The fall of Archibald Clunes Innes

In 1840, Port Macquarie’s Archibald Clunes Innes was at the height of his wealth and power with stores, pastoral runs and real estate holdings on the coast and across the New England. Now he faced economic storms of cyclonic proportions.   

Opposition to transportation had been rising, driven in part by the growing number of free workers especially in Sydney who saw the convicts as an economic threat, in part by those who believed that continued transportation was incompatible with the development of a free colony.

Aberglasslyn House outside Maitland is an example of the rise and falls associated with the crash of the early 1840s. This monumental Georgian pile designed by architect John Verge for George Hobler, remained unfinished following Hoblers insolvency in the crash.

In face of protests, transportation to NSW was suspended in 1840. Innes had built his wealth in part on access to convict labour to service his growing empire. Now he and other squatters faced labour shortages together with rising wage costs, leading to a search for new workers.

 Later in the decade, this would bring the first Chinese and German workers to New England, but the initial effects were severe. However, these were the least of Innes’s problems.

Over the 1820s and 1830s NSW experienced a sustained economic boom.

High wool prices fueled pastoral expansion which in turn inflated stock prices. The previously small European population grew from 7,040 in 1807 to 28,024 in 1820, to over 44,000 in 1830, passing 127,000 in 1847, inflating real estate prices. Land sales inflated Government revenues that were used in part to fund immigration.

 Growth required capital drawn heavily from English investors and the London capital market, fueling the growing boom. Fortunes were being made from speculation in stock and real estate, fortunes invested in further speculation and in the construction of the first grand homes including Lake Innes House. Now all this came to a shuddering halt.  

 In 1837, a speculation fueled US boom part fueled by English capital crashed. This led to a financial crisis in England in 1839, drying up the capital that had been fueling the NSW boom.

Wool prices dropped sharply as did live stock prices, a fall accentuated by the ending of the rapid pastoral expansion that had driven up prices as stock was purchased to stock the new runs. Government revenues from land sales fell sharply, creating a Government financial crisis.

The end result was a rolling series of bankruptcies among those who most exposed to the boom including that of merchant, pastoralist and steamship owner Joseph Grose in 1844. Grose’s spread of interests made him a considerable figure in the early colonial history of Northern NSW’

 Innes could not escape the turmoil. Initially he seems to have refinanced his operations using family money. But then, in 1843, the collapse of a large Sydney based pastoral house led to the collapse of a major local bank that would finally force Innes into bankruptcy. An era had ended.

Archibald Clunes Innes, a major figure in New England's early colonial history, reflects the the rise and fall of Port Macquarie

Lake Innes House, Port Macquarie, 1839, where Archibald Clunes Innes entertained in lavish style.

The rise and subsequent decline of Port Macquarie from the centre of British civilization in the North to quiet backwater is captured in the rise and fall of one man, Archibald Clunes Innes. His story tells us much about New England’s early colonial history.  

Innes (1800-1857)  was born at Thrumster, Scotland, the son of Major James Innes, a distinguished soldier. At thirteen, he joined the army as an ensign, serving in the Peninsular War against Napoleon. 

Innes arrived in Sydney in 1822 as captain of the guard in the convict ship Eliza. There he quickly moved up the colonial hierarchy, including six months as commandant of the Port Macquarie penal colony. 

In 1829 at one of the most magnificent weddings that the colony had then seen, Innes married Margaret, daughter of the colonial secretary, Alexander McLeay. 

McLeay, the builder of Sydney icon Elizabeth Bay House, was one of Sydney’s wealthiest and most prominent men. The Macleay River carries his name. 

Having resigned his commission in 1829, Innes became police magistrate at Port Macquarie in 1830 and was granted 2568 acres (1039 ha) of land and contracts to supply the convict population with food.

By 1840, Innes was one of the wealthiest men in the colony. 

Working from his initial base, he had 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 and Beardy Plains on the Tablelands. His acquisition of Furracabad and the creation of the store on that station would provide the base for the development of Glen Innes. 

To support his growing empire he created stores, would build the first convict built road onto the Tablelands and began exporting wool from Port Macquarie to Sydney. In his mind, I think, he saw Port Macquarie developing as a major commercial centre and port servicing the New England. 

As a sign of his growing wealth, Innes used convict labour to build Lake Innes House, a grand new home suitable to his aspirations. There he entertained lavishly supported by staff including a butler, musicians, maids and stable hands. The staff included New England’s first Spanish settlers. 

As Innes’s interests developed, Port Macquarie became an immigration centre bringing in new and especially Scottish settlers who would move onto the Tablelands. Among those who came were his cousin William Tydd Taylor and wife Margaretta Lucy Lind who would take up what became known as Terrible Vale Station.  

Archibald Clunes Innes was now at the peak of wealth and power, but disaster lay ahead. 

Note to readers: This post was prepared as a column for the on-line edition of the Armidale Express. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters 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, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020, here 2021 

Port Macquarie: the centre of British civilization in the north

Port Macquarie, 1832, by convict artist Joseph Backler.

