Travels with my Ancestors #29: The Rags to Riches Tale of the Roberts Family Part Five
‘King St looking East’ by Andrew Garling c 1843.
Source: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/media/3068, accessed 11 April 2026This is Part Five of the epic story of my 4 x great-grandparents, William Roberts and Jane Longhurst.
In Part Four we saw Jane coping with the death of William in 1819, and his care for the family via generous legacies in his will. Jane continued to forge her way through colonial business and society as a widow, independently wealthy and answering to no one.
Was this about to change?
Part Five: Introducing William (2)
Another William was about to enter Jane’s life. William Hutchinson, like Jane and the first William, had been a convict. He had broken into a London home and stolen goods worth over £168; at his trial at the Old Bailey in 1796 he was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to transportation for life. He either had some influence wielded on his behalf, or he was lucky, because the sentence was then reduced to seven years.[i] He arrived on the Hillsborough in 1799.[ii]
Once in New South Wales he had a rather chequered career. In Sydney, he was convicted of theft from the Government Stores—a serious crime at a time when the settlement faced food insecurity, verging on starvation levels in its first decade. A few years earlier and William would have been hung for the crime; instead, he was sent to Norfolk Island, a penal settlement which also served as a place of secondary punishment.[iii]
There he met and married Mary Chapman (or Cooper), herself a transported convict, and they had eight children.[iv] Two of their daughters, Hannah and Martha, would feature in the Roberts family story in years to come.
William was industrious and well behaved on Norfolk; he was soon appointed overseer of government stock, acting superintendent of convicts in 1803 and then superintendent in 1809.[v] He may have smothered a smile at these appointments—overseer of the government stores, after having stolen from them so recently in Sydney!
When the government gave orders that the Norfolk Island settlement was to close, he oversaw the evacuation of the last inhabitants in 1814—a complex operation—winning himself a recommendation to Governor Macquarie.[vi]
Back in Sydney, he was made the Principal Superintendent of Convicts and Public Works—a prestigious and powerful position for a twice-offending convict. He was now responsible for the assignment of convicts, and he had gained the ear of the Governor.[vii] He had control over newly arriving convicts’ possessions and any money they brought with them—which, some suspected, he sometimes invested to his own benefit.[viii]
Was William just very good at any task he set his mind to? Or a smooth-talking opportunist? Perhaps he was a blend of both. It’s easy to imagine his grey eyes twinkling as he charmed people with tales of his adventures and successes. However it happened, he certainly won favour with the Governor. His next appointment was the highly sought after Principal Wharfinger (supervisor of the wharf) which gave him influence over the movements of ships in and out of the harbour—and their cargo.[ix]
In 1819 his wife Mary sailed back to England on the Shipley, along with returning regiment officers and naval surgeons.[x] This may have been an amicable separation; perhaps she was in bad health— or was Mary escaping from her husband or from life in the colony? She did not take the children with her: in 1822 they were living with their father.[xi] It’s possible that William held the children back from their mother if the separation was contested. As their father, he had complete custody and control over them. It’s likely Mary died within a few years of her return— that is, if her husband did not commit bigamy a few years later.
Some of his conduct came to the attention of Commissioner John Thomas Bigge, sent by the authorities in England to investigate matters concerning transportation to the colony. It would not have helped William’s case that he was an ally of Governor Macquarie who was at odds with Bigge and his commission. Despite this Bigge did not find any evidence to support a claim of wrongdoing on William’s part.[xii]
By the 1820s, William was an important and influential person. He owned pastoral properties south of Sydney, real estate in the main towns of the colony, business concerns such as the Waterloo Flour Mill, and was a founding director of the Bank of New South Wales.[xiii] He built a handsome sandstone house in Sydney on the corner of Pitt and Campbell Streets.[xiv]
He was active in various campaigns to increase civil rights in the colony.[xv] William’s trajectory was very much in line with Governor Macquarie’s belief that once they had served their sentence, convicts should be given every opportunity to become productive citizens on an equal basis with free settlers.
A happy second marriage?
William Hutchinson and Jane almost certainly met in Sydney. It could have been his role at the Bank that brought him into contact with the widowed Jane after her first husband’s death. Jane recognised a dynamic, forward-thinking man when she saw one. Hutchinson had been one of the three witnesses to her first husband’s will a few years earlier; settler society was small and networks brought people together in the commercial world of Sydney.
William Hutchinson’s signature as witness to the will of Jane’s first William.
Photograph by author of original document at NSW State Archives in 2026They married in 1825, blending their large families in the process. [xvi]
A certain amount of blending had already taken place. Jane’s son Thomas, one of her twin boys, had developed a relationship with his new stepfather’s daughter Hannah. They married in 1828 when Thomas was twenty-one and his bride seventeen.[xvii]
Ann (‘young Jane’) had died so tragically the year before, and Jane’s older children were mostly independent by then. Four of Hutchinson’s children were living with him in 1828, though none of Jane’s appeared on the household list in the Census of that year.[xviii]
~
Was Jane happy with her second William? Perhaps not. In the year following their marriage, there is a record of ‘Jane Hutchinson’ being sent to the Female Factory, the women’s prison at Parramatta, for one month. Her crime? Living in a state of prostitution. [xix]
According to a newspaper report, Jane had deserted her husband and children and was staying with a Ticket-of-Leave man, William Menzies. This is what led to the charge of ‘prostitution’; a term flung at any woman found living with a man other than her husband. Menzies was convicted of having harboured and concealed the said Jane. He had his Ticket cancelled and was returned to convict labour.[xx]
The Gaol Entry record showing Jane’s admission in January 1826.
Source: Ancestry.com, accessed 11 April 2026There were at least several other women called Jane Hutchinson who committed various crimes in this period, resulting in time in the Female Factory, Sydney Gaol, and even the ‘lunatic asylum.’ Was this newspaper reporting the arrest of the wrong Jane? If not, what could have made Jane seek shelter with Menzies, so soon after her marriage to Hutchinson? She was, after all, a wealthy woman in her own right and capable of supporting herself, should she have regretted her choice of second husband.
Source: Sydney Gazette & NSW Advertiser 12 Jan 1826 p3 Police Reports. Via Trove, accessed 11 April 2026
A clue might be found in a court case held ten years later, at the Sydney Quarter Sessions of July 1836. Jane’s son Charles was before the court on a charge of assaulting his stepfather, William Hutchinson.
Witnesses testified that at tea-time on 5th of May, Charles and his brother Joseph burst into the Hutchinson house in Pitt Street. Jane appeared beside them, described by Joseph as having the appearance of much ill usage. Charles confronted William in the hallway, calling him a damned infernal scoundrel for having hit his mother and hurled a glass at her.
He threw William to the floor and knelt on his chest, until blood gushed from his mouth. William grabbed a knife and the Roberts men ran off, with Charles crying out My mother has been the making of you! It appeared that when William had hit her, Jane had sent a maid to tell her sons what had happened and the brothers rushed to the house to get her out of harm’s way.
When giving his own testimony, Hutchinson freely admitted that:
he had hit her {Jane} and would do so again under similar circumstances; I struck her six times with my hand whip; I did not strike her with a tumbler; I threw one at her…she may or may not have been bleeding.
The brothers would have been enraged at hearing his, but their stepfather’s lawyer remarked that this behaviour towards his wife was not ill treatment. The lawyer for Charles’ defence, though, objected:
…if an assault under any circumstances could be justified, it was this…{Charles}had acted because of the natural feelings of a son who conceived that his mother had been grossly injured…
The jury found Charles guilty of assault, but given the mitigating circumstances, he was not sentenced to gaol, but to pay a fine of 40 shillings.[xxi]
William Hutchinson faced no penalty whatsoever for his behaviour.
Was this instance of abuse of Jane by her second husband one of many; behaviour that had begun early in their life together? Perhaps that report of Jane leaving her husband a decade before had been her attempt to escape his mistreatment. Menzies, the man she’d briefly stayed with then, had given her shelter and had paid a steep price for doing so.
If Jane was sent to the Female Factory for a month in 1826, she was back living with Hutchinson and his children two years later.[xxii] Judging by the ferocious response by Charles to his stepfather’s behaviour in 1836, the violence she experienced at Hutchinson’s hands had continued.
Jane knew that gossip was rife in Sydney Town. Both she and her second husband were well-known in its business and property circles. She would have faced scandal and likely condemnation if she had permanently severed her ties with him, given his prominence in the settler community. She would be punished for desertion, while he would escape any penalty for his abuse. She may have felt she had no option but to endure his behaviour.
It’s also possible that despite the provisions in her first husband’s will, which left her a legacy for her sole and exclusive use and benefit …for the term of her natural life, Free from the Control of any person, the laws of coverture might still have applied unless she and the second William had a property agreement (a sort of colonial-era ‘pre-nup’) between them when they wed. Otherwise, her new husband would have control over all the wealth she brought to the marriage.
Real choices for women, even independently wealthy ones like Jane, were limited, given the legal and social constraints they faced.
~
Jane died later that year, after a decade with the second William. [xxiii]
She had done so much in her fifty-four years of life: convict girl, wife and mother, emancipist, businesswoman, a second marriage and many stepchildren.
William Hutchinson followed her into the grave ten years later.[xxiv] At his death, the value of his estate was estimated to be £220,000—equivalent to something like $1.77 billion in today’s money. His name appears at position 147 of the 200 ‘richest Australians of all time.’ [xxv]
They were both buried in Sydney’s Devonshire Street Burial Ground, near Jane’s first husband, her daughter Ann, and sons Richard and Thomas.[xxvi] Her surviving children may have felt some bitterness at burying their stepfather next to Jane, given his apparent unkindness towards her. Still, other links had been forged between the two families, with Thomas and his brother Joseph both marrying Hutchinson daughters: Thomas and Hannah in 1828, Joseph and Martha in 1835.
