Many notable people make their mark on a community that they were born in or come to live in  But there are many times through history that a notable person becomes that as a result of leaving the community they were born in, as was the case with Thomas Blinkhorn.  He was born in Sawtry on May 3rd 1806 to Thomas Blinkhorn Sr and Ann Waldock. The oldest of seven children, Thomas b.1806, Sarah b.1808, Anne b.1809, b.John 1811, b.Elizabeth 1813, Martha b.1817, and William b.1819 the last child who died in 1820 as did his mother Ann, Thomas Sr’s wife.  Thomas Blinkhorn Sr remarried in 1821 to Ann Hudson and they had four more children, Elizabeth b. 1822, Mary b. 1824, William b. 1825 and Naomi b.1826.  Thomas Blinkhorn Sr was a miller and his son became a miller like his father, Thomas Jr also farmed the land and was once a stage coach driver. In August 1827 at the age of 20, he married Ann Beeton, daughter of the late Thomas Beeton of Great Gidding and his wife Ann Coles, however Thomas Sr did not attend his son's wedding as he was in ill health. Early the following year, 1828, Thomas Blinkhorn Sr died at the age of 50 leaving a wife and nine children. It was customary that the sons should support the family in these circumstances. Thomas Blinkhorn Junior was 21 and his younger brother John was 15 at the time of their father’s death.  Ann Beeton, the mother of Ann Beeton Blinkhorn, had been a widow for several years and a few years earlier, in 1824, had remarried  a man by the name of William Cheney.  Some years later Thomas Jr’s wife was left an inheritance by her maternal uncle, her mother’s brother. Ann Beeton's second husband, William Cheney,  presumably the executor of the will, kept the inheritance payment of £89, left to Ann Blinkhorn and meant for her, for himself, which was a lot of money at that time.  As retribution for this, Thomas Blinkhorn Jr stole a horse, a gelding, from William Cheney’s farm at Lutton, presumably to sell to make up for the lost inheritance. He ended up in a public house he often frequented called the True Blue in Cambridge, where the horse was put in the stable. William Cheney’s son James was searching for the horse and encountered Thomas Jr in the pub. The publican, who knew Thomas well, informed James Cheney and the local Police constable that he believed the horse in the stable was William Cheney’s and that Thomas had put it there. Thomas was arrested for stealing a horse and committed to trial at Northampton Assizes. On June 30th 1836 at the age of 30 Thomas Blinkhorn was convicted of the crime of horse stealing and was sentenced to transportation for life to Van Diemans’s Land, now Tasmania, part of Australia. Prior to this change of sentencing to transportation to Australia, Thomas would have been hanged for the crime of stealing a horse. However at the intervention of Samuel March Phillips, the under secretary for the Home Department of the Government now known as The Home Office, Thomas Blinkhorn’s sentence was reduced to seven years. It is customary for prisoners due to be transported to serve the first part of their sentence aboard one of the Prison Hulk ships moored on the coast and Thomas was first put aboard the Leviathon, moored in Portsmouth Harbour and then the Antelope. Thomas was finally transported to Van Dieman’s Land in August 1837 aboard the Ship “The Susan” and was generally well behaved although some fracas landed him in the stocks for six hours for disobeying orders. In February 1840, after three years in prison, Thomas was moved to the Sheep farm and estate of a Lieutenant Richie in Perth. Not getting on with his employer, he was punished for misconduct at least twice. However because of his overall good conduct record he only served six years of his seven year sentence. He did not apply for his certificate of freedom until 1845.  He eventually returned to England in 1849. It is believed that he worked on the sheep ranches of Tasmania and Australia to raise money for his trip home as convicts were allowed to seek employment whilst serving their sentence and he continued to work even after gaining his freedom. During the time he was away, two of his family members had died, His sister Sarah Blinkhorn Cooper in 1842, wife of George Cooper and his half sister Mary in 1843.  In 1850, Thomas became acquainted with a young Captain James Cooper. James was the son from a previous marriage of George Cooper, who had married Thomas’s sister Sarah in 1831.  James Cooper worked for the Hudson Bay Company and told Thomas of the settlement opportunities that the Hudson Bay company were advertising on behalf of the Crown, in an attempt to expand the Fort Victoria Colony, a farming venture on the southern tip of the Pacific colony of what was then known Vancouver Island. James Cooper himself was going out to settle there and convinced Thomas to join him.  A business partnership was formed between James Cooper and Thomas Blinkhorn. Thomas would act as superintendent and develop the land that James Cooper was to purchase from the Hudson Bay Company. In November 1850 Thomas, his wife Ann and her 15 year old niece Martha Beeton Cheney along with the 22 year old James Cooper, his German wife and their four children Elizabeth, Thomas, Henrietta and Charles, a Captain Edward Langford and his wife Flora and various dogs and goats, boarded the ship The Tory bound for Fort Victoria, now part of British Columbia. It was a long eventful voyage with gales in the Bay of Biscay, the spoiling of food and lack of water, severe storms, being becalmed at one point and the rounding of Cape Horn at the southern most tip of South America, there was no Panama Canal in those days so to get on the pacific side of the America’s it had to be done the long way. Whilst rounding the horn the ship was blown so far south by fierce winds that the sails froze. The Tory finally arrived at Vancouver Island on May 10th 1851.  Thomas and his wife and their niece stayed with the Reverend Robert Staines of Fort Victoria for two years. Captain James Cooper finally gave the Hudson Bay Company a down payment on Lot 1, a 385 acre plot of land in Metchosin, part way between the settlement of Sooke and Fort Victoria and in 1853 the Blinkhorn family moved there to take up Thomas’s post of superintendent of the Bilston Farm.

 

Continue reading the second part of Thomas’s story on the “In Focus” page entitled “A Mountain, A Lake and a Sawtry Man Who Became a Colonist.”