BIBLIOGRAPHY

John DELL was born 5/11/1763 in Reading, Berkshire (son of John Dell, Snr John DELL] and Elizabeth)

His mother Elizabeth, brother Matthew and brother in law John METCALFE were convicted and sentenced to transportation to Australia

• Elizabeth arrived in Sydney Cove on "Lady Juliana" on 3/6/1790
• Matthew arrived in Sydney Cove on "Neptune" on 28/6/1790
• John METCALFE arrived in Sydney Cove on "Neptune" on 28/6/1790

John was a marine and arrived In Sydney Cove on "Surprize" on 26/6/1790

John went to Norfolk Island on "Supply" in March 1791 and then returned to Sydney Cove

John went to Norfolk Island on "Kitty" arriving on 11/2/1793 and returned to Sydney Cove on 6/11/1794 on "Daedalus"

John married Mary HONSLOW on 15/11/1795 in Sydney and they had the following children

• 1798 Elizabeth
• 1800 Joseph

Mary died 2/5/1800 and John had a relationship with Sarah GREEN (marrying on 5/11/1809 in St Phillips Church in Sydney and they had the following children

• 1805 George John
• 1807 James, died young
• 1811 Ann

John and Sarah and 4children (Elizabeth, Joseph, George and Ann) went to England in 1811 or 1812 and once there had the following children

• 1812 Rebecca
• 1815 John

John, wife Sarah and 5 children (Joseph, George, Ann, Rebecca and John) returned to Australia, in Tasmania in 1818 on "Elizabeth Henrietta". (Daughter Elizabeth did not return until 1838)

After arriving in Australia John and Sarah had the following children

• 1819 Charles

John died 2/3/1866 in Launceston, Tasmania, Australia and was buried at the Cypress Street Anglican Cemetery in Newstead, Tasmania, Australia

SOURCES

• NSW Marriage Record - John DELL married Mary HONSLOW in 1795
• NSW Birth Record - Elizabeth DELL born 1798 to John and Mary
• NSW Birth Record - George DELL born 1805 to John and Sarah
• NSW Baptism Record - George DELL baptised 4/6/1805 St Johns Church, Parramatta to John DELL and Sarah
• NSW Marriage Record - John DELL married Sarah GREEN in 1809
• Tasmania Birth Record - Charles DELL born 27/2/1819 Launceston to John DELL and Sarah

  ---

LINKS

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dell-205
• https://rgs.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RR-123-May-2017-Web-V...
• https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/family/K2XY-VRS
• https://patfearnley.weebly.com/john-dell.html
• https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/hounsett/mary/66116
• https://gw.geneanet.org/qenzore?lang=en&iz=13&p=john&n=dell
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/204697784/john-dell
• https://www.familytreecircles.com/john-dell-1763-1866-launceston-ta...

  ---

  
  

Early Tasmania
The following might be of interest to "A.V.G.":

After the settlement of George Town by Lt-Col Paterson in 1804 he decided to move to the junction of the Esk rivers. 

In March, 1606, with this object in view, he sent Capt Wini'oe and Sgt Dell, with a few men, in a boat to mark out the site of a town to be called' Launceston. The party landed at the rocks, about where Ritchie's mill now stands,- where they camped for several days and explored. Shortly afterwards Sgt Dell was again sent, with privates and some prisoners, to erect some buildings. The spot chosen was the site of the Brisbane Hotel.. It would seem most likely that Col Paterson resided at or very close to that spot. The records giving details of the settlement between 1806 and 1816 seem to have disappeared. The grant of land to Mrs Ann' Dry most probably was at Elphin. The Drys lived at Elphin Farm for many years, and it was there that Brady, the
bushranger, lay siege to the place, and Dr Priest was so badly wounded that he died a few days later. A list of grants shown in a diary written by George William Evans, Surveyor-General of the colony, gives the acreage as: River Tamar and North Esk, Richard Dry, 70 acres, and 100 acres; Western River, Lake River, and Norfolk Plains, 700 acres. There is no mention of the 50 acres to Mrs Ann Dry. This probably was before G.W. Evans' time.
C. L. WILLES.
Blackwall.

