and Elizabeth.  Further research then revealed that John Morgan’s father John, had died in Leominster in 1838, and this then explained why so many people from Leominster had signed the petition.  I believe he lived and worked in Draper’s Lane where many of the signatories to the petition lived and worked. And so by now, with all this information at hand, it was time to contact S.D. to relate to them the story behind the unbelievable DNA match.  It turned out that S.D. lived on the Gold Coast, less than 100 kilometres from my home and one of the descendants of Elizabeth and John Robinson in Dudley and had moved to the Gold Coast Australia in the 1960’s. They were blown away! I arranged a meeting with the family of S.D. and my cousin June at my house and when Mike and Linda stood in the doorway, I looked at June, and she looked at me. Mike was the dead spit of my father - a thin petit man, with slightly receding hair at the sides, long thin face and ruddy complexion.  

It took a petition, an 1841 Census, a DNA match and the death and exhumation of the 5 year old child Benjamin to provide all the proof I needed to confirm that our convict John Morgan was born in Leominster in 1806.  We have since had three more DNA matches to other children of William Morgan, adding further weight to the heritage of our convict John Morgan

This is just a summary of our convict John Morgan.  For more detail, read the book of Morgan, a 100 page document under the heading of Morgan Family Books. 

Enjoy our Morgan Family History.

If you stumble on this site through google and want more information you can contact me at

jsomers@somersoft.com.au