Last year as I read from the journal of the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society called Greenwood Tree, in the March 2022 edition called Opening Pandora’s Box: Your Surprise Discoveries, about folks who have found interesting people including criminals in their family lines, I was reminded of one of my own.
A few years ago I was researching my paternal family from Somerset in the UK. I have written about the changing of our surname to Hall from Shearn by my 3x-great-grandfather Mark Hall Shearn (1800-1884) who ran off with a teen girl half his age. I have also shared a two-generation report about Mark, his children, and one of his son’s generation (Charles Hall Shearn (1830-1921)) in a blog post series. While researching Charles Hall Shearn I found a codicil or appendage to his will that he added a couple of years after his last will. As reported previously, Charles disinherited his oldest child, his son Robert Austin Shearn. I wondered at the time why he did that. It turns out that we have a bit of a criminal in our family, too.
Robert Austin Shearn (1877-1940) was born to Charles and his first with Arabella Cowley. Arabella died as a result of an illness contracted from childbirth. Austin ended up on a boat to Australia in the late 1880s when he would have been in his early twenties. While he may have had some legal concerns in England that we have yet to research and which may be why he want to Australia, there are several Australian court records and newspaper articles showing that Robert certainly ran into trouble there.
Robert Austin Shearn often used the surname McFarlane as well as at least one other alias. He entered the service in the Australian Imperial Force serving during WWI. He spent time in an asylum. He spent time in prison. He committed crimes from theft to housebreaking. He stole things from a bicycle to jewels. His mom died when he was born. He was married, widowed, married, divorced. He had children who also changed their surname. In his sixty odd years, from the start to the end, his life was checkered and troubled. We will explore some of the details in future posts, and maybe find that he did have some joy in his life.
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