F is for Fort Street High School

In 1849, the Governor of the colony of New South Wales established a model school on the site of an old military fort at Observatory Hill in Sydney, the first of a system of national or non-sectarian schools. It was named Fort Street school. It was designed for all children of school age. By 1911, the school was split into one primary school remaining on-site and separate boys' and girls' high schools. The boys were moved to a new site at Taverner's Hill, on the Parramatta Road at Petersham whilst the girls remained at the newly named Fort Street Girls High at Observatory Hill. This structure remained until 1975 when the two high schools were combined into a co-educational school at Taverner's Hill.

The school has always been a selective academic high school and students were encouraged to matriculate.  Some very famous Australians - prime ministers, governors-general, high court judges and captains of industry have attended Fort Street High.

As well as the not-so-famous.  Like families with the Moxon surname. John's father Herbert John Moxon had five sisters who were brought to the city from distant Cobar at the end of World War. His cousin Denise, a member of the Moxon Society

confirmed that her mother Johanna Margaret Moxon (1913-1986) attended the school and matriculated in 1931.  Denise and John both thought that at least some of her older sisters did too.  Certainly, they became teachers, actors, publishers' assistants as well as being politically active.

So John and Denise's grandmother Ellen Mary (nee Egan) had a completely different approach to education than her cousin in law Herbert Percy (Bert) Moxon as you will see below.

In the late 20s, May Fowler (nee Moxon)'s story about A beautiful Moxon in the April 2021 issue of the Moxon Magazine (no 67) noted that her father, Edgar Herbert Moxon (1915-1950) won a scholarship to Fort Street Boys High.  However, his father Bert believed that "a man wasn't worth anything unless he worked with his hands" and Edgar was denied the opportunity to attend the school.  Instead, he was sent out west to work on farms.

In 1940, John Bruce Moxon's sister Bette attended Fort Street Girls HS but her education there was interrupted for 18 months when her parents decided to leave the city for the Blue Mountains.  When they returned to Sydney, Bette was encouraged to return to the school but sadly, she felt overwhelmed and left behind academically, so this very smart now 92 years old joined the workforce instead of matriculating.

In the 1950s, Bette's much younger brother, John Bruce Moxon attended the school at Taverner's Hill from 1951-1954 but left halfway through 4th year because he felt he didn't fit in. With the insight of his later years, he believes he was too immature for his age, unlike others in his class such as former high court judge Michael Kirby. He made no lasting friendships amongst his schoolmates.  He didn't matriculate and obtain a degree until he was in his 40s, having followed the apprenticeship vocational route in his youth.

In the 60s, brothers Douglas and Geoff Moxon attended Fort Street.  Unlike the other Moxons mentioned in this blog, they are no relation to John.  However, they are our good friends on Facebook and in the Moxon Society.  Their ancestry is found in the Moxon Society Tree MX05 whereas John, Bette and Edgar feature in MX27.

And there is still more - in the 1970s, when the school became co-educational, John's son Bruce Robert Moxon attended Fort Street High School.  Unlike John, he has remained good friends with many of his classmates and they hold regular reunions.

We are not aware of any other Moxon families at the school but there may have been some, as well as some students with the Moxham surname.

However, you may not believe this:  a few years ago, as one of the "very old boys" at a school speech day, John was invited to morning tea by the current school principal, a Ms Moxham!

E is for Ernest Edward Victor Moxon

Jones and Pyrmont Bays quarries in 1886

As a stonemason, John Bruce Moxon's great grandfather, Joshua Middleton Moxon spent his life cutting, carving and erecting sandstone for which the Sydney basin is reknown.  In the 1870s and 80s, the source of much of this sandstone was the Ultimo area of inner Sydney. 

These quarries are described in Lost Sydney  The Jones quarry shown on the left was within close walking distance from where the Moxon family lived in 1892.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday March 31, 1892, the following sad story was printed.

"The City Coroner held an inquest yesterday in the Native Youth Hotel, Pyrmont, upon the body of Ernest Edward Victor Moxon, who died partly from concussion of the brain and partly from asphyxia by drowning, the result of having accidently fallen down the face of a quarry, a distance of about 40 ft or 45 ft, into water below.  Deceased resided with his parents at 8 Agnes-terrace, Murray-street, Pyrmont, and was eight years of age.  He attended the Ultimo Public School, and on Monday at a quarter past 6 o’clock in the evening, while passing along the top of the quarry near the school, he was seen by another boy to fall over the precipice. He fell on to a plank near where some children were floating another plank.  The children’s plank struck that upon which deceased was lying, and deceased rolled into the water.  The children then became frightened and ran away, and said nothing of the observance until the following morning.  A watchman on the Darling Harbour railway station recovered the body on Tuesday morning, and haded it to Senior-constable McCrimmon.  The jury returned a verdict of accidental death."

