Travels with my Ancestors #28: The rags to riches tale of the Roberts Family Part Four

This is the Part Four of the epic story of my 4 x great-grandparents, William Roberts and Jane Longhurst.
In the Part Three, the couple were working hard to establish themselves in the colony, busy with William’s road-building work for the Governor, their hotel business in Sydney, and farming ventures. Their lives had transformed along with the settlement of Sydney Town around them.

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Part Four: Life after William

They did not have long to enjoy their prosperous new life together. In September 1819 William’s good fortune had run its course and he died, aged in his mid-sixties.^[i] He was buried in the Devonshire Street Burial Ground (now the site of Central Railway Station.)^[ii]  

He’d survived the worst of the worst on the hulks and the Neptune. Now he was gone and Jane faced a future without him. William had signed a will in May that year with his mark (X), and it was witnessed by three men: William Hutchinson, James Master and a Mr Robinson. ^[iii]

One of those three was to play a significant role in the family’s future.

In that document, he had left Jane five hundred pounds sterling in cash—a substantial legacy. In addition, she had ownership of the Kings Arms Hotel: the property itself, the stock in trade and all household furniture and other items. She was also bequeathed twenty head of horned cattle. All the legacies for her sole and exclusive use and benefit …for the term of her natural life, Free from the Control of any person. She was thirty-six, financially comfortable, but with eight children to raise to adulthood.

To those children, their father had made additional legacies. His extensive wealth and properties were to be distributed amongst them all. Eldest son William, fourteen at the time, was bequeathed five hundred pounds, and the farm and properties at Liverpool, including the ‘Halfway House’ inn there, and ten head of cattle. Twins Charles and Thomas (aged twelve) each received five hundred pounds and ten head of cattle. They were to share in the interest from a property at Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Likewise Richard (aged nine) received cattle, plus the rental from three tenements on Castlereagh Street. Joseph (aged five) was left a house on Hunter Street (plus, of course, cattle). The youngest son James (just three years old) also received cattle, along with a house and land in Hunter Street and a small cottage in Castlereagh Street.

The daughters were not forgotten. Eldest girl Ann (known by her middle name as Jane) had married earlier that year and had received a generous dowry from her parents. However, if any of her siblings died, she was to have a share of their legacy. Elizabeth (aged six) was left a brick house on Elizabeth Street (and the obligatory cattle). She was also included with the three others who were equally bequeathed the proceeds from rent of another estate on Parramatta Road.

Their mother proved to be a woman who would not take a backward step. She continued managing the business interests she and William had established. Six months after his death, she wrote to the Colonial Secretary, requesting payment for outstanding amounts owed to William for his work on various government projects.^[iv]The next year, she wrote to the Governor, requesting the land grant earlier promised by him to William.

Her petition said:

To His Excellency Governor Macquarie,
The respectful memorial of Jane Roberts most humbly states:
That your memorialist is the relict of the late William Roberts to whom Your Excellency was once kindly pleased to promise some portion of land before your departure from the Colony. Hopes ye will excuse her troubling him at this time and not attending personally, having been in very ill state of health for several months’ past.
That the number of horned cattle now the property of memorialist on behalf of her family nearly approaches two hundred head, which are very much neglected and is obliged to pay Mr Grono of Windsor for four years each twenty-five pounds per annum, through not having pasture of her own, prays that Your Excellency will be pleased to confer on such portion of land in any part of the country Your Excellency may seem meet.
And your memorialist will be truly grateful for such favour.
                                                          Jane Roberts

She was granted 200 acres of grazing land at Bathurst, on the lands of the Wiradjuri people.^[v] She also had at least two convicts assigned to her there: labourers and one ‘mechanic’ (a skilled worker or tradesman).^[vi] It meant she could continue operating the hotel and other business interests in Sydney, while the farm was managed by an overseer and workers.

Those workers would have been aware when hostilities broke out between the Europeans and Wiradjuri. The flood of settlers taking up land for their sheep and cattle in the early 1820s had a devastating effect on the lifestyle and sustainability of the Wiradjuri, who began to fight back under leadership of men such as Windradyne, with guerrilla raids on stock, buildings, crops, graziers and their workers.

Governor Brisbane, who replaced Macquarie in 1821, declared martial law in 1824, effectively giving magistrates, troops and settlers authority to use summary force against any Wiradjuri including women and children. Wiradjuri were shot or poisoned and retaliated with increased attacks of their own.^[vii]

Back in Sydney, Jane could not read the newspaper accounts of those events but must have heard tales around the hotel bar or in stores as she shopped for the family. What did she make of these troubled times? Did she think about the terrible toll on the Wiradjuri people, or was the viability of her farming ventures in the bathurst area her primary concern? We will never know.

In 1820 she was one of only eight female shareholders in the newly established Bank of New South Wales, along with the likes of Elizabeth Macquarie, the Governor’s wife, with an initial deposit of £600. ^[viii] This was a significant amount of money to place in the new bank. As she entered the bank on the day she made this first deposit, did she hold her head a little higher, make her step a little firmer, knowing she was joining a select few: women like herself who had done well in the colony and exceeded the expectations of her betters? To her initial deposit she added over £1300 later that year, money that had been owed to her husband for his government work.^[ix]

The settler society that had been transplanted from Britain may have allowed space for energetic women like Jane to conduct successful businesses and farms; but people in trade did not generally mix socially with people of private means. The convict stain, too, seeped through all aspects of society; it would be hard for her to overcome this, despite her newfound wealth.

