no image
Privacy Level: Open (White)

William James Wood (1806 - 1868)

William James Wood
Born in Maidstone, Kent, England, United Kingdommap
Ancestors ancestors
Husband of — married 27 Oct 1826 (to 1827) in Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Landmap
Husband of — married 3 Jan 1832 in Fremantle, Colony of Western Australiamap
Descendants descendants
Died at age 61 in Ashby, Colony of Victoriamap
Problems/Questions Profile manager: Robert Judd private message [send private message]
Profile last modified | Created 14 Mar 2016
This page has been accessed 1,522 times.

Biography

Kent (historic flag)
William Wood was born in Kent, England.
William was a Baker

William James Wood the son of William Wood and Sarah Bassett was baptised on 13 July 1806 at All Saints, Maidstone, Kent.[1]

William could read and write and was, in all likelihood, taught at home. In his early teens, he was sent to a baker to learn the trade. As an apprentice, a boy would have lived and worked at the bakery and would not have been paid a wage. In fact, an apprentice’s parents would have paid the baker a not inconsiderable fee to teach the apprentice in the trade. In this instance, however, it is doubtful that William James’s mother could have afforded to pay for him to be apprenticed formally.

It is not clear for how long William James learned the bakery trade. With an absent father, he would have been under great pressure to find paid work in order to contribute to the entire family’s welfare. When he was 18 years old, his father’s business partner from Hobart arrived in Kent to escort the whole family to Van Diemen’s Land - to be re-united with their father. First of all they would have sold what little furniture they owned, rather than cart it all the way to Australia. In October 1824, William James, his mother, his four sisters and his younger brother all sailed for Van Diemen’s Land aboard the ship Elizabeth. They arrived in Hobart on 21 April 1825.

1826 Married Diana Dennett at Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land.[2]

1827 to 1829 the year after his family arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, William Wood (Snr) retired from business. William James joined the family business and, as soon as he turned 21, applied for the license of the Britannia Tavern in Liverpool Street, Hobart. He held the license for three years until 1829.

1830 In June, when William James was 24, his father died. William James, and his mother, Sarah, were involved in administering his estate.

1830 In August the same year, it seems that William James was planning to settle in Hobart. On 27 Aug he wrote from the Britannia Tavern, Liverpool St., Hobart, applying for a 2nd class allotment of land.

1830 28 Sep - wrote that he wished to take the allotment at the angle of Warwick and Grenville St. However, Grenville St is not on the early maps of Hobart so we have no idea where this property was. Soon afterwards, however, something in the Hobart papers attracted his attention. Reports were appearing in the newspapers about the new Swan River colony. Settled only the year before, there was already a regular shipping trade between Swan River and Van Diemen’s Land.

1830 In October, he said farewell to his mother and siblings and boarded the Orelia as one of only four passengers bound for the Swan River. He arrived in Fremantle in November 1830 to start his new life.

1830 12 Nov Arrived in Perth, Western Australia, per the Orelia, less than eighteen months since the first shipload of settlers had arrived, in June 1829.

1832 He stayed in Fremantle and set up shop as a baker. Within a short while in the infant settlement, he had met a young lady who would become his wife. On 3 January 1832 at Fremantle William James Wood, a widower (aged 25), married Mary Ann Coyer, spinster (aged 18).[3]

Her actual name was Mary Ann Bailey. Date and place of birth are undocumented, but on her youngest son's birth certificate it is stated as ca. 1809 in Bath, Somerset (see attached copy). She died on 29 Sep 1892 in Hamilton Victoria. We don’t know why Mary Ann married under an assumed name but she went to some length to keep her real name secret. In a colony of only a few thousand people, one assumes she arrived in Perth as Mary Ann Coyer, meaning her name change occurred when she left England. It was only later in life that she revealed her true name. One story was that she had arrived in one of the first ships to Swan River in 1829 and was a governess to a military family. Another is that she may have married without parental consent that was required at the age of 18.

William James and Mary Ann had eleven children, the first eight born in Western Australia. Their eldest child, John William Wood, was born in Fremantle on 16th October 1832.

William James remained in Fremantle for three years. He ran his bakery and store in partnership with William Blackmore Okely, who had arrived in 1829 from Yorkshire. The partnership was dissolved in December 1832 and William James removed to Perth which in those days was a separate town.

1833 Feb 9 As William announced the dissolution of his business with William Okely in Freemantle, he also began advertise his new Perth business in the Perth Gazette:

PARTNERSHIP DISSOLVED.

