Mormon Church: Australia's PM a descendant of underwear thief and convict

The Mormon church in Australia investigated the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s family history and found out that he is a descendant of a girl underwear thief and a male sugar thief.

The church spent nearly a year researching Rudd‘s family history and have come up with interesting conclusions. Most of original Australian settlers were deported from England for doing crimes. The first settlement that arrived in Australia from Britain in 1788 was originally to build a British penal colony and have the convicts settled there. Nearly 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia until 1868, when Britain stopped sending such convict ships to Australia. Before, this part of history was troubling to Australians but now they take it as a source of pride, according to Reuters. PM Kevin Rudd’s family records showed that he had an ancestor, his fifth great-grandmother was sent to Australia on one such convict ships. She was originally sentenced to death for stealing another girl’s dress and underwear by the Old Bailey courts in England. Lucky for Kevin Rudd’s family, the courts decided against executing her and sent her to Australia along with 200 other women. The records showed that Rudd’s fifth grandmother Mary Wade lived in poverty in England and survived by sweeping streets and begging. In 1788, the 12-year-old and another girl robbed an eight-year-old girl of her dress and underclothes. On the other side of the family, Rudd’s fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Rudd, was sent to Australia in 1801 for a seven-year sentence for stealing a bag of sugar. He settled in Australia and married another convict, Mary Cable, sent to Australia in 1804 for stealing cloth. The church elder Terry Vinson said it best when he said the following to Sydney Herald:

A study of our personal history helps us to respect the struggles that our ancestors endured, in a far different world than one we live in today, to give us the prosperity we now enjoy.

Given a fresh leash in life and another opportunity, Rudd’s ancestors and others turned their lives around and have made Australia a great country today.