DELL.-On the 2nd instant at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. Wm. Brean, Brisbane street, Mr. John Dell, aged 102 years and four months. Friends are invited to meet at St. John's Church on Monday, the 5th, at 3 p.m. JOHN SIMPSON, Undertaker.

DEATH OF MR JOHN DELL. It is with feelings of sincere regret that we record the death of Mr. John Dell, at the patriarchal age of 102 years and four months. He had been ailing but a very short time, and had the use of his faculties to the last hour of his life. He was reading as usual without the use of spectacles, and out of bed on Thursday night, but he breathed his last yesterday, at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. William Brean, of Brisbane Street, and his remains are to be interred on Monday. Mr. Dell was born at Reading, in Berkshire, in 1763, and arrived in New South Wales with the 102nd Regiment of Foot, in 1788, in the ship 'Surprize,' the first of the fleet which brought convicts to Botany Bay, and he was present in Sydney during the whole of the period of the government of Governor Phillip, and at the arrest of Governor Bligh, who it will be remembered by those who have read the early history of New South Wales, was arrested by Colonel Johnson, the Colonel of the regiment in which Dell served, the 102nd. This corps was raised specially for service in New South Wales, and Mr. Dell returned with it in 1808, and on board the vessel in which Governor Bligh died on the passage to England. He was pensioned in 1815, and has been in the receipt of a pension for more than half a century. He arrived in this colony in 1818, and was for some time Chief Constable of Launceston, but retired many years ago from office, to a large farm at Norfolk Plains. Mr. Dell was the owner of very valuable property in this colony, though he did not die wealthy, the Court House Square belonged to him at one time, and he fenced it in, but subsequently he returned it to the Government in exchange for a grant of six hundred and forty acres of land in the country. Mr. Dell was a temperate man but not a teetotaller. It is strange that throughout his eventful career, he never learned to smoke, but this may account for the steadiness of his nerves to the latest day of his long life. He had encountered great hardships in New South Wales, having been in the bush there for three days disabled by a spear wound inflicted by an aborigine. He was in a very exhausted state when discovered, but his iron constitution enabled him to rally, and he was soon in as sound a state of health as ever. For some years past his sight was keener and his hair of a darker colour than they had been twenty years previous. He was rather eccentric of late, but no one from his hale appearance would suppose him to be much above seventy years of age. His voice was a good strong firm bass without a quaver in it. Very few men have ever been blessed with such a long period of interrupted sound health as Mr Dell. He will be missed and his death lamented by a wide circle of relatives and friends.

