Gore's
partner in establishing the Salvation Army in Australia - Edward Saunders
and family, ca.1905
When John Gore, a convert of
William Booth's "Christian Mission" in London, gave his testimony in
the Pirie Street Wesleyan Church in Adelaide in 1880, it invoked a response
from another member of that congregation who also had been a Booth convert in
England, one Edwards Saunders. The two met for the first time that day.
After Gore met Edward Saunders who had
also at one time been a member of Booth's mission,
and had arrived in Adelaide in 1879, the two decided to team up and hold meetings
along the lines of how they thought Booth would do it. The next evening
they preached in the notorious Light Square, and were
abused by a mob there. They continued to preach, convinced that the effort was
worthwhile. They wrote to Booth asking him to send officers 'as fast as
fire and steam can bring them'.
John Gore had been born at
Sutton, Lincolnshire, England. He was son of William Gore, shoemaker, and his wife
Martha, née Marsh. On 3 September 1867 he was converted at the " Christian
mission" conducted by William Booth. For two years he had helped Booth in
the mission which in 1878 became known as the Salvation Army. In 1870 Gore
married Sarah Simpson and in 1878 they emigrated to Australia, arriving with
their three children in
Adelaide. In Adelaide, the deeply religious John Gore had at first became
active in the Bible Christian Church. For their sustenance he
obtained railway construction work.
Encouraged by Booth, Gore and Saunders
decided to hold their first 'official' Salvationist meeting on Sunday, 5
September, at the open forum in Botanic Park. They thought that
the meeting was successful.
Gore again wrote to Booth after
the meeting in the Botanic Park, conveying that "The Salvation Army has commenced in
this sunny land". He went on to say that Edward Saunders was
Secretary, and Thomas Glay was Treasurer, and that “The Army is led by me
until some of you arrive.” Gore was 37 and Saunders was 33 years
old. Actually there were also others in 1880, both in Brisbane and
in West
Wallsend near Newcastle, who were also being active along very similar lines; but
Gore was the first to so decisively declare back to Booth that the Salvation
Army had formed in Australia and he was leading it.
Barracks were soon built at the corner of Hindley and Morphett Streets.
The Salvation Army sent out
Captain and Mrs. Thomas Sutherland. When these arrived in February 1881, sixty-eight converts
and supporters marched to the port to greet them. The movement's numbers increased and
by 1882 the Salvationists had started in Sydney too. Saunders was sent to Sydney to build the Army's first hall
there. By 1884 the Army reached Penrith, where it appears to have
been welcomed and helped to establish by the local Methodists.
Gore, who had been
working on the railways, in 1883 decided to become a full-time officer. He became a Captain, then
an Ensign in March 1895, and then ultimately Adjutant in 1897. Gore transferred to New South Wales
in 1889, where he and his wife Sarah served at Wallsend, Leichhardt, Penrith, Parramatta, Wagga Wagga
and Wollongong.
Gore retired from active service in 1902 and became staff-orderly at colony headquarters.
In 1924 he was received
into the Order of the Founder. His
wife died on 14 August 1915 and on 25 May 1916 Gore married an elderly widow,
Esther Willings, who cared for him until he died aged 85 at Mortdale on 28
December 1931. He was survived by six children of his first marriage. Three of
them were Salvationist officers.
Gore's founding partner
pre-deceased him. In 1923 Commissioner Richards learned of Edward Saunder’s failing
health. He visited this “pioneer of 40
years ago” at his home in Canterbury. Just one week later, on
11th August 1923, Edward Saunders was promoted-to-glory, aged 73
years.
Seeing Gore had been at some time
in command of Penrith Corps, it can be assumed therefore that Sister Mrs
Cummins was very likely acquainted with the founder of the Australian Salvation Army.
But still the details of just when and how she first entered into 'Christian
Mission' type work remain unknown.
The Worboys link to the Army
continues still higher than this though - to General.
General is the title of
international leader of the Salvation Army. The first five leaders
were:
George Carpenter was the first
non-English (Australian-born) general.
George Lyndon Carpenter
(1872-1948) was born in 1872 at Miller's Forest. He was born into a
Methodist family, with a Salvationist mother. That mother was Hannah
Worboys from England.
Was this the Hannah Warboys who
arrived aged 12 with the second batch of Worboys on the Speedy in 1855 (and who
would have been aged 29 in 1972)?
Were the second lot of Worboys
related to the first? Almost certainly yes, and probably
encouraged to emigrate by good reports on Australia returned to Cambridgeshire
Worboys by Augusta's parents.
This
Hannah Worboys, the mother of General George Carpenter, was born in 1843
in Newnham, Hertfordshire; and her sister, Mary, was born 1846 also in Newnham
(fide Margaret Guy, margaret_edith_guy@hotmail.com
whose great grandmother was this Mary - Mary had married Tom Fountain in 1868 at
Miller's Forest). Now if we look at the shipping records, the
Speedy also brought a Mary, who was aged 9 when Hannah was 12. It's
clearly the same family.
Another
researcher of this family, who has the family as a tree is Debbie
Reid. One of the son's of William Taylor Byrnes and
Kate
Cummins, William Edward (born 1902) married Louisa Woodleigh in 1925 and they
had 12 children. One of their
daughters,
Patricia (born 1941), married Leslie McKeon in 1959. They had 5
daughters, of whom Debbie is the eldest.
Not
a great amount of personal detail has come to light on Augusta's life, but
there is at least the above good photograph of her. One exception to the
lack of detail, however, concerns her death. A coronial enquiry on
her death recorded about one page of facts, including that this confirmed her
suspected association with the Salvation Army.
She
was found dead one Thursday morning wherever they were living in Riley Street,
Penrith. Riley Street is a short street now in the heart of Penrith's
densest shopping development (Penrith Plaza) and near the railway
station. Where she was when she died was in a house a few doors from
other Byrnes kin, including her daughter (Maria Catherine Hall Byrnes).
Possibly in that same street, at the corner with High Street, is where the
Byrnes'es once ran a groceries or general store.
In
the coronial notes, daughter Maria recorded "I am the wife of William
Byrnes and reside in Riley Street. The deceased, the subject of this enquiry,
was my mother, and resided also in Riley Street a few doors from where I
live. At about 8 o'clock this morning my son Arthur aged 9 years came to
me and said 'I can't wake Grandmother'. He had been staying with his
Grandmother all night ..."
She
had been ill for a week, with no appetite, complaining of a terrible pain in
the chest and showing other symptoms of distress. She had said that
she did not think she would last much longer. She was noted to
have had a weak or failing heat and the examining doctor thought she may have died
of "apoplexy". Maria recalled that Augusta had also had a severe illness
six months previously and had at that time lost a great quantity of blood, being ill a
fortnight. Maria also added "She has had a great many family
worries of late and these have also told terribly upon
her".
Other facts recorded at the time of
Augusta's death
were that she'd been a "fairly strong woman and cheerful as a
rule". She was a total abstainer from alcohol and for
"two-thirds of her life she had been identified with the Salvation
Army". Augusta died aged 65, and so this should imply mean that she
had joined the Army in her twenties, in the 1860s. However, that is
impossible. The Salvation Army was written to in February 2010 and replied that it had
commenced in Penrith on 24 February 1884, and that the Salvation Army did not
begin until 1878, in London. It began in 1880 in Australia.