Although Joshua and Louisa lost quite a number of children in infancy, little Ernest Edward Victor Moxon was one who survived.  He was the baby who was born after his mother Louisa Mary Moxon left Hailey Farm under acrimonious circumstances in 1883.  Louisa had two more children born in 1885 and 1887, both given the surname Moxon, so it may be likely that Louisa and Joshua re-united.  We are yet to find out through a DNA test of descendants of one of those children, Susan Mary Moxon born 1887.

D is for DNA

Margaret's DNA test results

Of course it is!  Where would we baby boomer retirees with time to indulge in family history research be without it?

Certainly a lot worse off than my mother Freda Tucker, who had joined two local historical societies in the 1960s after the worst of her child-rearing years were behind her.  This led in turn to an interest in family history, and as soon as the word spread to her mother's large adoptive family in Victoria, she began getting requests from cousins to seek out certain records at the NSW Archives, at that time located in the centre of Sydney.

I retired from full-time work in 2002 and by 2005 began to research my family as well as my husband's Moxon family.  Fortunately, he was just as interested as I was, but still working until 2008 when we started travelling overseas.

I had a lucky start: my mother had recorded what she knew of her Kentish birth mother and her journey to a new life in Sydney prior to Freda's birth in 1912.  My mother also strongly suggested to my father that "if you must wander around the house in the middle of the night because you can't sleep, why don't you record your life memories?"  So he did.

John had an older cousin who had started researching their Moxon family history in the early 80s and wrote to all her known Moxon relations - and some she was introduced to - to find out what they knew.  Bless you, the late Dr Wendy Lou Walker whose mother was a Moxon.  She was thus able to build a large tree of distant cousins, uncles and aunts.

 Unfortunately, when she obtained their great grand-father Joshua Middleton Moxon's death certificate, she pursued the wrong line for his father.  Certainly not Wendy's fault - the witness was his housekeeper who in 1894 had identified the wrong names for both his parents. It was Joshua who had established the Moxon family we knew in Australia.  His shipping record noted the small family of three arrived via Queensland in 1867 from London.  Ultimately, Wendy was able to find that Joshua's parents were Isaac Moxon/Moakson and Sarah Middleton.  Thank you Joshua for adding your mother's maiden name to your plain baptismal name.  It probably sounded more entrepreneurial, which was of course his aim.

A more distant cousin, Edward (Ted) Moxon whom we eventually met post-retirement had also undertaken extensive research, particularly regarding later generations.  His energetic research was very helpful for John's tree.  Ted was a longtime member of The Moxon Society and his sister May Anne Fowler is currently a very enthusiastic member who enjoys contributing stories.

By 2008, building on and checking via online records, John and I were able to start adding family stories, some of which sounded fanciful.  How could we verify some of this information?

One Moxon story was intriguing.  In 1883, the large family of Joshua Middleton Moxon imploded.  He was gaoled for three months; his pregnant wife left home; John's grandfather Harry left home at 14, breaking his apprenticeship to his father; a housekeeper left with three-year-old Alfred Moxon and changed his surname; the family was mourning the death of twins the year before.

Years later, Harry found his young brother Alf at Stuart Town in the central west.  The story was handed down in two distant Moxon branches that a rat had eaten Alf's toes and that was how Harry had identified him.  However, when the large family of Moxons gathered at Stuart Town for a reunion about 2011, Alf's son, Cecil Moxon stated that his father's toes were intact and laughed off the rat story.  It is more likely that Harry recognised Alf's adoptive "mother" in Wellington, near Stuart Town, NSW.  Alf had married in 1909 as Alf Wilson.  Later his marriage certificate was changed to Moxon.

So how did we prove that Alf really was that three-year-old child who had disappeared - some saying to Wellington in New Zealand?

Through DNA of course.  My husband John and various descendants of Alf Wilson/Moxon shared strong autosomal DNA, making them second cousins, or second cousins once or twice removed.

