Sidney Alfred Parsons and his Ancestors

Silas Parsons (1807 to 1894)

Silas Parsons’ grandfather Moses Parsons was a brother of William Parsons of Holton, and William’s grandson Edward Parsons was a grandfather of Sidney Parsons who is the person upon whom the family tree described in these web pages is based. So Silas Parsons and Sidney Parsons were second cousins twice removed.

Silas was baptised in the parish church of North Cheriton, near Wincanton in Somerset, on the 31st of May 1807. His parents were Moses Parsons and Naomi Jeanes. Silas’ father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were all called Moses Parsons, the earliest Moses having farmed in Kington Magna, about ten miles from North Cheriton, during the late 17th and early 18th century.


The area in which Silas’ ancestors lived is in south-west England near the town of Wincanton which lies on the old main road from London to Exeter and Plymouth. North Cheriton is in the south-eastern part of the county of Somerset and Kington Magna is in neighbouring North Dorset.

Silas’ earliest known ancestor was Richard Parsons who was born in Kington Magna in North Dorset at about the time of the Civil Wars.

Silas was the youngest of five brothers. He became a coachman and for a while he lived in London. It was there, on the first of January 1833, that he married Maria Hoy. Their wedding was in Bloomsbury.

Silas and Maria’s first child, Eliza Naomi, was born in 1833, probably in Somerset. Their second child, Roseanna, was baptised in London in March 1835 and at that time Silas was working as a greengrocer.

Later in 1835 Silas and Maria decided to emigrate to New South Wales. They and their two children travelled on the Brother commanded by Captain Towns. Maria was unwell on the sea journey and upon reaching Hobart in Tasmania she refused to travel further, so the family disembarked there. Their date of arrival in Tasmania was the 15th of November.

The Parsons family lived in Hobart for five years while Silas established himself. There was plenty of land available for industrious and enterprising people to settle because the population was very low, the number of aboriginal Tasmanian people having already fallen to just a few hundred. The majority view amongst historians is that they were mainly wiped out by diseases introduced by British and Americal sealers who began to visit Tasmania in the 1790s. However some historians maintain that there was a policy of deliberate extermination. There is no doubt that those few who survived where very badly treated by Sir George Arthur who was governor from 1823 to 1837.

Silas was offered land near McRobie’s Gully but rejected it and continued to search. In 1839 he found 100 acres of land near the entrance to the Huon Valley which he applied for and was granted for a fee of £50. The transaction was recorded in the Van Diemen’s Land Gazette. That land, which is about 20 miles from Hobart, became the foundation of the Grove Estate.

Working with convict labourers who had been assigned to him Silas cleared the land and built a house, making occasional trips back to Hobart to visit his family. During this period he and Maria had three more children: Emily, Mary Ann, and Charles James.

The house that Silas built was described as follows: “a fine, roomy, comfortable house of split timber, with stone chimneys, lath and plaster rooms, and a big old English fireplace, with seats on either side, in the dining-room, and in the grounds he planted ornamental trees”.

In the early days of the Grove estate Silas cut timber and grew potatoes and wheat.

In 1839 Charles moved his family to Grove. Although it was only 20 miles there were no roads then and it was a difficult and arduous journey for a family with young children. The following year he planted three acres of apple orchards. They were among the first in the Huon which has since become a major apple growing area. There is today an Apple Heritage Museum near to Grove.

Silas and Maria had three more children. Their names were Ellen, Silas George, and Lucie Maria.

In 1871 their eldest child Eliza, who had married a few years previously, died. She was only about 38 years old. Their third daughter Emily also died at an early age; she was only 44 when she passed away in 1880.

Silas became a prominent member of the community. He helped maintain a postal service during the early years and was also involved in the project to build a road connecting the area to Hobart. In 1876 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace.

Maria died in December 1885 and Silas died eight and a half years later in July 1994.

Their sons remained in the Huon and themselves became respected citizens and young Silas George (known as George) took over the farm at Grove.

On Thursday December 12 1935 the Hobart newspaper The Mercury published an article commemorating the centenary of the Parsons family’s arrival in Tasmania. It ended by remarking that:
“the Huon owes much to the Parsons family, who won through in spite of stupendous pioneering difficulties and hardships”.

Silas and Maria Parsons’ children

Ancestors of Silas Parsons

The following chart shows three generations of Silas’ ancestors.

His earliest known ancestor was Richard Parsons who lived in Kington Magna in Dorset during the period following the Civil Wars.


Parents
Father — Moses Parsons, a farmer from Horsington in Somerset
Mother — Naomi Jeanes, Moses’ wife

Grandparents
Grandfather — Moses Parsons who was born in Kington Magna in Dorset but spent most of his life in Horsington in Somerset
Grandmother — Betty Hobbs, Moses’ wife, who came from Abbas Combe

Great-grandparents
Great-grandfather — Moses Parsons of Kington Magna in Dorset
Great-grandmother — Martha Turk



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You are free to make use of the information in these web pages in any way that you wish but please be aware that the author, Mike Parsons, is unable to accept respsonsibility for any errors or omissions.

Mike can be contacted at parsonspublic@gmail.com

The information in these web pages comes from a number of sources including: Hampshire County Records Office, Somerset Heritage Centre; Dorset County Records Office; Southampton City Archives; the General Register Office; several on-line newspaper archives; several on-line transcriptions of Parish Register Entries; and several on-line indexes of births, marriages and deaths. The research has also been guided at times by the published work of others, both on-line and in the form of printed books, and by information from personal correspondence with other researchers, for all of which thanks are given. However, all of the information in these web pages has been independently verified by the author from original sources, facimile copies, or, in the case of a few parish register entries, transcriptions published by on-line genealogy sites. The author is aware that some other researchers have in some cases drawn different conclusions and have published information which is at variance from that shown in these web pages.