Notice is hereby given, that the Partnership lately subsisting between William James Wood, and William Blackmore Okely, of Fremantle, Bakers and Storekeepers, was dissolved on the 20th day of December last. All debts owing to the firm of Wood and Okely, are to be received by George Leake, and James Mc. Dermott of Fremantle, Trustees to the Estate.

W. J. WOOD
W. B. OKELY

At No: 3 St George’s Terrace, Perth, in a brick house with shop attached, William James started another bakery. St Georges Terrace is the main street in the city of Perth, Western Australia. It runs parallel to the Swan River and forms the major arterial road through the central business district. Its western end is marked by the Barracks Arch, whereas the eastern end joins Adelaide Terrace at the intersection with Victoria Avenue.

William James’s Advert in the Perth Gazette news Paper Feb 9th 1833:

BREAD and FANCY BISCUITS.

W. J. Wood, of Perth, Baker, begs to intimate to the Public, that he has a regular supply of Bread, and fancy Biscuits. Baking’s done every day, and carefully attended to.

A new arrival from Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) caused a stir for the Wood family, when William James’s brother, Edward, arrived in Perth in May 1834. He set up business as a cabinet maker and joiner at No. 7 St George’s Terrace - just two doors down from his brother. It would seem that from a Google search, the brothers lived on property where the Perth concert hall is now situated. The advertisement Edward placed in the local paper, announcing his arrival in Perth, mentioned that ‘mattresses would be made on the lowest terms’ and ‘funerals performed on the shortest notice’.

William James and Mary Ann’s family continued to grow. His second child, Emma Eliza Jane, was born there in March 1834. Edward was born in 1835, Francis in 1837, and Cordelia in 1839, dying the same year from ‘water on the brain’. Three more daughters were born in the early 1840s: Mary Ann in 1840, Sarah in 1842, and Emily in 1845. They must have been well-squeezed into their little cottage!

In February 1835, William James had his own announcement in the Perth Gazette and West Australian Journal:

“William James Wood in returning thanks for the very liberal support he has received during a series of years he has carried on the Baking Business etc., begs to inform the public that he has disposed of his whole stock in trade, Baking Business etc., to his brother Edward Wood."

While such an announcement might have indicated that William James was retiring from business or leaving the colony, in fact he set up shop in another part of Perth, later the same year. He occupied a brick cottage, with shop and bake house attached, in Bazaar Terrace, Perth.

Today it is almost impossible to look down on the city from Mt Eliza and re-capture Perth as it was founded on 12 August 1829. Gone are the reed-lined river banks, the forests of tall trees, the continuous clumps of spiralled-stemmed grass trees and small valleys and rivulets that once streamed slowly into the Swan River below the slope of the hill. Only the then unexplored Darling Range in the distance remains distinguishable.

When Stirling established the colony's principal town some twelve miles up-river, the Swan River ran adjacent to Bazaar Terrace (now Mounts Bay Road) and just south of the Supreme Court buildings. The original site of the fledgling settlement was then no more than a narrow ridge of sand with a river frontage, a chain of freshwater lakes in the background and a series of swamps to the north. Many extant letters have described the natural beauty of early Perth. 'The bank as far back as Hay Street' wrote one colonist 'was beautiful in colours of green, yellow, white and pink with small streams running into the river'. Almost two months after foundation another view was presented by visiting naval surgeon T Wilson RN.

Many years later, Mary Ann reminisced about how hard life was in the new colony of Western Australia at that time, isolated from other cities by thousands of kilometers. She recalled the privations that were undergone by the early settlers, when stores of every description became scarce, often through the criminal proceedings of storekeepers who, rather than see prices go down, would hide their stock of commodities. On one occasion, the chief and almost only food obtainable for a fortnight was wild cabbage, and the colonists were at starvation point when a vessel happened to arrive with fresh supplies.

1836 Another baking partnership - with his brother Edward Wood dissolved.

1837 Is mentioned in census in Perth.

1837 William James briefly appeared in the Court reports in 1837 when he failed to honor a promissory note. The Court found that he had committed to pay the 28 pounds now due to Samson Bros, auctioneers and importers. William James had already agreed to pay the debt by installments, so the Court basically dismissed the case.

1840 November signed petition for a Methodist Minister’s stipend at Perth. By 1842, he had removed his bakery back to St George’s Terrace, the main street of Perth, perhaps into his brother Edward’s bakery and cottage. He was still in the trade when a man appeared in court in 1846 charged with obtaining two loaves of bread from 12 year old Emma Wood, serving in her father’s shop. It transpired that the poor fellow was hungry and didn’t know where to go. He spotted the baker’s shop and asked for two loaves of bread to be charged to the account of the Catholic priest. He ate them himself and it proved a very expensive meal. He was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment with hard labour!

