Aaron ASHWOOD b. 1828 Brosley Shrewsbury England d. 4 DEC 1880 River Derwent Hobart: Tony's Genealogy Pages

1828 - 1880

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Birth 1828 Brosley Shrewsbury England

Gender Male

Died 4 Dec 1880 River Derwent Hobart

Person ID I1613 James Harrison's descendants

Last Modified 24 Jun 2011

Family Margaret HACKETT, b. Abt 1831, Ireland , d. 9 Feb 1883, Risdon Hobart Tas.

Married 31 Jul 1855 St Johns Richmond

Children

	1. Aaron ASHWOOD, b. 12 Jun 1857, Hobart , d. 12 Sep 1884, Shag Bay Hobart
	2. John ASHWOOD, b. 1856
	3. Rebecca Theresa ASHWOOD

Family ID F1162 Group Sheet

Notes	10 children in Hobart 5 boys and five girls. 8 alive when he died. Born Broseley Village, Shrewsbury Salop England Aaron Ashwood was born about 1828 in the Salop District of England in the town of Broseley, Shrewsbury County. While research continues, we know little of his life in this area bordering on the Welsh border and marshes. It was a geographic area abundant in coal, lead, copper and iron ore deposits. The River Severn flowed through the county and was used for the transportation of goods and services for centuries. During the 18th century, the town of Broseley was a centre of innovation. 1750 - 1820 was a time of great riches for few and abject poverty for many. The Rev. John Wesley preached in Shrewsbury to the poor as to how to help themselves. By 1800 coach travel had become the main means of transportation. Shrewsbury became an important staging post for the London- to- Ireland route with numerous coaches leaving from various inns in town; and in 1832 3 Family Group Sheet 7/7/2006 the thirteen year old Princess destined one day to be the mighty Queen Victoria visited Shrewsbury. All the silver was taken out of the town’s store to make the day special. The Navvies were building the railway to connect Shrewsbury with Birmingham. In November 1859 Charles Darwin, a son of Shrewsbury, published his Origin of Species. Shrewsbury however has more pressing things on its mind: drunkenness, prostitution, overcrowding all problems that had built over the subsequent decades. It was amongst this drunkenness, prostitution and overcrowding Aaron Ashwood lived and grew to be a young man. Broseley was experiencing a high rate of crime as were other economically depressed areas of Salop, and there were no policing agencies. The well to do citizens banded together and formed associations for the prosecution of felons. “The Anti-Felons” was the name by which they were popularly known. Their full title was “The Broseley Association for the Prosecution of Felons”. They were one of many such associations existing in the 18th, 19th and well into the 20th centuries, which originally had the sole purpose of bringing petty criminals to justice. They flourished in the days prior to the compulsory establishment of borough and county police forces. In his “Portrait of an Age Victorian England”, G.M. Young says that in 1840 there were in England “five hundred associations for the prosecution of felons; but there were no county police; and the mainstay of the public police was not the (parish) constable but the yeoman, and behind the yeoman, though cautiously and reluctantly employed, the soldier”. More than one Shropshire town had its Anti-Felon Association. Ludlow had one, rivalling Broseley’s in its long years of existence. There was one in Louth, Lincolnshire. George Eliot, in “Scenes of Clerical Life”, writing of the 1830 period, has a farmer, Mr. Hackit, “presiding at the annual dinner of the Association for the Prosecution of Felons at the Oldinfort Arms”, in the Nuneaton area. Arnold Bennett writes in “These Twain” of an architect living in the Five Towns during the late 19th century: “Osmond Orgreave had never related himself to the crowds. He was not a Freemason; he had never had municipal office; he had never been President of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons”. But between the days of Hackit and Orgreave Anti-Felons everywhere were more concerned with the pleasures of social gatherings than with the pursuit of justice. Precisely such a system of rewards was fundamental to the formation of the Broseley Anti-Felons. Members of the Association were owners of various kinds of property; a house, an estate, a mine, a quarry, a farm, craft on the river, an iron-works, a pottery, a shop or a public house. They each paid a membership fee and an annual subscription, and the money subscribed served to provide rewards for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of persons responsible for thefts and acts of damage to property. The money was also to be used to pay lawyers’ fees. There was a fixed scale of rewards, payable after conviction of the felon. In 1837, a reward of 5 guineas was offered in cases of burglary, highway robbery, arson, stealing horses and cattle; 2 guineas when pigs, poultry, hay, straw had been stolen; one guinea in the case of theft of timber, gates, fencing, of fruit and vegetables, and in the event of wilful damage to wagons, ploughs etc.; “or any kind of felony whatsoever”. In 1860 the same scale of rewards applied as in 1837. (taken from Wilkinson Journals 9 and 11 - 1981&83 by John Cragg) THE CONVICT YEARS On the 27th day of June 1842, at the age of twenty, Aaron Ashwood was tried and convicted. He was sentenced to ten years for burglary of books and for 2 months for poaching. Shrewsbury had it's own prison dating from 1793. Aaron Ashwood was described for prison records as being 5 feet 2 l/2 inches, medium weight, fair complected with a round head, dark brown hair, dark brown eyebrows, grey eyes, large nose, wide mouth, medium chin, with ______________ right arm, _______ marks on breast, large scar on throat, scar between eyebrows who could read. He was also described as single, and a Protestant. The surgeon's report was indifferent. REgistration Number 1890 RGD Number 35 (his death) He departed from Plymouth on the ship Anson 1 October 1843 and arrived 4 February 1844 in Van Diemen's Land. Data Base Number 1680 Tasmania Convict Archives 4 Family Group Sheet 7/7/2006 Private Life At the time of marriage Aaron Ashwood, Sr. was described as a coal miner, in 1856 as a miner of Providence Valley; in 1858 of New Town, from 1860 as a quarryman of O'Brien's Bridge, and from 1868 as Watr Bailiff. In 1871 while residing at Risdon Ferry he was reported missing on the Derwent December 4, 1880. His body was never recovered, consequently thee was no inquest or death certificate. The basic details of his date and place of birth cannot be located from that source. There were a number of Ashwoods transsported from Ireland over the years, but none with the surname Aaron. Marriage Information Wife: Margaret Ferrell Mary Hackett Married: 31 Jul 1855 Beginning status: Married in: The Church of St. John Richmond Tasmania Australia Reference number: Reg # 1173 Marriage Notes Registration Number 1173 RGD Number 37 (Marriage) Aaron Ashwood (27), coal miner and Margaret Hackett alias Mary Farrell (21), house servant were married on 31 July 1855 by William Dunne (sic) at the Church of St. John Richmond according to the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic church by bans . Witnessed by Jeremiah Donovan and Margaret Donovan. Marriage number 126 in the book Marriages of the District.