George Billett (also Bellett, Bellette and Billet, 1812–1885) was a farmer and landowner, an early settler of Sorell in Tasmania, and the son of two ex-convicts. His father, Jacob Bellett (1765–1813), was a Spitalfields weaver transported to New South Wales for seven years for stealing silk, and came to Sydney aboard the Scarborough, one of six convict transports among the vessels forming the First Fleet. George’s mother, Ann Harper (1772–1842), arrived in New South Wales in June 1790 having been found guilty of stealing silverware in Bristol in February 1788. Both were later sent to Norfolk Island, where they married and acquired land and, eventually, pardons. They were among the settlers relocated to Van Diemen’s Land in 1808 following the British government’s decision to close the Norfolk Island settlement. Along with other evacuees, Jacob was granted land at Sandy Bay in compensation for the substantial Norfolk holding he had relinquished; later, he acquired 60 acres east of Hobart at Pitt Water (renamed Sorell in 1821). George was the youngest of Jacob and Ann’s eight children and the only one of them born in Van Diemen’s Land. Following Jacob’s untimely death in 1813, the family appear to have moved to the Pitt Water holding, nearby to where other Norfolk Island ex-convict families had previously settled. George’s marriage to a daughter of one such family, Jemima Larsom (1818–1891), is registered as having taken place in the school house at Clarence Plains in February 1835; and the record of the birth of their eldest child, Ann, in 1836, lists George as a farmer resident in the district. By the birth of their next child, James, in February 1838, George and Jemima are recorded as living at Sorell, where their further ten children were born between 1840 and 1858. The variant spellings of the family’s surname – whether through misspelling on the part of government clerks or an attempt to distinguish themselves from convict forebears – complicates the tracing of George and Jemima’s lives beyond the establishment of facts relating to births, deaths and marriages. Newspaper reports, however, offer the occasional proof that George maintained an active interest in local political and agricultural matters; served as a magistrate; and that he, along with his brothers John, Jacob, William and James, contributed significantly to farming activity in the district. In 1880, George sold his property – ‘A Farm, 76 acres, situated on the Sorell Rivulet … Good four-roomed cottage, a barn, dairy and out-buildings’ – and relocated to one east of Sorell, at Bream Creek. That George’s death there in March 1885 was noted in the Hobart Mercury and other papers suggests that he was a considerable, if not distinguished, citizen. ‘The deceased was a quiet, inoffensive man, and had all his lifetime followed the pursuits of a farmer’, one obituary concluded, while that in the Mercury stated that during the 50 years of his ‘farming pursuits’, George had ‘gathered around him many friends, while enemies were almost unknown to him’. Jemima died at Bream Creek in August 1891, her death certificate stating that she was 72 years old and a ‘farmer’s widow’.
