The Long Road To Grafton

The Pacific was the last of the oceans to be explored, a vast area of water dotted with islands, the least known, yet the most romantic. Out of that great ocean appeared an inconspicous vessel called the "Eclair," which entered Port Jackson on the 23rd September 1851 and sailed slowly up Sydney Harbour, before dropping anchor in Neutral Bay. The small 50 ton schooner had sailed all the way from San Francisco via Honolulu and the Isle of Pines with just four passengers, in addition to the master and crew. One of those lucky voyagers was 24 year old Thomas Eastman Shoveller, who was destined to become a pioneer of the Northern Rivers region of NSW, and the developing settlement of Grafton.

Following his father's death in 1847, 21 year old Thomas left London on an amazing voyage throughout the Pacific before arriving in Sydney four years later. From there he gradually travelled north to Grafton, where he settled, married and produced a family. As a pioneer he was the first chairman of the town, and lived to become one of its oldest residents.

This story traces a genealogical journey through the ancestry of Thomas Eastman Shoveller (1827-1908), and covers the hereditary and ancestral families of Shoveller, Bignell, Eastman and Sabine in detail, examining the lives of his known forebears along the way. The work methodically explores each of the hereditary branches, highlights significant individuals and describes what is known to date of the forebears as well as the life, love and descendants of Thomas Eastman Shoveller.

The process described in this book is a narrative history and it tells some of the great stories of these families, which mostly took place between the age of enlightenment about 1750, and World War I. But this is also a book written to entertain, and it spans great events such as the industrial revolution, the French revolution, the Napoleonic era, as well as the Victorian and Edwardian periods.