Kevin Rudd Family History

Kevin Michael Rudd was born on September 21st, 1957 to Bert and Margaret Rudd at Nambour in Queensland, Australia.

His father died in 1968 when he was eleven.  The family then lost their farm and the years that followed were not happy ones because of their poverty and the shame of relying on charity.

Kevin made it to university where he studied Chinese language and history.  His career then took him to the diplomatic service and to Queensland state government before he entered Parliament in 1998.

Politics.  His rise there was rapid and, when the Labor party won the 2008 electtion, he became Australia’s 26th Prime Minister.  He was replaced as leader in 2010 but returned in 2013 for a short period as Prime Minister.

He was by some estimates the richest man in the Australian Parliament at that time.  But the family wealth did not come from him, a  career bureaucrat.  Instead it had been made by his wife Therese Rein, with her entrepreneurship in developing her company Ingeus into a global human recource service.

Kevin Rudd is best known today, post Prime Ministership, for his expertise on China.

Family History.  In 2008 Kevin Rudd had been presented with two leather bound volumes of his family history by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at a private ceremony in Sydney.  Far from being the embarrassment it might have been just a couple of decades prior, the discoveries gave Kevin Rudd’s image a boost.

Convict ancestry has recently lost its aura of shame and become almost a badge of honor in modern Australia.  A Rudd, Standen and Sweeny family reunion is held every year at Appin south of Sydney.

Convicts Past

Thomas Rudd.  Thomas Rudd – the fourth great grandfather of Kevin Rudd – was transported on the Earl Cornwallis from London to Sydney in 1801 to serve a seven-year sentence for “unlawfully acquiring a bag of sugar.”

In 1806 he married Mary Cable, a fellow convict, at Parramatta and they were the parents of nine or possibly more children there and in Campbelltown.

Mary Wade.  Thomas’s crime was eclipsed by that of Kevin Rudd’s paternal fifth great-grandmother Mary Wade, a London street urchin who made a pittance by sweeping streets and begging. In 1788, aged twelve, she and an older girl coaxed an eight-year-old girl into a toilet where they relieved her of “her dress, petticoats, a linen tippet and a cap and absconded.”

Mary was transported to NSW for life, arriving in 1790 on the infamous Lady Juliana as part of the Second Fleet.  She “married” fellow convict Jonathan Brooker and reportedly bore twenty one children. When she died in 1859 she had more than 300 descendants and is now considered as one of Australia’s “grand founding matriarchs.”

Mary’s granddaughter Sophia Ray married Thomas Rudd, Thomas’s eldest son. in Campbelltown in 1830.

Catherine Lahey.  Another paternal fifth great-grandmother was Catherine Lahey who arrived in Sydney on the Speedy in 1800 aged twenty.  Her crime was having forged one shilling and sixpence coins to pay for her rent.  She married John Mitten in Australia.

Catherine’s granddaughter Sarah Brooker married Edward Rudd, Thomas’s youngest son, in Campbelltown in 1844.

Living in the Country

Thomas Rudd moved to Campbelltown, thirty miles southwest of Sydney, in 1812 before the town was officially formed.  He ended up there a respected businessman and sizeable landowner.  In 1926 the Rudd estate in Campbelltown, a huge area of land stretching from Chamberlain Street to Leumeah Station, was subdivided to create “farmlets” for orchard or poultry farming.

Thomas Rudd’s Descendants.  Some of his sons settled and prospered in the Murrumbidgee district:

• James (born in 1808) came in 1836 and his property there was named Wagingoberrembie.  That was before the township of Wagga Wagga was surveyed and gazetted for European settlement in 1849.   
• Thomas (born in 1805) moved to nearby Gudagai in the 1850’s.
• while the younger brother Edward (born in 1818) – Kevin Rudd’s ancestor – came to Wagga Wagga from Campbelltown in the 1870’s as the Wagga Wagga population grew.

