Eliza was the daughter of John Ardley.  She is my 3rd great grandmother. When John Ardley was transported, his daughter Eliza was separated from her brother William Ardley and went to live with John’s sister Frances and her husband William Sheppard. 

Frances and William Sheppard and Eliza Ardley emigrated to Nelson, NZ in Mar 1842 aboard the ‘Indus’ and are shown in 1845 to be in Riwaka.  They left NZ aboard the barque ‘Brightman’ and arrived Sydney 22 Mar 1848. They then embarked on the ‘Diana’ for Port Philip, arriving 4 Apr 1848.

In 1852 she married John Norman at Mount Alexander, their wedding certificate says they were resident at Forest Creek. Forest Creek was a gold mining area in what is now Castlemaine. John Norman was also a convict, more details when I do his history. If you look at their marriage certificate you can see that both of them made their mark (+), presumeably because they couldn't read or write.

They moved to Tasmania shortly after their marriage. Their first son William was born on the 7th of July 1853 in Hobart Town. By 1856 they are back in Victoria.

In 1857 Eliza was eventually re-united with her brother William Ardley when he and his family emigrated to Australia on the 'Admiral Boxer '.

They eventually moved to Kangaroo Ground near Eltham. They had 7 children. She died on the 15th April 1914, she was 94 years old. When she died she had 29 grand children and 58 great grand children. A remarkable women.

Marriage Certificate

Death Certificate

Norman Family Bark Hut

I was a software developer and like most of us I had my bad days, so I shouldn't complain too much. Sending a "test" notification to all your users seems to me to be a rookie mistake. When I fucked up like this I sent a couple of thousand emails to the same person, luckily it was an internal fuckup. 😀

This is supposed to be an advertisement but something went wrong !!!