~
Legacies
William Roberts and Jane Longhurst demonstrated that despite the privations and cruelties of their world, people could—and did— overcome these obstacles to survive, and then to thrive. Theirs was certainly a ‘rags to riches’ tale.
Jane dealt with the wealthy and famous of colonial Sydney in her business life, despite the label of ‘whores and prostitutes’ routinely applied to convict women. She defied the convict stain and the scorn of her social betters, becoming a wealthy and influential woman after William’s death. If her second marriage had been an unhappy one, perhaps the loyalty and support of her children somewhat compensated for that.
Their children and grandchildren could thank William and Jane for their legacy: the monetary wealth and, importantly, the personal pride bequeathed by their parents.
This brings us to the end of the amazing story of William and Jane. Thank you for following along!
Soon I’ll be posting about the next generation of the Roberts in my family tree: the equally intruiging tale of Thomas Roberts and Elizabeth Greenwood, my 3 x great-grandparents.
This one has it all: convict voyages, orphanages, a teen marriage, theft and gaol in the colony, illicit romance and children.
Do join me for this next chapter.
[i] England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892, Class: HO 26; Piece: 6; Page: 43.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Dec 2025[ii] Australian Convict Transportation Registers – Other Fleets & Ships, 1791-1868, Class: HO 11; Piece: 1.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Dec 2025[iii] Biography – William Hutchinson – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au), accessed 19 Jan 2026
[iv] State Archives NSW; Ships musters; Series: 1289; Items: 4/4771; Reel: 561; Page: 147. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 Jan 2026; William Hutchinson 1776–1846 – Australian Royalty: Genealogy of the colony of New South Wales, accessed 18 Jan 2026
[v] William Hutchinson 1776–1846 – Australian Royalty: Genealogy of the colony of New South Wales
Accessed 17 Dec 2025[vi] Colonial Secretary Index 1788-1825, Reel 6004; 4/3493 p.147. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 16 Dec 2025
[vii] Biography – William Hutchinson – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au) accessed 16 Dec 2025
[viii] Biography – William Hutchinson – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au) accessed 16 Dec 2025
[ix] Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser 8 November 1817 p1 Via Trove, accessed 16 Dec 2025
[x] State Archives NSW; Ships musters; Series: 1289; Items: 4/4771; Reel: 561; Page: 147.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Jan 2026[xi] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Population musters, Dependent settlements; Series: NRS 1261; Reel: 1254. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Dec 2025
[xii] Biography – William Hutchinson – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au) Accessed 16 Dec 2025
[xiii] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Copies of Deeds to Land Grants and Leases; Series: NRS 13836; Item: 7/484; Reel: 2704. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 Dec 2025
[xiv] Casey & Lowe Pty Ltd Archaeology & Heritage, Report on Archaeological Investigation for Meriton of 420-426 Pitt St & 36-38 Campbell St, Sydney, p4
[xv] Biography – William Hutchinson – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au)
[xvi] New South Wales, Australia, Butts of Marriage Licenses, 1813–1835, 1894, Series Title: Licenses for Marriages, 1813-1827; NRS Number: NRS 1037; Reel Number: 2281; Volume Number: 4/1710
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 Dec 2025[xvii] Series Title: Licenses for Marriages, 1828-1831; NRS Number: NRS 1037; Reel Number: 2281; Volume Number: 4/6030. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 24 Jan 2026
[xviii] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; 1828 Census: Alphabetical Return; Series Number: NRS 1272; Reel: 2554. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Dec 2025
[xix] State Records Authority of NSW online, NSW Musters of Convicts in the Colony 1808-1849, Jane Hutchinson, HO10, Piece 19 NRS-2514-3-[4/6430] Page 137 Reel 851. https://search.records.nsw.gov.au/
accessed 18 Jan 2026
[xx] 1826 ‘The Police’, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803 – 1842), 12 January, p. 3. Via Trove http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2185036, accessed 18 Jan 2026
[xxi] 1836 ‘Quarter Sessions’ The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803 – 1842),14 July, p3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2205436, accessed 19 Jan 2026
[xxii] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; 1828 Census: Alphabetical Return; Series Number: NRS 1272; Reel: 2554. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Jan 2026
[xxiii] Australia Death Index, 1787-1985, Jane Hutchinson, V1836267 20. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Dec 2025
[xxiv] Sydney Morning Herald 26 July 1846, p3. Via Trove, accessed 17 Dec 2025
[xxv] Rubinstein, William (2004). The All-Time Australian 200 Rich List, quoted at https://findingmerriman.com.au/merriman/william-hutchinson-1776-1846-william-bowmans-father-in-law/, accessed 7 March 2026
[xxvi] Sydney Devonshire Street Cemetery headstone inscriptions photographed and transcribed by Arthur and Josephine Ethel Foster, 1900. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Dec 2025
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.
Part Four: Life after WilliamThey 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]
Devonshire St Cemetery prior to demolition c 1900. By Ethel Foster. Source: State Library NSW 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.
Page 1 of William’s will, photographed by author from original at NSW State Archives, 2026 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 RobertsShe 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]
Document listing early shareholders at Bank NSW, showing Jane Roberts
Photograph by author of original held at NSW Sate Archives in 2026The 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.
~
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.
[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
Travels with my Ancestors #27: The rags to riches tale of the Roberts family story, Part Three
Source: City of Parramatta Local Studies Photograph Collection,
“The old toll bar at Dog Trap Road,
c. 1840s,” Reference Number: LSP00369.This is Part Three of the epic story of my ancestors, William Roberts and Jane Longhurst.
You can find Part One here and Part Two here.
So far we have followed William and Jane as they survived their voyage to NSW on convict transports, earned their freedom and began to make new lives in Sydney. William had been granted land in Sydney Town and at Bondi. Their colonial stars were on the rise.
Part Three: Thriving
William’s first recorded job under the new Governor, Lachlan Macquarie, was in 1810, working on stone bridges in Sydney, for which he was paid £100.[i]
That same year, he and Jane were married at St Philip’s church in Sydney.[ii] Jane had already given birth to a daughter and three sons (including twins Charles and Thomas, my 3 x great-grandfather) and she was heavily pregnant with their fourth son, Richard, on the wedding day.[iii] There were few among their fellow emancipists who’d cast judgement on a family born out of wedlock, although the clergy and authorities continually urged the colonial population to formalise their unions.
William’s work was favoured by the Governor. Macquarie was appalled by the state of the roads and dwellings in the ramshackle areas of Sydney Town that had sprung up in those earlier years, and ordered householders to take responsibility for the cleanliness and repair of the streets outside their homes. He threatened to impose an annual tax on anyone not doing so, and recommended someone who could help with any repairs that were needed:
William Roberts having rendered much satisfaction to His Excellency by his substantial repair of George Street, he is recommended to the consideration of the inhabitants as well qualified to make good the repairs now required.
By Command of His Excellency The Governor.[iv]Three years later came William’s most lucrative contract yet. He was appointed by the Governor to work under superintendent Thomas Moore, of Liverpool, to build a new road and bridges joining the existing Parramatta Road (at present-day Ashfield) to the new settlement of Liverpool, the first planned township settled by free arrivals.[v] Settlers needed better access to and from farms; securing food resources was always a preoccupation of colonial authorities and safe and reliable routes for grain and crops were essential.
Convict road gangs did the hard work of shovelling dirt, breaking stones, cutting trees; William was supervisor and responsible for the work being completed on time and to a budget. The new road was known then as ‘Dog Trap Road’ (because of the many dingo traps set nearby to protect settler livestock). It was renamed decades later as ‘Woodville Road’.
What an extraordinary turnaround: from labourer, to convict, to engineer, project manager and supervisor of convicts. When he’d galloped away on that gelding from Wootton Hall, he could not have imagined that he would end up as a respected road builder in NSW, twenty-seven years later. There must have been huge satisfaction, too, in knowing that, while on the population and convict muster records, his trial at Warwick and arrival on the Neptune were always listed, by the 1810 record he was described as a ‘landholder.’ [vi] By 1816 he had added ‘trader’ to his occupations.[vii]
William began work on the Liverpool road in 1813. The project included constructing bridges as well as creating a proper road from the bush tracks that had been used to that point.
It’s likely that at least some of those tracks had been established by the Cabrogal/Cahbrugal people of the Dharug nation, or those of neighbouring Tharawal or Gundungurra/Gandangana groups, as they travelled through the region on tribal business. It’s very unlikely that the men labouring on the new road would have given that possibility any thought, unless they glimpsed or met Aboriginal people while at their work.
When the road was completed, the Governor travelled along its length by carriage and reportedly expressed much satisfaction with the general line and performance of that important work.[viii]The new road was 24 km in length and included 27 new bridges.[ix]
With the success of this first major project, William was given many more contracts by Macquarie. He oversaw the extension of the Parramatta Road to Windsor, as well as roads and bridges at Airds, Minto, Bringelly, and the Cowpastures.[x]
Between 1813 to 1819 he was paid £8,000 in cash and £1,000 in spirits for the work he’d completed for the Governor.[xi]
In addition to all this activity he was busy with his farm and hotel businesses.