I wonder how many New Englanders know that for more than a decade Port Macquarie was the centre of British civilization on Northern NSW? 

Maitland (1829) together with its adjoining river port at Morpeth (1831) would develop into the largest urban conglomeration in the North, but this still lay ahead. 

The penal colony at Newcastle had been established in 1804 as a place of secondary punishment for re-offending convicts, but problems soon emerged. 

Newcastle was just too close to the Sydney fleshspots, to accessible by land, providing the incentive and means for absconding. There was also pressure to open up the Hunter for European settlement. 

There were initial land grants under Governor Macquarie, but these were limited to small grants to ex-convicts. However, further south the settlers on the Hawkesbury and in the Sydney Basin were seeking new pastures for their growing flocks and herds. As a consequence, the Hunter was opened up for European settlement in 1822. 

Explorer John Oxley had discovered and named Port Macquarie in 1818. This seemed a suitable site for a new penal colony to replace Newcastle, although Macquarie was initially uncertain. Finally, in 1821 the decision was made to proceed. 

In seeking to discover that far country called the past, we are all bound by current mind-sets in ways that we do not always understand. Port Macquarie is a case in point. 

I had always thought of Port Macquarie as a minor penal settlement founded from and close to Sydney, something equivalent to the establishment of the jail at Grafton many years later. The reality is different.

To begin with, the number or convicts sent to Port Macquarie was roughly similar in scale to those sent to Port Jackson in the early days. This was not a small settlement.

Like Port Jackson, convicts were expected to build the necessary infrastructure including barracks required to support the colony. Like Port Jackson, they were expected to grow their own food. And like Port Jackson, the Government was interested in exports from the new colony that might yield economic gain. 

The new colony was expected to be a punishment colony, a feared place of secondary punishment. But to accommodate the needs of the new colony, convicts volunteering to build Port Macquarie were offered special treatment.

Later, convicts sent to Port Macquarie were also granted special privileges in the treatment of things such as their own gardens. This, too, had happened at Port Jackson, but it created a fundamental problem. This can be put simply.

Port Macquarie was a place of secondary punishment, a place to be feared. How, then, do your reconcile the special treatment required to establish and then maintain the colony?

There were no easy answers to this question. It led to fluctuating treatment of the convicts as official balance switched between punishment and remediation. Meantime, a new town had emerged. 

Note to readers: This post was prepared as a column for the on-line edition of the Armidale Express. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters 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, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020, here 2021 

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.

History revisited - likeable man drove development

The one portrait I have seen of Archibald Clunes Innes presents him in army dress uniform as a young captain in the English 3^rd or Buffs Regiment. His formal jacket encloses his neck, creating an elongated effect; his head with its black hair and brown eyes seems to sit a little uncomfortably on the jacket’s buttoned top, somehow separated from his body.

By all accounts, Innes was a likeable man. He was certainly an interesting one who left an imprint on the North that survives to this day. Glen Innes carries his name,

In 1822, Innes arrived in Sydney in 1822 as captain of the guard in the convict ship Eliza. He was twenty two. In December 1826, Innes was appointed commandant of the penal settlement at Port Macquarie.

Growing up in New England, I had no idea that the then sleepy sea side town had been such a big place and so early in the colonial history of New South Wales.

To put this in context, in 1788 the total European population of New South Wales was 1,030. At the time that Innes took control of the Port Macquarie penal settlement, the convict population was around 1,600. In just five years, a totally new colony had been built from scratch.

The story of early Port Macquarie is an interesting one that I might tell later. For the moment, my focus is on Archibald Innes.

Innes only stayed at Port Macquarie for six months before returning to Sydney. There he worked as a military officer before resigning his commission and becoming superintendent of police and magistrate at Parramatta. In 1829 he married Margaret, the daughter of colonial secretary Alexander McLeay, in one of the most lavish social weddings the colony had yet seen. We remember McLeay today in terms of a river (the Macleay), a Sydney Street (Macleay Street) and Elizabeth Bay House, the magnificent home built by Andrew McLeay.

With the opening of Port Macquarie to civilian settlement, Innes returned in 1830 as police magistrate with a 2,568 acre (1,039 hectare) land grant and a contract to supply the convict population with food. From this point, he built a business and pastoral empire that included Waterloo, Innes Creek, Kentucky, Beardy Plains and Furracabad on the Tableands. The last became the site for the new township of Glen Innes.

Innes owned stores and hotels and organised the building of the first road between Port Macquarie and the Tablelands as a way of getting supplies up and bringing wool back for shipment from Port Macquarie.. Using convict labour, he built a major house at Port Macquarie and transformed the surrounding land into the fabled Lake Innes, for many years the greatest pastoral property north of Sydney. There he entertained lavishly.

Reading the diaries and descriptions of life at Lake Innes, this is a very Jane Austin world: visits by dignitaries, military officers or young men from the New England, dances and decorous rides, collecting flowers and the beauty of nature. We know that it won’t last, that the crash of the 1840s is coming, but we can still share some of the joys.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 September 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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.