It had existed under other names from
1865. Possibly all this means that since the 1860s Augusta had
absorbed similar ideals as the Army ones. How and where
could this have happened? The mostly likely way to
suspect it happened somehow would be via St Phillips church, the church
which has now vanished at South Creek, and that it happened in connection with
some of the early Christian temperance campaigns. From the implied
timing, one suspects it would have predated her becoming Mr Cummins in
Penrith. The family was soon Methodist in Australia,
William's children marrying Methodist in Windsor, and it not entirely
impossible that they could have been Methodist or this way inclined (called
non-conformist in England) even before coming to Australia, for a few Methodists
are known to have been present in Guilden Morden as early as 1807 (see history
of Guilden Morden below).
One of
Augusta's daughters was Captain Jane Cummins in the Salvation Army at Bathurst,
and another daughters at the time she died was a missionary
absent in Africa (with the "W.C.T.U." - The Woman's Christian
Temperance Union). The
WCTU is the oldest voluntary, non-sectarian Christian women's organisation in
continuous existence in the world.
"Kate
Cummins" (Maria Catherine Hall Cummins) - one of Augusta Worboy's
children,
and
the one the present writer is descended from Augusta via.
MORE
INFORMATION WOULD BE VERY WELCOME
This
webpage was started to record and piece together anything findable on the
people, times and places around one of the writer's ancestral lines - the
Worboys
who it was known came from England.
Such
a story line could be started anywhere, as with
Augusta's parents William and Mary, or even further back. However
this file is focussed about Augusta - just one in the Worboys family - for a
number of reasons. One is that we are fortunate to have a
photographic image of her surviving from fairly early days in photography, and
another is that her life span covered the direct link between Worboys in
villages southwest of Cambridge, where the family had considerable presence,
and the Penrith area west of Sydney where Augusta's daughter 'Kate' (Mary
Catherine Cummins) married to the Byrnes'es near or with whom Augusta was
associated in her last years. The story handed down is that Arthur
Byrnes, Augusta's grandson and the writer's grandfather, routinely checked on
grandma Cummins' wellbeing and so was the one to find her dead one
morning.
That
this family
of Worboys came in 1844 to Sydney from Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire, is well
established and verifiable. Beyond that however much has been, or
remains, as surmise of inference. When the writer commenced this webpage in early 2009 the
basic BDM data was easily found on the Internet. Beyond that there was
very little immediately findable online. Requests for information were
put at various geneological discussion websites and this bore further
fruit. Various little clues suggested where the
family went to after reaching Australia, and what they did. A
David, likely one of Augusta's sons, was the first to turn up - in directory
records as a bootmaker in Penrith. Augusta's daughter 'Kate' (Maria
Catherine) married to the writer's line of a Castlereagh/Penrith family of
Byrnes'es and so it seemed that the family, after the death of Augusta's
husband, may have moved to Penrith or somewhere near there (Worboy mentions
are also findable for St Mary's area east of Penrith).
What
is herein discussed beyond BDM basics is still mainly
conjectural or unverified at present. That they were assisted to come and work
on Rouse family property between Castlereagh and Windsor to the west of Sydney
is strongly suggested. However, is NOT confirmed fact - just a
possibility stemming from mentions of Jericho in meagre public records. So if you known
anything at all of this family, or of their assumed destination Jericho,
please contact the writer
(JGB) who would be grateful to learn more if inferences so far are true or
just heading up the proverbial garden path to nowhere.
At
the moment it is thought that the family would have gone to where the father,
William, had advance organised employment, quite likely at
Jericho. William died relatively young, some thirty three years before
his wife Mary Ann. After William died, Mary Ann with at least some
of the children may have moved to somewhere much closer to Penrith.
There is an in-passing mention of a Mary Ann Worboys as being with the early
Salvation Army in Penrith and this is suspected to be a reference to
her. At some time she remarried in Penrith, and her daughter Kate
is known to have been married at their house in Penrith.
Kate
married William Taylor Byrnes, whose father Samuel ran a store on High Street
in Penrith. Indications are that daughter Kate may have been looking
after Augusta in the latter's old age, or at least keeping a close eye on her
(sending her son Arthur to check on Augusta regularly) and that Augusta may
have been somewhere near Samuel's shop.
PLACES
MENTIONED AT THE AUSTRALIAN END
The
immigrant Worboys first came to "Wilmington", which was the farm of
Betts (an ex-Potton man, and where they'd lived in England as off Potton Road
north of Guilden Morden).
Wilmington
is believed to have been close to Riverstone but nobody has been found who
knows exactly where it was. After the Worboys where there working
for the Betts family for some time, Betts for some reason transferred
"Wilmington" and it would seem that the Worboys family were then
displaced but were lucky to get re-employed at nearby
"Jericho".
Two
Worboys died there (Jericho) and are buried at a very close-by cemetery which
is at the middle on of the three "61" symbols along Richmond Road in
the map below, where that road crosses South Creek. When looking
for the graves, the writer instead found an old stratigraphic hole (''well')
drilled by Amoco oil company - Riverstone No. 1. Later on,
consulting the report on this hole revealed a map (shown below) which
has the actual words "Jericho Farm" on it. Also, as the
map immediately below shows, there appears to be today a small reserve (nature
reserve?) at, or very close-by, where Jericho house would once have been, on
the western side of South Creek. This could be traced via reserve
records, and quite likely there will have been some sort of archaeological
study carried out there.
The
writer got as far only as glimpsing in early 2010 from a small distance some
white objects in the area believed to have been the old church area - possibly
marble headstone fragments(?). Shortly after that, in March
2010, Riverstone Historical Society located a photo somebody had taken over
twenty years ago of a flat-lying headstone (photo below) - not fully
transcribable until it is again relocated, yet almost certainly the headstone
of William Worboys, Augusta's father and the family head of the first Worboys
coming to this land. Finding
this headstone again could prove difficult. Since it is fallen and flat-lying, soil and grass might now have completely covered over it (?).
Jericho
farm was an early land grant near or at present day Windsor Downs
(centre). The Windsor Downs Nature Reserve,
dedicated
in 1990, is land which was once part of Jericho farm. Snippets of information suggest
that the first Worboys
family of assisted immigrants (the family of William
Worboys) were destined for
there. The Anglican church of the
area
was at
Clydesdale (on the eastern side of South Creek). After the death of William, who is buried at
Clydesdale
cemetery, at least some
of his family went
to Penrith town (south of Castlereagh) where
daughter Augusta married a
Mr
Cummins
and her daughter Catherine (Kate) married to the
Byrnes family
of
Castlereagh
(lower left) and is an ancestor of the present writer.
"Wilmington"
- Two blocks of land in the name of J.A. Betts, around the junction of South
Creek and Eastern Creek
(Source:
Found March 2010; received courtesy of the Riverstone Historical Society after
one of the members
recalled
having seem a map that showed the name J.A. Betts at South Creek.)
[
Mitchell Libary map - "Part Windsor district"
zm4.811.1122.1842/1 ]
The
area of J.A. Betts today, between South
Creek and Eastern Creek, is not cultivated. The other
Marsden/Betts
land along the eastern side of South Creek is cultivated floodplain of low
elevation.
This
map, found in the well completion report for Amoco Riverstone No.1, actually
shows a "Jerico Farm" just west of
South Creek, about east of present day Gordon Place, and also a bridge over
the creek at
present day Kimberly Lane. Later local enquiry found the
opinion that these would be later
times features from when the Riverstone Meatworks controlled the farm and the original
Jericho house need not have been at that spot. At the house shown
on this map as "Echo Vale" a woman was met who said she had gone
to school, in Riverstone, with a "Matthew Worboys" and so Worboys
may have later on returned to this area. On a subsequent
visit to Echo Vale house different people were living there who had no
idea who the fist woman I had spoken to might have been (and I forgot to get
her name at the time she told me of Matthew Worboys).
