Although they had both arrived as convicts, Paul Bushell and his first wife Jane Sharp are recognized as members of the group which founded the Ebenezer church. Their connection with Ebenezer was rather intriguing.
It began in 1792 aboard the ship Kitty. Three months after the Kitty arrived in Sydney with its load of stores and about 30 mostly-female convicts, a baby fathered by the ship’s captain, George Ramsay, was born to Charlotte Stroud, one of the convicts in his charge. The baby was named Jane, possibly in honour of Charlotte’s fellow transportee, 17-year-old Jane Sharp, who may have helped care for Charlotte’s other two children during the long sea voyage. Later in the 1790s Jane Sharp formed a permanent relationship with Paul Bushell and Charlotte Stroud teemed up with the private soldier George Loder, based at Windsor. Charlotte’s small daughter, who became known as Jane Loder, and two other children fathered by men aboard Kitty lived near the Bushells, and Jane Sharp remained friendly with their mothers.
Paul’s life in Australia was exemplary, yet for many years after his arrival in Sydney with the Second Fleet in 1790 he avoided the religion presented by Rev Richard Johnson (from 1788 to 1800) and Rev Samuel Marsden (from 1794). Things changed, and Paul’s need for acceptance and fellowship was satisfied, with the advent of Rev Rowland Hassall as a preacher at Ebenezer. Hassall, an age peer of Paul’s, from the English Midlands like Paul, and sharing Paul’s interest in horse-breeding, helped the ‘Coromandel Settlers’ group of Calvinistic Methodists and Presbyterians build the chapel and school at Ebenezer. Paul and Jane mixed with this group from at least April 1808. Hassall continued to preach at Ebenezer until Rev John Youl was appointed in 1809. Youl was an Anglican at this time, but was later involved with the Congregational Church.
Documentary proof does not survive, but Paul Bushell married Jane Sharp some time between August 1806 and April 1810, and it’s more than likely that they were married at Ebenezer by Hassall or Youl, either under the ‘great spreading tree’ or in the new church. Early in 1810 Rev Youl married Jane Sharp’s young namesake from the Kitty, Jane Stroud/Ramsay/Loder, who had come into regular contact with Youl when he was teaching at Windsor from 1808. Through the Kitty connection, the Youls were most likely personal friends of the Bushells.
When William Pascoe Crook became a full-time evangelist in 1814, his wide-ranging circuit included the church at Ebenezer, and on one of these trips he visited the home of Paul Bushell, and the school at Wilberforce which Paul had helped James Kenny establish around 1807. Crook’s diary implies that this was his first meeting with Paul Bushell, and Crook completely ignored Mrs Bushell’s presence in her own home. Both being ex-convicts, the Bushells did not receive the deference shown by Crook to Mrs Youl a few days later. The irony of the long-standing connection between the Bushells and the Youls was clearly lost on Crook.
Evangelists of the ‘fire and brimstone’ variety, like Crook, may not have appealed to the Bushells but they continued to enjoy the ongoing, genuine Christian fellowship of their friends at Ebenezer. Although the Bushells lived at Wilberforce, some distance from the church, in March 1817 Paul pledged an annual contribution of ₤2.10.0 towards the support of the Minister at Ebenezer, the other thirteen supporters each pledging ₤5 annually.
Religious affiliations at this time were very fluid. By 1820, as the church at Ebenezer drifted closer to Presbyterianism, Paul turned back towards the Church of England, into which faith he’d been baptized in 1766. The attraction may have been the new chaplain working at Windsor from December 1819, Rev John Cross, a recent immigrant holding broad and liberal views. Cross had taken over from Rev Robert Cartwright, who tended to be very critical of ex-convicts and disinclined to think of them as respectable or moral. Rev Cross buried Jane Bushell née Sharp at Wilberforce in December 1820 and married Paul to his young second wife Isabella Brown at St Matthew’s Windsor in June 1822. Once Cross moved on from Windsor in the late 1820s, Paul became a regular member of the Church of England congregation in the schoolroom at Wilberforce, his wife Isabella’s home parish.
For more information, see my book ‘Paul Bushell, Second Fleeter’. Copies are available at the Ebenezer Church bookshop, or online via www.louisewilson.com.au
Contact Ted Brill via the website www.ebenezerchurch.org.au to join the emailing list for the Ebenezer Church Newsletter.
No comments:
Post a Comment