RE: William George Bowden WATSON
I guess you probably had access to the following texts (which do not give any info on the Canadian wherabouts of William Watson):
William would work away on the ships while he was away Sarah would take in borders. One time when William came home he found Sarah pregnant to one of the borders "James Mclean". Apparently Sarah took off with the border and left William with the children.
In April 1873 William was charged with drunk and disorderly and a vagrant when he asked for the police to look after his children because his wife had deserted him.Some of the children were put into care until a solution was found.
Sarah eventually came and took some of the children back with her new partner James Mclean.
William apparently took his eldest William G.B back to Canada with him, William died in Canada. William G B ended up back in NSW, after 1873 No one really knows what happened to William SNR.
Sarah Watson and James Colin Mclean had 5 children being Isobella(Charlotte)1872, David 1874, Mary 1879, Jesse 1887, and James 1882. James Mclean and Sarah Watson married 09/09/1881. Sarah is listed as a wifdow????
James ans Sarh lived in Victoria, then moved to W.A and our branch of the Watson family lived in N.S.W> Don't think Annie knew she had relations in W.A.
The Watson Family: According to newspaper reports, after Sarah walked out with the baby, William was left with six of the children and tried to get the police to take care of them. Five of the six children mentioned in the newspaper report were placed in the Industrial School in Melbourne and eventually boarded out and licensed to various people. It is obvious that Sarah knew James McLean for a while but I doubt that she was running a boarding house as she and her children were was surviving on charity at the time. I suspect that the story of the boarding house was something told to the McLean children to put a gloss of respectability on what had happened. Also I do not believe that Charlotte Isabel was a child of James McLean. At that time it was relatively easy to use another name (and common enough) and I think if James McLean had believed her to be his child she would have been known as a McLean. She gave her name as Watson on her marriage certificate and listed William Watson as her father. She was around six months old when the family broke up. I also think if the local community had suspected that Sarah was involved with another man they may have been less forthcoming with their charity. The eldest of William and Sarah’s children, Sarah Ann O’Connor (my great-grandmother) was also taken to South Australia, perhaps as she was old enough to help with the care of the baby, Charlotte Isabel. Sarah Ann lived with Sarah and James McLean in Millicent until she married William O’Connor in 1880. She had no love of either her mother or her “step-father” according to family stories. It is interesting that Williams and Georges pop up in the offspring of the Watson children but Charlotte Isabel was the only one to call a daughter Sarah. Most of the Watson children managed to make some sort of contact after their release from the Industrial School but I am not sure how much contact they had with their mother. Albert was discharged into the custody of his sister Sarah Ann O’Connor in November 1886 aged 15. Another of her brothers, Edwin “Ted” Watson was a regular visitor at the O’Connor property at Valencia Creek. The story our side of the family has is that Sarah Lancaster told her Watson children that William George Watson had taken ship with his eldest son to Canada; apparently she even named the ship. This ship is supposed to have gone down at sea. (None of the Watson children ever knew what had become of their brother William George) Ted Watson, at some stage, went to the shipping office and checked the passenger and crew list of that particular ship but neither William George Watson was on it. The implication of Sarah's story was that William had deserted her but, the reverse was true with her not only leaving William but deserting her children as well who then spent years in the Industrial School system. The last sighting we have of William George Watson, senior, is in February 1874 when he was released from the Ballarat Base Hospital. I have not been able to discover any record of him having left Victoria by ship or any death record that is identifiably him either in Australia or overseas
