The Association
You can contact the Mary Wade History Association by sending an email to contact@marywadefamily.org.
You can also interact with other Mary Wade family members through our Community page.
Mission Statement
Our Purpose
To bring together descendants of Mary Wade and to preserve, share and extend the knowledge of our shared family history.
Aims
- To provide a forum to connect descendants of Mary Wade
- To share family history information, such as, stories about descendants, family trees and photos of our ancestors
- To assist each other with family history research
- To undertake further research into Mary Wade’s ancestry and ancestors
- To preserve records, photographs and other information about the descendants of Mary Wade
- To build on the work of the authors of “Mary Wade to Us"
Who Was Mary Wade
Mary Wade came to Australia as an 11 year old convict girl. She was one of a boatload of convict women sent to the two year old colony of New South Wales in 1790.
At age 16, she gave birth to her first child, Sarah Wade.
Mary Wade is reputed to have given birth to 21 children in her childbearing years but only seven survived to have children of their own. Those seven children lived through much better times than Mary and were quite prolific in their child rearing.
When Mary died in 1859 at the age of 82, she had over 300 living descendants and was considered one of the founding mothers of the early settlers in Australia. Tens of thousands of Australians, including the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, trace their lineage back to that little convict girl, Mary Wade.
Early descendants seemed to congregate in the Wollongong, Campbelltown and Riverina regions, but today they are scattered all over the world.
Twenty years ago, some diligent family members did their research and published a book called ‘Mary Wade to Us’. It told the early stories and traced the family trees of thousands of Mary’s descendants. Several thousand copies were printed and distributed but the book is now scarce and out of print.
Today, quite a few of us keep in touch and share family trees through Genes Reunited and Ancestry.com. If you search the Genes Reunited database for “Mary Wade b.1777” you will find over 30 of us there with Mary in our Tree.
We are now in the process of setting up a Mary Wade Family History Association and this will be its website.
The purpose of the Association and this website is to publish Mary’s story dedicated to her and her family.
We want it to contain the stories of family members, where we can share information, and one giant Family Tree that includes as many of Mary’s descendants as want to claim their heritage.
Anyone interested in joining the Association and helping us create this website should contact:
Mary Wade Family History Association,
Email: contact@marywadefamily.org