Holroyds to Australia

 Australian notes were prepared by Steve Holroyd at sholroyd@acay.com.au and used by

 Brian Howroyd on his website,links at bottom of page.

  The first Holroyd to arrive in Australia was a convict. In all three Holroyd convicts were transported to Australia. Joseph Holroyd arrived ith a life sentence on the Earl St Vincent in 1820 and was sent to Parramatta where he was placed in the service of Isaac Reynolds a Government servant.
  There is no record of his death and it is unlikely he returned to England as he had received a life sentence.Edwin Holroyd arrived in Tasmania in
  1842 aboard the Moffat. He married Mary Irvine in 1850 in Hobart and presumably returned to England as there is no record of him after
  that event.
Abraham Holroyd was the first convict to marry and have a family in Australia. He arrived in New South Wales in 1830 on the Nithsdale with a life sentence for house breaking. He had a wife and three children back in Yorkshire but even though he was eventually conditionally pardoned he would never be allowed to return. After serving ten years in the Moruya district of NSW he was given permission to marry. He married Elizabeth Russell, an orphan who at age 21 had been sent from New Ross in Wexford Ireland with other women because of the male population imbalance in the colony.
The children of this marriage established themselves in Moruya in New South Wales and were the ancestors of many Holroyds in Australia most of whom resided in Sydney and areas in northern New South Wales.
Living descendants of Abraham and Elizabeth Holroyd make up the largest of the Holroyd family groups in Australia today. There are seven generations of this family on record in Australia, all descended from Abraham Holroyd. The ancestors of Abraham Holroyd in Yorkshire have also been tracked back a further five generations to 1700.They were from the Bradford area in West Riding of Yorkshire.

