People Australia

William Jenkins (c.1762-1837?) and Richard Willcocks were found guilty on 20 March 1786 at Exeter, Devon, of assaulting a person with sticks with the intention of robbing them. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, the men were sent to the Dunkirk hulk and were discharged to the Charlotte in March 1787. They arrived at Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Jenkins married Isabella Chapman on 24 December 1791. He was granted 30 acres of land at Bulanaming in January 1794 and had cleared 13 acres by 1802; he and his wife were off stores and they had one child. Jenkins sold his farm to Robert Campbell for £70 in August 1802 . In 1806 Jenkins was renting 60 acres of land from Henry Kable in the Hawkesbury area — all of the land except for a quarter garden was in grain. Jenkins was by then a widower, with one living child. He married Katherine Robertson, a widow, on 26 February 1810 at St Philips Church, Sydney. 

William Jenkins was still farming in 1828. He was buried at Portland Head on 29 January 1837; his age was given as 70.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 192-93