An advert placed in an Australian genealogy magazine and months of painstaking research led Alan and Heather Hall to discover an ancestor transported to Australia over a century ago.
Hall's great-great-great grandfather, Thomas Collins, was sentenced to seven years' transportation at the Old Bailey in 1839.
He was found guiltyof stealing two loaves of bread and a sack of flour at the age of 16. He was freed in 1846 and spent most of his life owning hotels in Sydney. "I think it was natural curiosity that led us to tracing our family and it was quite something to find convict ancestry," said Hall, 63, who lives near Canberra in ACT.
He said "convict ancestry" no longer carried the stigma that it may have done a few generations ago.
The Halls have been piecing together their family history for the past three years and Hall has traced his family tree to 1750. They are both members of local genealogy societies and have visited Britain to further their search.
Since coming across the Old Bailey website, they discovered another ancestor, George Harrop, who became a victim of crime in 1831 when he was duped into leaving his bag of laundry unattended, and it was pawned by a thief.
