Sarah Crosby : Short Biography

Sarah Crosby was my great great grandmother. She came from Waterford. She was probably born in May 1833. During the famine, she apparently had to leave Ireland, as a girl of about 13. I don't know what happened to her family. She went to Bath, and worked as a maid in a house, but she ended up in London. She was homeless. There was an incident outside a "refuge for the houseless poor". She was told to leave and, desperate, she ended up stabbing a policeman. Subsequently she was transported. She was sent to Hobart on the St Vincent, arriving in April 1850.

She met Edward Lewis, another convict (from London), and they got married in Hobart. They had seven children, one of whom is my great grandmother. But I know very little about Sarah. I sort-of guess (given the evidence) that her father is Martin Crosby and her mother is Sarah Fitzgibbon, of Waterford. There was apparently a brother, James, who may have gone to America. I doubt that Sarah had any subsequent contact with family in Ireland (if indeed they lived through the famine). She lived well (in the sense that it is good to be alive, and have children), and died in Sydney. I found her grave at Rookwood almost accidently (it was a glorious wonder). The gravestone proudly said she was a native of Waterford. 

I would dearly love to find Sarah in Ireland. I am a fourth generation Australian, mostly Cornish, Scottish and English. But she is dear to me.

I have written a book about Edward and Sarah: The Search for Edward Lewis. But the questions above remain, and it would be so wonderful if I discovered Sarah in the place where she came from.