Any
information on the old properties in this area (Wilmington, Jericho and
Clydesdale) was sought in February 2010 from both the Hawkesbury Historical
Society (which covers the Windsor area, and there appears to be no Windsor
historical society per se) and the Blacktown and District Historical
Society. The enquiry to the latter was passed on to Jeanette
French who has written about Clydesdale etc. in the pas. Jeanette
forwarded information that "Jericho" ( owned by Richard Rouse) and
the similar sounding "Jerusalem" ( lived in by Edwin Otto Hassalland
his family) were two properties on the western side of South Creek which
had resulted from the carve up in the early in 19th century of Penruddock
Farm. That had been a 300 ac. grant to Colonial surgeon Martin
Mason, in about. 1803. Clydesdale, of course, still exists, and is now
owned by Pace Farms. The Clydesdale property was originally 700
acres in size. Clydesdale was sub-divided in 1933, and the land on
the northern side of Richmond Road was later named 'Echo
Vale'. Jeanette wrote that doesn't know where Wilmington had been,
and that she is trying to find this out herself. She knows that it
has always been referred to as being 'near Riverstone', or even 'at
Riverstone'. Wilmington was not a primary grant, as
Clydesdale and Penruddock Farm were. Jeanette is president
of the Blacktown and District HIstorical Society.
The
Jericho farm land is now part nature reserve and part housing development
(Windsor Downs). A 'time capsule' buried at Windsor Downs has a reference to the 'Worboys' in
(per. comm. Kay Vella, Windsor Downs resident).
Richmond
Road crossing South Creek today. Remains of the older course of
the road can be seen to the
east
of it, with a stretch of the old ?bitumen showing. In the trees
just east of that former road course is
likely
where St Phillips church stood.
The next place to poke around in for graves will be in the
clump
of trees adjoining east of where the remnant strip of old bitumen shows.
(Google Earth)
.
Today
at the vanished-church-site seen above, the present situation is that the
current Richmond Road is built up so that it crosses South Creek on an
elevated bridge. It does not dip down to near the water level as
the former roadway once did. Looking directly over the site from the
side of the current roadway one can see two small white objects within the
trees. They might be fragments of marble headstones or they could
be just any old discarded junk. Looking at the Google Earth image it
would seem just a moment's walk away from the road to go and
investigate. However it is not that simple. The
grass and weeds are very thick in this patch, unlike in the surrounding
pastures. Also, a wet area, almost a creek, seems to have formed
where the old road once ran. Nor is it clear who to request
permission from to have a poke around. The actual fenced off land
which is undergrowth and week infested is probably still owned by the Anglican
church. The adjacent pasturage is presumed to be owned by Echo
Vale No. 5 Farm. For that, the owner according to local
information is "now a Japanese company and the manager lives in
Brisbane". The site is almost open acces from the north,
where the old road course can be walked along till South Creek is
reached. At that point several old large wooden posts still
protrude from the mid line of the creek, marking former bridge
support. The creek is deep at the wider ponded areas but
where the old bridge was it seems to be shallow and it possibly could be
crossed here. This might be easiest way to access the old church
site, unless Echo Vale No. 5 would allow easier access to this long grass and
weed infested clump of trees from their land. On the western side
of the old road coarse, on a visit there on 26 February 2010 there was
discovered a plugged deep drillhole by Amoco. A rusting marker
plaque on it says it is Amoco Riverstone 1, and that it was spudded
20/2/92. Perhaps where Worboys are buried is a good place to
drill for oil or gas? Presumably, however, the well was quite dry.
The
rusting steel memorial to the abandoned Amoco Riverstone No. 1 well
30o40'42.69"S
150o48'42.81"E
***
AMOCO
RIVERSTONE
SPUD
20 -2 - 92
P
+ A 29 - 3- 92
DEPTH
1538.1 m ??
***
The
inscription is already difficult to read. "P + A" would
mean plugged and abandoned.
The inscription is already difficult to read. "P + A" would mean plugged and abandoned.
An obtained summary of Riverstone No. 1 reads :
""""""
Riverstone No.1 was drilled in early 1992.
The well penetrated the entire Illawarra Coal Measures in the axis of the basin, reached a TD of 1537m and delineated:
1) 14.87m net pay (11.29m within a 300m zone from Bulli to Woonona Seams)
2) 380 SCF/ton weighted average gas volume for coals within 300m zone
3) 18.23m clean coal (13.42m within 300m zone)
4) 26.46m of seam thickness (16.67m within the 300m zone)
5) 471m thick coal bearing interval (1013m MD to 1484m MD) with coals generally clarains to durains with
occasional vitrains.
The well also:
A) Showed significant stratigraphic expansion of the Allans Creek through Wilton Formationsn
B) Delineated a greater pay in the American Creek seams than most wells
C) Showed greater splitting of the Bulli and Wongawilli seams relative to the southern Camden Syncline
D) Showed stratigraphic similarities to all three traditional coal mining areas on the basin margins, atlthough no detailed correlation has been attempted
E) was non cored to within 75m of the pay zone.
""""""
The well completion report (WCR266) states that the site was "flood
prone" and one week prior to moving the rig onto the location it was
under a metre of flood water (RL 9.95m AHD).
And
nearby lies the more attractive stone memorial to William, the first-ever (I
think) Worboys to pass away in Australia.
In
March 2010, before making further owner contacts for permission to look in the
cemetery land described above, Riverstone Historical Society wrote with good
news that a photograph (above) had been tracked down of a Worboys headstone at
the former St Phillips (Clydesdale) cemetery there. It is believed
that this photo would have been taken over twenty years ago. It is not
known if the headstone is still there or what condition it might now be in.
Echo
Vale No. 5 farm on the northern side of Richmond Road was originally
part of Clydesdale. Hence the church land was originally excised
and donated out of Clydesdale property. Clydesdale was originally part
of a grant to William Lang in 1813. Lang died in 1816 and the land sold at
auction to Charles Tompson in 1818 or 1819. At the time the estate comprised
700 acres, which he expanded to 865 acres by purchasing two neighbouring
farms. By 1827 there was a Georgian-style brick two-storey
dwelling, valued at £600, built upon an 1822 homestead, parts of which it
incorporated. In the 1840's Tompson encountered financial trouble
and in 1850 lost Clydesdale. In 1851 it was bought by the Lamb family
and in 1859 it became a Marist seminary. The Marists sold it to the
Hassall family by 1870, who also owned adjoining property. From
1870 to 1935 the property was owned by a string of owners, including briefly
the then Mayor of Sydney, John Hardie, who bought it in 1884 for a country
retreat. In the late 1890s the property was bought by Joseph
Earnest James, who's family retained ownership until after WW2. In 1932
the property was split along Richmond Road, with only the southern,
larger part, retaining the name. In 1935 it became a a flourishing
dairy farm and in 1961 it was acquired by Associated Dairies, it's present
owner. From 1924-1945 the homestead was commandeered by the RAAF as a
convalescent home. The family stayed on the property during much of its use by
the Airforce. Today a sign on Richmond Road suggests that this
diary at Clydesdale is still operating but I have not been into there yet to
speak with anybody. In January 1991 some twenty-eight cattle
suddenly died at this farm. The then manager, Mr Barry Keith, supposed
that an alleged spill from the Water Board's nearby St Mary's sewage treatment
plant had contaminated South Creek, the farm's water source. The
State Government dismissed that as a possibility and tests by the State
Pollution Control Commission (SPCC) and the Department of Agriculture and
Fisheries were carried out. According to a statement by the
Minister for the Environment, Mr Moore (Sydney Morning Herald 25 Jan 1991) no
Water Board spill was to blame, and Mr Moore believed the animals died from
drinking water contaminated with their own faeces and urine. Apart
from that the area has been little in the news. Cattle seen from a
distance here in February 2010 were walking south along the eastern flank of
South Creek and looked happy enough. This dairying/farming land is
not shale land. It is a flat topped but dissected alluvial
terrace, I think. The soil, seen only from the roadside,
looks to be loamy. United Dairies, perhaps not keen to be lumbered
with care of a heritage house, is understood to have sold off part of the
property around the homestead some time ago. I
was informed locally that there were also graves with 'gravestones' on
Clydesdale, although these were said to be "hard to find".