THE LATE MR. JOHN DELL. (From the Melbourne Spectator.) The following reminiscences of the olden times were furnished to us by a gentleman who took them down as they fell from the lips of John Dell, the Greenwich pensioner, a few months before his, death, which happened at Launceston, in the early part of the present year:- He was born, he said, at Reading, in Berkshire, on the 5th of November, 1763. He was one of a family of twenty four children. He remembered the excitement occasioned by the Gordon riots, and how the people gathered round the London coach which brought down the tidings of the tumult, incendiarism, and bloodshed. He was apprenticed with another Reading lad, to a veneer cutter in London; and as he and his fellow-apprentice were one day staring in at a shop window in Fleet-street, and observing to each other that there was nothing like that in Reading, they were accosted by a respectably dressed man, who said his wife was from Reading, and would so like to have a chat with them about the dear old place; would they go home to tea with him ? They cheerfully assented; and were taken to a house in an obscure neighbourhood, at the back of the Fleet Prison Immediately they entered, the door was locked behind them, and the lads straightway concluded that they had been allured there to be murdered; but they were reasonably well fed and taken care of, and remained there some days, with numerous other inmates, who had been similarly kidnapped. Dell watched every opportunity to affect his escape; and one day he saw a portly elderly gentleman enter the house. He seized the propitious moment to run butt at him with his head, doubled him up, bolted through the open door, and rushed bare-headed along the streets, crying out "Murder, murder !" When he reached his master's house, he found him very uneasy at his lengthened absence, and unable to account for it. Dell was taken before the Lord Mayor, who gave instructions for the rescue of his fellow apprentice. They had both fallen into the hands of crimps ; but this mode of recruiting the Navy was so far connived at by the authorities that no steps were taken for the release of the other detainees. Having enlisted in the 102nd Regiment, Dell came out to New South Wales with Governor Phillip in 1785. As she was dropping down the Thames, his vessel anchored near a transport which had just returned with troops from the American War. By the aid of a glass he recognised an old acquaintance, named Fitzpatrick, on board, whom he obtained leave to go and see, and from whom he obtained the particulars of the British reverses in the colonies. Dell described Governor Phillip as an atrocious and ferocious scoundrel, with a finely-shaped head set on a most diminutive body. The sacrifice of human life, both on board ship and in the settlement, by cruelty, disease, over-work, and insufficient food, was perfectly appalling. He mentioned the story of a beautiful young woman, with respectable connections, who had been transported for stealing a silver thimble, which thimble was averred to have been marked and dropped in her box by her mistress, who was jealous of her husband's admiration of the girl. While in New South Wales this convict picked up a parcel containing some boots and other trifling articles, which had been apparently stolen from the Government stores. They were found on her, and she was tried for the theft. Governor Phillip, addressing the prisoner, said, "Now, if you will speak the truth, on the honour of a gentleman, I will acquit you." She replied, "On the honour of a gentlewoman, as I am"-her brother, held a commission in the Guards-" I found the things as I have said." "It is the old story," rejoined the Governor; and thereupon she was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. She died earnestly protesting her innocence, and bitterly inveighing against the Governor as " no gentleman," for having violated his word. After her death, it transpired that the parcel had been thrown away by an escaped convict. Many of these fugitives, Dell added, used to make for the bush and travel northward, under the impression that they could reach Europe overland. On one occasion the mortality in the: hospital was so great, owing to a contagious disease, generated by a low diet, excessive labor, insufficient clothing, and unhealthy accommodation, that the people died off like rotten sheep. A deep pit was dug for the reception of the dead, and into this they were flung " unhousled, unannointed, unanealed.", The men entrusted with the office were so brutalised that they stripped the corpses of their shirts, in order to sell them for a plug of tobacco. While they were taking a fine linen shirt off the body of one man, who was of respectable parentage, and had been transported for forgery, the poor follow revived, and feebly entreated to be reconveyed to the hospital. "What's the use?" was the reply