Emergence of New England public figure

Sir George Gipps was Governor of the colony of NSW for eight years between 1838 and 1846.  Jim Belshaw continues the story of Terrible Vale, the Taylors and the early days of the New England pastoral industry.

Alexander Macleay was not the only Northern member elected to the Legislative Council in that first NSW election of June 1843 so vividly described by sixteen year old Annabella Innes. Two other Northern representatives were also elected, both for districts centered on the Hunter.

One was Richard Windeyer, another prominent name in the early history of NSW. The second was someone I have talked about before, William Dumaresq, one of the two brothers who left their name imprinted on Armidale.

I do not think that either William Tydd Taylor or his wife Margaretta came down to Port Macquarie for the election. Certainly Annabella did not mention them. However, William Taylor was now becoming a prominent public figure in his own right, a standing that would later see him elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly as the second member for New England.

Soon after his arrival at Port Macquarie in 1840, Taylor had been appointed a magistrate. While the first paid magistrate in New South Wales, D'Arcy Wentworth, had been appointed in 1810, much judicial work was still carried out by what were in fact unpaid volunteers.

With Commissioner George James Macdonald some distance away in Armidale, William Taylor became the figure of authority in the southern part of the New England Tablelands. The role wasn’t always easy, for it involved the administration of justice in what was still in many ways a penal colony.

In 1845, Governor Gipps appointed William Taylor as councilor for the District of Macquarie. The Constitution Act of 1842 that had created a partially elected Legislative Council also provided for the creation of district councils to raise rates and undertake various local government activities.

This proposal proved immensely unpopular. The colony was still recovering from a depression that had adversely affected Government revenues, as well as private fortunes.

Governor Gipps was an advocate of free immigration. Subsidised immigration schemes were established, funded from the proceeds of land sales. Among those who came were New England’s first German settlers, another thread in our story.

Immigration peaked just as depression gripped and land sales collapsed. The Gipps administration, faced with almost £1,000,000 in immigration orders that it could not pay for, struggled to find funds.

In these circumstances landowners considered, accurately enough, that the district councils were simply another way of funding government activities and therefore resisted with vigour.

Unable to proceed with the formation of the councils as planned, the Governor legislated for their creation and then appointed councilors including William Taylor.

In many cases, the newly appointed councils simply refused to meet and, in the end, this first attempt to create local government collapsed. Local government as we know it today was still decades away.   

At this point, we do not know if the Macquarie District Council ever met or, if it did meet, just what it did. William Taylor was closely aligned with the landowning interests opposing the creation of the councils, so it is quite possible that the Macquarie Council remained an entity in name alone.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 July 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

There's more to constitutional matters than just the 'vibe of the thing'

Annabella Boswell's dairies present a clear picture of life at Lake Innes including NSW's first election campaign. Jim Belshaw continues the story of Terrible Vale, the Taylors and the early days of the New England pastoral industry

Do you find constitutional matters terribly boring? I did at school and I think that most Australians do now.

In fact, constitutional discussions and decisions are some of the most fascinating historical topics, for they represent then current controversies and set the frame for later events. You only have to look at the current Brexit debate to see what I mean!

We are now at the point in the sprawling story of William Tydd Taylor and his wife Margaretta Lucy Lind and their world where constitutional matters become important, a time when key aspects of our system of Government were established. 

By 1823, the growing colony with its rising number of free settlers, emancipists and locally born required a new system of governance. In that year, the British Parliament passed an act “for the better administration of Justice in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.”

The NSW Act as it was known created a 5-7 person Legislative Council to advise the Governor It also established a judicial system, with the new Chief Justice given the power to veto colonial legislation that he considered to be in breach of the laws of England. 

The new Council met for the first time on 25 August 1824. Its first piece of legislation passed on 28 September 1824 was a Currency Act. Then, as now, economics was important!

The first Council’s five members were all officials. However, in July 1825 the Council’s numbers were increased to seven, of which three were to be non-executive members and then in 1829 to ten to fifteen of which seven had to be non-executive members.

Council members were still appointed, but the presence of the non-executive members provided an external and increasing fractious check on executive government.

