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I am researching the Harford family. I am in direct line of descent from Samuel Harford whose details are
Born c1810, Heytesbury, Wh, England
Died 25 Aug 1886 Gumbowie South A,ustralia
I can trace his history in South Australia and should be able to trace him in Tasmania but hoped that you may be able to give me a lead to his ancestry, crime, occupation or some clues relating to him in Wiltshire.

Question asked on

04 July 2011

Answer

Samuel Harford seems to have been an interesting character. He was a ploughman of Tisbury who was one of a gang breaking up the new threshing machines in the area of his wife's home. These machines replaced the back breaking winter work of threshing corn in the barn and the labourers feared that their introduction would mean no work and no pay for them through the hard winter months. At 12.00 noon on 25th November Samuel was one of a gang, said to number 200 or 300 but this was probably a slight exaggeration, who came to the farm of Ambrose Patient at Corton in the parish of Boyton in the Wylye valley. He must have been one of the leaders as he spoke to Ambrose before the machinery, which was in pieces, was broken up. He, and others, were taken to Devizes new prison and were charged on 3rd January 1831 with ' having riotously and tumultuously assembled against the peace of these realms, and forcibly destroying several threshing machines in Knook and Upton Lovell in this county'.

He was convicted of machine breaking and sentenced to seven years transportation. On 19th January 1831 two vans, each drawn by six horse, transported the prisoners from Fisherton Goal in Salisbury, to Portsmouth, where they were incarcerated in the prison hulk York, before being transported. Samuel was described as being 5 feet 0 inches, of brown complexion, with brown hair, no whiskers, brown eyebrows, and a stout neck. He left a wife and young child in Wiltshire.

In Australia he was granted a ticket of leave by the Lt. Governor for his praiseworthy conduct in rescuing a child from drowning. The child had fallen into a flooded quarry at the back of the penitentiary. This was on 15th April 1934 and he was granted a free pardon (No. 281, no. 33) on 3rd February 1836.

Bibliography

Wiltshire Machine Breakers, Vols. 1 & 2, by Jill Chambers, 1993, ISBN 0 9515959 5 4