Honora Collins

Honora Collins came from County Kerry. She was tried in Kerry in March 1795 and sentenced to transportation to NSW for seven years. Details of her offence are missing as are many from that period. She sailed on the ship The Marquis of Cornwallis. This ship left Cork August, 1895 with 233 male and female convicts. Most were members of a Roman Catholic movement called the Defenders, which had been formed to resist Protestant attempts to drive them off their land. A threatened insurrection on board led to 42 convicts being flogged and Ellis, a sergeant on the ship and the ringleader being put in irons and dying days later. An informant was strangled by convicts and Hogan, the captain, fired into the them (no-one was killed.)

Honora arrived in NSW 11.2.1796, she began living with convict Thomas Francis and had her first child with him in June 1797 followed by five further children, all but one survived to adulthood. Honora and Thomas married at St Johns, Parramatta on 3.June 1801.

Thomas Francis, an English convict supported the government side (against the Irish) in the Castle Hill Uprising of 1804. He received a number of land grants and the family eventually settled in Castlereagh on the Nepean River west of Sydney near Penrith.

Honora received her Certificate of Freedom in February 1811.

On 18 June 1814: Thomas advertised that Honora absented herself “without cause or provocation” and that he would not be responsible for her debts. It is not known if she returned to Thomas but  she remained in the Castlereagh district and is buried in Castlereagh, possibly in the same grave as Thomas.

Contributed by Sue McCarthy, Sydney

Fourth great granddaughter of Honora.