In 1842, the British Parliament passes the first Constitution Act. Membership of the Council was increased to 36, of which 24 members were to be elected. The franchise was limited, but this would still be the first Parliamentary election in the colony, marking a major constitutional step.

The elections were scheduled for June 1843. Former colonial secretary Alexander Macleay decided to stand for the districts around Port Macquarie where his son-in-law Archibald Clunes Innes, William's cousin, was such a major figure.

We have a very clear picture of that first election from the journal of Archibald Innes’s sixteen year old niece Annabella. By 1843, the depression had forced Innes to retrench, but he still maintained considerable state at Lake Innes including a butler, two footmen, four maids and a personal piper!

The house filled with visitors including Alexander Macleay. There was constant movement, with the girls making favours in Macleay’s colours to be worn by the men on election day.

Polling day Friday 23 June dawned bright. The men left for Port Macquarie by coach and horseback, joined outside the gate by six men on horseback carrying flags to escort the party. It was quite a show.

Macleay was elected and would become first speaker of the new Parliament. But to Annabella, it was the colour and excitement that counted. She mentions the result only in passing!

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 July 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

Matthew Henry Marsh formed deep links with New England

Jim Belshaw continues the story of Terrible Vale, the Taylors and the early days of the New England pastoral industry. Mathew Henry Marsh and family

In an earlier column, I spoke of the friendship that formed between the Taylor and Marsh families following the arrival of Mathew Henry Marsh’s new wife Elizabeth. Eliza and Margaretta Taylor had attended the same school and now shared common experiences.

Mathew Henry Marsh (1810-1881) was born in Wiltshire, England, eldest son of the Reverend Mathew Marsh and wife Margaret. Marsh was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford and then began practice as a barrister. Finding briefs few, he followed the advice of his mother’s brother and decided to emigrate. It would prove a wise move.

Mathew Marsh clearly had access to money. He arrived in Sydney in June 1840 and then, later that year, purchased a 34,000 acre (13,759 ha) run from Robert Ramsay Mackenzie which he named Salisbury Plains. We have come across Robert Mackenzie before, for it was he that sold the adjoining run of Terrible Valley to Messrs Taylor and Middleton at around the same time.

Marsh quickly added another New England run, the 175,000 acre (70,820 ha) Boorolong, to his holdings and then a 200,000 acre (80,937 ha) Darling Down run Maryland. Now established, Marsh returned to England in 1844, leaving his more recently emigrated brother Charles in charge of the properties.

I almost wrote that Mathew Marsh returned to England to find a wife, for that is what he did, but I presume that he already knew Eliza. That may be just a presumption, for Marsh was clearly a very determined man. Just three years after arriving in the colony, he had returned with substantial holdings to his name.

On their return to the colony, Mathew and Eliza lived in first an old canvas lined slab hut called Old Sarum until Salisbury Court was finished in 1846. It was around six miles, a bit under ten kilometers, between Margaretta and Eliza, and the two visited each other on a regular basis.

It appears that Mathew Marsh could be a stroppy man. He was also a conservative one. But it is also clear that he was a very good manager, building his wealth through land. He was also something of a romantic.

In August 1855, Mathew would return to England leaving brother Charles to run the properties. In England, Mathew became a member of the British Parliament for the liberal interest, but the New England had burnt itself into his soul.

Marsh as a UK MP. Appropriately enough, he was Member for Salisbury.  

Ten years after leaving, Marsh returned to Australia on a trip. There his support for Queensland self-government, Marsh is part of the continuing story of New England’s own fight for self-government, was recognized at a public banquet in Brisbane staged in his honour.

In 1867, Marsh published Overland from Southhampton to Queensland, telling the story of his trip. It’s a good travel yarn, with the latter part full of his early New England experiences.

Marsh was only thirty when he first came to New England. The love of country that was formed partly out of the sense of a young man’s adventure is deeply embedded in the book in prose and poetry. This was, he suggested, the most beautiful countryside in the world.