However, there were plenty of social connections and opportunities within large families and the emancipist community, and this is where Jane would socialise: with her family and with others like her in business, trade, or farmers visiting town from the regions. Here she could stand with pride about what she had achieved, as William’s wife and since his death. Her children were growing up and taking their places as prosperous members of colonial society.

She could not have been prepared for the appalling tragedy that was about to overtake one of her children.

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Jane and William’s first-born, Ann (known as Jane), was just fifteen in the year her father died, and she had fallen in love with a wealthy emancipist from London named Solomon Levey. On the day that Solomon received his absolute pardon he asked young Jane to marry him.^[x]

Whatever reservations her parents may have had about her young age were overridden, because within three days the couple were married.^[xi] Young Jane was given a substantial dowry by her parents, but Solomon was wealthy in his own right from his business and property holdings, and held in wide esteem by others in Sydney’s commercial society, so they didn’t have to worry that he was a ‘gold digger’ after their daughter’s money. Solomon and his young wife had two children, a boy John (born the same year his parents married) and a girl, another Jane, born in February 1822.^[xii]

Young Jane’s youth and inexperience led her into an illicit affair with another man, who very likely was after her money. With toddler John, and her baby no more than six months old, this very young mother must have been caught up in a maelstrom of emotional and psychological turmoil.  

Her unhappy husband Solomon posted a pre-emptive notice in the Sydney newspaper:
This is to caution the public from giving trust or credit to my wife, Mrs Ann {Jane}Levey, as I will not be responsible for any debt or debts she may contract. 25 August 1821^.[xiii]

The affair ended in the worst possible way. Young Jane’s lover beat her and kept her captive for months, denying her medical help, until she eventually died, in February 1824.^[xiv] Tragically her baby daughter had died the month before.^[xv] If her abuser told her that awful news, Jane senior’s torment would have been complete. Two lives had been snuffed out before they had properly begun. Solomon’s beloved wife and their tiny daughter, both gone.

Jane senior’s sorrow that her daughter suffered and died at the hands of a brutal man was profound and bitter. It was an event that shocked Sydney society and left indelible scars on Jane, her other children, and on Solomon, who never remarried.

The obituary for young Jane echoes the sympathy her terrible death aroused, even in a community where violence and abuse were commonplace:

On Friday, the 30th ult. Mrs. Ann {Jane} Levey, the wife of S{olomon}Levey, 72, George-street, Sydney. Her complaint originated in a hurt from the brutal treatment of her seducer, joined with his inhumanity in not allowing her medical advice for four months past, and during that time she was allowed no female servant to attend her; but she sincerely repented of her conduct to an injured husband, and fervently prayed for forgiveness. The funeral was respectably attended, on Sunday, from her mother’s house (Mrs. Jane Roberts), Hunter-street.^[xvi]

Solomon maintained his personal and business connections to the Roberts family, including with his brother-in-law Richard Roberts.^[xvii] In 1827 he returned to London to pursue business affairs, until his death there in 1833.^[xviii]

Jane’s story will be continued in my next post.

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[i] Australia Death Index, 1787-1985, William Roberts 1819, volume no V18194395 2b.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Dec 2025

[ii] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, William Roberts, 1819.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Dec 2025

[iii] NSW State Archives NRS-13660-1-[14/3176]-Series 1_53 William Roberts Date of death 13 Sept 1819, Granted on [Not known]

[iv] New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1856, Series: NRS 897; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6041-6064, 6071-6072, p358. Via records.nsw.gov.au, Accessed 14 Jan 2026

[v] Col Sec Papers, Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312, p68
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Jan 2026

[vi] Col Sec Papers, Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312, p91
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Jan 2026

[vii] Keneally, Thomas: Australians: A Short History, Allen & Unwin,2016, pp 25-260

[viii] Johns, Leanne: Women in Colonial Commerce 1817-1820, ANU, 2001, p51. Accessed 14 Dec 2025

[ix] Johns, Leanne, p86

[x] Biography – Solomon Levey – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au) Accessed 14 Dec 2025

[xi] New South Wales, Australia, Butts of Marriage Licenses, 1813–1835, 1894, Licenses for Marriages, 1813-1827; NRS Number: NRS 1037; Reel Number: 2281; Volume Number: 4/1710. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Jan 2026

[xii] Australia Birth Index, 1788-1922 John Levey born 1819 Volume No V18195019 1b; Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 Jane Levey born 1820 FHL Film No 993949. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 12 Jan 2026

[xiii] Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser 25 August 1821, p2 Via Trove, accessed 16 Dec 2025

[xiv] Australia Death Index, 1787-1985 Ann Levey died 1824 Vol no V18245984 2b.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 12 Jan 2026

[xv] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, Jane Levey Jan 1824. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Jan 2026

[xvi] Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser 5 February 1824 Via Trove, accessed 16 Dec 2025

[xvii] ‘Shipping intelligence’, The Gleaner (Sydney, NSW: 1827), 4 August, p. 4, accessed 18 Jan 2026, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article251535458

[xviii] Biography – Solomon Levey – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au), accessed 17 Jan 2026