The Land and Stock Books of 1818 recorded him farming 50 cleared acres of land, on which he produced wheat, maize, barley and oats. He also raised 30 hogs, 30 horned cattle and owned a horse.[xii] Did he smile to himself when he took ownership of that last animal? Such a purchase would have once been nothing but a pie-in-the-sky dream. He had once stolen a horse; now he could buy one outright.
He opened the King’s Arms Hotel in Hunter Street, Sydney; Jane assisting with the many tasks involved in providing accommodation, food and drink to patrons. She would do so while tending to the care of their growing family. Benjamin (known as James) was born in 1816, the youngest of eight; his elder siblings Ann (known as Jane), William, twins Charles and Thomas, Richard, Elizabeth, and Joseph.[xiii]
A Direct North View of Sydney Cove…1794. Source: Dixon Galleries, State Library NSW The King’s Arms was a two-storey weatherboard building on a large corner block. The Roberts established an orchard and a kitchen garden to supply produce for the hotel’s meals.[xiv] They ran a tight ship at the pub, again winning the Governor’s favour. When Governor Macquarie was attempting to grapple with the fact that the settlement was awash with liquor, he had made the following proclamation:
Government House, Sydney, 16th February 1810
The very great and unnecessary Number of Licenced Houses for Retailing Wines and Spirituous Liquors that have hitherto been allowed to exist in the town of Sydney and adjacent districts, cannot fail of being productive of the most mischievous and baneful Effects on the Morals and Industry of the lower part of the Community, and must inevitably lead to a Profligacy of Manners, Dissipation, and Idleness. In view, therefore, to check these Evils, as well as in the Hope of awakening Sentiments of Morality, and a Spirit of Industry amongst the lower Orders of the People, His Excellency the Governor had deemed it his indispensable Duty to make a Reduction of the Number of Licenced Houses for Retailing Spirits…[xv]He restricted the number of licensed public houses to twenty, closing fifty-five in the process and imposing a hefty fine of £20 for anyone found selling liquor outside these restrictions.
William and Jane’s establishment was on the list of favoured publicans in Sydney Town—along with the likes of Mary Reiby, a fellow emancipist who became one of the wealthiest women in the colony.
They also opened an inn or halfway house on the Liverpool Road, catering to travellers needing to stop for a meal, to rest horses, or an overnight stay.[xvi] If Jane worked here, in the kitchen or at the bar, she would have had convicts—a scullery maid and cook—to assist her.
Sometimes she too, must have marvelled at how fate had changed her lot from her time on a transport ship, to a woman with money and resources. Their stars had well and truly risen.
~
The town around them was changing under Macquarie’s public improvement program. Convicts laboured on handsome buildings such as the Hyde Park Barracks, St James Church and a new general hospital; charity schools were established in Sydney and outlying districts. The Governor acted to stabilise the colony’s wavering currency and established the first bank, the Bank of New South Wales, which was financed by private subscription and opened in 1817.[xvii]
These measures were helpful to businesspeople like the Roberts. Wealthy traders built warehouses along the wharves of Sydney Cove; shopkeepers, publicans, and essential tradespeople like tanners or blacksmiths built up flourishing businesses. The straggling settlement that William had seen when he first arrived was being transformed.
Hyde Park Barracks (L) ; The Courthouse and St James’ Church Hyde Park Sydney (R)
Source: Mitchell Library, SL NSWTheir circumstances were in accord with Governor Macquarie’s desire to see emancipists become part of the fabric of the colony, working to establish wealth and a future for themselves and their families. They were doing exactly as the Governor wanted all settlers to do: clear and cultivate land, growing produce along with a new generation of colonial-born youngsters to occupy and make productive this offshoot of the British Empire. Their children were thriving; unlike Jane’s own mother, she did not have the all-too-common experience of seeing any of her babies die. They lived in comfortable surroundings and never had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
Despite their difficult start, their life together was on an upward trajectory. They must have reflected on the years since they had each stood in the docks and heard the words transportation across the seas. They could not have guessed what awaited them in far-away New South Wales. Now, they had achieved a level of independence and prosperity that would have been unimaginable in Warwickshire or Surrey. Neither were literate, but if they could have written to their families back in England, what stories they could have told!
Among the free settlers and military in New South Wales were those who called themselves ‘exclusives’ and who were in bitter opposition to these developments. To them, convicts could never rid themselves of the stain of their criminal past and should not be afforded the same rights and privileges as those who had come free to the colony.
The Roberts were living at the interface of these conflicting views.
William & Jane’s stories will be continued in my next post.
[i] NSW Colonial Secretary’s Papers 1788-1856 Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 3 Dec 2025
[ii] Australia Marriage Index, 1788-1950, William Roberts & Jane Longest, 3 April 1810. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 3 Dec 2025
[iii] Australia & New Zealand Find-a-grave Index, Ann Roberts Levey; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/249401714/ann-levey?_ Accessed 7 Dec 2025
Fairfax Media; Pyrmont, New South Wales, Australia; Year Range: 1841 – 1842; Australia, Newspaper Vital Notices, 1841-2001, Death notice for William Henry Roberts 1841. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 7 Dec 2025.
Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981, Baptism of Thomas Grenville Roberts 1807, FHL Film No 993949.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 7 Dec 2025; Global, Find a Grave Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s-Current, Charles Roberts 1865, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/263496717/charles-roberts?_ Accessed 7 Dec 2025; Australia Birth Index, 1788-1922, Richard Roberts b 1810. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 7 Dec 2025
43 New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1856, Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Feb 2026[v] NSW Colonial Secretary’s Papers 1788-1856, Series: NRS 898; Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312,
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 7 Dec 2025[vi] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Title: Muster of Prisoners in the Colony, 1810-1820; Volume: 4/1237. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 9 Dec 2025
[vii] New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834, Class: HO 10; Piece: 3. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 9 Dec 2025
[viii] 1904 ‘The Great South Road’, The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 1842 – 1954), 25 June, p. 7.
Via Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article14661003. Accessed 9 Dec 2025,[ix] https://www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au/major-roads.html. Accessed 9 Dec 2025
[x] Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790, p503
[xi] Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790, p503
[xii] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Population musters, Dependent settlements; Series: NRS 1264; Reel: 1256. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 9 Dec 2025
[xiii] Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 For Elizabeth Roberts 1812 https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XTCX-4XX, accessed 10 Dec 2025; Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 for Joseph Roberts 1814, FHL Film Number 993949; For Benjamin James Roberts 1816 FHL Film Number 993949. All via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 Dec 2025
[xiv] 1882 ‘Old And New Sydney.’, The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 1842 – 1954), 27 November, p. 11
Via Trove http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13524564, accessed 13 Dec 2025[xv] Historical Records of NSW vol 7 (1810, 1811, 1812), pp289-290, via Trove, accessed 10 Dec 2025
[xvi] State Records of NSW, Colonial Secretary Index 1788-1825, Reel 6038; SZ759 p.342.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 Dec 2025[xvii] Commerce and trade | State Library of New South Wales (nsw.gov.au) Accessed 10 Dec 2025
Travels with my Ancestors #26: The Rags to Riches Tale of the Roberts Family, Part Two
This is part two of the epic story of my ancestors, William Roberts and Jane Longhurst.
In part one (here), we met William at his home in Warwickshire, England, and followed him through his arrest for horse theft, his survival of the appalling prison hulk ships, and the even more appalling voyage on the ‘hell ship’ Neptune which sailed into Sydney harbour in June 1790.
He put his head down and worked diligently, seeing out the rest of his sentence until he was a free man in 1794.
Several years later he met the woman who would become his partner in the grand project of making a new life in the fledgling colony of NSW – my 4 x great grandmother, Jane Longhurst.
I have written previously about Jane – a woman I admire very much – however, in this and subsequent posts I’ll delve a little deeper into her story, drawing on more recent research which has revealed more intruiging details of her life in Australia.
Part Two: An unknown crime
While William was adjusting to the unfamiliar seasons and landscapes of Sydney and its surrounds, Jane Longhurst (sometimes spelt Longest) was facing trial in England, at the Surrey Quarter Sessions, for the crime of larceny.[i] She was eighteen years old.
Map of England showing county of Surrey. Source: https://www.visitnorthwest.com/counties/surrey/ She’d been born and raised in the small village of Ewhurst, southwest of London. Her family name was a reminder of how deeply she was connected to the area, harking back to a locality known as Longhurst Hill.[ii] Longhursts had lived in Ewhurst and surrounding villages for at least two centuries: Jane’s great-grandparents, and their grandparents before them, had been baptised, married, or buried in one of the many churches around the district.[iii]
Jane herself had been baptised in the Church of St Peter and St Paul and attended services there during her childhood. In the beautiful little churchyard, the graves of her father, grandparents and great-grandmother were sheltered by the branches of an ancient, spreading yew tree. [iv] It was a reminder of the great forests that once covered that part of south-eastern England and which gave her village its name.[v]
Churchyard at St Peter & St Paul, Ewhurst, Surrey, 2023. Photo by author She was the second eldest of eight children, though her mother Hannah (née Jones) experienced the misery of burying at least one child in childhood.[vi]
Ewhurst was in a part of the county badly served by roads, isolated and poor, and people were having a hard time making ends meet, so there were plenty who took their opportunities where they found them—including highway robbery, smuggling, or poaching. But Jane’s family had been a law-abiding one. By the time of her birth in 1783, her father John Longhurst owned land in the parish, so perhaps her family did not struggle, though owning land did not always equate to a comfortable standard of living.[vii]
What did Jane steal to have her brought before the court? It’s not specified in the records, but whatever it was, on 11 July 1801 she was found guilty and sentenced to transportation for seven years.[viii]After her sentence she was imprisoned for nearly eighteen months until it was time to leave England. If she longed to see her family, to say a last goodbye to her parents, her brother, and sisters, it was unlikely she had that opportunity. In September the following year, she was taken to London and put on board the transport ship Glatton, moored on the Thames.
