A book uncovering central Maitland’s first community of European descent is close to publication. The book provides an expose on the lives of a small but diverse society made up of convict settlers, placed by Governor Macquarie on farms along the banks of the Hunter River between Morpeth and close to Elgin Street.
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The book looks at how these people – known as the Wallis Plains Settlers – and their families once lived, how their histories were originally embedded in crime and the opportunities they took to reform their lives.
EMMA SWAIN reports with historical information from Maitland City Council.
On June 27, 1835, Mary Hunt, better known as Old Molly Morgan, died in her Anvil Creek home. She was 75 and at one time possessed one of the most valuable properties in Maitland.
Her obituary read: “. . . she was in the constant habit of lending the most valuable assistance to all who asked it – the settlers of the years 1820 to 1826 have reason to remember her, as many without the aid rendered by her, would not have borne themselves through the trying seasons of that period while many from her ignorance of accounts fattened themselves on her good will.
“The writer of these remarks, often favoured by her, only regrets that her latter days were not those of enjoyment of the comforts of life to which she was entitled from the numerous acts of kindness she had evinced to all around her.”
This obituary was heartfelt and true, and in the 1830s such a testimony for a convict settler was rare.
Mary Hunt (known as Molly) was born at Ludlow Shropshire in 1760. Following her marriage to William Morgan and the birth of their son James, Mary was sentenced to transportation for 14 years and sailed for NSW on the Neptune (a second fleet ship) which left England in 1790 on a notorious and inhumane voyage to Australia.
In November 1794 Mary Morgan was one of three prisoners noted as missing. It was believed that she had escaped from the colony in the ship Resolution. As several years had passed since her marriage to Morgan, who now had a partner and a new family, Mary married again in England and became Mary Mears.
This marriage was not successful and in 1803 Mary was arrested for another offence and sentenced to seven years transportation. She returned to NSW in 1804.
In 1814 Mary was sentenced to seven years transportation to Newcastle for receiving a stolen cow. She had served four years of this new punishment when she was permitted to be one of the Wallis Plains farmers. She was the only female convict settler of this group to receive a farm in her own right.
For about five years from 1818, Mary’s farm occupied the peninsula of land called Horseshoe Bend, first known as Molly Morgan’s Bend.
From 1830 to 1835, until her death, Mary lived at her stock farm at Anvil Creek.
Molly’s journey, along with a number of other European settlers, are the subject of a soon-to-be published book by Maitland City Council.
“Working on this book has been fascinating and it’s quite chilling when you put a little bit of yourself back into these peoples’ situations and positions of where they came from in England and what they faced when they looked at life in the frontier of European settlement,” Maitland City Council heritage officer Clare James said.
“Records show that after five years of occupancy these men and women, once considered the worst criminals (men serving life sentences) in Great Britain and Ireland, were showing that they were industrious and prepared to increase the colony’s agriculture and livestock,” Ms James said.
Remarkable considering this was a time when the only tools had were hoes to cultivate their 30-acre farms, timber was sourced by axe and saw and travelling along the river was probably by ketches with a sail when the wind blew favourably.
“It’s very hard to grasp but I guess this is the story of how Maitland began as far as European settlement is concerned so we wanted to capture the very personal stories and I think that’s what comes through very strongly. There was a lot of tragedy in peoples’ lives just because of the hardships and we want to make those stories available to people.”
The Wallis Plains convict farms were located along the Hunter River and Wallis Creek from near Morpeth to the western end of West Maitland near Elgin Street.
The principal convict settlers occupying farms near Morpeth to West Maitland were Richard Martin/Martyn, George Mitchell, Patrick Riley/Reilly, John Allen, John Smith, Thomas Boardman, John Cahill, William Jones, Patrick Maloney and Mary Hunt.
The free Wallis Plains settlers were William O’Donnell and John Eckford.
“The reason we chose convict history is because of the interest people have in it and the book also talks about the very beginning of European history in central Maitland,” Ms James said.
“We want to present this in a very accessible way and we also hope this will evolve into an educational project that relates to the school syllabus so that local children can get a grasp about what it means for the place that they live.
“We see this publication as giving a tangible and very personal account of these people’s lives and how they and their families lived and there is a real richness and uniqueness to this information that can add to our historical understanding of Maitland.”