If Commissioner George James Macdonald was New England’s first European poet, Marsh may well have been the second.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 June 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - wool production a chilly business for homestead

Jim Belshaw continues the story of Terrible Vale, the Taylors and the early days of the New England pastoral industry

Soon after bringing Margaretta Lucy Lind  and the children to Terrible Vale in 1844, William Tydd Taylor had built a new woolshed on the property about 100 yards from the newly constructed homestead. That plus the homestead and the nearby barn and men’s quarters made for a small settlement.

The woolshed was needed.

The depression that gripped NSW in the early 1840s made money hard to obtain and yet money was constantly required to develop the early New England runs and to bridge the financial gap between the annual sales of the wool clip.

With scarce capital, the NSW Legislative Council agreed changes that allowed loans to be advanced on the security of unshorn wool and mortgages over livestock. In February 1845, this allowed Taylor to borrow £1,200 pounds from Stuart Alexander Donaldson secured by mortgage over 9,696 sheep.

Donaldson and Taylor would later be in Parliament at the same time, with Donaldson becoming the first Premier of NSW.

With growing sheep numbers, Taylor faced the challenge of collecting the flock, washing them and then bringing them to the new shearing shed where the wool was clipped and baled.

Washing the sheep was important. Grazing, sheep collected grit and burrs that added to the weight of the wool and made it harder to process.  Washed wool attracted a premium, something that was important to cash strapped pastoralists.

But washing sheep was also hard, back-breaking work. Today we forget just how much physical labour was involved in making a living in our very recent past.

This applied as much to women as men. Maintaining a household, especially a large household, required constant work.

On Terrible Vale, washing the sheep was done in October prior to sheering. Sheep had to be collected from across the property and then penned in a specially constructed yard near the creek. There they were driven into the creek.

In the creek, a line of men standing in waste deep cold water would take the sheep and try to clean it before passing it on to the next man. At the end of the chain, the sheep were hauled out onto the bank and placed in a yard to dry.

Have you ever tried to lift a fully grown ewe? In Armidale parlance I’m a townie, but I have and they are bloody heavy. So imagine a scene in which protesting wet wool sheep (wet sheep are heavier because of the weight of the water) are swimming or being pushed along a line while men scrub them.

October can be cold, so following hours of this work the sheep are cold but the men are frozen. To help them continue, men were often given a ration of grog in the middle of the process.

Once the sheep were washed, they had to be shorn. The shearing gangs that would become a feature of New England life did not yet exist, so everybody helped.

Shearing completed, the wool was dispatched to London, first by Port Macquarie, later Morpeth. Now began the anxious wait. Would the wool get there? What price would it get?

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 22 June 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - Terrible Vale grows into expansive lot

QUITE THE FLOCK: There were 7827 sheep on Terrible Vale in the 1840s among 60 cattle, six horses and 26 human residents. 

I don't have a picture of the house William Tydd Taylor built for  his family. This is a much later slab and daub homestead.  

The house that William Tydd Taylor built for Margaretta and the children on Terrible Vale was a timber slab and bark home with some stone foundations built near the creek for easier access to water which had to be carted in barrels from a spring near the creek. Much of the washing was done in the creek itself.

To this point, I have been referring to the run as Terrible Valley, its original name. However, by the time I am writing about, the shortened form of the name seems to have come into popular use.

With the house finished, the family took the long dray trip from Port Macquarie over the ranges onto Terrible Vale. We do not know what the weather was like, the road was absolutely dreadful in wet periods, but it was probably quite exciting for the children if Annabella Boswell’s descriptions of similar trips as a child are any guide.

For Margaretta Taylor, the trip must have been more difficult, for she was leaving the civilisation of Port Macquarie for a remote place with no female companionship.

By 1844, Port Macquarie’s brief golden age was in decline as the penal colony began to wind down, but there were still the stores, church and the regular steamer connections with Sydney. There was still the regular social life centred in part on Lake Innes involving the army officers, the administrators, the merchants and the increasing number of free settlers who had made the Hastings Valley their home.

Margaretta was no stranger to the rigours of settler life. She had experienced that at Oakville, where she was often alone apart from the servants while William was working away on Terrible Vale. Still, there was a considerable difference between a world in which you could purchase supplies after a journey measured in hours, where you could order something from Sydney and expect it to be delivered in a few weeks, to one where the most basic supplies could take many weeks to arrive.

