From the West Indies to West of Sydney

9 — Take a family document (baptismal certificate, passenger list, naturalization petition, etc.) and write a brief narrative using the information.

The Bounty papers of Jessie Isabella McMullen

 Jessie Isabella McMullen, known as Isabella, was born in Trinidad in 1822, to Alexander McMullen (I don't yet know who her mother was - I'm working on it). Somehow she ended up in Scotland with her aunt Marcella May Mary McKinnon ni McMullen. When Marcella and her husband Ewen and nine of their children moved out to Australia under the Bounty Immigration Scheme, Isabella went with them. They travelled on the Boyne and arrived in Sydney on 3 January 1839. The family then went to Bathurst, an area in the early stages of white settlement. There were many Scots families there, but I doubt Isabella had many fellow Trinidadians for company.

Isabella married William Asprey in 1842 and had seven children with him. He died in 1859, aged 44 years, and then Isabella lost four children between 1860 and 1869. She remarried in 1876, to a local grocer, Richard Martin. I haven't found a death record for her yet.

Isabella came a long way to endure great sorrow and hardship. I hope her last years were happy ones.