of the callous grave diggers, "You'll be brought back again to be buried to-morrow. You'll be dead enough then you know." He pleaded so hard, however, that he was taken back, and recovered. When Dell returned to England, in 1810, he met this very man in Holborn, who immediately recognised him, and insisted upon taking him home to his mother, that he might assure her from his own lips, that her son's report of the horrors of a penal settlement in New South Wales was not exaggerated. Dell gave a graphic picture of the old lady, who impressed him by her natural piety, sitting with her hands clasped over one knee, and listening to him with a white, wondering face. When Dell came out a second time to Sydney it was in a ship commanded by a man named Donald Traill. He had been instrumental in bringing three of his crew to justice for an alleged mutiny, and they were hung in chains opposite Blackwall, as the custom then was with malefactors of this description. When the vessel went down the river with the tide, some perverse influence seemed to take the ship close to the place of execution, and to render her immovable. The people on board, Dell alleged, could hear the groans of the dying men ; and the crew commented on it in their own superstitious way, with no very complimentary allusions to the captain, who seemed to be so awe-struck by the horror of the scene that, telling the second officer business of importance would take him (the captain) back to town, he handed over the command of the vessel to him, quitted the ship abruptly, and was never seen on board again. In 1793, he said, one of the sentinels on duty in Sydney declared that he had seen the excution of the King of France, in the moon, and described the event with circumstantial minuteness. He was taken before the colonel and the Governor, and still persisted in his assertion, describing the appearance of the King as he walked up to the guillotine, and all the adjuncts of the scene, in a manner which led the authorities to believe that it was a mental hallucination; but when, a year afterwards, the tidings of Louis XVI's execution reached New South Wales, the date of the event was found to coincide with that of the sentinel's lunar vision, while the details likewise agreed. Among the free settlers in the colony was a Louis Bourbon, whom Dell asserts to have been a member of the Royal family of France. He owned 5000 acres of land, stock, &c. When the Irish and English faction fight took place in Sydney, the rioters went out to the farm of this Bourbon. He was a brave man, and would not yield to their demands. He was strung up to a tree, head downwards, and left in that position, from which he was fortunately rescued just in time to save his life. During his first stay in Sydney, a fellow townsman of Dell's, and who had enlisted in the 102nd Regiment under an assumed name, made some offensive remark to the adjutant, who drew his sword and split his skull open. The wounded man was tried by court-martial, and two privates (who were shortly afterwards promoted to be petty officers) swore they saw the man present a firelock at the adjutant. The poor man was condemned to be shot, and twelve men were detailed for the duty. When brought out for execution, he asked leave to speak to the sergeant, the object of his request being to obtain a few minutes conversation with Dell. Permission having been obtained of the colonel, Dell went to the doomed man, who told him he had paid what few debts he owed, and requested him (Dell) to receive and accept the pay which was coming to him. "I have one dying request to make," said he. " Whenever you go back to Reading my mother and sister are sure to hear of it, and to make inquiries about me. Tell them you saw me die; but don't tell them how, or why." When Dell did go home, in 1810, almost the first persons he saw were his late comrade's mother and sister, to whom the tidings he was permitted to communicate were a great blow. Dell was a sentinel at Government House when Bligh was put under arrest, and described him as tyrannical as Phillip. Hunter and King, on the contrary, were good men. Among his Tasmanian experiences, he narrated his pursuit of two convicts who had escaped from Port Arthur, and taken to the bush. They had no provisions with them, and were famine-smitten. One of them murdered his companion as he slept, cut him up, and fed upon his flesh. When apprehended by Dell and party, the pockets of the fugitive were found full of fragments of the mutilated man, which his destroyer declared were as sweet a meat as ever he ate. He was captured in the northern part of the island; and on their way back to Hobart Town the soldiers camping for the night on the edge of the Salt-pan Plains, dug a hole, thrust the cannibal into it, head downward, and buried him alive-so exasperated and savagely vindictive were they with the atrocious conduct of their prisoner.