Further
enquiry on the matter of "Clydesdale" and where it is exactly
revealed that acting on certain considerations, Blacktown and District
Historical Society had written on 16 January 2009 to the
Council to suggest they inspect the property to ascertain the current state of
"Clydesdale" old homestead, its attendant buildings and the
gravestones. The Society urging Council to instigate immediate action to
care for this property as it might be disintegrating or in danger of loss
even. The Society sent photos which their Vice President, Mrs
Jeanette French, had taken over the years back to 1980.
Cydesdale
old homestead is today owned by Mr Frank Pace (Pace Farm), and the manager is
Mr John Vassallo. Council inspected there in February 2009 and
offered to assist in the preservation of the place. Council found
that buildings had indeed fallen into a state of disrepair and that urgent
work was required to stabilise and protect them from further
decay. Mr Pace noted that he had not been wanting to begin on a
restoration project until he had generated sufficient funds. This he was
doing by the sale of land
on the opposite side of South Creek. Currently (2010) that land if being
offered for sale as 5 acre blocks via advertisements especially around an entrance to the area
for sale (on the southern side of Richmond Road just west of South
Creek). This sale offering land is being called the "Clydesdale Estate". Some of the land sale
signage has fallen into disrepair (noted February 2010) and apparently many or
most of the offered 5 acre blocks still have not been sold(?).
Council
in 2009 offered $6000 assistance from its heritage fund to assist with urgent
roof repairs to the old homestead. It appears that Council had earlier offered similar
assistance, but of a lesser amount, to Associated Diaries when they were owner
of the old homestead, but that on the former occasion such offer was not
availed of. "Clydesdale" is of State heritage
significance and if necessary the State can order repairs and charge the costs
to the owner. Council in 2009 threatened to invoke such process if
the current owner did not take up the $6000 dollar-for-dollar assisance
offer. Pursuing this matter was discussed at a meeting of
the Heritage Committee, attended by Mr. J. Gibson (Council's Heritage
Consultant) and Mr. J. Vassallo on behalf of the owner ( Reported at Council
Meeting of 8 April 2009; File 122744/5
"Current State of Historic 'Clydesdale' - Lot 2, DP 260476, H/N 1270).
Records
(noted below) show that the Worboys family went to work on
Jericho. An above map shows where Berkshire Park is located, on
the western side of the junction of Richmond Road and South
Creek. In 1804, the same time as Castlereagh grants were
made, the former surgeon of the Buffalo, Martin Mason, received a grant
of 300 acres at the junction of South Creek and Richmond Road. He named
it Penruddock Farm. Penruddock is a small village a few miles from
Penrith, in Cumbria,
England. Later
on the name Penrith was applied here too, at the place which is now Penrith
City. Mason was a Bligh supporter, and after Bligh's arrest the
'Rebel' government ordered him to leave the Colony. He departed on the Hindostan
in 1810. Mason sold Penruddock
Farm, before his departure, to wealthy free settler Richard Rouse
(1774-1852). Rouse renamed the property as Berkshire
Park. Jericho House was built on 347 acres purchased by Rouse
on the opposite side of Richmond Road from Berkshire Park. Jericho
House was named after the Rouse home in Oxfordshire. Richard Rouse
died at Jericho in 1852, and the house was later destroyed by fire.
It is uncertain when Jericho burned down. As late as 1890 a Mary
Ann McKellar (Mrs Carless/Bowling) was recorded to have died at
"Jericho", South Creek.
It
is stated in the book "Rouse Hill House and the Rouses" by Caroline Rouse Thornton, where
discussing these two Rouse Properties ( Berkshire Park and Jericho): "Jericho House, on
other side of the road and further from it, had a magnificent site overlooking South Creek. It too was destroyed by fire".
The reference that Caroline refers to for this came from a book
"Hawkesbury Journey" by Doug Bowd.
The late Douglas Gordon Bowd (1918-1993), local historian, was descended from
Catherine Moore (
nee Johnson), a first fleeter who was transported at the age of
16. 'Hawkesbury Journey' and other Doug Bowd books are available
at the Hawkesbury Museum, Thompson Square, Windsor.
Just
where the "magnificent site overlooking South Creek" of Jericho
house was is uncertain, however some think it was at the end of Kimberley Lane
which runs down to the creek and faces "Castlereagh Mountain" on the
opposite side of the creek. Mr Maurice Smith, or Town and Country
Electricans in Riverstone, who had lived previously at Kimberley Lane.
suggested to consider Kimberley Lane or nearby Burnside Grove as near where
the old house may have stood. He notes that there are, or once
were, ruin sites but these might have been ruins of later buildings from the
time the Meat Works owned the land. Similarly, there had
been two old bridges across the creek thereabouts but once again he thought
they likely dated only from the Meat Works ownership period. Mr
Smith thought the main ruin site may have been behind where there is now a
white house with a blue roof, or else it might have actually now been built
over. He believed that there had been some
archaeological study in the area and thought that a Mr Peter Laurie might know
more, and might be contacted via the company which developed the Windsor Downs
housing estate.
One
possible
owner at Jericho in the late 1800s is noted as John Bowlin Snr, who died aged 68 in
Ashfield and was taken to Windsor for burial. John Bowlin Snr may be
John Edward Bowlin(?), and he actually may have resided at Summer Hill rather
than Ashfield.
In
the 1885 Parliamentary Return of Landholders, the following entry is recorded
on page 442:
Jericho
- Bowlin, Jno., 1,100 acres, with 11 horses, 11 cattle, and 5 pigs. ( NSW
Legislative Assembly, Votes & Proceedings 1885 (2nd Session) Vol. 3 -
Appendix 2. pp. 435 - 457.)
The
Greville Index for 1872 records "BOWLIN, John sen., farmer, South
Ck."
The
Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 18 May 1872 published the following under
'Family Notices':
~~~
FARMER
- BOWLIN -- March 28, at St Philip's Church, Clydesdale,
by the Rev. C. F. Garnsey, George, third son of Mr
John Wright Farmer, of Allt Ucha, Llanfair, Caercinion, Welsh
Pool, Montgomeryshire, Wales, Great Britain, to Lizzie Carloss,
eldest daughter of Mrs. J. Bowlin, of Jericho, Windsor.
