My trip to Xiamen China
23rd July 2025 till 31st July 2025
During my trip to Xiamen China I asked the library if they had any information about my Hen family.
This was the email that they sent me after a few weeks.
市图书馆<stsg@xm.gov.cn>
You
Dear Mr. Hend,
Greetings from Xiamen Library.
This email is the feedback of your consultation on “Searching for relatives and descendants of great-grandfather who is from China” which you made at our library last Friday, July 25, 2025. Our reference librarians have conducted a search for relevant literature based on your inquiry and have compiled the following information for your reference. We hope it will help.
1. We have found some research from an Australian historian.
l Excerpts
My name is Danielle Lautrec. I am a genealogy educator and historical researcher living in Sydney Australia. Check out my other website Generations Genealogy Australia.
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Chinese shepherds and gold miners
We always thought that “Old Jimmy”s father came to Australia for gold – like so many others. The truth could be more sinister.
Samuel Hen was born in Amoy (Amoi, Xiamen), China in about 1835.
Samuel was a shepherd. There some indications that he arrived in Australia in the late 1840s – before the gold rush. So, why did he leave his family and travel 12,000 kilometres to an unknown country?
Sheep were very important to the development of Australia, and the Australian Agricultural Company was established with support from the British Parliament to “extend and improve the flocks of Merino sheep” in New South Wales. Convict labour was used in the early days, but when transportation ceased in the 1840s, labour became difficult to obtain. The Australian Agricultural Company and others therefore turned to China, where economic and social unrest following the British and French invasions of southern China had left a lot of people unemployed and eager to travel. Some Chinese shepherds were paid to migrate, others are believed to have been kidnapped.
The first large group arrived from Amoy on the Nimrod, which docked at Henry Moore’s wharf at Millers Point (Sydney, New South Wales) in October 1848, where about half of the 121 Chinese passengers disembarked. By 1853 more than 3000 had arrived. I’ve not found Samuel’s name on the shipping lists, but at the time most Chinese were not listed individually – plus, one would assume that Samuel was not his birth name.
When gold was discovered, most of the Chinese shepherds ran off and became miners. And more came from China. By 1861 there were approximately 13,000 Chinese in New South Wales, with the majority in the mining districts.
Samuel was living in the Mudgee area in 1866 when he partnered up with Sophia Webb. Jimmy’s birth certificate says they married in January 1866, but I’ve found no marriage certificate and Sophia was buried under the name Sophia Squires – she was married to John Squires in 1855.
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Mudgee was a centre for the local goldfields, so presumably he was already mining at that time. They had moved to Hill End by 1868 when their first son, Samuel, was born. Hill End is about 49 kilometres south of Mudgee. Gold was discovered there in 1851 (the town was called Bald Hill at that time). About 8000 people lived in Hill End and Tambaroora during the time Samuel and Sophia were there. Most of the Chinese miners were concentrated in the ‘Chinatown’ established in Tambaroora. For over two decades, Chinese miners in the area outnumbered the Europeans.
“There were miles of a riverbed full of gold… The Chinese set to work as though they had come possessed of the experience of generations…. They cut races and flumed them over to drain the riverbed. They erected waterwheels, undershot and overshot, made pumps that lifted immense quantities of water, similar, I am told, to what are used in the rice fields of China.” Mark Hammond, 1861, quoted in Hodge, 1988.
Gold production in the Hill End area peaked in 1872 and the mines closed down. While most of the Chinese miners returned to China, Samuel had a family and decided to stay. They moved to Spicers Creek, where he lived at Tank Station until his death in 1889. I’ve not seen his grave – the cemetery is now on private land. Hill End is now managed as an Historic Site by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
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l Key point from the research
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The first large group arrived from Amoy on the Nimrod, which docked at Henry Moore’s wharf at Millers Point (Sydney, New South Wales) in October 1848, where about half of the 121 Chinese passengers disembarked. By 1853 more than 3000 had arrived. I’ve not found Samuel’s name on the shipping lists, but at the time most Chinese were not listed individually – plus, one would assume that Samuel was not his birth name.
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l Source
2. Based on the statement “The first large group arrived from Amoy on the Nimrod, which docked at Henry Moore’s wharf at Millers Point (Sydney, New South Wales) in October 1848, where about half of the 121 Chinese passengers disembarked. ” We pondered whether there is such a possibility:
Considering the first voyage of the ship from Xiamen to Sydney in 1848 and the researcher’s estimation of your great-grandfather’s marriage in 1866, we suggest you look into the passenger lists of the Nimrod（the ship） during the period from 1848 to 1866.
3.Recommendations for reference only
Although Samuel-Hen is probably not your great-grandfather’s birth name, his English name is likely similar to his birth name. If you can first find the list of Chinese passengers on this ship in Australia (this part of the historical records might not have been kept in China at that time but brought back to Australia), and then seek the help of relevant cultural and historical units in Xiamen (such as museums, foreign affairs offices, etc.), you might be able to find the family tree of the relevant surname based on the surname of Samuel-Hen’s birth name, thereby narrowing down your search.
Meanwhile, we have found other self media articles on early Chinese immigration to Australia for reference only：
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MjM5NDAwNDEyMA==&mid=2655308990&idx=2&sn=6f3a97213cced438d8a648b26b743d41&chksm=bd3e01498a49885f8754c6561abbeba56b1eb952c4aac48949756344fd49d4763d212c4e2330&scene=27
This is our feedback on your inquiry. If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us!
Best wishes,
Xiamen Library
Address of Xiamen Library: No.95, Tiyu Road, Xiamen City
Email address:stsg@xm.gov.cn
Contact number: +86 0592-5371862