1844 Nov, with his wife, opened a lodging and boarding house in St George's Terrace, today in the very hub of Perth's business area.

1847 After 17 eventful years in the infant colony of Western Australia, William James and his wife and their seven surviving children sailed from Perth on 11 March 1847 aboard the Emperor. They were bound for Adelaide, on the first leg of their voyage to Geelong, where William James’s sister, Cordelia, had moved the previous year. Cordelia’s husband William Lewis owned the Victoria hotel in Malop Street, a landmark in early Geelong. Their stay in Adelaide must have been very brief because Henry's birth is recorded later in 1847 in Victoria.

William James’s ninth child, Henry, was born in Geelong in October 1847 and christened the following month in the Wesleyan Chapel in Yarra Street. Their tenth child, Frederick, was born in December 1849 and Ernest, the youngest, was born in 1856.

William James continued in the baker’s trade, firstly in Malop Street, next in Moorabool Street, and then the family settled in Ashby (now Geelong West) in the 1850s.

In 1856 the fire carts rushed to the Wood bakery in O’Connell Street Ashby. The bakery was on fire and the adjoining cottage was under threat. In the end, the cottage was saved but the bakery destroyed.[4] William James retired from business the following year but continued to be involved in the Wesleyan Church.

1857 Retired. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, there were many changes in the Wood household. William James’s older children married and left home. Around this time his mother Sarah came over from Tasmania to live with her eldest son and his family.

1868 William James Wood died of phthisis (TB), aged 61 years on 08 Jan 1868 at La Trobe Terrace, Ashby, Victoria, Australia.[5][6] He was buried in the Eastern Cemetery, Geelong[7]. The headstones have long gone.

His mother Sarah survived him until 28th March 1871, when she died aged 91 years. She was buried in the Eastern Cemetery, Geelong on the 29th March 1871. Register #91803. She also is only listed in records as the headstones have long gone.

His wife Mary Ann survived him for many years. In the 1880s she went to live at Karabeal, near Hamilton, with her daughter Mary Ann, who had married Theophilus Higgins. She died there in 1892 and was buried at the Karabeal Cemetery.

Sources

Footnotes and Citations:
  1. Baptism: "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JSQJ-7R8 : 22 March 2020), William James Wood, 1806.
  2. Marriage 1: "Australia, Tasmania, Civil Registration, 1803-1933," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q279-9XZB : 3 October 2018), William Wood and Diana Dennett, 27 Oct 1826; citing Marriage 27 Oct 1826, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, line #1820, Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart; FHL microfilm 7,368,152.
  3. Marriage 2: "Australia Marriages, 1810-1980", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XTC1-3JG : 28 January 2020), William James Wood, 1832.
  4. Insolvency: Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1926) 15 November 1859 Insolvency (Bakery) : 6 Jun 2016
  5. Death: VIC BDM 1135/1868
  6. Death notice: Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1926) 11 January 1868 Death notices : 6 Jun 2016
  7. Burial: Wesleyan Section Register # 91906
Source List:
  • Kent Archives UK; B.D.M, Australian Archives
  • Death, Victorian Pioneer index CDROM (F= William, M= Sarah Unknown)
  • Wood Family Files references. Family records supplied by Barrie Mair JP (Australia/New Zealand/England/Scotland and Ireland), Kathy Thompson (NZ), Wood Family Ancestry, Daryl Wight (Australia), Wood Family Ancestry, Lois Mair (Family Photos NZ), Mair/Wood Family Ancestry, Brews News Tasmania.




Is William your ancestor? Please don't go away!
 star icon Login to collaborate or comment, or
 star icon contact private message the profile manager, or
 star icon ask our community of genealogists a question.
Sponsored Search by Ancestry.com

DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with William by comparing test results with other carriers of his Y-chromosome or his mother's mitochondrial DNA. However, there are no known yDNA or mtDNA test-takers in his direct paternal or maternal line. It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with William:

Have you taken a DNA test? If so, login to add it. If not, see our friends at Ancestry DNA.



Comments: 1

Leave a message for others who see this profile.
There are no comments yet.
Login to post a comment.
Wood-17271 and Wood-17045 appear to represent the same person because: Clear duplicate
posted by [Living Woodhouse]

Rejected matches › William Wood (1806-)James W Wood (1808-)