Our History | Thomas Armstrong of Namina Creek

So say the Yass death records. This is the date on the marble headstone in the Anglican section of the Yass cemetery that he shares with his wife Elizabeth, who survived him by some 33 years.  

Thomas was a pioneering farmer of the Yass Valley who eventually accumulated a very comfortable holding at Nanima and on the outskirts of Murrumbateman.

His parents William and Mary had emigrated from Fermanagh, Ireland on the ‘Royal Admiral’ in 1839 as bounty immigrants, probably taking up their 40 acres along the Yass River around 1841.

William is listed as an agriculturalist and Mary as a ‘dairy woman’. It was important to be useful to gain the all important sponsorship needed to pay for the voyage out.

Curiously, their characters are certified by Lord Belmore, who would later visit Yass in his official capacity as the Governor of New South Wales.

But mystery surrounds Thomas.

It had been a difficult voyage. The family tragedy is told in the blunt notation on the Immigrant Passenger List of two year old William and infant Mary, both ‘died on passage’.  Thomas, aged seven, is clearly listed as disembarking with his grieving parents and sisters Francis and Ellen.

However, The Australian newspaper of November 13, 1839 reports the trial of the Captain of the ‘Royal Admiral’ for the murder during the voyage of the boy Thomas Armstrong, when the captain’s pistol discharges as he was trying to quell a disturbance: "Thomas Grieves, Master of the ship Royal Admiral …was indicted for the wilful murder of Thomas Armstrong on the high seas, by shooting him with a pistol, on 24th June last, of which he died on the 27th of the same month."

Was it baby William not Thomas, or even his brother Robert, recorded vaguely as dying prior to July in Ireland? What we do know is Thomas survived and thrived and the Captain was found not guilty, whilst the miscreants causing the onboard affray were charged.

At the other end of his life Thomas is equally tricky.

Does he die of cancer in Yass hospital or does he drown whilst crossing the flooded Nanima Creek? 

An account by Elsie Thompson born 1893 supports family folklore: "Granny Armstrong, as Elizabeth was known to everyone….her husband Thomas, was drowned trying to cross the flooded Murrumbateman Creek, which ran through their property in February 1892."