From Victoria to New Zealand

Above:'Argus', Tuesday, September 1, 1863.

Anthony Edward Corvan joined the Volunteers at Geelong.He would have had to produce certificates of character from a former employer or some persons who had known him for 12 months at least previously and adjust his age so that it appeared that he was under the age of 40 when in fact he was about 43.
Anthony's age has always been uncertain. The only document thus discovered that gives an age for him is the birth certificate of his Victorian-born son in 1856. Anthony himself gave his age as 36 when he registered the birth in February of 1856, giving him a birth year of approximately 1820 if he was being truthful with his age.The 1841 census gives his birth year as about 1823, but ages are notoriously incorrect in this census due to the rounding down of ages.
I wonder why Anthony travelled to Geelong to join when he could have done so in Melbourne? Perhaps he went to a place where nobody knew him since he was taking liberty with one truth(and perhaps more).
Whatever the case, Anthony Edward Corvan signed up with the 1st Regiment of the New Zealand Militia on August 28, 1863. He gave his occupation as "Traveller", which fits in with the information given on his daughter Rosa's marriage certificate six years later when she described him as a "Commercial traveller".
Events moved very quickly once Anthony had enlisted.Within days they were in Melbourne and boarding the ship 'Star of India' which had been chartered to take the first shipment of volunteers to Auckland.
The Argus of Tuesday, September1, 1863, reported:
"Our Geelong Correspondent writes,-'The first batch of Volunteers from Geelong, numbering thirty, left town this morning by the first train, to proceed on board the Star of India, in Hobson's Bay.
The men looked remarkably well, and the fine band of the Artillery Brigade played them through the town to the station, where they were met by Mr. William Fraser, Colonel Pitt's agent here, who called over the roll of names. He then escorted them out to the West Geelong Station, where they were handed over to a Sergeant proceeding to Melbourne with the Ballarat contingent."

STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Thanks to the kindness of a wonderful New Zealand researcher, Jeni Palmer,I now have the information for Anthony Corvan/Cowan as given by the Nominal Roll for the 1st Waikato Volunteers:-
COWAN, Anthony Edward.
No 342, enlisted 28 Aug 1863, Geelong.
Born St James, Middlesex, England.
Traveler, 37 years, 5 ft 6 ¼ in tall.
Star of India.
Single.
Discharge 5 Oct 1866 sub provided.

The "Single" is the very interesting bit, and leaves us with several options to ponder.I can find no death for Mary Corvan(or various spellings)anywhere. Life on the goldfields was pretty wild and woolly, so she may have taken up with another man without marrying and we will never find her death.Of course, Anthony was known to distort the truth, so he very well may have gone to Geelong where nobody knew him, dropped his age by several years and said he was single...he was out of the country within a week, probably before any of his family knew what he had done.

His very small height was also interesting...his daughter Rosa was a very tiny lady not much more than five feet tall.

Mary Corvan's brush with the Law in July 1863

The above article from the 'Argus' does not give much more detail than the report that was published on the same day in rival newspaper 'Port Phillip Herald'. It does, however, refer to the fact that Mary Corvan was a lodger at the house of Susanna McDonald, and that she left the house with McDonald's servant Mary A Dowling.
The article doesn't refer to the age of Mary Corvan, so from this report alone we don't know if it is referring to Mary Corvan the mother or her daughter Mary.
The Port Phillip Herald, however, stated: "It appears that she had left the house in company with another girl named Mary Carvan."
This tells us that it was 15 year old Mary Corvan who had been arrested. The two papers both made mistakes in the first of their three reports about the case, stating that Mary Dowling was released while Mary Corvan was remanded to face the Court again. It was in fact Mary Dowling who was sent to gaol for one month, and Mary Corvan who was released due to there being no evidence against her.

So, there we have two members of the Corvan family for the month of July 1863...father Anthony was sleeping in stables and presumably homeless, and his middle daughter Mary Corvan was lodging with Susanna and Robert McDonald in Melbourne.Where mother Mary Torsa Corvan and her daughters Ellen and Rosa were is anyone's guess at the moment.

Auckland Militia Notice- Argus, August 19, 1863.

