3.7 Hillman in Oceania – Australia & New Zealand

Both Australia and New Zealand proved attractive to settlers from Britain from the earliest days of the “discovery” of these places by travellers from Europe. They offered space and freedom from the constraints and troubles back in England and Scotland, as well as in Australia’s case, a convenient dumping ground for criminals far from society in Britain, who it was hoped would contribute through production and export to the needs of society “back home”. Hillmans were and still are a part of this story.

3.7.1        Australia

The names Hillman and Illman arrived as settlers in Australia very early, encouraged no doubt by the free sea passages offered at times by the British government. There are also records of at least two Hillman men who were transported as convicts to the “new lands”. Since then both family names have thrived and persisted as evidenced by the many enquiries and accounts on family history fora and websites.

Australia was a secondary source for the name, with Hillman immigrants from the UK especially, but from a few other countries in addition.

Toumas Salste[1] records 808 people on the Australian voters register in 2006 with the name Hillman, but only 166 with the name Illman.

The “White Pages” for Australia[2] recorded numbers of the name Hillman at recorded addresses in each state (Table 1):

Table 1 Records for the name Hillman in Australian States (2002)

It is evident that the most populous states in the east and south carried the highest numbers, with lower absolute numbers in the north, west and Tasmania. There was little difference between numbers in the capital cities and rural areas.

Family Search[3] data is limited and non-systematic in the main. A cursory search of 1,240 records for Hillman and Illman in Australia shows that Death and Burial records outnumber Birth and Baptism records significantly – as high as 4.82 more Deaths than Births in New South Wales for example. Marriage records are very few in number. To some extent this may relate to the numbers of immigrants in the early days, whose births and marriages may have occurred prior to entering the country, and to the way in which FS records are collected with that organisation’s own priorities. However, they do afford some countrywide indicative comparisons.

The earliest FS records for most states were in the period 1803-1815 at the time convicts from England were still being sent to the “new territories”. The exception is Canberra whose earliest record in 1909 which relates to the establishment of Canberra as the capital in the Australian Capital State in only 1908.

The ratio of Hillman to Illman records is 3.38 in favour of Hillman overall, with ratios of 31.83 in New South Wales, 19.25 in Western Australia and 8.20 in Victoria. Illman outnumbers Hillman only in the Australian Capital Territory at 0.88 and South Australia at 0.73.

The greatest number of Hillman records are from Victoria (451) and for Illman from South Australia (143). It is evident from tracing records for individual families, that as elsewhere in the world the two spellings were interchangeable on occasion, with children from the same marriage, or the same person at different events being recorded with both spellings.

3.7.1.1       Convicts

Hillmans were not ignorant of easier ways of making a living, as the result of which some family members fell foul of the law in Britain and were victims of the transportation system of penal

Figure 1 The hulk of the East Indiaman “Edwin Fox” (in Picton, NZ) on which Neil and Richard Hillman were transported to Australia

servitude. Two records illustrate the Hillman participation, and countless accounts exist of the hardships convicts had to undergo. Both Hillman examples travelled to Australia on the former East India Company merchant sailing ship – the “Edwin Fox[4], the hulk of which I was lucky enough to visit in Picton, South Island, New Zealand in 2015 (Figure 1). In this day and age of sleeping cabins and showers on jetliners for long-distance travel, the sheer horror of travelling below decks for months on end with hundreds of other shackled fellow prisoners is almost un-imaginable. Many survived, some to make an excellent stab at life in the new lands of opportunity once their sentences were served out.

There are no Hillmans or Illmans listed in the earliest convict vessels to New South Wales in 1788, 1790 and 1791[5]. However, 14 Hillmans (including one Illman) occur in lists for convict vessels between 1800-1858. Two of these were transported in the “Edwin Fox”.

Neil ? Hillman (the name is unclear in the records) was sentenced in the same court at Lewes, East Sussex as Richard below, but 30 years earlier in 1827. He was convicted of “Larceny” and sentenced to 7 years transportation. He was transported on the “Edwin Fox”. We have no further information on his fate in Australia.

Richard William Hillman[6] was sentenced to 14 years also for “Larceny” – with a previous conviction which increased his sentence from the usual 7 years – at Lewes Court in East Sussex. He was sentenced in 1857, when he was an unmarried labourer, semi-literate and a Protestant, aged 35. He was born in 1822, arrived in Australia at Perth WA on 21 Nov 1858, so aged 36 years. He was also transported on the “Edwin Fox” (and I suspect Neil – above – might have been the same person?). His Ticket of Leave was dated 15 Nov 1860, issued before he was given leave to work in the country. Richard died in a lunatic asylum on 6 Dec 1866, so aged 44 years.  Sadly, he did not outlive the length of his intended sentence, and one wonders what demons drove him to be in a lunatic asylum at his death?

John Hillman[7] was transported from Portsmouth, England to Port Jackson (now Sydney), Australia on the Coromandel in 1804 after a journey of 154 days. He was assigned to a public agricultural settlement, or to the Coal Harbour, and may also have been part of a group sent to establish a new settlement at Port Dalrymple. By 1810 John Hillman had served his time and was given his Certificate of Freedom. As far as is known he may then then have settled in the Hunter Valley.