Terrible Vale itself had developed into a small settlement. When Commissioner George James Macdonald, Armidale’s founder and first poet, visited the run early in 1844, it had 30 European residents. There were four cottages and huts 90 acres under cultivation, 33 cattle, one horse and 5,714 sheep.

When the Commissioner visited eighteen months later, the number of residents had declined to 26, the area under cultivation had dropped to 18 acres, but stock numbers had grown rapidly. There were now 6 horses, 60 cattle and 7,827 sheep.

The small number of horses in these records always comes as a surprise, but horses had been in quite short supply for much of early colonial history. . Horses reproduce relatively slowly, so that even with imports they could be difficult to obtain. People walked rather than rode, often for very long distances.

At the end of 1844, Margaretta Taylor’s isolation was eased by a new arrival, one that will introduce another familiar Armidale name, Marsh.

Eliza (Elizabeth) Merewether had attended the same school as Margaretta. In 1844, she married Mathew Henry Marsh, the owner of the adjoining Salisbury run, coming to live with her new husband on Salisbury.

Taylor and Marsh knew each other. Now with Eliza’s arrival, a deep family friendship was formed. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 15 June 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - 1840s wool crash brings new challenges

KEEPING SHEEP: Jim Belshaw continues his story of the Taylor family, their world and the trials and tribulations of the early wool industry in New England 

As depression gripped NSW, the sprawling commercial and pastoral empire of Taylor's cousin Archibald Clunes Innes came under pressure. 

By 1843, he was in serious financial difficulties. He managed to borrow the enormous sum of £29,000 pounds secured by certain landholdings, his stores at Armidale and Port Macquarie, his household furniture, carriages and other personal effects. That stabilized the position for the present.

Photo: Archibald Clunes Innes as a young man. The commercial empire he founded and the life style at Lake Innes, his Port Macquarie headquarters, provide one of the themes in our story. 

Later in 1843, the large mercantile firm of Messrs Hughes and Hoskings, one of those who had lent money to Innes, failed. The firm owed £155,000 to the Bank of Australia and its failure pulled the Bank down, adding to the economic woes.

In 1844, the commercial, shipping and pastoral empire of Joseph Grose failed. 

We first met Grose when he commissioned the construction of the William the Fourth, the Billy, the first steamer built in NSW (1831) and a familiar sight on the Port Macquarie run. This was followed by the purchase of the Sophia Jane, another familiar ship to those living at Port Macquarie and in the southern New England.

The drought that gripped NSW in the late 1830s affected Grose, as did the decline in stock prices. His Hunter River trade came under pressure from the newly formed Hunter River Steam Navigation Company, while in 1839 his largest and fastest steamer, the newly purchased King William the Fourth, was wrecked. Then came the collapse of the Victoria Mills with a loss to Grose of £5,000. It was all too much.

In addition to the funds borrowed from Messrs Hughes and Hoskings, the £29,000 borrowed by Innes in 1843 included substantial contributions from the Macleay and Dumaresq families. Innes was married to Margaret Macleay, while William Dumaresq had married Margaret’s sister Christiana Susan.

Henry (1792-1838) and William John Dumaresq (1793-1868), were the sons of Colonel John Dumaresq. Both went to the Royal Military College, Great Marlow, and served during the Peninsular War and in Canada.

Photo: The Dumaresq River in Northern New England, Southern Queensland, Armidale's Dumaresq Creek and the previous Dumaresq Creek are just some of the features named after the Dumaresqs 

Between 1818 and 1825, Henry served in Mauritius where became military secretary to General (Sir) Ralph Darling, who married his sister Eliza. When Darling accepted office as governor of New South Wales, Henry became his private secretary. This brought Henry and William to NSW. 

The two brothers each built up considerable estates in the Hunter Valley, while also acquiring the large New England runs of Saumarez and Tilbuster, thus establishing the now familiar Dumaresq name in the Armidale district.