Anthony Corvan, "Argus" article, July 1863

Well...after many weeks of waiting, the full article from the National Beta newspaper site has finally come online, and it's left me with a deep sense of sadness and, as usual with this family, more questions.
As seen above, the Police Report was published in the Argus on Friday, July 10, 1863. It reveals that Anthony was arrested and had to front the court after he was found sleeping in a horse stall in a Melbourne stable. Why did he have nowhere else to sleep? Where were his wife and children? It was the middle of winter..to have no home or a warm place to sleep would be a terrible situation to be in.
This event occurred only weeks before Anthony travelled to Geelong to sign up with the Auckland/Waikato Militia- was his destitute state responsible for his signing up to serve in the Maori War? Promises of a free passage to New Zealand with free land grants at the end of service must have sounded tempting to a man who didn't even have a roof over his head in Melbourne's cold winter.
The first advertisements to be carried in the Argus in relation to recruiting for volunteers to fight in the Maori wars appeared in the week of July 17, 1863- just a week after Anthony Corvan appeared in Court. The following blog entry features one of these notices, exactly as our Anthony would have read it in his copy of the Argus newspaper.

Last recorded sighting (so far!) of Anthony Corvan in Australia.

Well...almost a month has passed since I last wrote in this Corvan blog, and no startling discoveries have exploded onto the Corvan research scene.It is time to report on the circumstances by which Anthony Edward Corvan left Australia, and the mystery of what happened to his wife and children when he did so.
In August of 1863, Anthony Corvan would have been aged approximately in his early 40s. His wife Mary would have been in her late 30s, and their daughters Ellen, Mary and Rosa were aged 17, 15 and 12 respectively.
Having last been sighted on the Victorian goldfields in 1856,Anthony appears in the Argus newspaper of July 1863. On July 10, 1863, he gets a brief mention as having had a charge of trespassing against him dismissed in the local Melbourne Police Court. I am still waiting for this article to become available in full on the Australia Newspapers Beta site, but found the report in the Port Phillip Herald on the same date:
"Discharged: Anthony E. Carvan, being illegally on the premises of Mr. W.L Lees."
Note that the Corvan name is recorded as 'Carvan'.
Six days later the Argus carried a short article about a young girl named Mary Corvan being charged with stealing from a dwelling. Again, I am waiting for the full article from the Argus, but have it from the Port Phillip Herald:

" STEALING FROM A DWELLING: Mary Dowling and Mary Carvan were charged with stealing from a dwelling.Mrs Macdonald stated that Dowling had been employed as a servant; Carvan had been living in the house. About a fortnight since they had both left without notice and took with them several articles of wearing apparel and some money. They were arrested in the street, and at that time Carvan was wearing a shawl which she had stolen. The bench discharged Dowling and remanded Carven until Friday.
- Port Phillip Herald, July 15, 1863."

" STEALING FROM A DWELLING: Mary Dowling was charged, on remand, with stealing a shawl and some other property from the dwelling of Robert McDonald in whose service the prisoner had been employed.It appeared that she had left the house in company with another girl named Mary Carvan, and had taken the things with them.The prisoner was remanded until the following day.
-Port Phillip Herald, 18 July, 1863."

"STEALING FROM A DWELLING: Mary Dowling, who had been remanded from the previous day,charged with stealing some articles of apparel from the dwelling of a person named McDonald, was sentenced to one month's imprisonment.
- Port Phillip Herald, July 20, 1863."

It appears from the three 'stealing from a dwelling' articles that a mistake was made in the first report, which stated that it was Mary Dowling who was released and Mary Carvan who had to face sentencing. In fact, the two latter reports state that it was Mary Dowling, who worked for the McDonalds, who was sentenced to a month in prison.

