The Stapley and Bryant Families in Australia

The Church History Library in Salt Lake City is currently digitizing its out-of-copyright collections and making them available on the Internet Archive. Many thanks to J. Stapley for sending a link to Zion's Watchman (1853), a publication of the Australian Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has a number of references to members of the Stapley and Bryant families.

Here's a brief review of the genealogy of these early Australian converts.

Henry Stapley and Elizabeth Tarbutt of Rolvenden, Kent, England, had four children including Charles and Sarai. 

John Bryant and Jenny Watson, also of Rolvenden, had seven children including Samuel and Sarah.

Charles Stapley married Sarah Bryant and Samuel Bryant married Sarai Stapley. Both of these families emigrated to New South Wales, Australia, where they joined the church.

Zion's Watchman includes notes of church conferences and missionary efforts, and tells of the departure of the Stapley and Bryant families for California on the Julia Ann, including some notes about their travel:

Sisters Stapl[e]y and Bryant have lately remarked to me, they were told before leaving Australia, they would not be able to endure the fatigues of the journey, but they could not see but they enjoyed as good health, and were just as happy on the vessel as when at home, and much more so in anticipation of soon bein[g] numbered with the saints in Zion (157-58).

(Note: they were on the first voyage of the Julia Ann, not the second voyage that ended in a shipwreck on a desert island.)