The town of Wagga Wagga lies in New South Wales halfway between Sydney and Melbourne.  The last of Edward’s line in Wagga Wagga was Albert Rudd (born in 1894) who died there in 1973. 

Leaving Wagga Wagga

Most of Albert’s children moved away from Wagga Wagga.  Two – Coral and Gordon – departed for America.  Bert – Albert’s eldest son – served with the Australian army during World War Two.

Nambour, Queensland.   Bert afterwards moved north to farm in Nambour, south of Brisbane in the state of Queensland.  He married his wife Margaret there in 1948.   Margaret’s Devere family had arrived in Nambour at the end of World War One.  Her Irish grandfather had come to Sydney in the 1870’s and then deserted his family.

Bert and Margaret’s only child Kevin was born on their farm in 1957.  But Bert died in 1968 and the family then lost their farm.

One notable feature of these Rudds over a long stretch of time has been that they have generally avoided the large metropolitan cities and stayed more in the country.

Kevin Rudd’s Family Tree

• Thomas Rudd from London (1765-1830) m. Mary Cable from Essex (1775-1860) in Parramatta, NSW in 1806
• – Thomas Rudd (1805-1882) m. Sophia Ray (daughter of Sarah Mary Wade)
• – John Rudd (1806-1851) m. Margaret Cullen
• – James Rudd (1808-1851) m. Mary Cullen
• – William Rudd (1810-1885) m. Emma Terry
• – Mary Ann Rudd (1813-1884) m. Patrick Sheridan
• – Isaac Rudd (1814-1866) m. Mary Ann Brennan
• – Sarah Rudd (1816-1890) m. William Jones
• – Edward Rudd (1818-1878) m. Sarah Brooker (daughter of Sophia Lahey)
• – Anne Rudd (1820-1835)

• Edward Rudd from Campbelltown m. Sarah Brooker (1823-1890) in Campbelltown in 1844 and moved to Wagga Wagga in the 1870’s
• – John Rudd (1841-1918)
• – Sarah Rudd (1843-1923)
• – William Rudd (1848-1910)
• – James Rudd (1850-1835) m. Harriet Campbell
• – Eliza Rudd (1857-1908) m. John Rynehart

• John Rudd from Campbelltown m. Eliza Larkin (1840-1905) in 1864 and moved to Wagga Wagga in the late 1870’s
• – John Albert Rudd (1865-1942)
• – James Rudd (1868-1935)
• – Edward Rudd (1872-1951)
• – Ida Rudd (1875-1910) m. William Hannam
• – Ernest Rudd (1878-1954)

• John Albert Rudd m. Sarah Winnell (1867-1958) in Wagga Wagga in 1886
• – Leila Rudd (1888 -1909)
• – Albert Rudd (1894-1973)
• – William Rudd (1897-1970) m. Eva Harrison
• – Violet Rudd (1900-1933)
• – Aubrey Rudd (1905-1987) m. Violet Russell
• – Evelyn Rudd (1911-2008)

• Albert Rudd m. Maud Harrison (1898-1969) in Wagga Wagga in 1913
• – Coral Rudd (1913-1983) m. Arthur Smith; died in America
• – Vera Rudd (1917-1984) m. Ernest Lipscombe
• – Albert (Bert) Rudd (1918-1969)
• – Roy Rudd (1922-1992) m. Blanche Martin
• – Gordon Rudd (1924-1984), died in America

• Albert (Bert) Rudd moved to Queensland and m. Margaret DeVere (1921-2004) in Nambour, Queensland in 1948
• – Kevin Rudd (b. 1957)

• Kevin Rudd m. Therese Rein from Adelaide (b. 1958) in Canberra in 1981
• – Jessica Rudd (b. 1984 in China) m. Albert Tse
• – Nicholas (Nick) Rudd (b. 1988 in Canberra) m. Zara Shafruddin
• – Marcus Rudd (b. 1991 in Brisbane)