Meet Joseph Inch and Ann Grant, two young people shipped from Ireland and England to serve seven years as convicts in the colony of New South Wales. He was just 17 when he was dragged off a ship in the notorious second fleet in 1790 and she just 24 when she arrived three years later in 1793
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They would find love together in this far-flung isolated colony and together sow the seeds of a dynasty that would grow to become colonial royalty in one generation; shops, a tavern and a two-storey house in Sydney’s Pitt Street and huge farms in New South Wales.
Their daughter Ann married a free Settler James Styles and produced 16 children who would gift them 69 grandchildren.
Their story from reluctant convicts to survive and embrace wealth, romance, and tragedy including suicide, makes a terrific read as these convict pioneers forged a life in what was then New Holland. Today the family’s impact lives on in cricketing history with the Ashes, in heritage listed mansions in NSW, and aboriginal grand children in modern day Australia.
When Dennis Lingane volunteered to write the family history for his wife and her family he did not realise that he would be writing the history of Australia. In this fact is better than fiction story he follows the growth of the family from this convict couple that would embrace English gentry, Danish Seafarers and Scottish farmers all dating back to the 1700s. The family’s descendants left their mark on the early foundations of New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.
Lingane’s writings brings them all alive with his inimitable story telling in this wonderfully colourful jog through Australia’s history from birth to modern day with a welter of illustrations from past oil masters to modern day photography.