IT IS a myth that one of Australia's most infamous bushrangers Frederick Ward, or Captain Thunderbolt to his admirers and detractors, was buried in the Uralla Cemetery after being shot by police on May 25, 1870.
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This long-standing belief of historians from the New England region and beyond has been debunked by Barry Sinclair, a Uralla historian, businessman, former schoolteacher and a grand nephew of Thunderbolt.
Mr Sinclair claims that although Thunderbolt was undeniably wounded after various robberies in the Uralla district leading up to the day of his alleged death, another body was incorrectly – and probably fraudulently – identified as that of the feared lawbreaker and buried.
He also says he has sufficient evidence to show the odds are heavily in favour of his conviction that Thunderbolt fled Australia by boat to San Francisco in the United States and later moved to the gold fields of Alberta, Canada.
He later lived in Ottawa and died there in the early 1890s.
Mr Sinclair admitted yesterday that many local historians would certainly reject his claim and some had already done so.
"But I have researched the saga of Captain Thunderbolt for decades and in my opinion, there is compelling evidence that the person who identified his body was being deceitful and had been tempted by a Government reward of about 400 pounds, which was an enormous amount of money in those days," Mr Sinclair said.
As a former director of the largest primitive art museum in the world – the New Guinea Primitive Arts Gallery and Museum in Sydney – he had learned the necessity to conduct ongoing research on "factual" and "non-factual" research, at all times making corrections as more evidence came to light.
Mr Sinclair said he had checked his research findings with the NSW Police Museum in Sydney, the Newling Library in Armidale, the Mitchell Library in Sydney and the State Records Department at Kingswood, Sydney.
He was also in contact with the National Archives of Canada regarding proof or otherwise of Thunderbolt's burial site in Ottawa and also with the trustees of the Anglican Cathedral in Sydney, which he believes holds a copy of the marriage certificate for the bushranger and his wife, the former Mary Ann Bugg, whom he married at Stroud in 1860.
After serving four years for his part in a robbery conducted by members of his family in 1856, he partially regained his freedom with a ticket-of-leave, but just over a year later was returned to prison on Cockatoo Island for two relatively minor offences.
But faced with the prospect of about 10 more years in jail, he and a fellow prisoner escaped after being helped by Mary Ann Bugg, who swam from the shore to the island and back.
The career of Captain Thunderbolt, bushranger extraordinaire was about to blossom. Fred Ward, like the young Ned Kelly, a bit of a youthful rogue but also blessed with much Gaelic charm, embarked on an amazingly diverse career of theft over a period of five years, mail robberies, store and hotel robberies and horse thefts.
But according to Mr Sinclair, although Thunderbolt was always armed while in action, his gun was never fired because it was never loaded.
He attributes that remarkable fact to Thunderbolt's wife, an Aborigine, who had impressed on him her total fear of firearms because of the toll they had taken on her people.
The robberies – of which there were at least 40 over a wide part of the New England and north-west region – were collectively worth about
$1 million in today's currency.
Acknowledging that his critics would not - "not yet, anyway"– accept his claim that the "Thunderbolt body" in the Uralla cemetery is not that of Fred Ward/Thunderbolt, Mr Sinclair said among the mountain of facts he has drawn up is the strong and consistent evidence from members of the Ward family of that time, and their descendants, that Thunderbolt had lived with his sister Sarah Ann Edwards in the mid-coast region of NSW and had attended Saturday night dances for six weeks after his alleged death.
"It is my belief during that period, Fred called on all his hiding places in the area at Lansdowne near Taree, Barrington, Moonbi, Uralla, Black Mountain, Torrington and Boonoo Boonoo near Tenterfield, to rescue his 'earnings'.
"Despite people searching the area of his caves for the past 130 years, all that has been reported as having been found is one bottle containing about 20 pounds," Mr Sinclair said.
He believed afterwards, Fred, possibly with a companion, went to Sydney, then to San Francisco.
"When the gold petered out there, he moved to Canada, where he died.
