Lucy Bell, aged eleven, arrived with her family in the Colony of Victoria on 20 April 1855. The Bell family sailed with two hundred and twenty other government-assisted immigrants from Liverpool in England to Geelong in Victoria aboard the ship Sir Charles Napier, a journey that took five months.

Like many other new arrivals to the colony, Lucy’s family left the Immigrant’s Depot at Geelong ‘on their own account’ to head to the goldfields. The Bells made their way to a mining area just south of Ballarat.

1854 list of births and baptisms in the Bell Family, Tillicoultry, Scotland. Courtesy of Bell family collection.

This list of births and baptisms was kept by the Bell family. It tells us where the family came from in Scotland, the names of Lucy’s parents and siblings, and their dates of birth. It is dated 11 December 1854 at Tillicoultry, Scotland.

The Bell family arrived in Australia aboard the ship Sir Charles Napier on 20 April 1855.

PROV, VPRS 14/P0 Register of Assisted Immigrants from the United Kingdom, 1839-71, unit 16, book 12, folio 56

Unidentified Fully Rigged Immigrants

S T Gill,