For a woman who had spent all her young life in a land-locked part of Surrey, her first experience of the Thames would be astonishing. Used as she was to fields and woodlands, the river, crowded with barges, ships and small vessels, and the visible swirl of its currents, was a sight to see.
The ship spent time at Sheerness, at the river’s mouth, being fitted and victualled for the voyage. Each of the male and female convicts were allocated the rough prisoner clothing known as ‘slops’ and assigned quarters below decks. The ship’s master, Captain James Colnett, was under orders to pay strict attention to the separation of the men and women:
You are to be very careful to keep a sufficient guard upon the said convicts during the time they may remain on board the ship you command, so as to prevent the execution of any improper designs which they may form…[ix]
~
It’s unlikely that Jane, or any of her fellow prisoners, knew anything about New South Wales and its ragged little penal colony. Their destination was a complete unknown or may as well have been. All she knew was that it was across the seas.
When the ship drew anchor and set sail along England’s coast, she thought she’d seen the last of her native land. But no: the Glatton stopped at Portsmouth for three weeks, taking on convicts from hulks moored there.
Captain Colnett was obliged to sign bonds for the safe conveyance of the convicts—a legacy of the disasters of the Second Fleet, or as the Captain noted in his report: an Act of Parliament resulting from wanton cruelty by masters of merchant men.[x] It may have been some comfort to William later, to learn that his suffering on the Neptune had led to more humane conditions on following voyages.
Colnett was a compassionate and diligent Master who took his responsibilities to his King, his ship and all those on board, very seriously. He had trained under the famous James Cook and when offered command of the Glatton, he wrote: …had it been an eggshell, I should not have refused it, so highly flattered as I had been…[xi]
At a time when female convicts were routinely disdained and seen as prostitutes, no matter what their crimes or life situations, he considered the punishments they received for what were often small crimes to be severe; he was aware of their suffering in unhealthy and dangerous gaols and hulks, and their grief at leaving family and friends behind:
{The women} had acquired a mark’d countenance of despair, disappointment, anxiety etc…{They} I am sorry to say, had little mercy shown to them by their prosecutors or the jury at the Petty Assizes, being mostly condemned to death or long transportation …and had those who prosecuted them been present to observe the anguish of their minds in their present situation, it would have …left such a stamp as to disturb their peace ever after, some of their crimes being under forty shillings, and their age not fourteen…by this cruel prosecution not only the individual is completely ruined, but parents, families, etc…[xii]
He was also aware that many of the women boarded the Glatton with the fear that they would be treated as sexual slaves by the crew and possibly by male convicts as well. He described the scene on the Quarterdeck on the first morning on board, when the women:
…wept most bitterly, looking around as I have seen a wild captured Indian, their attention fixed on me as their commander, as if imploring mercy, and then waving their hopes and expectations of the Officers and Petty Officers on the [deck]. I afterwards learned that they flattered themselves they should fall to the lot of one of them in preference to the common seamen who most times they glare at with contempt… They were not long on board till the treatment they received astonished them, and on being shown their Prisons [below deck], their hammocks being hung up and beds in, and ordered to go to sleep, it is impossible to paint their surprise, nor could they be persuaded their fears were groundless till morning.[xiii]Not yet twenty, Jane would share the women’s relief that whatever else might occur on board the Glatton, they should not be abused by crew or the male prisoners.
In late September they were away, on a voyage that would take 169 days, stopping at Madeira Island off Portugal and then at Rio de Janeiro, to refresh water and food supplies. The passengers endured the usual discomforts of sea sickness, dousing with salt water when seas were high, the saturating heat and humidity of the tropics and the icy winds and storms of the lower latitudes.
Within days of setting sail there was evidence of sickness, including the flux (dysentery) and scurvy. Captain Colnett was disgusted by the filth on the male prison deck and insisted that they wash their bodies and clothes regularly, and worked to break them of making use of their Prisons in every part as a Privy. [xiv]He also ensured that fresh supplies included oranges, lemons, vegetables such as cabbage, and fresh meat (in the form of live bullocks to be slaughtered on the voyage). The deck was a crowded and noisy space when prisoners were allowed there for fresh air and exercise.
A model of the ‘Glatton’
Source: https://www.modelshipmaster.com/products/tall_ships/HMS_Glatton_model.htmThe prisoners were probably amazed to learn that along with the four hundred prisoners, wives and children of some of them, and a crew of one hundred and eighty, the Glatton had over thirty people who had paid for their passage, keen to settle in the colony.[xv] Who on earth, they would wonder, would willingly subject themselves to such an experience? —especially as people began to take sick or die. By the time they saw the rugged sandstone entry to Port Jackson in March 1803, around thirteen passengers had met their deaths from illness or accident.
Jane may have been among those taken ill, but if so, she recovered. In Sydney, she met William Roberts.
Though some years younger, she proved herself to be his equal in energy and resourcefulness. He had received his freedom in 1794, and she was assigned to him until she obtained her Ticket of Leave in 1806.[xvi]
An industrious couple
William and Jane worked hard, settling in Sydney Town.
By 1809 he had a wine and spirit licence, a profitable opportunity in a township as thirsty as Sydney.[xvii] But the settlement’s reliance on alcohol, especially rum, was problematic. Many convicts were dependent on the stuff. It also distorted the economy of the colony, with farmers being paid in spirits because for years the colony had no currency of its own and little cash, consolidating money in the hands of the unscrupulous few.
The NSW Corps, a military regiment sent to guard the convicts and maintain order, had instead milked every advantage that the colony afforded them for money and power, resulting in a military coup against then-Governor Bligh in 1808: the so-called ‘Rum Rebellion’.
A new Governor arrived in 1810, with orders to bring the chaos and corruption of the previous few years under control.
Lachlan Macquarie’s mission was to restore government control. The NSW Corps were sent packing back to Britain, replaced by the new Governor’s own regiment. Macquarie set about an energetic program of improvements and building, with a vision of the colony as a productive outpost of Britain, and Sydney as its elegant centre.
The timing could not have been better for William. He took on building and maintenance tasks in and around Sydney. He’d been granted an allocation of 200 acres at ‘Bundye/Boondi’ (now known as Bondi) made by Lieutenant Governor Paterson in the period between the overthrow of Governor William Bligh and the arrival of Macquarie.[xviii] The grant was payment for work he’d done overseeing the building of South Head Road (later Oxford Street/Old South Head Road).
This was land belonging to the Bidiagal (Bidjigal), Birrabirragal, and Gadigal people of the Eora Nation; it included almost all the beautiful beachfront and much of the land behind it.
Recipients of land granted by Bligh, the Rum Corps rebels, or Paterson, were nervous that the new governor would delete or disregard their allocations and they hastened to write to Macquarie to have them formally confirmed.
Early in 1810 William petitioned the Governor for confirmation of his Bondi allocation, which Macquarie granted.[xix]
In his ‘memorial’ (as such petitions were called) William stated that his character and conduct in the colony were unimpeached and generally known to the officers and Gentlemen therein. The memorial was written on his behalf, probably by a professional clerk. Like many of his fellow emancipists, he could not read or write, but he could make his request of the Governor all the same.
Copy of William’s ‘memorial’ to Gov Lachlan Macquarie, c1810
From family collectionHe had not lived on the extensive Bondi land; rather advertised it as land suitable for grazing cattle, at sixpence a week per herd.[xx]
William’s focus was elsewhere and his star in the colony was well and truly about to rise.
Early Map of Bondi
Source: https://bondistories.com/William and Jane’s story will be continued in my next post.
If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe to the blog if you’ve not already done so.
[i] Australian Convict Transportation Registers – Other Fleets & Ships, 1791-1868, Class: HO 11; Piece: 1
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 Dec 2025[ii] A brief history of Ewhurst – Ewhurst History Society Accessed 14 Dec 2025
[iii] Source title: FreeREG – St Peter and St Paul, Ewhurst, Surrey Citation detail: Baptism Walter Longhurst 17 Jun 1674: https://www.freereg.org.uk/searchrecords/5aece80ef493fd466ba505; UK and Ireland, Find A Grave Index, 1300s-Current, Record for Walter Longhurst Death Date 6 May 1735, Surrey, England Cemetery St James Churchyard Burial or Cremation Place Abinger, Mole Valley District, Surrey, England; Surrey History Centre; Woking, Surrey, England; Surrey Church of England Parish Registers; Reference: EWH/1/2, Burial record for Sarah Longhurst June 1740; UK and Ireland, Find a Grave Index, 1300s-Current, Burial record for Joseph Longhurst, Birth Date 1643 Birth Place Ewhurst, Surrey, England Death Date 1 Feb. 1698 Death Place Ewhurst, Surrey, England Cemetery St Peter & St Paul Ewhurst, Surrey, England; UK and Ireland, Find a Grave Index, 1300s-Current Burial record for Margaret Longhurst, Maiden Name Steere Birth Date 1648, Birth Place Ewhurst, Surrey, Death Date 9 Mar. 1697, Death Place Ewhurst, Surrey, Cemetery St Peter & St Paul Churchyard Ewhurst, Surrey, England.