Holroyds in Australia during the nineteenth century
The 1840's and 1850's was the main period when Holroyds began arriving in Australia as free settlers. There were probably arrivals before those dates. The deaths of a Lavinia Holroyd (1853) and a Bridget Holroyd (1868) were recorded in NSW.A Samuel Holroyd died in Launceston Tasmania 1846.
In approximate order of arrival they were:
Arthur Todd Holroyd was born in Leeds Yorkshire in 1807. He immigrated to Sydney Australia in 1845.After having been twice married in England he married again in Australia. He and his wife Elizabeth Armstrong had no children in Australia. Arthur Todd Holroyd was a prominent man in both England, where he was doctor and explorer and in Sydney where he was a NSW State Parliamentarian (MLC) and a local government mayor. He had the honor of having Holroyd City Council named after him when it was formed by the amalgamation of two councils one of which he had served in as mayor.
He was a trustee of the Sydney Grammer School and this led to an association with the Jardine brothers who attended the school and later documented much of the northern Australian river systems in Queensland.The Holroyd river was named after Arthur Todd Holroyd.
He died in 1887. As his offspring in the UK was a daughter and there are no children in Australia, his Holroyd line is extinguished.
Michael Holroyd also arrived in Sydney in 1845 after emigrating from Halifax Yorkshire where he was born in 1822. He married Eliza Burnett in 1847.They had five sons and a daughter. On Eliza's death in 1876 he remarried. (Emma Kate Walton in 1878 and after her death Margaret Hobbs in 1888). There is no record of children from the second and third marriages. There is no record of family from any of the sons, three of whom died at a relatively young age. Michael Holroyd was a solicitor who established a successful law practice in King Street Newtown in Sydney and lived close by in Ashfield. It seems that this Holroyd line of this family has also been extinguished.
Ernest Silvester Holroyd was the son of Louise and Henry Holroyd and was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand. He came to Australia in about 1880. He had two sons Charles E and Leonard P in 1886 and 1888. A blacksmith/coachbuilder, he resided in the Willoughby area of Sydney around 1896, living in Penshurst and Oakville Streets Willoughby. He moved to the Mosman where he resided in Parrawi Rd between 1925 and 1933 where he died in 1935. Leonard P Holroyd married in 1911 and had a daughter Patricia Holroyd in 1912.
Thomas Holroyd was born about 1828 in UK. After immigrating to Australia he established an engineering business in the inner suburbs of Sydney A resident of Riley Street East Sydney and later (about 1888) Little Norton Street Leichhardt, he died at Paddington 1916. He had a daughter Ellen and a son Charles W Holroyd born 1876.
Benjamin Holroyd was born in Soweby Yorkshire in 1820 and in about 1850 he and his wife Mary Agnes Driscoll and three children emigrated from Yorkshire to Tasmania where five more children were added to the family. Prominent among these was Percy Benjamin Holroyd who was born in Hobart Tasmania in 1868, and his sisters Ada, Matilda May, Helen Annie and Emily. Among Benjamin Percy's children was Charles Selwyn Holroyd who at the age of 92 died in Sydney (July 2003). He is survived by his two married daughters. The Holroyd line of this family has apparently been extinguished in Australia. In Yorkshire Holroyds from this line can be traced back to an Isaac Holroyd born in Barkisland and who died 1776. Subsequent family members resided at Chapel Farm (Barkisland) and Soweby. This family connects to the Cockroft Holroyds of the 15th and 16th century. There are living descendants of this line in England, USA, Canada and Australia.
Sir Edward Dundas Holroyd was the son of Edward Holroyd (and Caroline Pugsley), senior commissioner of the London bankruptcy court, and grandson of Sir George Sowley Holroyd, an English judge, of whom there is an account in the Dictionary of National Biography. Holroyd was born on 25 January 1828. He was educated at Winchester College, where he won the medals for Latin and English essays, and in 1846 went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1851, M.A. in 1854, and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in June 1855.
 He decided to go to Australia, and arrived in Melbourne in 1859. He made a great reputation as a barrister in equity and mining suits, became a Q.C. in 1879, and in 1881 became a judge of the supreme court of Victoria.
He married in 1862 Anna Maria Hoyles Compton, daughter of Henry Compton, and was survived by two sons and three daughters. He took little part in public discussions, except on the question of Federation. He was for some time president of the Imperial Federation League of Victoria. He was knighted in 1903.
William Holroyd was born in the UK and immigrated to Victoria Australia in 1854 aged 28 with his brother Issac aged 24 aboard the Queen of the Seas. He married Anne Hill in 1856.They had two children, Eliza born 1857 who died in infancy and Thomas Edward born 1858. As there is no further record of Isaac it is assumed that he returned to the UK.
Thomas Edward Holroyd was born in Collingwood Victoria in 1858 and married Annie Elizabeth Byford in Melbourne Victoria in 1881.They had four children Ernest Leo born 1882, Horace Leslie born 1883, Elsie May born1886 and Alice Victoria born 1889.
Thomas Knowles Holroyd was born UK 1823 and immigrated to Victoria Australia with his wife Mary Jane Stubbs and two children George Frederick and Mary aboard the Camtyne in 1858. A third child Arthur Edward Holroyd was born in 1859 at Fryers Creek Victoria.
George William Holroyd was born in Victoria in 1893 the son of William George Holroyd born in the UK and was married to Selena Halsted. They had three children Frederick William, John and Norman and lived in Geelong.
John Holroyd immigrated to NSW in 1855 and died in 1890.
Henry and Benjamin Holroyd brothers were born in Sheepscar Leeds Yorkshire in 1829 and 1834 and immigrated to South Australia. Henry resided at Ducks Pond station Port Lincoln.
Benjamin Holroyd was one of the pastoral pioneers of the area with extensive land holdings. He married Alice Haile. There were three children Ellen born 1858, Mabel born 1866 and Bertrum born 1874 and who died in 1883.
Henry died 1911 and Benjamin 1885.Further information about Benjamin can be found in Pastoral Pioneers of South Australia Vol 2
Robert Holroyd immigrated to Queensland where he married Margaret Tucker in 1891.They had three children Kathleen Niven Holroyd born 1891, May Adelaide Holroyd born 1894 and Robert Henry Holroyd born 1902.

Steve Holroyd can be conyacted at sholroyd@acay.com.au
BRIAN HOWROYD lives in Tasmania & his email address is brian7004(at)iprimus.com.au.
Brian's research into his extended family in the UK, South Africa, Australia, the USA, & Canada can be seen on the internet. His Web Page is the 'Howroyd File' at http://tinyurl.com/qiov