~~~
A John Bowlin, probably the son of John Bowlin Snr, is also noted to
have been the first manager of the Riverstone Meatworks. The
Meatworks was established by Benjamin Richards in 1878 on 2,300 acres (930
hectares) of land. In the early 1870s, before the meatworks, Riverstone
had a population of only around 50 people. By 1901 there were 204 adult
males living in Riverstone. In 1900, an ornate Federation style brick
home was built for the manager, John Bowlin. It still stands today, in
Richards Avenue or ‘Butchers Row’, Riverstone.
South
Creek catchment
WHERE
THEY LAY TODAY - The first English born Worboys who passed away in
Australia
According to
Anglican records, namely the transcription of the St Phillips Church of England, Clydesdale
records (courtesy of Riverstone Historical Society), there are these two entries for
Worboys in the burials register:
Date of Burial
Remarks Date of Death
Age
30 or 31/3/1854 Josiah Worboys
Labourer 30 or 31 March 1854 18 yrs
28/12/1851 William Worboys
Labourer 27/12/1851
44 yrs
The same information is at http://www.hawkesbury.net.au/church/burials/spbr1848.html
'WARBOYS' William | abode = South Creek | died 27 Dec 1851 | buried 28 Dec 1851 | age 44 | Labourer
(reg. no. 756 V37)
'WARBOYS' Josiah |
South Creek | 30 Mar 1854 |
31 Mar 1854 | 18 | Labourer
The Riverstone Historical Society was also able to provide the following two
images of the now vanished church and also some information as follows:
- It is believed that a broken headstone to one of the Worboys graves may still be
there.
- It is known that
many years ago there were the remnants of three headstones there, half buried in the grass.
- At one time the headstones had a timber fence built around them, to protect them from the cattle.
- The register reveals there may be as many as 15 people buried at this place.
- Unfortunately, however, no plan is known to exist.
There was
indeed once a church there - St Phillips - and the Riverstone Historical
Society kindly scanned and sent the below two surviving images.
Images
from Riverstone Historical Society of St. Phillip's Church, east bank of South Creek at
Richmond Road. It is
no longer in existence.
The
photo may be later than the sketch; showing added bell and cross atop of
the building.
In
1824 Charles Thompson, who had arrived as a convict in 1804, was the owner of
Clydesdale. He purchased a further 1,000 acres and erected the home,
known as “Clydesdale”, which still stands. Charles Thompson gave the
land for St. Phillip’s Church of England, which was consecrated in
1846. After 1889/90 it was allowed to fall into disrepair. [ REF
(unseen): Adele May Whitmore, 1985. Charles Tompson, his family,
Clydesdale Farm, and St Philips Church of England Church, Clydesdale, Windsor,
N.S.W. NSW State Library, MLMSS 6878].
St
Phillips was flooded and partially destroyed by the flood of ?1857, and
a man was drowned by the flood waters. He had hung onto the the spire
until he was washed away by the water. Following this disaster the
church or what remained of it was abandoned and allowed to fall totally into disrepair.
Land there is still owned the Church of England. (pers. comm. Kay Vella)
I had written to the historical
society on 25 Jan 2010, after visiting the site on 24 Jan 2010.
The farm gate there today bears the words "Echo Vale Farm 5", at 1274
Richmond Road.
Going up to the farm house I told
the lady there that I believed that I had relatives who came to this area a
long time ago and some are buried here in the grove of trees down by the
creek. And that there name was
Worboys.
She replied that she went to
school with Worboys, and remembered a Matthew Worboys. She said
her father was a stockman and as a girl she helped him round up stock in what
they called the "Jericho paddock". She'd been told (but
sounded like she had never seen them herself?) that there were four or five
graves on the property, but they were believed to be Aboriginal.
It was following this that I wrote
to Riverstone Historical Society and was supplied with the above two very
welcome images of the church.
Also, the Society in reply thought
that Matthew might not be the only Worboys in the district. There may be
a few. It is thought that Matthew might have moved to Queensland with
his family.
The phone directory (White Pages)
finds nothing in this regard, however.
| No |
Surname |
Child's
name |
Parents
names |
When
Born |
When
Baptised |
Abode |
Father's
Occupation |
Ceremony
performed by |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 1 |
ROBERTS |
Martha |
James & Sarah |
4 Oct 1846 |
29 Nov 1846 |
Richmond Road |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 2 |
BOWERMAN |
Sarah Jane |
Solomon & Elizabeth |
10 Jan 1847 |
31 Jan 1847 |
Breakfast Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 3 |
BETTS |
Robert |
Josiah Allen & Martha |
30 Jan 1847 |
28 Mar 1847 |
Wilmington |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 4 |
SHEARING |
John |
John & Edith |
12 Mar 1847 |
30 May 1847 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 5 |
NICHOLS |
Samuel |
Henry & Ellen |
4 May 1847 |
25 July 1847 |
Wilmington |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 6 |
ROUSE |
George Moore |
George & Elizabeth |
19 Jul 1847 |
29 Aug 1847 |
South Creek |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 7 |
BARLOW |
Samuel |
Charles & Amelia |
18 Apr 1847 |
30 Jan 1848 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 8 |
HILL |
Mary Elizabeth |
Charles Henry & Sarah |
27 Feb 1848 |
27 Feb 1848 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 9 |
LAWSON |
David |
William & Margaret Jane |
15 Jun 1848 |
30 Jul 1848 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 10 |
TOMPSON |
Caroline Henrietta |
Piddocke Arthur & Jane Ann |
11 Jul 1848 |
15 Aug 1848 |
Sydney |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 11 |
TRUSSELL |
John |
William & Jane |
10 Oct 1848 |
31 Dec 1848 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 12 |
SHEARING |
John |
John & Edith |
14 Dec 1848 |
28 Jan 1849 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 13 |
ROBERTS |
Rosanna |
James & Sarah |
1 Feb 1849 |
25 Mar 1849 |
Blacktown |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 14 |
ROUSE |
William Charles |
George & Elizabeth |
23 Apr 1849 |
24 Jun 1849 |
Jericho |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 15 |
BETTS |
Elizabeth |
Josiah Allen & Martha |
5 May 1849 |
27 Jun 1849 |
Wilmington |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 16 |
LOWE |
Ernest Robert Charles |
Joseph Ward & Elizabeth Henrietta |
18 Jul 1849 |
11 Aug 1849 |
Bathurst |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 17 |
BLOWES |
Alfred |
James & Edith |
22 Dec 1848 |
26 Aug 1849 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 18 |
HALL |
Emma Jane |
Henry & Emma Hannah |
4 Dec 1849 |
30 Dec 1849 |
Upperby |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 19 |
NICHOLS |
Sarah |
Henry & Ellen |
7 Aug 1849 |
24 Feb 1850 |
Eastern Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 20 |
THRUSSELL |
Mary Ann |
William & Jane |
7 Feb 1850 |
31 Mar 1850 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 21 |
SHEARING |
Mary Ann |
John & Edith |
5 Jun 1850 |
30 Jun 1850 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 22 |
ROUSE |
Emily Jane |
George & Elizabeth |
18 Jan 1851 |
28 Feb 1851 |
Jericho |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 23 |
WARBOYS |
Mary Jane |
William & Mary Ann |
2 Apr 1851 |
27 Apr 1851 |
Jericho |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 24 |
HALL |
William Henry |
Henry & Emma Hannah |
26 Sep 1851 |
26 Oct 1851 |
Wilmington |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 25 |
