Finding my Motherline- through Art and Digital Media

Continuing my research into my long lost motherline and recently discovered family history, am going with Max to the Mitchell Library this week to view watercolours by our ancestor Andrew Hastings Doyle. The label 'convict' is a misnomer, Andrew was an artist and political exile from Ireland at the time of the Uprisings in the late 18th and early 19th c. Andrew and his brother (listed as "Rebels" in the ship's records of the Rolla) were exiled for life to the new colony of Australia in 1803). Andrew's wife Sophia Isabella and their three young children accompanied him as free, fee paying passengers, and according to the records he travelled in her cabin. When they arrived in Australia she bought a house in the Rocks where they lived - he was "assigned" to her. Then they moved out and bought land and built houses in the Blue Mountains and on the banks of the Hawkesbury River.  The Mitchell Library holds two of Andrew Doyle's drawings and a copy of a letter he wrote to the Dublin Society, that is held in the British Library. I am looking forward to seeing these in 'real life' and reading his letter.

The pictured image is Andrew Doyle's watercolour drawing 'Rock Lily' dated in the 1820s, that he painted where he lived with his wife Sophia Isabella and family (our ancestors), on the Hawkesbury, near Portland Head,  now known as Wiseman's Ferry.

Andrew Doyle,  Rock Lily,  42.9 x 27.1 cm, 1820s.