Chasing down James Proctor

James Proctor was a New Englander from Boston who was a quarter gunner on the Sirius, which he joined at Portsmouth on 20 December, 1786, aged 25. The Sirius initially  had an armament of six cannonades and four six-pounders but Governor Arthur Phillip demanded she be fitted with 'ten more of the six-pounders ... and the iron-work necessary for the carriages. Having the ironwork, the guns can at any time be mounted, and may, I presume, in future be of great use to me on board or on ashore, as the service may require.' [Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia. A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, 1989, pp. 294-295; Governor Phillip to Secretary Stephens, [London] October 31, 1786, in Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1, Pt.2, Mona Vale, 1978, p.28.]

As a quarter gunner, Proctor was probably a former common seaman and was responsible for the working of four guns. His main task was to assist the gunner's mate in the maintenance of his four  guns, and, unlike the gun captain who was responsible for the gun crew while in action, was on the official establishment. He received a wage of two shillings more than an able seaman. [N. A. M Rodger, The Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815,London, 2004, p.393; N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World. An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, New York, 1996, p.26.]

James Proctor's career in New South Wales is easy enough to trace. There is no record of him before the wreck of the Sirius at Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790, though he undoubtedly went on the seven month  voyage to the Cape of Good Hope with Captain John Hunter which departed Port Jackson on 2 October 1788 for desperately needed flour. Proctor was so impressed by his time on Norfolk Island despite the hardships, that he sought and gained a discharge from the Sirius after nearly a year's sojourn on the island and received a 60 acre grant for farm, ten hilly and the rest level. By 1 October, 1792 he had cultivated twelve of his acres, and by the following year was able to employ John Read for twelve months as a labourer. Tantalisingly, I have to date been unable to find any further record of this John Read, though presumably he was a convict. By 25 May, 1794, Proctor was selling grain to government stores and had rented four acres to William Wright. 

Wright was a convict who had made good. Convicted in London for stealing a watch and gown in an occupied house from a woman who first mistook him in the night for her husband, he was sentenced to seven years transportation in September 1784, and was very lucky not to be sent to Africa. Instead he spent nearly two and a half years on the London hulks. Sent out to Botany Bay on the Scarborough, he was able to prove himself once he was dispatched on the Supply to Norfolk Island in January 1790. Given a small plot to support himself on. By April 1792 he was off government stores and working for the island's free settlers., whence he saved enough capital to rent farm land off James Proctor.

By June 1794 Proctor was living with Mary Allen alias Conner, who had been convicted, aged 27 at the Old Bailey for stealing a cocked hat from a hatter in Bloomsbury. When the shop owner's son tried to arrest her she hit him on the head with a sieve while her friend gave him a good kicking, all to no avail. Just over two weeks after her arrest, she was delivered to the women's transport, the Lady Penrhyn. Ann Davis, the first woman to be hung in Sydney Town ,shared a hut with her.,  Allen was a witness at her trial for theft, and with every other convict, a spectator at the hanging, where Davis was dragged drunk, barely able to stand, to the scaffold. Mary Allen had been sent to Norfolk on the Sirius on 4 March 1790 and, like Proctor, endured its shipwreck. Probably she was  with Proctor for the whole of his time on the island, but i this is not recorded. anywhere [The details of the persons mentioned above are taken from the relevant entries in Gillen, op. cit.]

Tracing Proctor's earlier life before he came to New South Wales is far more difficult. At the time of the siege of Boston in 1775-1776 he would have been fourteen or fifteen. It is probable his father was the Boston Loyalist Thomas Proctor of Marblehead, who had been a fervent supporter of the disgraced Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutcheson as far back as 1774, While we know that family almost certainly left Boston  in March 1776 for Halifax with the British fleet, little else in certain about them. It is unlikely the Thomas Proctor who may have been James's father was the same Thomas Proctor who was identified in 1784 as a lieutenant in the loyalist Second American Regiment, attained of treason and had his property confiscated. [Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, Vol. 3, 1864, p.568.] The 2nd American regiment was originally the Irish Catholic regiment, the Volunteers of Ireland, raised in Philadelphia in 1777. It isimprobable that James Proctor was of  Catholic descent, since the Proctors were a famous Massachusetts Puritan family. Indeed, the New England Puritans, whether Patriot or Loyalist, were vehemently anti-Catholic.He was not related to the Proctors of Nova Scotia, from whence Deputy Adjutant David Collins of the Second Battalion Marines would find a wife in June 1777. [John Currey, David Collins. A Colonial Life, Melbourne, 2000, p.25.]
It is probable James Proctor joined the Royal Navy in America at some time during the War of American Independence, but I have not as yet found any record of him. He had progressed from ordinary seaman to quarter gunner and at war's end seems to have decided to remain in the navy, probably because there were few jobs ellsewhere because of a post-war depression. We know, too, that he was one of those seamen from whom Governor Phillip 'took his pick, all young men that were called seamen, 160 in number, no boys or women allowed.' [John C. Dann, (ed.) The NagleNagle, Sailor, from the Year 1775 to 1841, New York, 1988, p.77.] Evidently, James Proctor was well thought of by somebody, since we know Phillip chose his crew with great care.

While in New South Wales, Proctor clearly performed his duties as a seaman well, as can be inferred from the ease with which he was given his discharge and a land grant on Norfolk Island. Proctor and Mary Allen remained together until his death on 21 October, 1801. The property he left Mary was worth 60 pounds when she left Norfolk Island for Van Diemen's Land in May 1808. By then it consisted of a large two storey house, a second building 10 by 12 feet, a one storey wooden and floored barn, four thatched log houses, 28 acres of cleared land and 21 acres uncleared land. At her leaving, the authorities rated her, as a woman convict,  a '2nd class settler.' At the time she was living with another convict, William Atkins, and caring for his three children by his previous marriage. [Gillen, op. cit., p. 5.]