The earliest known male ancestor is Jacob KHANES
(sic) born in about the 1660s in Wiltshire, while the male ancestor who
emigrated from England was Keros KEYNES (CAINES). The names of Jacob and Keros will be mentioned in various
links, so bear these two names in mind.
Look over the following links and select the topic which may be of interest to you:
Where
and with whom did the family name
originate?
Who is Keros KEYNES? He is the ancestor who
started the Australian line which has now grown to many hundreds. Records
have shown many variations of his surname, commonly being recorded as CAINES in
Wiltshire and on board ship, but consistently KEYNES in Australia. The
spelling KEYNES will be used consistently in this web site.
In England before emigrating, Keros, his wife Elizabeth and his family lived
in a small village in the southern part of Wiltshire named Berwick
St Leonard.
The occupations of the male members of the family were that of
Agricultural Labourers (Ag
Labs recorded in many civil and church records);
the conditions of employment and the effect on family life in the 19th
Century has been written by historians.
The life of 'Ag Labs'
caused many to take up poaching to supplement family food and two of our
ancestors were jailed for this crime.
The pressures on the Wiltshire labourers reached a critical point in the early 1800s and riots broke out in the vicinity of Berwick St Leonard. Read an account of "The Machine Breakers" as published in a newspaper of the time.
Why would a family
who for many generations lived in the same farming area of Wiltshire decide to emigrate?