Private Thomas Dober (c.1818.....1867)

Back to . . 96th Foot Manchester Regiment.

Descendants

Information supplied by Dale Pobega E-mail address dale.lyn@yarranet.net.au

Area Settled :

 

Children :

History & Achievements :

Convict Guards from the 96th Regiment of Foot Thomas and Richard Dober were both married to my great,

great grandmother Agnes.

The Dober brothers' father, Thomas Dober (Snr), was born c. 1780 in Kent and died at the Greenwich

Naval Hospital* in 1856 - attesting to the Dobers' likely tradition of military/naval service and association. Thomas Dober (Snr) married Loveday Ferrell in Devon and had two children - Richard and Thomas. Thomas was born in St Georges (Manchester) around 1818. Richard was born in 1824 in the same place.

Both Thomas and Richard were convict guards in the 96th Regiment of Foot at Salford (Manchester) and

sailed on 'The Layton II', from Sheerness on April 9, 1841. The ship arrived in Hobart on September 1, 1841 with 245 male convicts aboard. (Five died on the journey)*

Thomas married Joanna Rowe in Adelaide,1850 after his discharge from the army in 1846. They had eight

children before Thomas died in 1867 at the age of 49. Coincidently, Joanna's sister, Nanny Rowe**, also married in 1850 and tragically lost her husband, Thomas McGrath, in a mining accident at Huntly (near Bendigo) in the same year. Nanny reportedly ended up in Central Western Queensland, near Longreach.

Joanna married Thomas' brother, Richard at Whitehills (just out of Bendigo) in 1868. She was 40 years old

at the time of her second marriage and she and Richard had one child - my great, great grandmother, Rose Emmeline Dober.

Richard, the younger brother, was the first to enlist in the army at Chatham Headquarters on 31 July, 1840.

He was 17 years old and according to his record (regimental number: 1527) was 5 foot 5 inches tall. His pay per day, including "beer money", was 1 shilling. He could not write. Thomas spent some years as a soldier on Norfolk Island at the penal settlement and was discharged in Adelaide 31/1/1846. Curiously, Thomas was stationed on Norfolk Island as a guard at the same time as my other ancestor, Williams Adams, was there as a convict! Later on, Thomas Dober was listed as a policeman 1/2/1848 and resigned 31/5/1848 in Adelaide. Some time after 1850, Thomas and Joanna moved to Bendigo in Victoria - perhaps with the encouragement of Joanna's brother, Francis, who had become a miner (and political agitator). Francis was a signatory to the famous Bendigo Miner's Petition in 1853. The Rowe family had come to Adelaide on the Samual Boddington in 1849 and had been miners at St Agnes in Cornwall for generations before their departure for the colony.

According to one family source, there is a note somewhere that Thomas could sign his name and also that

when he married Joanna Rowe Richard signed the certificate as witness with an 'X 'Thomas enlisted in the 96th Regiment of Foot at Salford on March 16, 1841.He was 23 and 5 foot 6 1/4 inches tall. His regimental number was 1443. As mentioned, Thomas and Richard arrived in Hobart as members of the regiment and were detailed as guards to the convicts on the 'Layton'. An officer commanding the detachment on the Layton lost his son overboard during the journey to Australia. The ship called in at Tenerife and the Cape Town along the way. The detachment from the 96th Regiment had eight women and fourteen children with them.

It is an interesting coincidence that Loveday, the Dober brothers' mother, and Joanna Rowe, their eventual

wife-to-be, were both Cornish. The Dober Brothers seemed to have been very close - almost like twins - enlisting as they did in the same regiment, coming out to Australia together and eventually moving to Bendigo where the sad circumstances surrounding Thomas' death led to Richard and Joanna marrying just a year later. Was it out of a sense of family duty that Richard married Joanna? There were eight children to support from the Joanna's marriage to Thomas and one gets the impression that Richard's closeness to his older brother would have naturally extended to his nieces, nephews and sister-in-law. Did Joanna and her Cornish origins signify deep associations or an attachment to a past place and time in the lives of both brothers?, great grandmother, Joanna Rowe, whose story is told in Mining the Best Mettle: the Rowes of St.

 

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Last revised: May 02, 2007.