Ruth FINCHER

Born in London about 1814, her parents were Thomas FINCHER and Jemima SAXBY. Her brothers and sister lived at Islington and it seems likely that she was living there when she was recruited for one of the first groups of free emigrant women to the Australian colonies in the 1830s.
Unfortunately, the Princess Royal women turned out to be a generally bad lot from the streets of London and the respectable few among them , including Ruth, must have had a trying time. The ship ran aground in Frederick Henry Bay when it arrived in 1832 and there was a scramble to secure the cargo of 200 women.
Ruth was employed as a governess by the Lewis family of Pittwater, according to family legend. She married Henry David CAWTHORN, the only surviving son of a free settler, at New Norfolk in 1839. They lived at the family property Arundel, at Macquarie Plains, on the Derwent.
They had six children, but her husband died shortly before the last child was born in 1850.
Ruth remarried William Henry PRICE in 1853. She died in 1876 and is buried at St Mary's at Gretna.