Dash Family History Australia
Hampshire & Isle of Wight - London - Australia

Hosted by Keith Dash, Sydney, Australia    e-mail


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Edward Dash c.1886
Edward Dash, the ancestor of perhaps as many as 40% of the Dashs now living in Australia, was born in London in 1818. He immigrated to Australia, on his own, in 1853. He was joined in the following year by his wife, Susannah Debney, and their four surviving children, all boys, then aged from 4 to 11 years. Susannah died in 1865 and Edward remarried, to Catherine Macdonald, in 1866. There were 11 children from this second marriage. In addition to their 16 natural children, Edward and his wives were foster parents to a number of other children, but no formal record of their names has been discovered. One of the foster children was Caroline Brown, sometimes known as Caroline Dash, who was taken in by Edward & Susannah Dash after her mother died in Ararat, Victoria, in 1864. She remained close to the Dash family throughout her life and many of the surviving family photographs from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s come from the album she kept.

During his voyage to Australia Edward Dash made detailed notes of daily happenings on board ship and later used these notes to write a lengthy account that he titled
Journal of a Voyage in the Ann Dashwood from Liverpool to Australia, 1853. A transcript of the journal, made in 1975 before the original hand-written notebook and journal were deposited in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, can be downloaded by clicking on the "Emigration to Australia" link above.

Edward was a very active member of the Baptist Church, both in England and Australia, and after he retired from the Victorian Treasury Department in 1880 he served as Baptist minister at Ararat, in central Victoria, until 1886. The studio photograph shown here (by M.J. Allan, Collingwood, Melbourne) dates from that period in Edward's life.

With special thanks to: Baptist Historical Society, UK; Caroline Brown; Claire Bennett-Claypole; Dawn Peel; Dina Broughton; Don Jenkinson; Doreen Griffin; Edna Turvey; Gail Bryant; Isle of Wight Family History Society; Ivan Hayward; John Cooper-Hammond; Kenneth Dash; Kerrin Cook; Lorna Banfield; N.M. Macmillan; Norelle West; Patricia Reynolds; Penny Daish; Peter Griffin; Raymond Ryden; Renn Wortley; Robert Dash; Sally Dash; State Library of Victoria; Susan Mills; and my many Dash/Daish cousins in Australia.