The Rosers arrived in 1842 on the Simon Taylor, a ship that brought labourers and tradespeople to the Swan River Colony, a small enclave of settlers on the west coast of Australia. The settlement was just over a decade old and badly in need of a workforce to help develop it as a viable colony.
William Roser and Diana Wilson
William Roser was born in 1802 in Mereworth, Kent and baptised in the village church, St Lawrence’s, on 21 November of the same year. The baptism is registered in the church’s register – William’s entry appears four from the bottom of the baptisms performed in 1802 (Figure 1). The entry notes that his father’s name was William and his mother was named Elizabeth. The Rector, Reverend William Foster, signed his name at the bottom of the annual entries. It must have been a church with a smallish congregation as only 16 baptisms were performed that year, all of them from the parish’s farmers.
Diana Wilson was also baptised in St Lawrence’s church. According to the parish register she was baptised there on the 9th December 1810 and her parents’ names were George and Martha.
William and Diana grew up in Mereworth, perhaps forming a friendship in childhood. It was a small village at the time and the families probably knew each other. When Diana turned 21 she and William (26) got married in East Peckham, a small village to the south of Mereworth. The parish record (which spelt William’s surname as Rose without the ‘r’) noted that William was then living in the village of Otford, in the west of the county. He was probably working at the time. The marriage document reveals that neither William nor Diana could read or write as they signed their names with crosses.
The couple must have settled back in Mereworth because John, their first-born child, was born there in 1829, coincidentally the same year that the Swan River Colony was founded.
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