Both brothers established reputations as effective and indeed kindly managers who looked after their staff, convict and free. “The result of such a system is just what might be expected”; wrote John Dunmore Lang, “the men are sober, industrious and contented”

While the loans from the Macleay and Dumaresq families were helping stabilize Archibald Innes’s position, William Tydd Taylor Margaretta Lucy Lind were taking the next step in their own journey.

William had purchased Middleton’s interest in Terrible Valley in November 1843. With full ownership, he began construction of the first Taylor family home on Terrible Valley.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 8 June 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - twist in Taylor's fate with wool price crash

EARLY 1840s. The long NSW pastoral boom ends in perfect economic storm. While William and Margaretta Taylor were able to consolidate their position at Terrible Valley, cousin Archibald Clunes Innes faced possible bankruptcy and the destruction of his business empire. 

The first fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788. Reflecting both the penal nature of the new colony and the difficulties of settlement, the initial growth of the non-Aboriginal population was relatively slow.

In 1798, ten years after the first fleet, the non-Aboriginal population had reached 4,588. By 1808, it had more than doubled to 10,263 including the new colony in Van Diemen’s Land. It more than doubled again over the next ten years, reaching 25,859 in 1818. Growth now accelerated.

By 1828, the population had increased to 58,159 and then to 151,808 in in 1838. By 1840, the year that William Tydd Taylor and Margaretta Lucy Lind arrived in Port Macquarie, the population was 190,408. The following year it grew to 220,908.

This long growth cycle has been supported by British Government spending on the penal system. Early fortunes were made by supplying the commissariat or, indeed, appropriating stock from the commissariat to build personal herds. Convicts supplied the labour required to develop estates.

This early growth was replaced by one based on pastoral expansion. High wool prices provided a value product that could support high transport costs. Settlement exploded as people sought new land. Demand for stock to meet the needs of an expanding frontier made sheep, cattle and horses valuable property.

The merchants and ship owners such as Joseph Grose prospered, supplying both the settler and growing urban population. Money was made from real estate as land values increased. Growing wealth was invested in mansions and the trappings of civilized life. It was a real boom.

In the early 1840s, the boom went into reverse. Wool prices collapsed. This added to a collapse in the value of stock associated with the end of rapid pastoral expansion that had supported stock prices as settlers bought stock to fund their new runs.

A practical man, William Taylor seems to have focused on consolidating his position as depression emerged. By the end of 1842, he owned Terrible Valley in partnership with Joseph Middleton as well as Oakville in the Hasting Valley, splitting his time between the two. 

Taylor had become a magistrate soon after his arrival in 1840. With Commissioner Macdonald, the nearest legal authority, some distance away in Armidale, Taylor was required to dispense justice.

He built the first woolshed on Terrible Valley, while the station store became a source of supplies for settlers further inland whose drays were delayed bringing supplies up from Maitland and the nearby river port of Morpeth on the Hunter.

In November 1843, he was able to make a major advance, buying Middleton’s share of Terrible Valley for £400. The price was a sign of the difficult times, for Taylor and Middleton had paid £3,500 for the run just three years before.

William and Margaretta now had a relatively secure base. That could not be said for his cousin, Archibald Innes, who was facing possible bankruptcy. Its resolution will introduce a new and very familiar name to our story, that of Dumaresq. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 1 June 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - establishing the Terrible Valley base

To earn extra money, William Taylor acted as a carrier between the Tablelands and Port Macquarie

September 1841. While Margaretta and the children stayed at Thrumster, William Taylor worked to develop Terrible Valley. Two drays were included in the equipment Taylor and Middleton had acquired when they bought the run. Now William Taylor became a carrier between Port Macquarie and the Southern New England.

The move made sense. Taylor needed to bring supplies in and send wool out. He had the drays, so why carry for other people as well.

In 1842, cousin Archibald Clunes Innes was able to arrange convict labour to build a new road from Port Macquarie onto the Tablelands.

Innes still wished to build Port Macquarie into a major centre, while the “better” road made it easier (and cheaper) for him to access his own properties. I have put better into inverted commas because older New England residents will remember the roads to the coast before tar. It would be the early 1960s before the first tarred road to the coast appeared.