SHEARING |
William |
John & Edith |
30 Jan 1852 |
9 Apr 1852 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 26 |
THRUSSELL |
Rebecca |
William & Jane |
31 Dec 1851 |
9 Apr 1852 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 27 |
THRUSSELL |
Alicia |
William & Jane |
7 Feb 1853 |
25 Mar 1853 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 28 |
WILLIAMS |
Agnes |
Edward Henry & Mary Jane |
4 Mar 1853 |
24 Apr 1853 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 29 |
TOMPSON |
Jane Amelia |
Walter & Mary Ann |
30 Apr 1853 |
29 May 1853 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 30 |
ROBERTS |
William John |
James & Sarah |
30 Jul 1853 |
1 Aug 1853 |
Blacktown |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 31 |
THRUSSELL |
Matthew |
William & Jane |
7 May 1854 |
30 Jul 1854 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 32 |
KNOCK |
Elizabeth |
Edward & Mary |
9 Jul 1854 |
30 Jul 1854 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 33 |
SHERINGHAM |
Robert |
Henry & Maria |
6 Jun 1854 |
30 Jul 1854 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 34 |
RETALLACK |
Ann Roslind |
John & Elizabeth |
3 May 1854 |
25 Mar 1855 |
Windsor Road |
Innkeeper |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 35 |
MAGICK |
Sarah Ethel |
William John & Anna |
27 May 1855 |
29 Jul 1855 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 36 |
THOMPSON |
Robert |
Walter & Mary Ann |
29 Sep 1855 |
28 Oct 1855 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 37 |
BOWLINE |
Catherine |
John & Mary |
26 Oct 1855 |
25 Nov 1855 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 38 |
SCHOFIELD |
Charles |
Samuel & Grace |
7 Jan 1856 |
24 Feb 1856 |
Windsor Road |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 39 |
WARD |
Jane |
John & Hannah |
12 Mar 1856 |
27 Apr 1856 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 40 |
PHILLIPS |
Elizabeth Emma Sultana |
Charles & Martha |
21 Jun 1856 |
31 Aug 1856 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 41 |
GOUGH |
Eliza |
George & Emily |
20 Jul 1856 |
31 Aug 1856 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 42 |
ERWIN |
Joseph |
Thomas & Mary Ann |
12 Jun 1856 |
28 Sep 1856 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 43 |
SCHOFIELD |
Charles |
William Henry & Jane |
18 Sep 1856 |
22 Feb 1857 |
Windsor Road |
Innkeeper |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 44 |
LOCKE |
Sarah Selina Rebecca |
Robert & Sarah |
30 Jan 1857 |
29 Mar 1857 |
Blacktown |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 45 |
ROBERTS |
Alice Selina |
James & Margaret |
10 Mar 1857 |
26 Apr 1857 |
Blacktown |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 46 |
BOWLINE |
Emma Jane |
John & Mary |
2 Jul 1857 |
26 Jul 1857 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 47 |
REDDICK |
William John |
William & Ellen Mary |
25 Aug 1857 |
27 Sep 1857 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 48 |
TABER |
George |
George Thomas & Rachael |
21 Mar 1857 |
27 Sep 1857 |
Blacktown |
Lawyer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 49 |
WILLIAMS |
Elizabeth Mary |
William & Mary Ann |
12 Dec 1854 |
27 Sep 1857 |
Pitt Town |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 50 |
SCHOFIELD |
Grace Emily |
Samuel & Grace |
28 Nov 1857 |
29 Dec 1857 |
|
|
Henry T. Stiles |
| 51 |
THOMPSON |
Mary Ann |
Walter & Mary Ann |
24 Jan 1858 |
28 Feb 1858 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 52 |
BENNETT |
Eliza Ann |
Thomas & Mary Ann |
28 Feb 1858 |
25 Apr 1858 |
Blacktown |
Lawyer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 53 |
BENNETT |
Elizabeth Sarah |
Jonathan & Mary Ann |
10 Mar 1858 |
25 Apr 1858 |
Blacktown |
Lawyer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 54 |
BENNETT |
James |
Frederick & Pheobe |
22 May 1858 |
25 Apr 1858 |
Blacktown |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 55 |
FIRTH |
Frederick |
William & Mary |
26 Feb 1858 |
27 Jun 1858 |
not stated |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 56 |
WILLIAMS |
Elizabeth |
not stated |
31 Jul 1857 |
29 Aug 1858 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 57 |
YOEMAN |
John Richard |
James & Mary Ann |
4 Oct 1858 |
31 Oct 1858 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 58 |
WILLET |
Rosetta Isabel |
William & Mary |
19 Oct 1858 |
26 Dec 1858 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 59 |
KNOCK |
Edward |
Edward & Mary |
20 Oct 1858 |
26 Dec 1858 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 60 |
GILBERT |
Grace Emily |
Richard & Esther |
3 Mar 1859 |
24 Apr 1859 |
Windsor Road |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 61 |
BELSHAM |
William James |
Mary Ann Belsham - no father stated |
6 Jun 1859 |
31 Jul 1859 |
Parramatta Road |
Single woman |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 62 |
WRIGHT |
Frederick James |
Edwin & Mary Ann |
12 Jul 1859 |
25 Sep 1859 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 63 |
LAYCOCK |
Richard William |
Elias Pearson & Grace Lysaght |
22 Dec 1859 |
29 Jan 1860 |
Parramatta Road |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 64 |
SCHOFIELD |
Sarah Jane |
Samuel & Grace |
1 Feb 1860 |
25 Mar 1860 |
Parramatta Road |
Innkeeper |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 65 |
PAUL |
Elizabeth Emma |
James & Elizabeth |
21 Mar 1860 |
27 May 1860 |
South Creek |
Carrier |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 66 |
WILLIAMS |
Edward Henry |
Edward Henry & Mary Jane |
21 Jun 1859 |
27 May 1860 |
South Creek |
Wheelwright |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 67 |
LOCKE |
Eliza ? Henrietta |
Robert & Sarah |
4 Feb 1860 |
27 May 1860 |
Parramatta Road |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 68 |
TAYLOR |
Thomas John |
Robert & Hannah |
21 Jun 1860 |
26 Aug 1860 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 69 |
WINDSOR |
William Alfred |
George & Mary Ann |
18 Apr 1860 |
26 Aug 1860 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 70 |
LOCK |
James John |
John & Jane |
15 Sep 1860 |
30 Dec 1860 |
Eastern Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 71 |
SCHOFIELD |
William Sampson |
William Henry & Jane |
10 Sep 1860 |
30 Dec 1860 |
|
Superintendent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 72 |
HASSELL |
Alfred Charles |
Edwin Otto & Lucy Maria |
7 Sep 1860 |
27 Jan 1861 |
South Creek |
Gent |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 73 |
WILLIAMS |
Sarah |
William & Mary Ann |
3 Jan 1861 |
12 Feb 1861 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 74 |
WILLET |
William Henry |
William & Mary Ann |
18 Feb 1861 |
31 Mar 1861 |
Eastern Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 75 |
BENNETT |
Phoebe Matilda |
Frederick & Pheobe |
3 Feb 1861 |
31 Mar 1861 |
Eastern Creek |
Labourer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 76 |
ALLEN |
William John |
John Joseph & Lucy |
11 Jul 1861 |
25 Aug 1861 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 77 |
SCHOFIELD |
Elizabeth Amelia |
Samuel & Grace |
3 Dec 1861 |
29 Dec 1861 |
Windsor Road |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 78 |
PALMER |
Louisa Maria |
Edward & Louisa |
1 Dec 1861 |
28 Sep 1862 |
Blacktown |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 79 |
LOCK |
Henry |
John & Jane |
14 Aug 1862 |
26 Oct 1862 |
Blacktown |
Fencer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 80 |
THOMSON |
Hannah |
William & Fanny |
6 Feb 1863 |
29 Mar 1863 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 81 |
ALLEN |
Joseph James |
Joseph John & Louisa |
23 Feb 1863 |
