John Eastment was born on 20th August 1838, in the small village of East Coker, just outside the town of Yeovil, Somerset in the southwest of England. He was the second son of Richard Eastment and his wife, Jane, formerly Cox.
John Eastment was born on
20th August 1838, in the small village of East Coker, just outside the
town of Yeovil, Somerset in the southwest of England. He was the
second son of Richard Eastment and his wife, Jane, formerly Cox.
Richard and Jane had also been born
in East Coker, Richard in 1812 and Jane in 1809. Richard gives his
occupation on John's birth certificate as a weaver.
East Coker is a typical west country village, but has two claims to fame. Firstly, it was the birthplace of the English pirate and adventurer, William Dampier (1651-1715), who was the first English man to set foot on the Australian mainland. Secondly, it is the ancestral village of the American poet, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), who named one of his poems after the village. There is a memorial to T.S. Eliot in the parish church at East Coker.
Richard and Jane Eastment had three known children:
Edward, born 1836
John, born 1838
Mary, born 1840
Richard Eastment died on 5th July, 1845 of a chill, leaving his widow Jane, with three small children. Little wonder, then, that she quickly remarried, to John Young, also of East Coker, on 13th October, 1845. Two more children were born to Jane, namely Elizabeth in 1847 and Thomas in 1850.
Thus, by 1853, when the family made the decision to emigrate to Australia, the family consisted of:
We do not know why John Young
made the decision to bring his blended family to Australia, although the
most likely reason for that time and place would be agricultural depression
in England, which led many farm workers to leave the country and travel
to Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
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