Via Ancestry, accessed 11 Dec 2025[iv] Surrey, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 for John Longhurst 1793; James Longhurst 1780 burial record in FreeREG – St Peter and St Paul, Ewhurst, Surrey Repository; Surrey, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 for Sarah Longhurst 1740.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Jan 2026[v] A brief history of Ewhurst – Ewhurst History Society Accessed 19 June 2019
[vi] Surrey, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 Burial record for Ann Longhurst Death Age 16, Birth Date abt 1795, Death Date abt 1811, Burial Date 29 Mar. 1811.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Dec 2025[vii] UK, Poll Books and Electoral Registers, 1538-1893, UK, Poll Books and Electoral Registers, 1538-1893, John Longhurst, 1774, Hundred of Blackheath, Parish Ewhurst, County Surrey. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 Dec 2025
[viii] Source: Australian Joint Copying Project. Microfilm Roll 87, Class and Piece Number HO11/1, Page Number 329 (164) Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Dec 2025
[ix] Admiralty to Captain James Colnett 2 September 1802. [3], on Convict Ship Glatton 1803 (freesettlerorfelon.com) Accessed 12 Dec 2025
[x] Colnett, James. 1802, Journal of a voyage round the world in his Majesty’s ship Glatton, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3921369108, accessed 11 Dec 2025, p44
[xi] Colnett, James. 1802, Journal of a voyage round the world in his Majesty’s ship Glatton, p10
[xii] Colnett, James. 1802, Journal of a voyage round the world in his Majesty’s ship Glatton, pp21-25
[xiii] Colnett, James. 1802, Journal of a voyage round the world in his Majesty’s ship Glatton, pp26-27
[xiv] Colnett, James. 1802, Journal of a voyage round the world in his Majesty’s ship Glatton, pp 36-38
[xv] Convict Ship Glatton 1803 (freesettlerorfelon.com) accessed 12 Dec 2025
[xvi] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Title: Muster of Prisoners in the Colony, 1810-1820; Volume: 4/1237; New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849, Class: HO 10; Piece: 37. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 Dec 2025
[xvii] Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790, p 502
[xviii] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Registers of Land Grants and Leases; Series: NRS 13836; Item: 7/447; Reel: 2561. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 9 Dec 2025
[xix] Memorial to Governor Lachlan Macquarie by William Roberts. No reference for this document (Copy in author’s collection) was found in NSW State Archives; however a report An Archival and Paleographic Analysis of the William Roberts Memorial: Identifying the Provenance, Context and Significance of the 1810 Bondi Land Grant Petition was prepared on 24 Jan 2026 by Google Gemini for Denise Newton. It suggests Jan 1810 as the most likely date for the memorial.
[xx] 1811 ‘Classified Advertising’, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803 – 1842), 31 August, p. 2. Via Trove http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article628308 Accessed 9 Dec 2025
Travels with my Ancestors #22: Troubled Waters
This is the continuing story of my Newton family history. The first instalment can be found here.
Travels with my Ancestors is an ongoing series of posts in which I explore my family heritage, sometimes involving travels to their places of origin, sometimes travel through archives, online sources and history books.
All photos are by author unless otherwise indicated. Names in bold indicate those people from whom I am directly descended.
Troubled Waters
BEADON NEWTON (1836 – 1919) and
ELIZABETH TOPPS ROBINSON (1849/1850 – 1902)Locked up
Greta, Hunter Valley NSW, 1876
Things began to go badly for Elizabeth Newton (née Robinson) when Constable Powell entered the Newton’s cottage, one step behind her husband Beadon. They were followed by Mr Leaver, one of Beadon’s employers from the Greta store where he worked. What was going on? Why were they here?
When the constable began looking through the rooms of the house, under beds and in cupboards, it was apparent that something was very wrong. Powell drew out assorted objects from various hiding places around the cottage: a man’s new shirt, sweets and tobacco, a bucket and garden spade, canned goods, crockery, calico…They were hidden under their bed, beneath the old couch in the living room, and in the lean-to shed outside.
Mr Leaver looked on with dismay. At one point, he exclaimed: ‘Beadon, what made you rob us in this way? Have we not given you everything you required?’The goods recovered by Constable Powell and identified by Mr Leaver by his store’s mark, amounted to £20 in value, the equivalent of six month’s wages.2
Why had Beadon stolen? His employment at Chapman and Leaver’s store in Greta paid him a wage of 15 shillings a week, and the family had lodgings in a cottage provided by his employers. His duties weren’t overly demanding—he delivered goods to customers, helped keep the stock tidy and swept out the store at the end of each day. He was sometimes alone then, and now he admitted to taking things he found on the floor, protesting that he thought there was no harm in that.
Had he became trapped in a cycle of petty theft, neither being able to own up and return the items, sell them, or use them? Elizabeth must have noticed the things appearing in their cottage. Perhaps he lied and told her he’d bought them. Or, if she suspected them to be stolen, she was bound to silence as mother of two small children, dependent on him and unwilling to force an issue which could see him go to gaol.
Constable Powell told her that he had spotted several items partially hidden under a tree in nearby bushland. Suspicious, he’d replaced them under the leaf litter, and returned at dusk, climbed a nearby tree, and waited. A man on horseback approached, stopped at the tree, and began stowing the goods in his saddlebag. The constable nabbed him in the act. It was Beadon, who claimed to have paid for them at the store and left them there to retrieve later.3
Constable Powell was having none of that story. He returned to the Leaver and Campbell store in town, and asked Mr Leaver to accompany them both to Beadon’s home, where the other stolen goods were then found.
NSW Police Gazette 9 February 1876, from Trove Beadon was taken to Branxton police lock-up, about fifteen kilometres away, there to await trial.4 As he left the cottage with the constable, Elizabeth probably looked with despair at their sons: three-year-old Albert and baby William. What was she to do now that Beadon was arrested and she would no longer have a house to live in? She would have to take up domestic service work again, as she’d been doing before the boys were born. But who would care for them while she worked? The future looked bleak.
Above: Branxton police station in 2021 
Above: The tiny window in the police lock up at Branxton. What went through Beadon’s mind as he peered out from the cell? To date, she’d not had much luck in marriage. She’d wed her first husband, James Pendall Morley, in 1870 when she was twenty. They married at her father William Robinson’s home at Down Park, the estate where he worked near Hinton, on Wonnarua land near the Hunter and Paterson rivers. The young couple didn’t have much between them: she was a servant and he a labourer. The ceremony was conducted by a minister from the Primitive Methodist/ Wesleyan church, the faith that her family had brought with them from Lincolnshire.5
They had a child, named after the baby’s father and his maternal grandfather: James Hardy Morley, born around the year of their marriage. If Elizabeth had been pregnant with this child before the marriage, it was likely a rushed wedding. It’s possible that he was several years younger than her. These circumstances could have made for a difficult start to married life for both.
Within two years, James was gone. He may have deserted her or died. Either way, he’d disappeared from her life. A ‘James Morley’ was in and out of Sydney’s Darlinghurst Gaol around this time, usually on charges of drunkenness.6 Was this the man who had so briefly been her husband?What happened to the baby after Elizabeth and James parted ways? He lived to adulthood, married, and eventually died in his fifties at Lithgow, NSW.7 It’s unclear whether he stayed with his mother during his childhood years.
In 1872 she tried marriage for a second time. This ceremony was held in the Trinity Church of England in Lochinvar. Her new husband was Beadon Newton, twenty-six, a labourer.8
Lochinvar Trinity Church, 2021 On the marriage record, Elizabeth declared herself a widow – was this a convenient lie to erase the mistake of her first marriage?
On the day, she juggled baby Albert Harvey (Bertie) in her arms. He’d been born almost eight months earlier, in February.9 It’s possible that the delay in the marriage of his parents was due to the need for authorities to confirm that Elizabeth was, as she claimed, a widow.
They settled into life at Greta, just up the Old North Road from Lochinvar. Beadon worked in Chapman & Leaver’s store; in his free time, he probably enjoyed a drink at one of the four pubs in town. He also served as church verger for the Reverend Walsh.
The railway had arrived along with exploratory mines to dig for coal; Greta was an up and coming place, though still quiet enough for a young family. The village was surrounded by expansive paddocks of pasture with scrubby patches of eucalypts and pockets of more densely forested woodlands.
Their next baby, William, arrived in 1875; Elizabeth’s days were busy.Something the couple shared were their experiences as young immigrants from England: Beadon from Somerset when he was thirteen; Elizabeth from Lincolnshire at three years of age. Both transplanted, but young enough to make New South Wales their home.
Perhaps he told her the story of attempted mutiny by some of the crew on the immigrant ship Una. She may have spoken sadly of her mother whom she barely remembered, because Mary had perished on board the Irene before reaching Australia. Elizabeth’s baby sister Hannah had died too, not long after their arrival.
And now, for the second time in a few short years, she faced life alone without a husband by her side.Back to Hinton
Fortunately she had family still in Hinton. Her father Hardy lived there with his third wife Anne and their children, so Elizabeth took the two little boys and moved back to await Beadon’s trial.
In March, Beadon came before the Maitland Sessions court. He was found guilty after a ten minute deliberation by the jury, although they recommended mercy on account of the nine testimonials in his favour, including one from the Reverend Walsh, which stated that Beadon had assisted him at the church for the previous four years.
