People Australia

James Grace was found guilty on 14 January 1784 at the Old Bailey, London, of breaking into a shop and stealing a pair of silk stockings and ten yards of silk ribbon. He was sentenced to 7 years transportation. He was recaptured following a convict mutiny aboard the transport Mercury, which was on its way to America, and was sent to the Dunkirk hulk in June 1784. He arrived in Sydney in January 1788 aboard the Friendship as part of the First Fleet. Ralph Clark recorded that Grace was a shoemaker, aged 18, from Middlesex.

Grace was sent to Norfolk Island on the Sirius in March 1790. By July 1791 he was subsisting on a Queenborough lot with 72 rods, sharing a sow provided by the government with Elizabeth Smith and James Thomas; he had two children with Elizabeth Smith. By February 1792 he was working for other settlers and was off stores.

Grace died on 15 November 1793 at Norfolk Island.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 147