Still, the new road did shorten the long journey. To celebrate, Innes, always the showman, made a considerable production of the first load of wool from his own properties to reach the new wool store he had constructed on the Port Macquarie waterfront for loading onto the steamer he had chartered for the occasion.

Upon arrival in Port Macquarie, William Taylor had first looked to acquire land in the Hastings Valley but without success. It was not until December 1842 that he took over the mortgage on 1,062 acres of land near the junction of Piper’s Creek with the Maria River, about fifteen miles north of Port Macquarie. The new property was named Oakville.

There is a problem with dates here, for some dates suggest that the Taylors were living at Oakville before the formal acquisition.

William Tydd Taylor and Margaretta Lucy Lind’s first child was born at Thrumster. The next three children were born at Oakville.

Conditions for Margaretta were not always easy. When one of her daughters was born, for example, William was away. The convict servants were generally drunk, and it was left to a female convict to help Henrietta through the birth.

Drunkenness among convict (and other) staff was a major issue.

In her diary, Annabella Innes records that went they went to tap a barrel of port laid down by Major Innes, they found it empty. The cellar could only be entered via a locked door. Investigation showed that the frequently drunk cook and another convict servant had cut a hole through the kitchen floor to allow them access to the cellar!

William ran cattle on Oakville, sheep on Terrible Valley. This would be helpful as the perfect economic storm that I have talked about before broke across the colony.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 25 May 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - Taylor settles in during pastoral boom

FRONTIER WARFARE. Rapid pastoral expansion led to Aboriginal resistance that was met with force including the Waterloo Creek Massacre also known Slaughterhouse Creek where mounted police clashed with the Kamilaroi in January 1838 

Thrumster, the 640 acre property that William Tydd Taylor and Margaretta Lucy Lind settled on after their arrival in Port Macquarie in April 1840, had been given as a land grant to William’s cousin Archibald Clunes Innes in 1838. It adjoined Innes’s Lake Innes Estate, making contact easy.

William and Margaretta would spend much of their early married years living at Thrumster and visiting Lake Innes. Their eldest son, born in 1844, would be named Innes Taylor.

In 1840, Innes was still expanding his interests. In Port Macquarie he would own (among other things) a store, wool storage facilities, a hotel and a mill. He acquired sheep and cattle stations all over northern New South Wales, among them Yarrows on the Hastings, Brimbine and Innestown on the Manning, Waterloo, Innes Creek, Kentucky, Beardy Plains and Furracabad on the Tablelands. The township on Furracabad, now called Glen Innes, carries his name.

William Taylor looked at land around Port Macquarie, applying unsuccessfully to purchase several blocks in August and September 1840. .He was also looking further a-field.

In September 1840, he partnered with Joseph Richard Middleton to buy occupancy rights to Terrible Valley station for 3,500 pounds, one thousand in cash, the rest on terms spread over two years. Located on the Salisbury Plains south of modern Uralla, the property adjoined the Kentucky run.

Now we need to understand something about the economics of the period beyond the limits of settlement.

The squatters did not own the land. Rather, they were purchasing the stock, any improvements such as huts, yards, hurdles (moveable sheep pens), any kit such as drays plus any stocks of rations or other supplies.

The squatters returns came from solely from the sale of wool or meat and from the natural increase in stock numbers. During the period of rapid expansion of European settlement, stock were valued not just in terms of immediate return from wool or meat, but also to meet the constant demand for stock by settlers moving to settle new areas.  

The value placed on stock was reflected in the terms of employment for staff. Excluding unpaid convict labour, shepherds had the value of any animals lost deducted from their wages, while senior staff could be paid in stock that they might run on the place and sell later..

This economic structure helps explain some of the frontier violence. The Aborigines considered, rightly, that this was their land. When they killed stock in revenge or for food, they were attacking personal economic activity, leading to a cycle of violence.

It also explains the looming if unseen economic threat hanging over the colony, for economic growth had been financially leveraged, with leverage based on the value of constantly expanding stock.