The magistrate was less impressed. He said sternly that he’d liked to have passed a severe penalty, but given the character references, he sentenced Beadon to imprisonment with hard labour in Maitland gaol. Elizabeth’s husband would be gone for eighteen months and she would need to get on with her life for the duration.10Two months after the heavy door slammed shut on Beadon’s cell, little William took ill with a cold or infection. A fever set in and he began crying irritably and shivering, even though his little body was hot to touch. The crying stopped—but Elizabeth’s relief must have turned to alarm when he became listless and refused to take any fluid. Soon after he began convulsing and he died in her arms.11
She had to deal with the grief of burying their baby without her husband. Her father and stepmother were doubtless some comfort. She occupied herself with Bertie, now three, and may also have needed to find work until Beadon returned.Troubled Waters
Once Beadon was released in 1877, it seemed their life together had at last settled. He found work in carpentry and they moved into Plaistowe Street, West Maitland. All their remaining six children were born in Maitland: Robert (born 1878), Mary (1880), Frances (1882), John (1885), Ernest Beden (1888) and George (1891).12
Their street ran straight to the banks of the Hunter, so they had to cope with numerous river floods over the years, including a devastating one in 1893.
After sudden torrential rains, warnings came from upstream about rapidly rising levels and a bell rang through Maitland sounding the alarm. The fast current and a huge load of debris in the river swept houses and farm structures away, inundating shops and homes in the central areas of town. People had to be rescued off roofs and out of trees; despite heroic efforts, at least fifteen people died.13
Maitland Flood Scenes by Elijah Hart, Photographer, West Maitland. Dated as 1857, but according to researcher Peter F. Smith probably circa 1867 or 1870.
Courtesy of State Library of Victoria.
Retrieved from
https://hunterlivinghistories.com/2019/02/26/maitland-floods-elijah-hart-1857/
24 April 2025Added to the heartache, the terrible economic effect compounded the pain of the 1890’s depression.
Elizabeth endured the death of another child in 1879; this time it was Robert, still a baby.14 There was more sadness when Beadon’s father died in 1881 and Elizabeth’s father in 1900.
However, their surviving children were growing, some were marrying and establishing families. Like the rest of their community they had to try to move on.Elizabeth was only fifty-four when she died in August 1902.15 She’d developed septicaemia, or blood poisoning. This meant high temperature, headache, chills, nausea, and pain. She was admitted to hospital but there was nothing more that could be done for her; all they could do was hope and pray.
They buried her at Campbell’s Hill cemetery in West Maitland on a wintery day six weeks after she became ill.16
Elizabeth’s gravesite in West Maitland, 2021 Beadon was left alone; now in his sixties, he was doing general labouring work where he could find it. He’d moved from Plaistow Street to a house he built at 16 Cross Street.
The house at Cross Street Maitland, where Beadon Newton lived after Elizabeth’s death.
Image taken during 1930 flood of Hunter River. Photo courtesy of Kerry Newton.In 1912 he suffered the shock of hearing the news that his youngest son, George, had been arrested and imprisoned for indecent assault.17 At twenty-one years of age, George was getting off to a very bad start. He spent three months in gaol and was released on a hefty bond. Beadon’s own time in front of court and in gaol must have come rushing back to him. George appeared to have learnt from this experience and did not come before a court again.
Beadon died a few years later in August 1915, when the nation was in the throes of the Great War.18 Perhaps he was glad to close his eyes on a world convulsing in violence and suffering. He was laid to rest alongside his wife at Campbell’s Hill.19
Photo from 2021 Beadon and Elizabeth merged the Newtons and the Robinsons, people from either side of England: the west country of Somerset and the Lincolnshire fens in the east. As children, they didn’t choose to come, but by making the journey with their families they planted successive generations here, in Australian soil.
Travels with my Ancestors will be continued in future posts…
- Maitland Mercury & Hunter River Advertiser, 16 March 1876 p3, Maitland Quarter Sessions. Via Trove, accessed 11 June 2024
- NSW Police Gazette & Weekly Record of Crime, 9 Feb 1876 p209. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
- Maitland Mercury & Hunter River Advertiser 29 January 1876 p10 Via Trove, accessed 11 June 2024\
- New South Wales, Australia, Police Gazettes, 1854-1930, 9 Feb 1876 p42. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024
- Marriage of James Pendall Morley & Elizabeth Robinson, Transcript of reg no 2703/1870.
State Archives NSW; Kingswood, New South Wales; - Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930; Series: 2134; Item: 1921; Roll: 276. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
- Death of James Hardey Morley https://centralcoastfhs.org.au/Unrelated%20Death%20Certificates_Mar%202014.pdf p11; State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: “Pre A” Series (1923-1939); Reel Number: 3231 Accessed 22 June 2024
- Marriage of Elizabeth Morley & Beadon Newton reg no 2864/1872 NSW Births Deaths & Marriages, Marriage. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024
- Birth of Albert Harvey Newton reg no 12927/1873, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
- State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Clerk of the Peace: NRS850 Returns of Criminal cases heard at Country Quarter Sessions, 1875-1877; Series Number: 850; Reel: 3638. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024; Maitland Daily Mercury 16 March 1876 p3, accessed 22 June 2024
- Australia Death Index, 1787-1985, William R Newton, Reg no 7761/1876. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024.
- NSW Birth Reg no’s 15531/1878; 17562/1880, 20854/1882, 24921/1885, 27288/1888, 20815/1891. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024.
- Chas Kays, ‘The Great Flood of 1893’ 2022, in Maitland Stories at: The great flood of 1893 — Maitland: Our Place, Our Stories (maitlandstories.com.au)
- Death of Robert Newton 1879, reg no 6502/1879 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
- Death reg for Elizabeth Tops Newton 1902, Cemetery, Military, and Church Record Transcripts, 1816-1982″, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVB6-B2BV: Sun Mar 10 14:35:15 UTC 2024 Accessed 13 June 2024
- Burial of Elizabeth Newton at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80623438/elizabeth-newton Section A1 Plot 3, accessed 22 June 2024
- State Archives NSW; Kingswood, New South Wales; Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930; Series: 2232; Item: 3/5978; Roll: 5122 NB: the estimated birth year on this record is incorrectly given as 1893 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
- NSW Death Reg no 9561/1915. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024
- Burial of Beadon Newton 4 Aug 1915 in Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, accessed 22 June 2024
Travels with my Ancestors #21: The Newton Story continued.
People from the West Country, Part Two
Portsmouth Harbour, 2023 In Part One of People from the West Country, we saw William and Ann Newton and their family embark in 1849 on the long voyage to New South Wales as bounty or assisted Emigrants. They knew they were in for a long journey with all its discomforts and dangers, but they faced an unexpected added threat of a mutiny at sea by some of the crew.
Those passengers not in the married and family section of steerage class, were separated into single male and female sections, with a dividing wall between them. This is what led to a dramatic stand-off between the Una’s Captain Causzer and several of the crew.
About a month into the journey, a group of around a dozen crewmen tried to destroy the dividing partition between the male and female passengers. They had armed themselves with knives and other weapons, demanding that the bar across the sections be removed and a chalk line drawn on the deck instead. They threatened the ship’s master, vowing they had a right to throw him overboard if their demands were not met.1 Will and Ann must have feared for Eliza, Martha, Mary Ann—all young women in their early twenties. Possibly even young Elizabeth was not safe at eleven years old.
The next day the threats to the Captain and First Officer continued, as rebels tried to convince some of the male passengers to join them. Then they refused to work the ship, which forced the captain to ask for help from any of the passengers who could assist. The mutineers continued their strike for several weeks. They passed the time singing loudly and behaving like boorish fools. Everyone’s safety was on a knife edge: mutinies at sea endangered all on board. What if there was a storm, or another crisis needing all hands?
For the Newtons and others in steerage, their proximity to the loud, defiant, cursing sailors must have been disturbing. The shouts and threats of the mutineers and the tight faces of the ship’s master and other officers made for a time of high tension. Many passengers must have longed for the return of the usual shipboard routines.The mutinous crew were finally restrained. A newspaper report in Sydney, a week after the Una’s arrival, recounted how the men were committed to trial for their actions.2 Mutiny at sea was a serious offence and could result in a sentence of death.
Extract from The Shipping Gazette & Sydney General Trade 24 Nov 1849, from Trove, accessed 29 March 2025
The rest of the voyage passed peacefully, and the ship arrived at Sydney in November 1849, four months after setting sail. The Newtons made their way to Newcastle in the Hunter valley; the traditional lands of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples. They were in New South Wales at last, ready to begin their new life.Life and death in the Hunter Valley
As Will and his family voyaged to Australia, he could not have known that back in Somerset, his sister Mary Ann was dying.3 His father had gone thirteen years earlier and the family had buried Martha, his mother, just a few months before they left England.4 Some of his strong ties to the west country there were already fraying.
They settled in Newcastle; he may have found work in an established butcher’s business there, or taken up work as a labourer. In the 1850’s his occupation was recorded as a fisherman.5 Perhaps he had decided that, living so close to the sea, harvesting the bounty of the ocean made for a better living than land animals.The young adult children all began to marry; grandchildren arrived. Eldest son Thomas moved to work in Sydney. They gradually grew accustomed to the different ways and landscapes here, starting to put down tentative roots. Young children are adaptable, so the sounds of Australian birds and the smell of the eucalypts would quickly begin to replace their memories of the west country of their birth.
After all the preparations, the long voyage, the excitement and anxiety about the move, Will only had Ann for eight years in their adopted country. She became ill with a heart and liver complaint, suffering for six months until she died in May 1858, aged fifty-seven.6 Eliza, the daughter born before Ann’s marriage to Will, had the sad duty of notifying the authorities of her mother’s death.