3 Apr 1863 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 82 |
LOCKE |
Emily Ann |
Robert & Sarah |
2 Jul 1863 |
27 Sep 1863 |
Blacktown |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 83 |
ALLEN |
Rowland |
John Joseph & Louisa |
12 Aug 1864 |
25 Sep 1864 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 84 |
WILLIAMS |
John Thomas |
Edward Henry & Mary Jane |
27 Mar 1864 |
30 Oct 1864 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 85 |
LOCK |
Louisa |
John & Jane Starkie |
3 Aug 1864 |
30 Oct 1864 |
Blacktown |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 86 |
TAYLOR |
John Edward |
Robert & Hannah |
19 Jul 1865 |
27 Aug 1865 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 87 |
GREENTREE |
Thomas James |
Thomas & Catherine |
21 Jun 1865 |
27 Aug 1865 |
Windsor Road |
Bushman |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 88 |
HASSELL |
Percy Rouse |
Edwin Otto & Lucy Maria |
27 Sep 1865 |
5 Aug 1865 |
South Creek |
Grazier |
Henry T. Stiles |
| 89 |
WILLETT |
Anna Elizabeth |
William & Mary Ann |
19 Jan 1866 |
25 Feb 1866 |
South Creek |
Farm Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 90 |
PAUL |
Ellen Phoebe |
George & Elizabeth |
24 Jan 1866 |
25 Feb 1866 |
Jericho |
Farm Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 91 |
HASSELL |
Gertrude |
Edwin Otto & Lucy Maria |
21 Sep 1866 |
28 Oct 1866 |
Berkshire Park |
Gent |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 92 |
LOCK |
Jerome |
John & Jane |
15 Aug 1866 |
28 Nov 1866 |
Blacktown |
Splitter |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 93 |
BEECROFT |
Albert Earnest |
John & Elizabeth |
26 Oct 1866 |
27 Jan 1867 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 94 |
ALLEN |
Harriett Angelina |
John Joseph & Louisa |
20 Jan 1867 |
24 Feb 1867 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 95 |
BOXALL |
Sarah Ann Louisa |
Richard & Mary Ann |
28 Jan 1867 |
26 Jun 1867 |
Jericho |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 96 |
LOCK |
Robert Albert |
Robert & Sarah |
2 Jun 1867 |
28 Jul 1867 |
Blacktown |
Splitter |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 97 |
SCHOFIELD |
Sydney Robert |
John & Elvina Sarah |
23 Sep 1867 |
27 Oct 1867 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 98 |
WHITE |
Amelia |
John & Angeline |
11 May 1868 |
5 Jul 1868 |
Riverstone |
Railway Servant |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 99 |
BROWN |
Percival James Melville |
George William & Eleanor Anne |
24 Jul 1868 |
13 Sep 1868 |
Llandillo |
School Master |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 100 |
LOCK |
Annie |
John & Jane |
7 Mar 1869 |
23 May 1869 |
Blacktown |
Fencer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 101 |
THOMPSON |
Maria Jane |
James & Ann |
3 Nov 1868 |
17 Jan 1869 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 102 |
WILLETT |
Mary Anne |
William & Mary Ann |
5 Dec 1868 |
17 Jan 1869 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 103 |
GUYATT |
Mary Anne Elizabeth |
Joseph & Sarah |
7 Jul 1869 |
7 Aug 1869 |
Blacktown |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 104 |
WATSON |
Frederick Thomas |
George & Adelaide Emma |
27 Aug 1869 |
26 Sep 1869 |
Rooty Hill |
Sawyer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 105 |
TATHAM |
William Reuben James |
George & Mary Ann |
19 Aug 1869 |
26 Sep 1869 |
Rooty Hill |
Sawyer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 106 |
BENNETT |
Henry Walter |
Frederick & Pheobe |
3 Aug 1869 |
5 Dec 1869 |
Rooty Hill |
Sawyer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 107 |
SCHOFIELD |
Arthur Albert |
John & Elvina Sarah |
29 Mar 1870 |
8 Apr 1870 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 108 |
TITTERTON |
Ida Augusta |
William & Jessie |
31 Jul 1870 |
28 Aug 1870 |
Riverstone |
Station Master |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 109 |
NASH |
Harriett |
Joseph Frederick & Louisa |
13 May 1870 |
28 Aug 1870 |
Llandillo |
Public School Master |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 110 |
NASH |
Violet Ann |
Samuel & Sarah |
27 Jul 1870 |
25 Sep 1870 |
Llandillo |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 111 |
GREEN |
William Jonathan Cooper |
John Thomas & Ellen Meaber |
18 Jan 1871 |
12 Mar 1871 |
Llandillo |
Public School Master |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 112 |
LOCK |
Joseph |
John & Jane |
8 Feb 1871 |
9 Apr 1871 |
Blacktown |
Splitter |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 113 |
LOCK |
Isaac |
John & Jane |
8 Feb 1871 |
9 Apr 1871 |
Blacktown |
Splitter |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 114 |
McKELLAR |
Clara Emily |
Dugald & Sarah |
21 Mar 1871 |
21 May 1871 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 115 |
ATTWELL |
William |
John & Mary Jane |
17 Apr 1871 |
2 Jul 1871 |
South Creek |
Splitter |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 116 |
THOMPSON |
Emma Gertrude |
James & Ann |
5 Jun 1871 |
16 Jul 1871 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 117 |
CRAIG |
Janet Maxwell |
John & Magdalen |
7 Oct 1871 |
3 Nov 1871 |
Riverstone |
Railway Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 118 |
PALMER |
Martha |
Edward & Louisa |
17 Oct 1871 |
31 Dec 1871 |
Blacktown |
Butcher |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 119 |
GUYATT |
Sarah Jane |
Joseph & Sarah |
|
28 Jan 1872 |
Eastern Creek |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 120 |
WILLETT |
Albert |
William & Mary Ann |
1 Apr 1872 |
5 May 1872 |
South Creek |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 121 |
SCHOFIELD |
Theodore Charles Bestick? |
John & Elvina Sarah |
2 Aug 1872 |
22 Sep 1872 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 122 |
HASSELL |
Emmeline Florence |
Edwin Otto & Lucy Maria |
9 Sep 1872 |
3 Nov 1872 |
Clydesdale |
Gent |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 123 |
SMITH |
Frederick James |
William & Jane |
9 Sep 1872 |
29 Oct 1872 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 124 |
ATTWELL |
Abess |
John & Mary |
24 May 1873 |
29 Jun 1873 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 125 |
BLUNT |
Lilian May |
Edward & Sarah |
19 Aug 1873 |
7 Sep 1873 |
Riverstone |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 126 |
BLUNT |
Bessie Elvira |
Edward & Sarah |
29 Sep 1869 |
7 Sep 1873 |
Riverstone |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 127 |
BLUNT |
Robert Webb |
Edward & Sarah |
6 Aug 1870 |
7 Sep 1873 |
Riverstone |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 128 |
THOMPSON |
Charles Henry |
James & Ann |
5 Dec 1873 |
8 Feb 1874 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 129 |
SCHOFIELD |
|
Samuel & Grace |
|
20 Sep 1874 |
Windsor Road |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 130 |
LAWSON |
Robert |
David & Jane Amelia |
13 Aug 1874 |
4 Oct 1874 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 131 |
SMITH |
Ellen Sarah |
Frederick & Sarah |
13 Nov 1874 |
27 Dec 1874 |
Clydesdale |
Labourer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 132 |
SMITH |
|
William & Jane |
|
7 Mar 1875 |
Eastern Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 133 |
SCHOFIELD |
Laura Augusta |
John & Elvina Sarah |
23 Mar 1875 |
16 May 1875 |
Riverstone |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
| 134 |
SMITH |
Jane |
Frederick & Sarah Maria |
30 Apr 1876 |
25 Jun 1876 |
South Creek |
Farmer |
Chas. F. Garnsey |
|
| Credits: |
Transcriptions
by Steve Liversidge - February 2005. |
The St Philip's
Baptism Register, 1846-1876
Reverend Henry Stiles was the
first minister to this church. It was on a visit to Rector H.T.
