William Nash
Of four known generations named William Nash, he is the first. Little is known of this ancestor and the only source of information is his son's death certificate which states that William Nash was a member of the 40th Regiment of Foot in the British army. However a search of British military records has not located a record of him. While there were soldiers named "Nash" in the 40th Regiment, no links have yet been identified with any of them. Thus there may be some doubt about who this person was. His wife's surname is also uncertain, with some information noted under the entry for his son, William Nash (the second).
There is a record of a John Nash, formerly of the 40th Regiment, being detained in Her Majesty's Collingwood Stockade for the offence of attempted bestiality. ('Register of Names, Particulars and Personal Descriptions of Prisoners' held at Public Record Office Victoria [PROV, VPRS 10934/P0 Register of Names, Particulars and Personal Descriptions of Prisoners, Unit 1 (1856)] reported at http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/provenance/no6/CollingwoodStockade2.asp. We can only hope he is not our Nash ancestor!
The 40th Regiment of Foot had a distinguished military history. For much of the 19th century the regiment was also known as the 2nd Somersetshire regiment. Although the geographic names attached to regiments was often of little significance, it is known that William's son, also named William Nash, was born in Somerset. A more detailed history of the regiment can be found at http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~tyoung/40th
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In the early 19th century the regiment had fought in the wars against Napoleon, then serving in Tasmania and New South Wales between 1824 and 1829 before service in Afghanistan and India (including Candahar, Ghuznee, Cabool, Kyber Pass and Maharajpoor. In 1845 the regiment served on garrison duty in England and Ireland. In a listing in the Liverpool Journal on 5 January 1850, the 40th Regiment was reported to be based in Dublin (see http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dadds/Army.html). In 1852 the regiment went to Cork in Ireland, in preparation for another tour of duty in the Australian colonies. The regiment departed Cork on 12 July 1852 on Her Majesty's Steam Ship Vulcan, arriving in Hobson's Bay, Port Phillip on 19 October of the same year, disembarking in Melbourne on the 4th and 5th November.
HMS VULCAN Iron frigate. 1,747bm, 220 x 41ft. Ditchburn & Mare, Blackwall. http://www.westnet.com.au/talltrees/shipping/shipping5.htm#vulcan |
Presuming that there was a soldier named William Nash (or similar), it is not known when he joined the 40th but it is presumed that he was part of the regiment when it arrived in Port Phillip. The 40th Regiment served mainly in Melbourne and the major gold towns of Victoria, as well as a contingent being sent to the newly established Moreton Bay settlement in New South Wales (later to become Brisbane/Queensland). William's son, William Nash (the second) is thought to have arrived in Australia in around the mid-1850s when he was in his late teens, and spent the next few years in the Victorian goldfields.
It may be a matter for pride or shame, depending on one's view of Australian history - the 40th was one of two regiments which suppressed the Eureka Stockade in Victoria in December 1854. However a search of records has not identified any soldier named William Nash at the Eureka Stockade.
In 1860 the regiment was sent to New Zealand where they assisted in the slaughter of natives in the Second Maori War before returning to England in 1866, then suppressing the Irish in Ireland before another tour of duty in India. It is not known when William tired of the slaughter, although it is known that some of the troops took discharge to remain behind each time the regiment moved. It is possible that William may have remained in Victoria or perhaps remained in New Zealand when the regiment left one of those locations. This may offer some explanation of how William's grand-daughter Lizzie Nash came to be in New Zealand in 1880. At this time this remains all conjecture.
One can wonder at the life of the soldier. It was interesting to note a family history in which is told the story ofa William Henry Skinner who was born in New Plymouth in New Zealand in 1857 and whose earliest childhood memory was of clinging to his father's leg as he watched the right wing of the 40th Regiment - headed by its splendid brass band in full regalia - marching up Brougham Street to the Marsland Hill Barracks (www.pukeariki.com/en/stories/immigration/skinner.htm).