Soon after Ann’s grieving family had buried her in the grounds of the little Christ Church in Newcastle, Will got news that their son Thomas, who had moved to Sydney, was sick with scarlet fever. His neighbour had summoned a doctor, who diagnosed the infectious disease from Thomas’ high temperature, the raised scarlet rash over his body and his swollen, mottled ‘strawberry’ tongue. Within two weeks he was dead at twenty-five years of age.7
It was a double blow for his father. Will’s dreams of his family’s future in the colony had surely not included the deaths of two of them within the first decade. There was nothing to do but to carry on. At least all the children were now grown, no longer needing their mother’s care. That was a small mercy.Berry Park
Sometime after the tragedies of 1858, Will moved to the town of Morpeth, a bustling Hunter River port on the traditional land of the Wonnarua people. Produce from all over the valley went by steamer to Sydney, and via Morpeth to Maitland, and the coal industry was expanding in the valley. Water transport was growing in importance. Morpeth also had a mill which ground the wheat brought in by farmers across the district. The town had a promising future and some fine buildings lined the main street near the wharf.
Swan St Morpeth 1898 Courtesy University of Newcastle Library Special Collections
Will had a connection with Berry Park, an estate built on the edge of the river near Morpeth by John Eales, originally from Devon, who had become a prosperous grazier and pastoralist. In the 1840’s coal was discovered on Eales’ property and he established a private railway line to carry coal from his Duckenfield collieries at Minmi out of the district. His prosperity allowed him to build a mansion he called Duckenfield Park House, and he employed many workers like Will on the estate.
Source: Google maps
Two years after moving here, Will married for a second time.8 His new bride was Irish-born Bridget Chadwick, twenty-seven, who had arrived in Australia on the ship Matoaka five years before.9
Together they had four children: George, Sarah, Richard and Lucy, all born between 1860 and 1874 and all (except Sarah) at Berry Park.10
Berry Park was where the Newtons and the Robinsons first connected: Beadon Newton would meet Elizabeth Robinson there, as her family also lived on or near the Eales Estate.
But bad news kept arriving from Somerset. His siblings were dying: brother George in 1873, sister Charlotte in 1876, another sister Ann in early 1881.11 They were all getting on in years.
Will’s own time was up in 1881; he died at Berry Park and was buried at Hexham Cemetery.12 By then he had lived for more than thirty years in the colony.
The decision to bring his first family across the seas to settle here could not have been an easy one; at the end of his seventy-seven years, was he able to reflect on that choice and be satisfied it had been a good one, despite the setbacks they’d suffered?
He left behind his second wife and their children, then aged from twenty to eight.
A few years after his death, the family suffered an awful loss: their home and possessions were razed in a house fire in April, 1888. Volunteers from the local community came to their assistance, collecting funds to allow the family to rebuild. George, then twenty-eight, put a grateful notice in the Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley General Advertiser, expressing their thanks.14
Bridget lived for another sixteen years, passing away at Newcastle in 1904.15
Meanwhile the children who had emigrated with their parents from Somerset had made lives of their own, mostly remaining in the Hunter district.
Eliza married twice; first to Thomas Dawson (1850) then after his death in 1859, she wed George Barry in 1861.15 She lived in the Newcastle area until her death in 1896.16
Martha married William Wilding, a druggist and chemist, in 1851, and they had one child, a son (also William) who was born and died in 1881, the same year his father died.17 What a traumatic time for Martha, losing both husband and baby in one year. Perhaps it because of this that she suffered for some time from a mental illness and spent years in what was then the Gladesville Lunatic Asylum, Parramatta, where she died in 1895.18
Elizabeth (known as ‘Biddy’) had nine children with David Avard who she married in 1860, but suffered the loss of three infants.19 She died in Berry Park in 1890.20
Youngest son John married in 1864 to Mary Lindores; they lived in Muswellbrook.21 He died in 1907 at Minmi, outside Newcastle.22
The Newtons had become firmly established in the Hunter Valley. Somerset and the West country of William and Ann’s youth were now places on the map to these younger immigrants.
SHipping at Morpeth 1860 Courtesy University of Newcastle Library Special Collections The Newton family story will be continued in the next chapter of Travels with my Ancestors
1.‘Revolt on Board the Emigrant Ship “Una”’, Shipping Gazette & Sydney General Trade, 24 Nov 1849 p 293 Via Trove, accessed 30 September 2023
2.Bells Life in Sydney & Sporting Reviewer Sat 24 Nov 1839 p3 Via Trove, accessed 30 September 2023
3. Burial of Mary Ann Dyer Oct 1839 in Somerset Heritage Services Taunton, Somerset England, Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914, Ref No D\P\ wal.sw/2/1/39 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024
4. Death of Martha Ann Newton March 1849 in Somerset Heritage Servicesd Ref No D\P\stogs/2/1/8 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024.
5. Death registration of Thomas Newton in Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/736
6. Death registration of Ann Newton in NSW Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/4629
7. Death of Thomas Newton in Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/736
8. Marriage of William Newton & Bridget Chadwick Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, , reg no 2524/1860. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024
9. Australia; Persons on bounty ships (Agent’s Immigrant Lists); Series: 5316; Reel: 2137; Item: [4/4792] Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024
10. Australia Birth Index 1788-1950, George William Newton reg no 1860/9163; Sarah Jane Newton reg no 1863/10140; New South Wales Pioneers Index: Pioneers Series 1788-1888 Richard Henry Newton reg no 1871/13072; Catherine Lucy Newton reg no 1874/14112. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024
11. Death of George Newton March 1873 in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915 Volume 5c Page 281; Death of Charlotte Perrett (nee Newton) March 1876 in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, vol 5c p259 1837-1915 Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Burial of Ann Geen (nee Newton) 30 March 1831 in Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\stogs/2/1/8; Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\du/2/1/18. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024
12. Transcript of William Newton Death Certificate reg no 1881/8734
13.Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley General Advertiser 9 June 1888, p2. Via Trove, accessed 19 March 2024.
14. Death of Bridget Newton 14 June 1904 in Australia Death Index 1787-1985 Death reg no 1904/10268. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
15. Marriage Eliza Long & Thomas Dawson1850 Australia Marriage Index 1788-1850, vol VB; Marriage Eliza Dawson & george Barry Australia Reg No 2463/1861, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024 ;
16. Eliza Barry at ttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/177510222/eliza-barry
17. Marriage of Martha Newton & William Wilding Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Marriage Reg 1851 vol V. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024; Death of William T Wilding NSW Death reg 1881/8445; Death of William Thomas Wilding (snr) reg 1881/8365; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 1
2024; 1882 ‘Family Notices’, The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW:1843 – 1893), 25 February, p1 accessed 13 Jun 2024; http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article848178; accessed 13 June 2024
18. Death of Martha Wilding reg no 1895/2499, Death Index 1787-1985, Pioneer Index Federation Series 1889-1918 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024
19. Marriage of Elizabeth Newton & David Avard reg no 1860/2050, NSW Pioneer Index – Pioneer Series 1778 – 1888, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024; Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current; Harriet Avard 1860; Alice May Avard 1880; Mary Avard 1877. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
20.Burial of Elizabeth Avard https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/170978688/elizabeth-avard Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
21.Marriage of John Newton & Mary Lindores reg no 1865/2683, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024;
22. Death reg no 5627/1907 in Australia Death Index, 1787-1985 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024Travels with my Ancestors #20: Now for the Newtons!
So far in the Travels with my Ancestors series, I have dealt with successive generations of Eather family and descendants, and people from other families who joined the spreading branches of that growing family tree. The final post of the Eather story concluded with my grandmother, Florence, who was born Florence Creek, but whose mother was an Eather before her marriage.
Florence’s married name was Newton.
So now I want to go back in time a little and tell the story of the Newton family’s beginnings: where did they originate; when and why did they come to Australia?
This is the Newton family story.
All photos by author unless otherwise indicated.
People from the West Country – Part One:
WILLIAM BENJAMIN NEWTON (1804 – 1881) and
ANN LONG (1800 – 1858)
Ship’s rigging at historic Portsmouth harbour, England, 2023. A west country family
The Una was moored at busy Plymouth harbour when William and Ann boarded the ship. It was July 1849 and they were about to set off on a momentous journey that would forever change their lives and those of their children. Did they hear echoes of far-off lands in the cries of gulls wheeling above their heads? No doubt the rigging on the brigantine’s two tall masts was bewildering to them both, having never stepped aboard a ship until then. They had to hope that the crew knew the ropes, and the captain would keep them safe.If the weather and their luck held, in a few months the family would be disembarking on the shores of New South Wales, far away from Somerset in England’s west country, where they’d been born and raised.
William Benjamin Newton came from a family with deep roots in Somerset. His forebears had lived there for at least four generations. There were stories about links to Wales, of a Newton who’d ventured across the Bristol Channel in search of a new place to settle. One story told of a Newton family amongst the wealthy nobility. It was possible, but so long ago that it hardly mattered. The Somerset Newtons had little to show from any reputed affluence of earlier generations.
Above left: Map of UK showing location of Somerset in England’s west. Source: Google maps
Above right: Northern Somerset, showing villages around the Quantock Hills where Newton & related families lived: Stogursey, Nether Stowey, Crowcombe, Dunster, Bridgwater, among others. Wales lies across the Bristol ChannelA good number had lived in Crowcombe, one of several villages around the Quantock Hills in the north of the county. Newtons had been baptised, married and buried at Crowcombe’s Church of the Holy Ghost since at least the seventeenth century, possibly even earlier. 1
The church was like most in those parts: a tall, square tower topped with blunt pinnacles, fronting the rest of the building, all of dark stone. Always a little gloomy, even daunting, those churches. Inside it was a different story. Crowcombe’s church was known for its intricately carved bench ends on the pews. Hard to say how old they were, but they dated from the middle ages, at least.