The following month, in August of 1863, Anthony Edward Corvan was in Geelong, signing himself up as a volunteer with the 1st Waikato Militia to fight in the Maori Wars in New Zealand!His age was stated as being 39, and his occupation ‘traveller’.
Before I continue with Anthony's story, here is a very short history of the Victorian involvement with the NZ Militia contingent of the 1860s...
" Most people believe that the first organised military force to leave Australia was the Sudan Contingent in 1884, but between 1863-72 over 2,500 Australian volunteers saw service in New Zealand.
The Empire was so strong at the time that many people didn't believe that the armed forces could be matched. But the Maori warriors were fierce and skillful warriors who were fighting on their own land. By 1863 the struggles had become so intense that the government had no choice but to reinforce the small number of regular troops and citizen forces.
At this time there was only a few hundred British soldiers in New Zealand while about 56,000 Maoris lived there, mainly on the North Island.
The New Zealand Government raised this force in the Australian Colonies and promised the men grants of land in exchange for their service.
The first conflict took place in 1845. In that year the Maori chief Hone Heke attacked the settlement of Russell in the Bay of Islands area. A local militia was raised among the white settlers, the celebrated governor of South Australia, George Grey, was called in to take command, and reinforcements were rushed in from Australia. These troops consisted of a number of British army units based in the Australian colonies. They contained large numbers of Australian-born troops so the dispatch of these units to New Zealand marks the first time that Australians ever served overseas on a large scale. Grey proved to be a good commander and by an astute combination of force and diplomacy he eventually forced Hone Heke to sue: or peace. With Heke's surrender the first Maori war came to an end.
The Maoris themselves, however, were still a long way from being defeated and continued white encroachment on their lands made a second conflict inevitable. It broke out in the Taranaki region in 1860 after a dispute over the sale of some land on the Waitara River. Much to their horror the British authorities now found that they had only 1000 troops in New Zealand compared to the 20 000 the Maoris could put into the field. The Maoris fought bravely and once again the New Zealand authorities were forced to seek help from the Australians. Not only did the colonies send troops, Victoria even sent its entire navy, which consisted of the steam corvette HMVS Victoria, to the battle zone.
Australian troops had taken part in both the Taranaki and Waikato wars but the New Zealand government decided it needed a more permanent force. So, when the Waikato war ended, the government went on a recruiting campaign in the Australian colonies. Allotments of land were promised to anyone who undertook to serve in the armed forces should the need arise. More than 3600 Australians responded to this offer.
1863-1869 approx 2,500 in NZ Waikato Regiments,
Australians KIA -
1st Waikato 27, (NZ Gazette No 31 of May 1871)
2nd Waikato 2, (NZ Gazette No 31 of May 1871)
3rd Waikato 1, (NZ Gazette No 63 of 1869 & No 31 of 31 May 1871)
4th Waikato 1, (NZ Gazette No 63 of 1869)
An offer of land in exchange for military service during the Waikato War led to the formation of four regiments of Waikato Militia, the members of which were recruited in Australia. A total of 1784 enlisted in Australia. 31 Australians enlisted in the Regiments in New Zealand, including one South Australian. More than five hundred men enrolled for service as military settlers in Taranaki (West Coast).
Victoria contributed most of the volunteers:
1st Waikato Regiment (mostly raised in Melbourne) . . . 822 (including Anthony Corvan)
3rd Waikato Regiment . . . 119
Total strength of this regiment was only 295
4th Waikato Regiment . . . 230
Total strength of 4th Regiment was 379
Protests about the effects of this recruitment on the Australian Colonies of Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland led to protests by those governments. By March 1864, recruitment was only a trickle.
The Australians who enlisted would be required not only to fight as soldiers, but to build towns, establish military stockades, erect their own homes and schools, and generally establish the bones of community life ahead of the commercial speculator. Their farms would be close to a town, and a quarter acre, or even an acre town section (depending on rank), assured them of a place in the new community. The appeal to men of adventure, and those of limited means was considerable. Those among them who experienced the harshness of the Australian outback, and its scorching droughts, might be tempted by a better climate. Others from prisons and farms, or laboring positions, might be tempted at the prospect of owning what they never could in Australia-their own farms. On Tuesday, 25 August 1863 enlistment of military settlers began in Melbourne and within the week Col. Pitt's junior staff were manning depots at Ballarat and Castlemaine.
From an enlistment office situated at the Port Phillip Club Hotel in Melbourne, Col. Pitt reported on the 27th August that 241 men had been enlisted. The numbers offering had been, as predicted, almost overwhelming. Not everyone was acceptable, and the usual dodges of adding years to age, or taking years off as the case may be were tried before. Other men anxious to escape domestic responsibilities or so it was rumoured, made up a not inconsiderable number of the applicants. In the main the accepted Volunteers in Melbourne were of the adventurous mould with a smattering motivated by ideals of maintaining the Empire, while some felt keenly the suffering of fellow colonists apparently at the mercy of Maori axes. A recruiting office opened in Geelong and gave opportunity to a previously publicly announced intention by four members of the Geelong Troop of the Prince of Wales Victorian Volunteer Light Horse to enlist."
--taken from ‘For Glory and a Farm’ by Rev Frank G. Glen.