In September 1841, the resulting troubles were still a little way away. Taylor and Middleton kept an overseer on Terrible Valley station. This allowed them to keep living in the civilized world of Port Macquarie, with William Taylor spending time at Terrible Valley developing the run. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 May 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - full steam ahead for Billy into a busy port

LAST STAGE OF THE JOURNEY. Ships travelling to Port Macquarie sometimes had to wait for days to dock according to the diaries of Annabella Innes

To those who read this column on a regular basis, I must seem very slow in telling the story of William Tydd Taylor and Margaretta Lucy Lind. Somehow, I seem to get sidetracked.

That’s very true. I am using their early story to take you on a ramble across the early colonial history of Northern NSW, the broader New England.

Walter and Margaretta arrived in Port Macquarie on the Steam packet William the Fourth in early 1940. Today, we forget just how important coastal shipping was in nineteenth century before the expansion of the railways. That part of the history of Northern NSW has almost been air-brushed from memory.

William the Fourth, the Billy, is quite a famous ship. Ordered by Sydney Merchant Joseph Grose in 1830 for the Hunter River trade, it was built on the Williams River at the Clarencetown yards established by Scottish shipwrights Lowe and Marshall.

This was Grose’s first venture into shipping. Born in Deptford, London, in 1788, Gose had become a successful pastoralist and merchant in the new colony. Hearing of the success of steam propelled vessels overseas, he decided to build one to extend his commercial interests into shipping.

It proved a profitable decision. For much of the 1830s, Grose dominated the Hunter River trade and also serviced Port Macquarie. Another of his well known vessels was the steam packet Sophia Jane, a ship that also became very familiar to those living at Port Macquarie or using it as their main port.

William the Fourth, a wooden paddle steamer with two masts, was the first ocean going steamship built in Australia. At 59 tons she was not a big ship. But then, she could not be to get across the difficult bar at the mouth of the Hastings River.

At Port Macquarie, ships sometimes had to wait for days to enter across the bar. Some went to Trial Bay to anchor and collect water, while others would by pass Port Macquarie completely, forcing passengers and freight to come by other routes.

The diaries of Annabella Innes, later Boswell, are full of references to ships, ships delayed, people waiting impatiently. These problems would doom the dreams of those who saw Port Macquarie becoming the main port for the southern New England.

Upon arrival in Port Macquarie, the Taylors took up residence on Thrumster, a 640 acre block owned by Taylor’s cousin, Archibald Clunes Innes and adjoining Innes’ main holding around Lake Innes.

Innes was then at the height of his power and influence in the colony.

Like Joseph Grose, he had benefited from the rapid expansion in population and economic activity over the 1830s. Like Joseph Grose, he had benefited from the Government contracts for supply to the convict establishments, providing cash flow to support other activities.

Both men now faced a perfect economic storm as the convict system wound down and depression gripped the economy with low wool prices and the ending of rapid migration.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 May 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - tragic death blights a Governor's life

A plaque near the entrance to Old Government House Parramatta, now a popular tourist spot, marks the place where Lady Fitzroy died.  

Friday, 1 March 1844. NSW Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy accompanied by his wife Mary, a son acting as private secretary plus entourage, embarked on the steam packet for Port Macquarie. A new Governor, he had been sworn in the previous August, FitzRoy was determined to visit every part of the colony.

At Port Macquarie, the Governor and his party were accommodated and entertained at “the Lake Cottage”, the attractive and well established home and headquarters of Archibald Clunes Innes. Innes’ niece Annabella Innes, later Boswell, recorded the details of the visit in her diary, including details of the dinner and ball staged in honour of the FitzRoys.

FitzRoy was a man of considerable charm and ability, able to navigate the complex web of colonial politics and society, if not always in ways that satisfied his superiors in London. His wife had equal, if not better, social skills. Personally close, they made a formidable team.

From Port Macquarie, the couple and their companions set out on the 150 mile journey to Armidale, the first Vice-Regal visit to the Northern Tablelands. The tracks were abysmal, with the drays carrying supplies in and wool out sometimes bogged for days, so all the party rode. The journey took three days.