GEDCOM Note

DELL.-On the 2nd instant at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. Wm. Brean, Brisbane street, Mr. John Dell, aged 102 years and four months. Friends are invited to meet at St. John's Church on Monday, the 5th, at 3 p.m.months. night, but he breathed his last yesterday, at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. William Brean, of Brisbane Street, and his remains are to be interred on Monday. Berkshire, in 1763, and arrived in New South Wales with the 102nd Regiment of Foot, in 1788, in the ship 'Surprize,' the first of the fleet which brought convicts to Botany Bay, and he was present in Sydney during the whole of the period of the government of Governor Phillip, and at the arrest of Governor Bligh, who it will be remembered by those who have read the early history of New South Wales,was arrested by Colonel Johnson, the Colonel of the regiment in which Dell served, the 102nd. and on board the vessel in which Governor Bligh died on the passage to England. colony in 1818, and was for some time Chief Constable of Launceston, but retired many years ago from office, to a large farm at Norfolk Plains. is colony, though he did not die wealthy, the Court House Square belonged to him at one time, and he fenced it in, but subsequently he returned it to the Government in exchange for a grant of six hundred and forty acres of land in the country. or the steadiness of his nerves to the latest day of his long life. icted by an aborigine. his sight was keener and his hair of a darker colour than they had been twenty years previous. e seventy years of age. be missed and his death lamented by a wide circle of relatives and friends.shed to us by a gentleman who took them down as they fell from the lips of John Dell, the Greenwich pensioner, a few months before his, death, which happened at Launceston, in the early part of the present year:- iots, and how the people gathered round the London coach which brought down the tidings of the tumult, incendiarism, and bloodshed. London; and as he and his fellow-apprentice were one day staring in at a shop window in Fleet-street, and observing to each other that there was nothing like that in Reading, they were accosted by a respectably dressed man, who said his wife was from Reading, and would so like to have a chat with them about the dear old place; would they go home to tea with him ? ere taken to a house in an obscure neighbourhood, at the back of the Fleet Prisonred there to be murdered; but they were reasonably well fed and taken care of, and remained there some days, with numerous other inmates, who had been similarly kidnapped. nity to affect his escape; and one day he saw a portly elderly gentleman enter the house. or, and rushed bare-headed along the streets, crying out "Murder, murder !"l was taken before the Lord Mayor, who gave instructions for the rescue of his fellow apprentice. ived at by the authorities that no steps were taken for the release of the other detainees.she was dropping down the Thames, his vessel anchored near a transport which had just returned with troops from the American War. patrick, on board, whom he obtained leave to go and see, and from whom he obtained the particulars of the British reverses in the colonies. ous scoundrel, with a finely-shaped head set on a most diminutive body. was perfectly appalling. en marked and dropped in her box by her mistress, who was jealous of her husband's admiration of the girl. ifling articles, which had been apparently stolen from the Government stores. ill speak the truth, on the honour of a gentleman, I will acquit you."ve said." he Governor as " no gentleman," for having violated his word. o make for the bush and travel northward, under the impression that they could reach Europe overland.ated by a low diet, excessive labor, insufficient clothing, and unhealthy accommodation, that the people died off like rotten sheep. hey were flung " unhousled, unannointed, unanealed.",eyed to the hospital. "What's the use?" was the reply of the callous grave diggers, "You'll be brought back again to be buried to-morrow. however, that he was taken back, and recovered. er, that he might assure her from his own lips, that her son's report of the horrors of a penal settlement in New South Wales was not exaggerated. pressed him by her natural piety, sitting with her hands clasped over one knee, and listening to him with a white, wondering face.d by a man named Donald Traill. malefactors of this description. e people on board, Dell alleged, could hear the groans of the dying men ; and the crew commented on it in their own superstitious way, with no very complimentary allusions to the captain, who seemed to be so awe-struck by the horror of the scene that, telling the second officer business of importance would take him (the captain) back to town, he handed over the command of the vessel to him, quitted the ship abruptly, and was never seen on board again.ed the event with circumstantial minuteness. lotine, and all the adjuncts of the scene, in a manner which led the authorities to believe that it was a mental hallucination; but when, a year afterwards, the tidings of Louis XVI's execution reached New South Wales, the date of the event was found to coincide with that of the sentinel's lunar vision, while the details likewise agreed. , whom Dell asserts to have been a member of the Royal family of France. o the farm of this Bourbon. ust in time to save his life.t, who drew his sword and split his skull open.a firelock at the adjutant. f his request being to obtain a few minutes conversation with Dell. requested him (Dell) to receive and accept the pay which was coming to him. it, and to make inquiries about me. ister, to whom the tidings he was permitted to communicate were a great blow.nter and King, on the contrary, were good men.ns with them, and were famine-smitten. d full of fragments of the mutilated man, which his destroyer declared were as sweet a meat as ever he ate. he soldiers camping for the night on the edge of the Salt-pan Plains, dug a hole, thrust the cannibal into it, head downward, and buried him alive-so exasperated and savagely vindictive were they withthe atrocious conduct of their prisoner.