Crowcombe Church of the Holy Ghost, 2023.
The carvings were lovely to look at, but what made them special were images from old Somerset tales, told to generations children by parents. Several depicted the legend of the Gurt Worm, a dragon, and the fearsome battle where two men cleaved the beast in half. This, so the story went, was how two local hills were formed, back at the beginning of time. Crowcombe children at least had interesting things to see, should a sermon be too dull.
The church’s carved pew ends depicting local legend of the
Gurt Worm
2023 Will had been born in 1804 in the village of Stogursey on the northern edge of the Quantocks, to parents Thomas Newton, a butcher, and Martha Buller. 2
Many Newtons had married into families from surrounding towns and villages: Bridgwater, Bicknoller, Combe Florey, Nether Stowey. His parents had lived at Nether Stowey when they married, then Crowcombe for a time, but moved to Stogursey before his birth.3 Stogursey had an old water mill, the ruins of a castle, and a cheerful brook that ran through pastures at the edge of the village. It was a pretty place, but not always easy to make a living for people of limited means.
Above: Scenes from Crowcombe, Stogursey & Nether Stowey in Somerset, in 2023
Will’s mother Martha came from a better-off family; her father and grandfather had both owned land, and were considered ‘gentlemen.’ Her father, George Buller, had left a will, in which Martha inherited an equal share of the property—with the provision that, should any one of his six children quarrel about the will or challenge it, they should be cut out without a shilling and their part divided among the rest.4 Perhaps after all, it was less troublesome to be a tenant farmer or employee with little to leave when you died, other than memories.Most folk around the Quantocks made their living as labourers on farms, harvesting apples for the tasty Somerset cider; here and there a saddler, carpenter, or cordwainer (shoemaker.) There was also work to be found in the all-important wool industry, from shepherding to wool washing.
West country folk were proud of their independent nature, the bounty of their land, their small communities that wrapped like comforting blankets around individuals and families.
The youngest of five children, William had learned to read and write—both he and Ann signed their own names on their marriage record.5 He had probably received a basic education in the local parish charity school.
He’d taken up his father’s trade of butchery, which should have brought in a reasonable living. But his family had grown, with seven children; downturns in the economy meant unemployment, rising food costs, and less money for people to buy his meat. New machines and factories replaced workers on farms and home-based producers of goods, like rope makers, weavers or straw plaiters.
Though far away from London, the seat of government and royalty, Somerset was affected by these changes as much as the rest of England.
In the public houses and the market, there was talk of opportunities for emigrants to the southern colonies. Should he apply for assisted passage under the generous terms offered by the colonial government? Skilled men such as himself were in demand; and colonists also wanted domestic staff. Ann had experience as a housekeeper, while their three older daughters were housemaid and needlewomen, and son Thomas had taken on the family trade of butchery. All the youngsters could read and write, except for John; the lad was only eight and still learning. He’d be able to to continue his schooling on the voyage, at daily lessons given to the children on board.
The passage for one person to Australia was beyond William’s reach; for a family of nine it was impossible. Under the Bounty Immigration scheme, the government would pay the passage of those it thought would be useful in the colony.
To leave behind family and home, likely forever—it was not something a man would consider asking his wife to do if the rewards weren’t likely to be considerable. There were many risks; things could so easily go wrong. Still, they had to think of their youngsters and hope that they’d all find better prospects in the colony.
Ann Long was from Dunster, on Somerset’s northern edge. From the nearby beach she could look across the Bristol Channel to Wales. It used to be a busy port for trade in wool, wine and grain. Since the sea had retreated several hundred years earlier, it had become a centre for cloth manufacture: Dunster woollen cloth was rightly famous throughout the whole country.
Walking through the village, under the gaze of Dunster Castle on its lofty hill, Ann would have passed the ancient octagonal Yarn Market, a reminder of the days when the town dominated trade in wool and cloth.
Above: Dunster Castle on the hill; and the medieval era yarn market in the village centre, 2023
Ann’s father was William Long, a saddler: a skilled occupation which easily supported his small family of wife Martha Headford and their three children.
While still a single woman, Ann had given birth to a daughter in 1825. She’d had to endure the sting of seeing baby Eliza described as a base-born child in the baptismal record.6 After Ann and Will married at the majestic Church of St George in Dunster in 1827, that no longer mattered: they were a family, though Eliza kept her mother’s maiden name of Long.
The family had settled at Tower Hill in Stogursey, just across the hills from Crowcombe. Ann’s father went to live with them after the wedding, since his wife had died the previous year.7 Other children arrived quickly: Martha in 1828; Mary Ann the year after; Thomas in 1833. Then came Beadon in 1836, Elizabeth in 1839 and lastly John in 1841. They were all baptised at Stogursey’s St Andrew’s church.8The voyage
Now the family was preparing for the Una’s departure. Most of their belongings were stowed below decks in trunks and boxes. They’d put clothes and items they’d need for the voyage in their allotted space in the emigrant quarters. Emigrants were told that there would be very little room on board, as the ship also carried cargo for stores and households in the colony, so they had to balance the needs of their family over a voyage of several months, and limited washing facilities, with the small area they would occupy.
They had to bring their own basic cooking equipment, plates and cutlery, as well as bedding and towels; and a ‘slop bucket’ or chamber pot for use as a privy, especially at night. Each family group would be issued with daily rations to prepare meals. The food would seem very monotonous after a while: salted meat or fish, dry biscuit, porridge of oatmeal or barley, peas and potatoes, and cheese. They’d have an allowance of tea, sugar, and dried fruits such as currants. The younger children would probably screw up their faces at the compulsory doses of lime juice, which they were told would prevent the dreaded shipboard disease of scurvy. Water would also be rationed. A plain diet: but at least they’d all be adequately fed during the voyage.
Images from on board HMS Victory at Porstmouth Historic Dockyards, 2023
The assisted emigrants’ quarters in steerage was a large space divided by a long wooden table down the centre, with berths arranged in rows on the sides. Passengers constructed partitions of sorts between family groups to give some privacy; a bedsheet or blanket if they could be spared. There were over three hundred emigrants just like the Newtons: married couples, single men and women, and about eighty children and babies.
‘Immigrants at Dinner, 1844‘, engraving.
With kind permission of Australian National LibraryThe odours in the stuffy space were terrible: so many bodies together along with the smell of mutton boiling or fish frying. It was a relief to go above and breathe in the tang of the sea breeze. The unfamiliar sensations as the ship lifted and sank with the swell made moving around difficult until people found their sea legs.
The youngsters were likely brimming with excitement at being on board, running along the deck, examining the rigging and all the other unfamiliar sights and sounds. Perhaps Ann and the older children had mixed feelings. As the Una drew anchor and sailed out of the shelter of Plymouth harbour, did they look on the shores of England for the last time with some sadness, wondering what lay ahead?
As it happened, the voyage was to prove more dangerous than they could have anticipated.
They’d been warned of the usual difficulties and perils of a long sea voyage: seasickness, shipboard fever or accidents, storms, hot weather through the tropical regions around the Equator. Boredom which would set in after the first week or so: shipboard routines were important for cleanliness and health, but repetitive; and after a while the experience of being surrounded by nothing but sea became tiresome.
What they had not expected was a mutiny.
William and Ann’s story will be continued next week…
- Marriage of Thomas Newton & Edith Bossley 23 Dec; Burial of Thomas Newton 8 Feb 1690; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\crow/2/1/1; Somerset, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1531-1812 From Ancestry.com, accessed 6 October 2023; Baptism of Abraham Newton 13 Jan 1663; Marriage of Abraham Newton & Sarah Sulley 31 Oct 1701 in Phillimore’s Transcript File line number 171, Somerset Crowcombe Parish Registers; Burial of Abraham Newton 27 July 1729; Baptism of Wm Newton 24 March 1703; Baptism of John Newton 24 Aug 1748; Burial of John Newton 1 May 1789; 1653: in Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\crow/2/1/1 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
- Baptism of WIlliam Nurton (sic) 21 May 1804 in Somerset Heritage Service, Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914; Ref No D\Pstogs/2/1/4Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 Oct 2023
- Marriage Martha Buller & Thomas Newton at Nether Stowey 1798, in England, Pallot’s marriage Index, 1780-1837 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024; Baptism Charlotte Newton 6 Oct 1800 in Somerset Heritage Service, Taunton, Somerset, Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914 Ref No D\P\crow/2/1/2 via Ancestry.com.accessed 22 June 2024
- Will of George Buller of Nether Stowey 1 Oct 1799,in National Archives, Kew Surrey, England, Records of Perogative Court of Canterbury Series PROB 11, class: PROB 11, Piece 1331 Will Registers 1799-1801 Howe Quire numbers 693-745 (1799) via Ancestry.com, accessed 5 Oct 2023
- Marriage of William Newton & Ann Long 15 Nov 1827 in England Select Marriages 1538-1973 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 29 Sept 2023
- Baptism of Eliza Long 13Nov 1825 in Somerset Heritage Services, Taunton, Somerset, Ref no D\P\du/2/1/6,Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1914 via Ancestry.com accessed 7 March 2024
- Burial of Martha Long 18 Oct 1826 in England, Select Deaths & Burials, 1538-1991, Dunster, St George Parish Reg no 195 Somerset Heritage Services Ref no D\P\stogs/2/1/7
- Baptism of Thomas Newton 11/12/1831; Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1914 Beadon Newton bapt. 13/10/1836; Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Reference Number: D\P\stogs/2/1/7 Elizabeth Newton bapt 21/10/1839