Additionally, members of the Society in England, Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand have been generously sharing their AncestryDNA with two Moxon Society committee members in England, Graham Jagger and Philip Lord.  This allows female members of the Society and those who have female Moxons in their ancestry to contribute their DNA, not just those male Moxon members who match on their Y-DNA.  The autosomal research has been a much more recent development since about 2015 when many English and Australians were enabled to test through AncestryDNA.

As a result, the numerous Moxon and Moxham trees for which the paper trail stalled were able to be reviewed and many trees were combined.

C is for Convicts

 In earlier years, I have written eight posts about Moxon/ Moxan/ Moxham/ Moxom convicts transported to the colonies of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land. Strangely enough, I have found - so far - that just ONE of these convicts established a family dynasty in Australia.  This is the Moxom family of Victoria and New South Wales which I mentioned yesterday in my post about Robert Moxon of Bathurst.  His brother "William Moxon/Moxham, convict 1842, Tortoise" established the "Moxom" family.

Many of these convicts died without death certificates that are discoverable in New South Wales.  At least one of them did marry.  John Moxon, Lord Sidmouth, 1819, married Suzannah Blue, daughter of the very famous Billy Blue, after whom Blue's Point was named.  However, by 1834 she had married George Lavender, after whom another bay in Port Jackson was named (after originally being called Moxom's Bay).

Thomas Moxham, a Third Fleet (Matilda, 1791), the first namesake to reach these shores did marry and produce children.  One died in infancy and is buried in the first cemetery in 1798. A son, another John Moxon was born in 1806 to Thomas and his wife Maria McNally, an Irish convict.  He certainly survived and settled on the McDonald River near the Hawkesbury River but there is no indication that he married.

However, despite no record of descendants of most of these convicts, a number of them left families in England or Ireland.  Jacob Moxon, a former soldier in Dublin who died before completing his sentence left a wife and family in the UK. The family may have returned to Jacob's birthplace in Yorkshire.

The earlier mentioned Thomas Moxham (Moakson) from Silkstone left a wife, Mary Garside and two infant sons in Yorkshire.  One child died before Thomas left England, but the other - another Thomas (1786-1824) married Sarah Sleigh (1788-1873) and created an English Moxon sub-branch of the Moxon Society's "Moxons of Silkstone - MX27" tree.

William Moxon (Tortoise 1842) left a family of five surviving children of his marriage to Elizabeth Emerton in Stewkley, Buckinghamshire.  He also had four stepchildren to his second wife, widow Hannah Chandler. 

So it is clear that there are descendants of Australian colonial convicts all over the world, not just in Australia - probably mostly in England!

It is now considered - at least in Australia - to be an honour to have a convict in the family.  Whilst my husband John Bruce Moxon does not have direct Moxon convicts to boast about or cover-up, he has claimed two - James Bruce (1791-1874), a convict on the Surry(2) 1831, convicted for life for burglary and Peter Colgan (Callaghan), an Irish convict from County Meath, convicted for highway robbery.

Two of John's Egan ancestors - Irish free settlers who were his 2x great grandfather and great grandfather - were convicted for perjury and sent to gaol for three years each.  And the latter's brother John Egan, for whom they gave a false alibi was convicted for bushranging, given a sentence of 14 years and sent into exile to San Francisco after seven years with no permission to return.

Member Mary Moxham's free settler ancestor (The Society's tree "Moxhams of Ebbesbourne Wake - MX37" - John Moxham (1795-1870) - migrated to New South Wales from Dorset in 1849.  He picked a fight with a fellow shell collector in the Hunter district and was convicted for violent assault and sentenced to 12 month's gaol.  This incident is described in the Moxon Down Under Newsletter No 11, 2018.

We are lucky in many ways to have convicts - whether convicted and sentenced in Australia or the British Isles - in our families because unless we have aristocratic roots, our families are not well documented.

B is for Bathurst

In 1849, Robert Muxon (or Moxon, born 1811) and his wife Sarah (nee Crawley, born 1814) of Stewkley, Buckinghamshire migrated to New South Wales, coincidentally on the Sarah.  By 1849, they had five surviving children including a daughter born at sea.  Two more sons were registered in Bathurst in 1853 and 1855.  The family settled at Wattle Flat, a gold mining area near Bathurst where Robert died in 1894.  The family has many descendants around Australia including many still living in the Bathurst area.  Others moved to Western Australia around the beginning of the 20th century and their descendants include a current politician in the WA Parliament who is a loyal member of The Moxon Society.

