Travels with My Ancestors #30 The Roberts Family Chapter Two: An Unconventional Romance

This is part 1 of the next chapter of the amazing, ‘rags to riches’ story of the Roberts family, which I began with the convicts William Roberts and Jane Longhurst.

Chapter Two begins by introducing their son, Thomas Roberts, who is my 3 x great-Grandfather.

Thomas Grenville Roberts
(1807 – 1858)
and
Elizabeth Greenwood
(Abt.1820 – 1871)

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Privileged beginnings

Thomas Roberts came into the world alongside his twin Charles in 1807, joining an older sister Ann (known as Jane) and brother William.[i] By the time the twins were baptised in February the following year, their parents were free of convict servitude and establishing themselves as farmers and hoteliers.[ii]

Three brothers (Richard, Joseph and Benjamin) and another sister, Elizabeth, were born in the following eight years.[iii] The growing wealth of the family kept pace with its size; the children wanting for nothing. They were close, sharing interests and activities as they grew. These bonds continued: it was a family that stuck together.

The boys were educated at a school established by Laurence Halloran, an Irish Ticket-of-Leave character with an intriguingly spotted background that included charges of libel, forgery—and murder. He was also reputedly a gifted teacher and in this new colony on the edge of the world, many opportunities to ‘start again’ could be found. Halloran opened ‘Doctor Halloran’s Establishment for Liberal Education’ in 1820, with the support of leading emancipists and wealthy businessmen.[iv] Here the Roberts sons gained an education that had been denied their parents, neither of whom could not read or write, although illiteracy had certainly not blocked their way to success.

The children were challenged by the death of their father in 1819. Jane set an example of perseverance and drive, continuing to manage the family’s many business and property concerns. Thomas and his older siblings, the eldest then fifteen, began their working lives early, called upon to help their mother run the King’s Arms hotel when they were at home.  

Their mother’s marriage to William Hutchinson six years later brought eight stepbrothers and sisters into the family: Charlotte, Elizabeth, William, Mary, Hannah, Sarah, Martha and Richard; ranging in age at the time from twenty to eight years. The two eldest Hutchinson daughters had already married and left the family home; perhaps others had left to take up work or education. The newly blended family was large, and not trouble-free.

For starters, it appears that Jane fled from the family home a year after her wedding to William Hutchinson and was sent briefly to the Parramatta Female Factory as punishment. (See TWMA #29) It’s very likely that the new relationship was not a happy one and that Jane was physically abused by Hutchinson. Thomas’ twin Charles was charged with assault on Hutchinson a decade later. In his defence, Charles gave evidence that his stepfather had beaten Jane and that’s what led him to intervene on her behalf.

All of this must have been troubling to Jane’s children. For Thomas, confronting in a very personal way. In 1828, three years after his mother married Hutchinson, Thomas wed Hannah Hutchinson, technically his stepsister, now also his wife.[vi] The two had not grown up together and were in their mid and late teens when their parents married, but it made for a complicated family arrangement. Hutchinson, the man Thomas’ twin had assaulted, was now his stepfather.

If Thomas needed to know what could happen when men behaved badly towards the women in their lives, his mother’s unhappy time with Hutchinson was one example. Another was his sister, Ann (known as young Jane), who died at the hands of an abusive lover when a very young mother. (See TWMA #28)

Grief and anger combined to mark out a very different pathway that he would follow in his own future relationships.

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Both Thomas and Charles became master cabinetmakers and, thanks to the generous legacies in their father’s will, they were wealthy young men.[vii] They had property—and plenty of it. He and his brothers continued their father’s practice of obtaining land in Sydney.[viii] Thomas and Charles had adjacent blocks in the centre of the rectangle bordered by King, Castlereagh, Hunter and Elizabeth Streets.[ix] This put the twins right in the heart of the town’s growing commercial district, in the vicinity of today’s Martin Place Metro station. They carried out their trade here, but as time went on, they joined many other ‘currency lads’ (those born free in the colony) chasing land for pastoral use.

In 1837, the twins dissolved their partnership in the cabinet-making business, Charles continuing on alone.[x]
Thomas was off in search of greener pastures—literally.

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He paid £10 in 1837 for a license to graze stock on property at ‘Maneroo’, today’s Monaro region in southeast NSW.[xi]

Also in 1837, Thomas leased a house and nine hundred acres of farmland from Andrew Badgery, son of free settlers James and Elizabeth Badgery, who had received the grant at South Creek decades before. [xii] Known as ‘Exeter Farm’ it was not far from where Sydney’s Badgery’s Creek Airport is now located, on the opposite side of today’s Eizabeth Drive. This was the traditional land of the Cabrogal people of the Dharug nation.

His stepfather William Hutchinson owned a large estate nearby he’d called ‘Hutchinson Farm’.[xiii] This could have been how Thomas first came to view this region, and why he chose to lease property in the district. Hannah may also have wanted to live near one of her father’s properties.

The previous decade had been a time of pastoral expansion in this region west of Sydney Town. With land grants and virtually free convict labour, graziers could make plenty of money from sheep or cattle grazing, along with crops needed to feed the growing white population. Gracious homes on large estates flourished here.[xiv]

It continued the devastating displacement of the Traditional Owners across the colony, as Europeans pushed further north and west in their quest for land. As before, displacement was followed by resistance and pushback. The Aboriginal people where the Hutchinsons and Roberts built, lived and farmed would have been visible to them, whether they looked through a sympathetic lens or an antagonistic one.

