My short story went nowhere today but I remembered my convict ancestor
My ever alert husband pointed out to me today a short story competition I should enter. So I sat down to make this happen, only it didn’t. The theme, major or minor, was ‘thread’ and the word count was only 1500 words. Very easy to bash this out, I thought.
It then got complicated.
Ah, thread. Embroidery. I know I will write about Sophia Grantham, my convict ancestor, transported to Australia from England (well, Van Dieman’s Land, now Tasmania) in 1841 aboard the Rajah. The quilt the convicts (including Sophia) stitched during the voyage is now a highly prized Australian textile artefact.
Have you ever been completely sidetracked by research? I just wanted to know a few facts I couldn’t recall from earlier reading. Several hours later, I was still absorbed by the research and remembering long forgotten information, with no story written.
I won’t beat about the bush here. Sophia Grantham was a thief – she worked in service in England and opportunistically helped herself to some money that didn’t belong to her. She did eventually make something of herself in Australia, and particularly in my home state of Queensland where she started, what else, but public houses. Through her, there is one small town in mid western central Queensland – Rolleston – where I imagine I’m related to just about everyone in the graveyard.
Australians are quite keen on tracking back on their ancestry – I find it hard to imagine the English, Irish and German people in my ancestry who came willingly (apart from Sophia) to an unsettled and strange land as far from Europe as they could get to start a new life, virtually hacked out of the bush.
So, no short story yet, but the idea is there. So in the meantime here is a poem I wrote some years back, with the simple idea of honouring her contribution:
Sophia’s Rajah Quilt
She wanted it badly
a trinket, largely worthless
but it wasn’t hers to take.
She almost hanged for wanting
to rise above her lot.
Instead they shipped her
much against her will
to a place across the ocean.
In the sordid southern port
she slipped into a way of life
that meant survival,
offering only what she could
in free exchange.
Catching a disease
she didn’t know existed,
her future clouded by the knowledge
that one day it would take her
over the edge
into madness
But in those years in between
she gave a fledgling country
so much more
than it gave her.
Her name is not remembered
in the towns she helped create.
She’s forgotten,
her memory lost,
her story barely known
to anyone
save for a fragile quilt
more valuable than anything
her small hands ever stitched.
Now a national icon
the Rajah quilt holds stories
that we will never know
except that our Sophia’s clever fingers
once worked upon the cloth.
Copyright J Mary Masters 2009
Written to honour her great, great, great grandmother Sophia Grantham, later Kezia Tregilgus
#JMaryMasters #1841 #Rajah #Australia #Convicts #SophiaGrantham #Writing #RajahQuilt
