Brisbane, 16 December 1854 · QSA ITM18474, image DR38490

The General Hewitt

The archive knew this family reached Queensland. It did not know how, when, or on what. The passenger register gives all three — and a fourteen-year-old girl shipped as a domestic servant.

Eight of them sailed. On 16 December 1854 the General Hewitt put into Brisbane with 394 souls aboard, and among them were James Wakefield, his wife Hannah, and six of their children — including Miriam, then fourteen.

This was found the long way round. Queensland State Archives' own search refused to run — every query returned a system error. But Queensland publishes the assisted-immigration index as open data ↗, a plain CSV, and the whole family is in it. The index then names a digital image, DR38490, and that turns out to be the register itself. The scan, from QSA ↗

The date is the register's, and the newspapers have not confirmed it. An assisted-immigration arrival of 394 souls should be in the shipping columns, so the obvious corroboration was sought. Trove's search will not render in this environment — a limitation recorded in the method notes — so the Moreton Bay Courier for 23 December 1854 was read directly instead. It does not carry her. That column lists arrivals from 19 to 22 December and never reaches back to the 16th, and the issue that would carry the General Hewitt has not been located. So 16 December 1854 rests on the register alone. That is not the same as resting on nothing — the register is the primary document and the scan is linked above — but a reader is entitled to know that the easiest check on it has been tried and has not yet answered. Every search behind this page →

Page 78, 80 and 81 of the register

The family, split across three categories

An assisted-passage register does not list a family together. It lists married couples with their young children, then single men, then single women — so the Wakefields appear three pages apart, and the two eldest boys and the eldest girl aboard are entered as though they were travelling alone.

Married couple and children · page 78

Name	Age	Occupation	Country
James Wakefield the head of the household — his county, dittoed down the page to the rest	48	Mason	Gloucester
Hannah Wakefield NOT an independent statement of her birthplace	48	—	— ditto —
Jabez Wakefield	11	—	— ditto —
Zillah Wakefield	8	—	— ditto —
Ephraim Wakefield	5	—	— ditto —

Single men · page 80

Name	Age	Occupation	Country
Hiram Wakefield entered separately, with his own county	16	Plumber	Bristol
Aaron Wakefield entered separately, with his own county	14	Farm labourer	Bristol

Single women · page 81

Name	Age	Occupation	Country
Marion Wakefield Miriam, written Marion — fourteen, and shipped as a domestic servant	14	Domestic	Bristol

Three things it confirms

A trade, a city, and a girl of fourteen

James Wakefield is entered as a MASON. The 1841 census at Drivers Fields calls him a Mason Journeyman. Thirteen years and half a world apart, two clerks who never met wrote down the same trade. documented twice
The three eldest children are from Bristol. Hiram, Aaron and Marion each get their own line and their own county, and all three say Bristol — exactly where the census and the birth registration put them.
Miriam is “Marion”, and she is a domestic servant. Fourteen years old, entered among the single women rather than with her parents, with an occupation against her name. Five years later she married William Hartley Sneyd at Brisbane. The women →

And one thing it pointedly does not give. Hannah's county is a ditto mark under her husband's Gloucester — the household head's county, entered once and carried down the page. It is not a statement about where she was born, and the register proves it knows the difference: on the very same day it enters her three eldest children as Bristol. not her birthplace

So the question the last two days have been chasing is still open. The 1841 census says Hannah was born outside Gloucestershire — WHICH WAS WRONG, and the 1851 census names her birthplace as BERKELEY; the reconstitution of all 81 Gloucestershire Saniger households says she is in none of them; and the one register that might have named her county dittoed it instead. Where to look now →

The voyage

Who else was aboard

The register closes with a summary in the clerk's hand.

Married couples	142
Single men	80
Single women	46
Boys under 14	51
Girls under 14	63
Infants	12
Total souls	394

Reckoned for victualling as 325 “adults” — children counted as halves, infants not counted at all. The counties on these pages are Cambridge, Middlesex, Somerset, Essex, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Wicklow, Armagh, Cork, Roscommon and Dublin: an English and Irish cargo of farm labourers, masons, ploughmen, bricklayers, dairymaids and domestic servants, landed at a settlement that would not become a state capital for another five years.

What this changes

The emigration is dated. The archive has said for years that the family "reached Queensland". It reached it on 16 December 1854, aboard a named ship, with the ages of every passenger recorded. documented
James Wakefield's trade is confirmed independently, and the family's Bristol origin with it.
Three daughters are missing from the manifest — and at least one of them was already dead. This page framed Eliza, Ellen and Martha as an open question about emigration. Eliza was buried at Bristol on 4 May 1834, aged nineteen months, and Ellen at St Paul, Portland Square on 12 July 1840, aged five — both baptised there to James and Hannah. And Martha, searched under every spelling and every record type, has no birth, baptism or burial at Bristol at all. The records → corrected 13 September 2026
Hannah's birthplace is not here — but it now has a candidate. A Saniger household two streets from the Wakefields' in 1851 gives its birthplace as Chew Magna in SOMERSET, which is the one thing the 1841 census insists on about her. Chew Magna →

The household they left, 1841 → · The Sanigers they did not come from → · The register scan, QSA ↗