In the late 1830s and early 1840s, some of the larger settler estates were subdivided or leased to smaller scale farmers like Thomas, because of severe drought and the approaching end of convict labour. He paid £100 annual rent; the lease specified that he could terminate the arrangement after three years with written notice of three months.[xv] This may have been his ‘exit strategy’ if the farming venture didn’t go as well as he’d hoped, due to the uncertain economic conditions at the time.

It was idyllic country in which to raise a family. The Roberts children could play in the fresh air, roam the fields and hills, ride horses. Thomas planned to show the little boys how to manage the estate, while the girls would be expected to learn about running a household through watching and helping their mother.

The couple grew crops and established stock, including horses.[xvi] The Roberts men were passionate about everything to do with horses and racing. Whether or not they’d been told of their father’s long-ago theft of a gelding, they’d made names for themselves, breeding, training and trading horses.

A respected figure in the local community, Thomas was a member of the District Council for Liverpool, an early form of local government.[xvii]

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Hannah gave birth to six children in eight years: three girls and three boys. She was a busy mother with a very young family and a large household to manage. Life was good. Her husband was engrossed in his farming and equine interests; her children were healthy.

But tragedy struck in March 1841 when baby William, the youngest at eight months old, died.[xviii]

Thomas and Hannah were still grieving this loss several months later, when she became dangerously ill with scarlet fever. An illness which struck children more often than adults, it was highly contagious, with symptoms including skin rash, mottled ‘strawberry’ tongue, fever and painful throat. While some recovered, without effective treatment it could cause kidney failure, heart damage or toxic shock. At the time, Hannah was in Sydney, staying at her brother-in-law Charles’ house in Castlereagh Street. Thomas would have brought her there to seek the medical help more readily available in town.[ixx]  

If this disease was what had taken little William’s life and his mother later contracted it, she did not recover either. She died in July, not yet thirty years old.[xx]

This was a devastating blow for Thomas. He and Hannah had met while in their teens and wed when Thomas was twenty-one and Hannah seventeen. It had been a love match: neither had needed to marry for money or social status. Now she was gone and Thomas was left with five children, the eldest aged nine.

He needed a live-in housekeeper and someone to take responsibility for the day-to-day care of his young children.

This is when Elizabeth Greenwood entered the Roberts household.

The story will be continued…

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[i] Australia Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981″, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XTDQ-MFH : 28 January 2020), Thomas Grenville Roberts 1808; Australia and New Zealand: Global, Find a Grave Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s-Current For Charles Roberts, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/263496717/charles-roberts;
 Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, For Ann Roberts https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/249401714/ann-levey; Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 William Henry Roberts 1805, FHL Film No 993949.
 Accessed 10 Jan 2026

[ii] Australia Births & Baptisms 1792-1981, entry for Thomas Roberts, FHL Film no 993949. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 23 Feb 2026

[iii]Australia Birth Index, 1788-1922 for Richard Roberts 1810 V18102191 Ia; Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 for Elizabeth Roberts 1812 FHL Film No 993949; Australia Birth Index, 1788-1922 for Joseph Roberts 1814 V1814369 7; Australia Birth Index 1788-1922 for Benjamin Roberts 1816 V18163995 1b.
Accessed 10 Jan 2026

[iv] Biography – Laurence Hynes Halloran – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au) Accessed 12 Dec 2021

[vi] Series Title: Licenses for Marriages, 1828-1831; NRS Number: NRS 1037; Reel Number: 2281; Volume Number: 4/6030. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 25 Jan 2026

[vii] 1834 ‘Classified Advertising’, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803 – 1842), 17 May, p1. (Government Gazette),  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2216155, accessed 26 Jan 2026

[viii] New South Wales, Australia, Land Grants, 1788-1963, State Archives New South Wales Reel: 1493; Series: 12976; Description: Index to Land Purchases and Grants. 1831 – 39. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 26 Jan 2026

[ix] City of Sydney, City of Sydney – Survey Plans, 1833: Section 39 (01/01/1833 – 31/12/1833), [A-00880289]. City of Sydney Archives, https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1709216, accessed 23 Feb 2026

[x] The Australian 30 Jan 1837 p1. Via trove, accessed 1 June 2026

[xi] New South Wales, Australia, Depasturing Licenses, 1837-1846, State Archives NSW; Series: 14363; Item: 4/91; Roll: 5067. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 26 Jan 2026

[xii] New South Wales, Australia, Land Grants, 1788-1963, State Archives NSW Archive Reel: 1581; Series: 12992; Description: Registers of Memorials for Land 1825-1842. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 26 Jan 2026

[xiii] https://findingmerriman.com.au/merriman/william-hutchinson-1776-1846-william-bowmans-father-in-law/, accessed 26 Feb 2026

[xiv] Robert Murray & Kate White, Dharug & Dungaree, Hargreen Publishing Co 1988, p247

[xv] Memorial of lease arrangement Lease, Andrew Badgery to Thomas Roberts, 13 Sept 1837, General Register of Deeds, Book L, Page 781, NSW Land Registry Services; referenced in Primary Application No. 8474, p. 6, HLRV, NSW LRS, https://hlrv.nswlrs.com.au. Accessed 2 June 2026

[xvi] Obituaries Australia, https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/roberts-thomas-28044, accessed 24 Feb 2026

[xvii] Gould Genealogy; South Australia, Australia; New South Wales Government Gazettes, 1832-1885, p1051, accessed 5 April 2026

[xviii] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, William Hutchinson Roberts 17 March 1841. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 25 Feb 2026

[ixx] Sydney Monitor & Commercial Advertiser, July 7, 1841, p3. Via Trove, accessed 28 Feb 2026

[xx] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, Hannah Roberts 5 July 1841. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 25 Feb 2026;