Notes:

Eliza Douglas

On the thirteenth of April 1866, Eliza Frances Black died in Armidale, NSW, Australia, after ten days of what the death certificate called "dysenteric diarrhoea". She was fifty years old and she left behind three children, Jane Cathcart Black, seventeen years old, Eliza Frances Black, fourteen years old, and Alexander Murray Douglas, ten years old. She had been married to Alexander Black in St Andrews, Scotland, when she was thirty-one. Her father was Archibald Murray Douglas and her mother was Anne Wedderburn Webster. She'd been born in the Hague.
She'd been in the colony of New South Wales for seventeen years. She arrived on the Fortitude in 1849, when she was thirty-two years of age. Her husband was twenty-nine. She also brought her children from her previous marriage to Alexander Hill. Her new baby, Jane Cathcart Black, had been born in August, the year before.
Her first marriage to Alexander Hill took place in February 1832, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-two. They had four children: John Douglas Hill in 1833, David Kennedy Hill in 1837, Anne Wedderburn Hill in 1840 and Margaret Douglas Hill in 1842. He died a year after Margaret's birth, in 1843. I don't know anything about the circumstances of the marriage or his death except that there was probably an acrimonious break with the family. She was probably expected to make a better match and with it some effort towards rescuing the family.
When she arrived in Brisbane, her four children from the Hill marriage were John, who was fourteen, David, 10 (he is listed as Kennedy Hill), Anne, 8, and Margaret, 7.
Alexander's sisters also sailed with them: Isabella Black 22 and Jane Black 13. There is also a William S. Hill, 23 years of age, but there is nothing to indicate that he is related to them.



The Fortitude
From Brisbane: Schemes and Dreams Nineteenth Century Arrivals, edited by Jennifer Harrison and Barry Shaw includes "The Voyage of the Fortitude", by Elaine Brown.
The Fortitude left the West India Dock at Blackwall in London the 14th of September 1848. John Dunmore Lang had written a book called Cooksland that enticed 270 men, women and children to take the voyage to Moreton Bay with the promise of a new life. He claimed to have organised land grants for them. The Fortitude was "a three masted cargo ship of 640 tons that usually engaged in trade with China." The Captain, John Christmas, was, according to the passengers, kind and was fond of children. He would carry them in his arms. The Hills and Blacks were in steerage where there were in total 260 passengers. A standard cabin for a married couple was six feet by three feet.
Their water was rationed, and they were given lemon juice to prevent scurvy. The food provided was bread, butter, biscuits, preserved meat, rice, potatoes, pickled cabbage, raisins, tea and coffee. They did not call into any port on the way so were not able to get any fresh food.
They were educated and articulate people, "religious, respectable people who believed in the virtues of enterprise and hard work". They had paid Lang for their passage and expected to recover the cost by receiving a grant of land when they arrived at Moreton Bay. Alexander Black is mentioned as an engineer. They were Protestants.
They were towed to Gravesend and then sailed along the coast to Deal, past Dover, Brighton, the Isle of Wight, and Devon. They suffered from seasickness. The weather was good for the whole voyage. People entertained themselves by walking around the deck, talking, reading and writing, singing and playing music. It was very monotonous when they were at sea. Alexander is recorded catching a shark.
They crossed the Equator on October 24. There were outbreaks of fever and diarrhoea and seven people died. They rounded the Cape of Good Hope in December. As they got close to the coast of Western Australia, they celebrated Christmas Day. On New Year's Day, they were close to King Island in Bass Straits.
It took them eleven days to sail past Sydney to Moreton Bay. They sailed past Mt Warning, Stradbroke Island, Point Lookout and Moreton Island, where they were met by the harbour master in the pilot boat. The Fortitude dropped anchor off Moreton Island on January 21, 1849. They voyage took 128-9 days. Anchored near St Helena Island, the passengers waited for two days on the ship enjoying the breezes and the hot weather.
The arrival took the authorities by surprise. (Captain John Wickham - the Police Magistrate) took the opportunity presented by the cases of typhoid on the ship to quarantine them on Moreton Island in tents. The quarantine ended on January 31 and people were ferried into Brisbane. They arrived in small groups at Petrie Bight on February 7, 10th, and 15th 1849.
The population in Brisbane at the time was just over 1,000. They were allowed to occupy the slopes below what is now Gregory Terrace - this became Fortitude Valley.
They did not receive permission to occupy crown lands at Moreton Bay. Denied the land that Lang has so foolishly promised Eliza and Alexander tried to earn a living in Brisbane: "At Kangaroo Point, less successfully, Alexander Black offered his services as a teacher and then a surveyor?"

They went south into the colony of New South Wales, to Murrurundi, where Alexander served as a pastor for ten years (1850-1860). John Dunmore Lang ordained him, so Alexander must not have borne him any ill. His brother John Black also arrived in 1855. There is an entry for him in the ADB.
Extract:

Family/Spouse: Alexander Hill. Alexander was born in 1810; died in 1843. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Alexander Smith Black. Alexander was born in 1819; died in 1910. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

(Research):Ancestor of Josephine Robertson, daughter of a Howard, daughter of a Graham, daughter of a Ney (married to a convict from Shoreditch), who was a daughter of Eliza Frances Douglas