At the beginning of 1845 when this letter was written, George Church had been in Tasmania, known then as Van Diemans land, for two years. A labourer accustomed to looking after sheep, he had been sentenced to ten years transportation at the Quarter Sessions in Aylesbury in 1841 for stealing two ewes from his previous employer. It was his second appearance at the court, although then, in 1840, he had been acquitted of stealing ducks. He left behind a wife, pregnant with their second child, a young son and mother-in-law.
This is his second letter home, the first apparently never arrived. George was illiterate and the poor quality of the writing suggests he got a fellow prisoner to write it. Addressed simply to Ann Church of Onley (note the misspelling) it conveys a favourable impression of country he has been sent to. Opportunities and cost of living compare favourably with that in England and it is perhaps a surprise to discover that even as a convicted convict he can earn wages. As a man experienced with handling sheep the job opportunities for George are excellent and indeed he is assigned to a good master who pays him well and puts him in a position to buy his own place. Over the next ten years he wrote repeatedly and sent money to his wife urging her to come and join him.
This story has no happy ending; Anne refused to go and died a pauper in Newport Pagnell workhouse in 1891. George married bigamously in 1855, the year after his final letter in this collection in which he finally gave up on pleading with Ann to emigrate. He had eight children with his new wife, but his fortunes seemed to have turned in the 1870’s. He received two prison sentences in Tasmania for horse and sheep stealing. He died in 1887 aged seventy-one.
There are seventeen letters from George Church to his wife and they were deposited in the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies by Anne Church’s descendants in 1987.
Image: Our ref: D-X 975/1
Milton Keynes in Fifty Historic Records 