Week 5 – 2023: Oops #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

Sometimes a great story comes along and you fight so hard to make it true.

Case in point, my husband’s purported 6th great-grandfather, Anthony Lindsey (or Lindsay). There are at least three iterations of his ancestry, all involving three brothers who came from Scotland.[1] So much that surrounds Anthony that is conjecture and speculation.

So what do I know about Anthony, for sure?

Well, I know that he married Alice Page because both of them are named in Alice’s stepfather’s will. Specifically, Francis Tolson “discharges and acquits” Anthony of all his debts to Tolson due at the time of his death.

There is an (another?) Anthony Lindsay that shows up in the records at about this time. It seems that on February 26, 1735, this Anthony and two others were indicted for breaking and entering the home of Jane Love in London in the early morning hours of January 5, 1735.[2] They stole “a Copper Fish Kettle, a Coffee Pot, a Frying Pan, a Sauce Pan, eighteen Plates, four Dishes, a a Pestle and Mortar, a Cane with a Brass Head, a Hat, two Wigs, three Pair of Breeches, a Petticoat, and six Yards of Cloth.” Anthony piloted the get-away boat which was moored on the Thames behind Love’s home. After putting all the booty in the boat, the thieves rowed it away. They were somewhat successful in selling what they stole, however, one of the thieves, Ethelbert Hawks, fell into the Thames while wearing one of the stolen breeches and wigs.[3]

A fourth thief, John Faucet, was not indicted with the three others because he “turned evidence” and testified against them at court. Apparently, Faucet had done this previously, sending these former comrades to the gallows. Seven or eight witnesses appeared on behalf of Anthony, swearing to his good character. Regrettably, he and the other two thieves were found guilty and sentenced to death.[4]

I can only presume that the testimony in favor of Anthony lead to his sentence being “reprieved” and the punishment being reduced to transportation to America. On April 12, 1735, Anthony and sixty-five other convicts boarded the Patapscoe Mercant captained by Darby Lux and bound for Maryland.[5] Lux had been contracted by Jonathan Forward, the London merchant solely responsible for convict transportation to the American colonies from 1718 until 1739.[6] In June 1735, the British government paid Forward £495 for transporting these felons from Newgate prison and thirty-three felons from county jails.[7]

Banishment to the colonies was nothing new by the time this happened to Anthony. From the earliest days of the colonies, colonial governors regularly asked the British government for convict labor.[8] Planters were eager to pay a minimal amount for the virtual ownership of a convict, seven years or fourteen years.[9] But these instances of transportation were of a makeshift nature. In 1718 the number of convicts transported shot up. In a response a rising crime-wave that swept London and the surrounding counties, the British Parliament passed the Transportation Act: An act for the further preventing robbery, burglary, and other felonies and for the more effectual transportation of felons, and unlawful exporters of wool; and for declaring the law upon some points relating to pirates.[10] This act established a regulated, bonded system to transport criminals to the North American colonies for indentured service and became the leading penalty for property offences.[11] From 1718 to 1775, more than 30,000 convicts were transported from England to America, the vast majority from London.[12]

While many in the Lindsey family believe that Anthony Lindsey the convict was the same Anthony Lindsey who married Alice Page, I have my doubts.

1. How did Anthony marry in Maryland before 1728 (when his son was born) and then wind up sentenced to death in London not many years later? Are we to assume that he was some kind of sailor who regularly went back and forth from Britain to the New World. That’s a BIG leap.

2. As a transported felon, Anthony would not have been freed when he arrived in Maryland. Instead, he would have been sold by Lux into indentured servitude for at least seven years. This would make his fathering two more children problematic, at the least.

3. Lastly, much credence is given to Francis Tolson forgiving Anthony’s debts in his will with the assumption that Tolson paid for his freedom. The problem with this story, as sweet as it is, is that Tolson died in 1730, five years before Anthony’s troubles.

Oops.

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[1] Margaret Isabella Lindsay, The Lindsays of America (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell’s Sons, 1889), 256-57; digital image, Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/lindsaysofameric1889lind/page/256/mode/2up : accessed 16 February 2023).

[2] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 17 February 2023), February 1735, trial of John Sindal Anthony Lindsey Ethelbert Hawks (t17350226-61).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Marion and Jack Kaminkow, eds., Original Lists of Emigrants in Bondage from London to the American Colonies 1919-1744 (Baltimore, MD: Magna Carta Book Co., 1967), 192-193.

[6] A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies 1781-1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 70-71.

[7] Warrants for the Payment of Money: 1735, April-June," in Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, Volume 3, 1735-1738, ed. William A Shaw (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1900), 106-122; digital image, British History Online (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-treasury-books-papers/vol3/pp106-122 : accessed 21 February 2023).

[8] Kaminkow, Emigrants in Bondage, viii.

[9] Ibid, ix.

[10] “1717: 4 George 1 c.11: The Transportation Act,” The Statutes Project (https://statutes.org.uk/site/the-statutes/eighteenth-century/1717-4-george-1-c-11-the-transportation-act/ : accessed 21 February 2023).

[11] A. Roger Ekrich, “Bound for America: A profile of British Convicts Transported to the Colonies, 1718-1775, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 2 (April 1985), 184-200: digital image, JStor.org (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1920427 : accessed 22 February 2023).

[12] A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies 1781-1775 (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1987), 23.