There's something about Mary .....

Over 150,000 men and women arrived as convicts on Australian shores over an 80 year period from 1788. So why does Mary Wade attract such interest? I suggest there are a number of reasons:

- Mary was the youngest woman to be transported to Australia, arriving in the colony when she was 12 years old
- she arrived with the Second Fleet
- she had lots of children, who had lots of children, who had ................ (OK, not unique in itself but..........)
- this meant she had a huge number of living descendants when she died in 1859 (some estimates put it at around 300 people)
- and means there are probably thousands of her living descendants across the world today

And we're all amazed and probably quite proud of how she overcame such obstacles to become, as the Illawarra Mercury wrote in her obituary, "the founding mother of the largest family in Australia."

About this web site
This section of my family history web site is devoted to Mary and her many descendants. A number of books, articles and programs have been created about Mary but what is available is starting to become dated and hard to find or out of print. As far as I can tell, very little is available about Mary on the web.

I'd like to fix that and I welcome your help. Please send me any content and details you may have about Mary and her descendants if it's not already included on this site. I'll then add it for future descendants to read and together we will create an online testimony to this amazing lady and her descendants.

Disclaimers (or "don't shout at me")
A lot of research has been done about Mary, both in England and Australia. And most of it has been documented, in particular in the book, Mary Wade to Us, a source of information I have drawn heavily on in creating this web site.

I don't have the time to verify the accuracy of the information in it myself - so if you do see something on this site which is clearly inaccurate, I'd be grateful if you'd just let me know.