The Hillman convicts[8] were drawn from courts spread across England, including Norfolk, Bristol, Middlesex, Surrey, Wiltshire, Liverpool, Kent, Radnorshire, York and Sussex. One was a soldier court-martialled and sentenced to life from Delhi, India. Most were transported for 7-year periods, one for 10, one for 14, and three for life. Three were sent to New South Wales, nine to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)  and one to Western Australia.

3.7.1.2       Settler Immigrants

Not all the Hillmans arriving were convicts however – there are many happier success stories of people who did emigrate to Australia and make a success of it which have been well-documented.

In 1839 Capt. J.C. Hillman[9] was Master of the Convict vessel Mary Ann, that brought 143 women convicts from Woolwich, England to Australia in a journey of only 115 days. 

The Stokes family web page[10] describes the fortunes of John and Johannah Hillman, of Plymouth and then Penzance in Cornwall. Together with five children, and John’s brother Leonard and sister Jane, the family moved to South Australia 1837 on the “Katherine Stewart Forbes” at Holdfast Bay, now part of Adelaide. Three more children were born in Australia where John set up as a successful carpenter, then later as a farmer. John sired a further 12 children in Australia with his second wife Elizabeth Haggett after Johannah died. Their descendants have continued to populate South Australia[11].

John and Sophia Illman[12] of Rotherfield, Sussex, and descendant of Rycharde Hylman of Balcombe, Sussex, moved to South Australia in 1839, with their four children as voluntary immigrants (i.e. not convicts). They lived initially in Glenelg, now a suburb of Adelaide, with John working first in a dairy, then producing butter and cheese, and then a farmer in his own right. They had a further six children in Australia, whose descendants still live in South Australia and other areas.

Marc Hillman (pers. comm.) of Canberra, has documented his ancestral line of Hillmans from England as well as documenting the life of William Hillman of the Hillman Motor Company (Sadly his website is no longer available). He traced his antecedents back to Kent in 1802, the move to Australia being made by Christopher John Thomas Hillman, born 1846in Greenwich, England, who then died in Australia in Sydney, Australia in 1941.

Mark Schipp’s family tree[13] lists 54 Hillmans deaths in the state of South Australia between 1837-1979, and originating in Cornwall, England. Descendants of Thomas Hillman emigrated to Australia between 1772 (his birth) and 1845 (earliest family death in Australia).

3.7.1.3       Places called “Hillman” in Australia

Alfred Hillman[14] was a surveyor, and later Surveyor General, in Western Australia 1831-1873 and his story is told elsewhere here. Arriving as he did early in the development of the area – two years after its establishment as a British Colony – his work took him to far-flung places, surveying the country generally, but also for the new settlers and their lands, town planning and railways.

During the course of his work – or afterwards to honour his memory? – a number of places in WA were named “Hillman” (Table 1, Figure 1).

Table 2 Features name by or after Alfred Hillman in WA

The Hillman River runs into the Arthur River near Donkan, Bowelling, south of Boddington and Williams.

Lake Hillman is south of Wiluna in WA (Figure 3).

Figure 2 Locations with the name Hillman in WA, Australia

Figure 3 Alfred Hillman’s survey route including Lake Hillman (1846)

Alfred Hillman’s son – Capt. Alfred James Hillman – remained in Western Australia along with his sibling and descendants. He kept a diary[15] that was published in 1990 by his great-great-grandson Frank Valentine Bentley Hillman. Sadly, it gives little information on the family, but more on life in Western Australia, especially Perth, in the late 1800s. Alfred Hillman’s descendants made their lives in Western Australia, although he returned to England where he died.

3.7.2        New Zealand

The story of early settlement by immigrants from Britain and later many other countries is similar to that in Australia, but without the convicts. Some convicts once granted freedom were permitted to start new lives in New Zealand, but no Hillmans have been found among them to date.

Various newspaper sources[16] provide information on Hillmans in New Zealand over the past two centuries, the earliest found so far being James Hillman’s birth in 1802 (but which may well have taken place before he came to New Zealand where his death was recorded in 1860). Numbers are low and the occurrence of the family name Illman very low indeed. Records combined with duplicates removed include 103 births between 1802-1983, 52 marriages between 1857 and 1938, and 158 deaths between 1848 and 2018. Official records only began in 1848 so the earliest Hillman settlers may be under-represented. As in Australia, the disparity between births and deaths may well be explained by the numbers of immigrants over the same period.

The family name does not appear in the list of New Zealand pioneer families[17] dating back to 1800.

An unknown Hillman is commemorated in the Bolton Street Chapel[18], in Wellington, that records early graves preserved in the city’s older cemeteries from 1840.

James Hillman is recorded as a New Zealand Pioneer[19] in 1840 at Wellington. He might well be the same James Hillman above recorded as born in 1802 and died in 1860.

There are 135 Hillman (n=131) and Illman (n=4) deaths recorded from 1848;  35 Hillman (n=30) and Illman (n=5) births recorded from 1859; and 47 Hillman (n=45) and Illman (n=2) marriages from 1899 in the Government Historical Records[20]. These figures are very low in proportion to the total population of 4.8 million in New Zealand at the 2017 Census[21].

