People Australia

Elizabeth Smith alias Carr was found guilty, with an unidentified black man, on 11 July 1787 at the Old Bailey, London, of stealing a watch, a pair of stone knee buckles, a silk handkerchief and a crown piece from a man. Sentenced to 7 years transportation Smith was sent to the Newgate Gaol until she embarked on the Lady Juliana in March 1789 for New South Wales, arriving in the colony in June 1790 as part of the Second Fleet. 

In August 1790 Smith was sent to Norfolk Island on the Surprize. In February 1791 she and William Boggis were each issued with a pig to encourage convicts to become self-sufficient. In July they were cultivating a small piece of land near Sydney Town; the couple were married in November 1791 in a mass wedding ceremony on the island. In 1792 they lived on a 10 acre farm with their daughter Elizabeth.

The family were still on the island in 1796 but returned to Sydney sometime in the period 1797-1801. William disappears from the records after 1802; it is possible he left the colony.

Elizabeth was described as self employed in 1806 and as a widow in 1806. She was buried in The Elizabeth Street burial ground on 23 August 1820, two days after her death in Sydney; her age was given as 68.

* information from Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790 (1993), p 535