More information about the Wattle Flat goldfields - very near Sofala - is available in a book by Eve Buscombe.

A young Clint Moxon, a talented district cricketer is often featured in the Bathurst newspapers.  The Bathurst showground includes a Noel Moxon grandstand.  This was moved from Ashfield in Sydney a number of decades ago.  A Dr Frank P. Moxon joined the United States Army Medical Corps and like many other Bathurst born Moxons, served in the First World War.

So Robert Moxon, born 1811 was the head of a very large family of Moxons in New South Wales and Western Australia.  However, less well-known is that his elder brother William Moxon (aka Moxham and Moxom, born about 1801) was sent to Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) on the Tortoise in 1842.  He had stolen a sheep and it was his second offence, having earlier stolen a turnip.

William had married twice in Stewkley and already had a family there, but in 1853 he married another convict, Mary Hurst from Yorkshire.  This was generally permissible when convicts were either unable to return to their homeland.  William and Mary already had a son William (born 1852).

In 1853, the small family sailed to Victoria from Launceston under the name Moxom and their many descendants in Victoria and New South Wales still use the variant name Moxom.  At various times, members of this family have been members of The Moxon Society.

Many members of this family also served during both world wars.

William and Robert were at least third-generation members of a family of Muxon/Muckson/Moxons established in Stewkley, Buckinghamshire but DNA has recently proved they are descendants of the much larger Moxon Society tree "Moxons of Cawthorne, Yorkshire - MX01".

A is for Air Freight

Twice a year, as Co-ordinator of Moxons Down Under, I receive an email from The Moxon Society's membership secretary in Lancashire, England notifying me that he has posted a bulk consignment of the Moxon Magazine.  Pre-Covid, this would take 10-13 days to arrive.  However, times have changed, and I now wait three to four weeks for this package.  Sigh.  Just one of the many changes due to coronavirus.

The Magazine is eagerly awaited by our Australian membership.  The current issue, no. 67, April 2021 is a bumper edition of 40 pages in full colour.  My husband, John Bruce Moxon and I have been the Down Under Co-ordinators since 2012 when we took over from another Margaret Moxon of Brisbane.  John has to include his middle name for his role as editor of the Moxons Down Under Newsletter because he isn't the only John Moxon.  Many are members, including one more in Australia.

A is also for Adamant, the convict ship that brought Robert Moxon of Nottingham to Port Jackson in 1821.  Robert had a brother John (1821, Lord Sidmouth) - yes, another one - already in the colony.

The Adamant was one of a number of sailing ships with that name.  This one only transported convicts once.  There were 144 aboard.  It was built as a trader in 1811 and was last heard of in Timor in 1828.  Fortunately, there were no incidents on its convict contract.

A to Z challenge 2021 theme

Last year, I heard about the A to Z blogging challenge and decided to participate.  Bloggers are challenged to choose a theme - it certainly doesn’t have to be genealogy - and following the alphabet, upload a post on that theme every day except Sunday.  I did get as far as H, on a theme about my own ancestors.  But later, I found that successful bloggers pre-planned their posts.  So this year, I did just that, and know what I will write about each day.  I can even write ahead of the day and schedule the posts for uploading.

This year for my theme, I have chosen Moxons Down Under.

My husband John Bruce Moxon and I have been members of the English based Moxon Society since 2008, the first year we travelled overseas together in retirement. In 2012, I took over the job of volunteer webmaster until 2018 and we also administer the membership of Australians who are interested in Moxon or Moxham genealogy.  There is also a third variant here - Moxom.  The Moxon name hails from Yorkshire whilst the Moxham name was first found in Wiltshire. Inevitably, over the centuries, the names were mixed up and now, some Moxons have inherited Moxham DNA and vice versa.  Hence, the Society covers both names.

Moxons and Moxhams are now found all over the world, mostly in English speaking countries, as would be expected.

This blog covers those found in Australia and New Zealand, and occasionally in Papua New Guinea.

I’m Margaret Tucker Moxon on Facebook, and am also a member of the Society of Australian Genealogists, The  Guild of One-Name Studies (GOONS) and The Surname Society (TSS) where I am focussed on the surname Moxon.  I completed the Diploma of Family History at the University of Tasmania in 2017 and a Family History Skills & Strategies (Intermediate) Distance Learning Course with Pharos tutors in 2014. The latter covers English genealogy.

My first post for the Challenge will appear on April 1.