On the return trip, FitzRoy’s horse fell, pinning his leg. Injured, he was placed in a two wheel vehicle to reduce the jolting, although the jolting on the rough track must have been almost as bad. Then the lead horse fell, throwing FitzRoy from carriage to ground.

The FitzRoys returned safely to Sydney. However, there would be a further and tragic reminder of the dangers involved with horses.

On 7 December 1847, the couple were leaving Government House at Parramatta. The party was delayed and the horses were restless. FitzRoy was at the reins of the carriage, he was an excellent whip, when the horses bolted. His wife was killed, his aide-de-camp would die from injuries, while FitzRoy suffered leg injuries.

FitzRoy’s many friend in the North were deeply upset. FitzRoy was distraught. He considered resigning his post, but finally decided to stay on, primarily for financial reasons.

Among those who attended that Port Macquarie dinner and ball were Archibald Innes’ cousin William Tydd Taylor, wife Margaretta and their now four children. “Mrs Taylor, we thought, was very pretty” wrote Annabella Boswell, nee Innes, in her journal..

In my last column, we left William and Margaretta Taylor still in England following their 1839 marriage. On 5 October 1839, they sailed for Australia on the 350 ton barque “Chelydra”, arriving in Sydney on 29 March 1840. Two days later, 1 April, they set sail for Port Macquarie on the steam packet “William the Fourth”.

It seems clear that it was the Innes connection that persuaded the Taylors to emigrate. It was also that connection that provided a base for what was to follow. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 April 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.

History Revisited - John Stuart Mill's link to New England

I have let this post stand, but following it I discovered that there were two Harriet Taylors and that our Harriet Taylor (and despite one Taylor family history) could not have been  Harriet Taylor Mill.

A PLACE OF LEARNING: William Tydd Taylor attended Edinburgh University before marrying Margaretta Lucy Lind and moving to the New England Tablelands  

I never cease to be fascinated by the connections I find as I trawl through New England’s history. This is another such case.

William Tydd Taylor was born at Edinburgh in 1814. Initially he lived with father John, Mother Harriet and younger brother John near Dundee on the River Tay.

Now we come to the first connection. Harriet Taylor is better known as Harriet Taylor Mill, ardent feminist and the wife of economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill.

It is not clear when Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill first became involved. Helen Taylor, John and Harriet Taylor’s daughter, was born in 1831. By 1833, Harriet was living in a separate residence, although the public façade of the marriage was preserved. at John Taylor’s request.

The relationship between Harriet and John Stuart Mill began as shared intellectual interests, but then deepened into something more. Mill was always generous in recognising her contribution to his thought, Harriet reluctant to accept, although she was writing in her own right. Finally, but only after John Taylor’s death, Harriet and Mill married.

John Taylor was clearly a remarkable person. A man of education, he accepted the relationship and also inspired daughter Helen with a lifelong love for history and strong filial affection from an early age. After Harriet’s death, Helen, now known as the step daughter of John Stuart Mill, would carry on her mother’s work.

These events all lay in the future at the time William Tydd Taylor was born.

William attended Edinburgh University and then became a barrister. In 1838, he received an inheritance from his grandfather’s estate. The following year, on 30 July 1839, William married Margaretta Lucy Lind.

Margaretta was, I think, another connection to that eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment that had helped form John Taylor.

Born in Calcutta to Alexander Francis Lind, a member of the Bengal Civil Service, and Anna nee McCann, Margaretta was the granddaughter of James Lind of Gorgie.

A physician and surgeon and close friend of the poet Shelly, James Lind had visited China in 1766, went to Iceland with a young Sir Joseph Banks and then became physician to the royal household of George the Third.

One of the guests at William and Margaretta’s wedding of was a young Frederick Roberts. Roberts was William’s cousin and would become Roberts of Kandahar, one of the most famous British generals of the nineteenth century. He remembered William and Margaretta as a handsome couple, a view supported by later photos.

Events now would take the newly married couple to other side of the world, to the southern New England Tablelands where they would spend the rest of their lives.

The catalyst here was almost certainly another of William’s cousins, Archibald Clunes Innes. I will continue this story in my next column.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 April 2016. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016.