Skip to main content
GSSA
The 1820 Settler Correspondence
 as preserved in the National Archives, Kew
 and edited by Sue Mackay

pre 1820 Settler Correspondence before emigration

ALL the 1819 correspondence from CO48/41 through CO48/46 has been transcribed whether or not the writers emigrated to the Cape. Those written by people who did become settlers, as listed in "The Settler Handbook" by M.D. Nash (Chameleon Press 1987), are labelled 1820 Settler and the names of actual settlers in the text appear in red.

BROOME, Thomas

Written by Sue Mackay on .

National Archives, Kew CO48/41, 259/260

No.1 Addington Square

Margate

Kent

28th July 1819

My Lord,

In consequence of an advertisement in the Times of the 17th inst respecting colonising the country about the Cape of Good Hope, I beg to represent that I have served His Majesty upwards of 11 years as Clerk and Midshipman alternately. In the coming of the Peace was paid off and since have been able to get little or no employ. Now my Lord in between 20 and 30 years of age, healthy and ardent, but possessed of no money, and should your Lordship be pleased to give me an order for a passage to the settlement it will be gratefully remembered by My Lord

Your most obedient humble servant

Thos. BROOME

I have a wife/no children/willing to follow where I go

I have some ideas of farming, my wife can conduct a dairy, attend the pigs or in fact anything a country girl [has] to do

Don't treat this as a commonplace note but give me an answer. My Lord, reflect I am a poor penshionar and you can serve me say will you or will you not.

  • Hits: 5848