Sunday, July 22, 2012

Unassisted Passengers to Port Phillip

I finally had the opportunity last week to look at the eight George Griffith/s Unassisted Passenger arrivals entries at PROV.  The one I thought the most likely to be my ancestor on board the Hibernia, which arrived in Port Phillip on 26 Oct 1852, was not as convincing as I would have liked. 

The details given for unassisted passengers are fairly scant.  The only additional thing to be discovered about him from the actual list was that he was English, and an "engineer" by trade.  Somehow that occupation doesn't sit right with  me.  Despite George being fairly consistent in recording his occupation as "musician", I didn't expect to find that was his occupation when he emigrated (mainly because I've never spotted a musician amongst the George Griffith emigrants), but I would have expected something more in the line of grocer or clerk.

He might be one of the other George Gfiffiths amonst the Unassisted passengers, but the details are so nebulous I think I will never know, unless he turns up somewhere else,  arriving in Sydney, perhaps, or Launceston.  More work needs to be done.