George Yeomans was an important figure in very early Maitland and Singleton.

He was a currency lad, born at Wilberforce on the Hawkesbury River in 1801, the third son of John Yeomans and Mary Cassidy.

John was a former convict who arrived in New South Wales in 1792 on board the Britannia; he and Mary married in 1798 at Sydney.

George first appears in the public record in 1826 when he became a settler at Patricks Plains.

This is doubtless where he met and married, Elizabeth, the 15-year-old daughter of Benjamin Singleton, their names appearing in 1827 in the Hexham register of Christ Church, Newcastle.

Benjamin Singleton was a man of substance and note, having accompanied John Howe on his epic 1819 journey along what later became the Putty Road from the Hawkesbury to Patricks Plains.

His enduring legacy is his name given to the town that evolved.

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It was during this initial settlement period that George became an explorer who, along with his brother Richard, Otto Baldwin, William Osborn and John Upton, discovered Dartbrook Pass, a second route across the Liverpool Range.

Together these men became squatters, establishing Yarramanbah on the Liverpool Plains, only to have the property ceded to the AA Company in 1833.

Undeterred, Yeomans re-established himself at Boggabilla Station on the McIntyre River in partnership with Baldwin.

In 1827 George leased the Angel Inn from Molly Morgan, and in doing so he became Maitland's first licensed publican.

He was among the first of the free settlers to appreciate the potential of Wallis Plains and effectively became its first genuine speculative entrepreneur.

In September of the same year his entrepreneurial flair was obvious when he advertised his 'beautiful White Blood Race Horse, Blanket', the standing fee of ten guineas - a not insignificant amount in those days.

In 1828 George was thanking patrons in the Sydney Gazette for patronising his coastal trader, the 'Monitor', then plying between Sydney and Wallis Plains.

By 1828 he was a successful coastal trader with a Sydney agent, a publican, a horse breeder and a squatter; this was a man not yet 28 years old!

It was however as a hotelier that George Yeomans is best remembered. As well as the Angel Inn, he either built or leased the Woolpack Inn (1828), The Harp of Erin (1828), The Sportsman (1834) and finally the Northumberland Hotel (1842).

He owned three lots in Central Maitland, firstly Lot 147 of 36 acres and bounded by Regent, Steam and Elgin streets and today's Ken Tubman Drive.

This included a part which became St Mary's Church in 1838.

The second (Lot 142) was immediately to the south and bounded by Steam and Elgin streets, the extension of Regent Street and a line of the surveyed but unmade Walker Street.

These two lots abutted Mary Hunt's (Molly Morgan's) holding. George and Elizabeth named their holding 'Maitland Grange' which explains the naming of the house built in 1894 by Elizabeth in Ballard Street.

This later became the long-time family home of the well-known Scobie family. Lot 142 was bisected by the railway in 1858.

George also owned the 5-acre lot originally granted to William O'Donnell and bounded by West, Elgin and Bulwer streets and the river.

This was extremely valuable commercial land and included a public wharf.

George Yeomans died in 1853 aged 52 years after a remarkable life. He is interred in Campbells Hill cemetery.

Yeoman Avenue, Metford, is named after him, but without the s at the end of his surname.