Hillman appears in passenger lists[22] from 1850 onwards. Eighteen Hillman passengers were recorded arriving between 1850 and 1921. Captain Hillman was commander of the vessel “Acacia” that was driven ashore and wrecked  at Hokianaga in 1863.

In 1907 Mr Hillman[23] of Arrowton, Macetown, Cromwell, near Queenstown, S Island, provided the music at the wedding of Alexander Henderson and Margaret Kerr.

The name has appeared in the Maori community as well – presumably through marriage with incoming settlers. William Lionel Hillman (#60840, from Thames, NZ) is recorded in the list of Maori Pioneer soldiers from the Hauraki District during the First World War[24]. Charlie Hillman of Horoera is recorded as serving in the 2nd Maori Pioneer Battalion in WW One in Egypt and Western Europe when he was accidentally killed (run over by a vehicle in France) aged 36[25].

The Hillman whaling family of New England, USA again appears in New Zealand (see St Helena and USA Hillman accounts). William Hillman (a.k.a. Billy Hillman, and possibly Charles William Hillman, or even “Yankee Bill Hazel”) was reportedly an American whaler who lived initially at the Bay of Islands in the north of North Island around 1834-5, then moved down the east coast to Hawke’s Bay, working as a cooper at onshore whaling stations[26]. He was later employed as a sawyer, and at sheep stations with the Williams family, finally dying of old age in Gisborne in 1916, reportedly 101 years old. He was said to have been born in the USA in 1810. During his life he evidently had a number of Maori “wives” who produced a line of Hillmans that persist to this day, especially along the east coast of North Island.

Another North American whaler was Thomas Hillman[27] who also married into the Maori community in the 1840s.  The name Hillman was included as a forename persistently in the Arthur Maori family on the west coast of North Island[28], possibly from a whaler as the source? No record has yet been found of Charles William or Thomas as New England whalers in the right time period.

Descendants of Edward Hillman, solicitor of Lewes in Sussex (see significant UK Hillmans later), still lives in New Zealand today (Mary Simpson, pers comm). Edward Hillman’s son Harry emigrated to New Zealand, marrying in Blenheim in 1890, and dying there in 1899. He had five children whose grandchildren descendants are still living in New Zealand.

Sources:


[1] Tuomas Salste. 2018. https://www.tuomas.salste.net/suku/nimi/index-en.html

[2] “White Pages” for Australia. 2002. https://www.whitepages.com.au/residential/results?name=Hillman&location=Tasmania

[3] Family Search. 2019 https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/location/1927080?region=Australia

[4] The Edwin Fox. 2019. http://www.edwinfoxsociety.com/

[5] Turner, Barbara. 1992. Convicts transported to NSW, Australia 1788, 1790, 1791. http://www.family.joint.net.au/index.php?mid=6

[6] www.freemantleprison.com.au/history/ConvictsAndShips/convict_display.cfm

[7] https://www.jenwilletts.com/convict_ship_coromandel_1804.htm

[8] https://convictrecords.com.au/search/results

[9] https://www.jenwilletts.com

[10] JK Stokes Family. 2019. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jksgenie/mtbarker/bios2.htm

[11] Tony Finnis. 2019. https://localwiki.org/adelaide-hills/Hillman%2C_John_%26_his_descendants

[12] Osborne, Ray Osborne. 2009. From Sussex to South Australia. SFHG Sussex Family Historian 18(7):364-370

[13] Mark Schipp Family Tree. 2018. http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~schipp/genealogy/Jan04/i680.html

[14] Alfred Hillman, WA Surveyor General. 2012. http://explorationswa.com.au/Errata/Updated_Expanded_Bio_Notes.php

[15] Hillman, F.V. Bentley. 1990. The Hillman Diaries 1877-1884. Private Printing, Applecross, WA. 1,052 pp

[16] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

[17] https://www.geni.com/projects/New-Zealand-Pioneer-Families-1800-1900-Surnames-Index/13017

[18] Bolton Street Chapel. 2019. https://boltoncemetery.org.nz/

[19] http://shadowsoftime.co.nz/settlersc.html

[20] NZ Government Historical Records. https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Search/Search?Path=querySubmit.m%3fReportName%3dBirthSearch%26recordsPP%3d30#SearchResults

[21] NZ Census. 2017. https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/population

[22] http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll

[23] Cromwell Argus. 28 Oct 1907. http://sites.rootsweb.com/~nzbound/macetown.htm

[24] http://www.thetreasury.org.nz/warpioneers.htm

[25] http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/C6958

[26] Otago Daily Times, Issue 16841, 2 Nov 1916. Personal. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT19161102.2.67?query=Hillman%20whaler&snippet=true

[27] Thomas Hillman. http://www.whakapapaclub.nz/forum/finding-whanau-family-owc/hillman-rosepaku-and-thomastame-1737/#post-3580

[28] Arthur Family. http://www.whakapapaclub.nz/forum/finding-whanau-family-owc/hillman-rosepaku-and-thomastame-1737/#post-8200