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THE SETTLER HANDBOOK by MD Nash
THE SETTLER PARTIES

BRADSHAW'S PARTY

No. 45 on the Colonial Department list, led by Samuel Bradshaw, a weaver and freeholder of Cam, near Dursley, Gloucestershire. Bradshaw was recommended by the Cam parish authorities and the Member of Parliament for Gloucester, Robert Bransby Cooper. This party was sponsored by the parish and organised on a joint-stock basis. Deposits were paid for 14 men.

The deposits for most of the party were paid by the parish authorities of Cam, 'overburdened with poor', who proposed to relieve the parish purse by sending at least 10 men with large families to the Cape. Two latecomers to the party, Isaac Wiggill of Painswick (who had initially joined Rowles' party) and Samuel Birt paid their own deposits, and Samuel Bennett was sponsored by his parish of Dursley. The party's application was rejected at first by the Colonial Department, but its patron, R Bransby Cooper MP, pleaded on their behalf that the men had sold everything they had in order to emigrate and would be left destitute if they could not go.

Bradshaw's party sailed from Bristol in the regular transport ship Kennersley Castle on 10 January 1820, and arrived in Table Bay on 29 March and Algoa Bay on 29 April. A gentleman emigrant (Thomas Philipps) on board the Kennersley Castle thought Bradshaw 'an obliging farmer', but dismissed the party from the parish as 'a most horrid dirty set and the pest of the ship'. A number of children died at sea, and a son, Thomas, was born to the wife of Samuel Bennett.

The party was located in Albany on the Torrens River, and the location was named New Gloucester.

LIST OF BRADSHAW'S PARTY

BAKER, Thomas 38. Weaver. w Esther 25. c Elizabeth 13, Hannah 12, Thomas 11, Sarah 10, Ann 8.
BENNETT, Samuel 35. Labourer. w Anne 40. c Ann 5, Thomas (born at sea).
BRADSHAW, Samuel 34. Weaver.
BRENT, Thomas 36. Weaver and Royal Marines pensioner. w Grace 27. c Thomas 6, Sarah 3.
CARTER, Richard 36. c Thomas 13, John 12.
COOK, John 22. Labourer. w Jane 22. c Harriet 3, Matilda 1.
KING, Alfred 10 (in the care of his brother Edward King).
KING, Edward 18. Labourer.
KING, Henry 32. Labourer. w Sarah 26. c Samuel 5, Hannah 3.
KING, Henry 18. Labourer. w Mary Ann 18.
KING, Joseph 37. Labourer. w Ann 25. c Joseph 11, Philip 8, Charles 6, Ann 3.
KING, Philip 30. w Maria 30. c Richard 8, Andrew 5, Elizabeth 3.
KING, Sarah 17 (in the care of her brother Edward King).
NEWTH, William 40. Labourer and RN pensioner. w Sarah 30. c William 13, Benjamin 3, Thomas 2.
WIGGILL, Isaac 30. Carpenter. w Elizabeth 29. c Eli 9, George 7, Joseph 3, Elizabeth 1.
WILLCOCKS, John 25. Labourer (servant to Isaac Wiggill).

*BIRT, Samuel 28.
*BRADSHAW, Richard 36.
*PHILPOT, Charles.

Main sources for party list
Agent of Transports' Return of settlers under the direction of Samuel Bradshaw (Cape Archives CO 6138/2,68); Special Commissioner William Hayward's notes (Cape Archives CO 8541). The names of nine children of this party under the age of 3 appear in the London list but not in the Agent's Return. These children may be among at least 17 who are known to have died in an epidemic of measles on board the Kennersley Castle.

*Richard Bradshaw (a brother of Samuel Bradshaw) and Samuel Birt were on the party's location in 1824 and claimed to have been original members of Bradshaw's party. Their names do not appear in the Agent's Return, but they may have sailed in the place of men who dropped out of the party. Charles Philpot was one of two lads under 18 who were falsely listed as the 'sons' of an adult settler, according to Special Commissioner Hayward's notes.

Two members of Greathead's party, William Simmons and Joshua Davis, had attached themselves to Bradshaw's party by 1824.

Further reading
Philipps, 1820 Settler, ed A Keppel-Jones (Pietermaritzburg, Shuter and Shooter, 1960) contains a detailed account of the voyage of the Kennersley Castle to the Cape.