Stiles, on 12 May 1838, that the famous Rev. Samuel Marsden breathed his last
breath, in Stiles' rectory, at the age of 73. One granddaughter of
Marsden was Mrs Elizabeth Betts.
Mary the sixth daughter of Marsden
married John Betts of Parramatta, and her youngest sister Martha Marsden
married his brother Josiah in 1839. Both Mary and Martha had accompanied
Rev. Marsden to New Zealand.
The church records
reveal some of the gentry and labourers on the area:
Wilmington -
Josiah Allen & Martha Betts (gent) in 1847.
Wilmington - Henry
& Emma Hannah Hall (gent) in 1851.
Jericho - George
& Elizabeth Rouse (gent) in 1849.
Jericho - William
and Mary Ann Worboys (labourer) in 1851.
From this, what
seems to have happened is that the Worboys first went to work for Betts, but
that Betts had sold out by 1851 and the Worboys then transferred to working
for the Rouses at Jericho. In 1849 Henry and Emma Hannah Hall are noted
to be at Upperby (Blacktown) but they had married at St Phillips on 7 February
that year; and Emma Jane Hall born 7 December. There was a Betts birth
at Wilmington in May 1849. And in January 1850 the Betts received
from off the "Panama", one of the transport vessels bringing Irish
famine orphan girls to Australia, the following 16 year old new servant
girl: Honora Laven, from Ballynare, Mayo, daughter of James
& Bridget Laven (both dead) [ Register 2, No 804, 10 June 1850, J A Betts,
Windsor; indenture Empl. J A Betts, Wilmington, £7-8, 2 years.].
The Betts,
therefore, must have left the property sometime in 1851. For the
new owners, Emma did not enjoy a long life there as the Sydney Morning Herald
of 27 June 1860 announced her death at age 37 ('after a protracted illness,
influenza supervening on confinement'). Emma Hannah was the second
daughter of Mr Charles Thomson of Clydesdale, and Henry was the eldest son of
the late Mr William Hall of Upperby, Black Town.
Josiah Betts
had been was born in September 1814 in the Church of England Parish of
Potton, Bedfordshire, England. He was baptised there on October 21, 1814.
He arrived in Sydney, free, a Merchant aboard the "Planter" on 20th
March 1834. He was son
of Matthew Betts and Sarah Allen. Matthew and Sarah Betts appear
to have run a store in Potton (linen and woollen draper, haberdasher, hatter
& hosier, grocer, stationer, dealer in hops etc.) (Church of England
records, Potton Parish, Bedfordshire - http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=004-p64&cid=-1&Gsm=2008-06-18#-1
).
In 1835 Josiah Betts was noted as
a landowner at Vale of Clywdd near Hartley. In 1840 he is noted
as being a magistrate in the Windsor district.
His brother John Betts acquired land at the same time in the Bathurst area. He took up land at Summerhill, Frederick’s Valley near Bathurst. In 1830, at St John's Parramatta, John married Mary Marsden, daughter of Reverend Samuel Marsden. Thus he got more connection thereby to western lands as she was later a landowner at "Vale Head", Molong, and the licensee of Molong pastoral station. Indeed the burgeoning Marsden/Betts syndicate (Samuel, Thomas, Martha, Mary and Elizabeth Marsden, with John Betts) acquired at least ten large grants and leases in Country Wellington during the 1830s, being properties along the Molong and Bell Rivers and around Nandillon Ponds.
Rev. Marsden himself must have become one of the colony's wealthiest men(?). He received various tickets-of-occupation and land grants around Bathurst in 1823-4, and by 1828 owned some 5140 acres. His sons and daughters, Thomas, Martha, Mary and Elizabeth Marsden, later also acquired grants, leases and squatting licenses in the district. Mary Marsden and her husband John Betts later lived at Summerhill.
Following the first crossing of the Blue Mountains by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth in 1813 and the subsequent forging of a road by Cox, Marsden joined the first influx of those sending their stock across the mountains from the Sydney region. With the establishment of the settlement at Bathurst under the military command of William Lawson, Marsden moved his sheep to Molong under the supervision of his son-in-law, John Betts.
Josiah Betts was at Wilmington by
1841, in which year the birth of a daughter is recorded there.
In 1843
Betts was Deputy Returning Officer for district elections. Polling
was at Miller's Inn in Wilberforce. One of the candidates was Mr
Panton. He was accompanied by the St Patrick's Teetotal Band and
after he returned to Windsor "the horses were taken out of his carriage,
which was drawn by the people to his residence' (Sydney Morning Herald, 19
June 1843).
In March 1851 his
Excellency the Governor appointed
Mr. Josiah and Mrs. Martha Betts to be be
master and matron of the Protestant Orphan School at
Parramatta.
He died in August
1863 from a sudden fit, at the Protestant Orphan School, Rydalmere, where his
wife had for many years been the matron. The attending doctor found a
part used bottle of opium compound and immediately sent for a stomach
pump. He had been suffering from painful bodily illness for some time
and had overdosed on the schools opium supply. Mrs Betts had found
him lying on the floor when she took up some gruel at about nine
o'clock. Among other things, Mr Betts was a member of the NSW Vineyards
Association.
Josiaha and Martha Betts are
buried in the St John's Church Cemetery, in O'Connell Street, Parramatta
(Section 1, Row V, Plot 1) with his brother JOHN BETTS and his wife MARY nee
Marsden (an older sister of Martha's). They had 7 children, as
listed below:
1.
Josiah Allen Betts, son
of Matthew Betts and Sarah Allen, was born in September 1814 in
the Church of England Parish Church of Potton, in Bedfordshire, England.
He was baptised
on October 21, 1814, and died on August 7, 1863 in Parramatta, NSW
at age 84, and was buried in St. John's Anglican Cemetery, Parramatta, NSW.
Josiah
married Martha Marsden, daughter of Reverend Samuel Marsden and Elizabeth
Fristan, on February 19, 1839 in St. John's Church of England, Parramatta,
NSW. Martha was born on May 6, 1811 in
Parramatta, NSW and died on September 26, 1895 in Gladesville, NSW at age 84.
i. Edward Marsden Betts
was born on December 16, 1839 at "Braybin Lodge" Windsor, NSW.
Edward Marsden Betts became Mayor of Ryde in 1902-1904.and
was Hunters Hill Mayor from 1905 to 1912. He
died on February 14, 1922 in Hunters Hill, NSW at age 82, and was buried
in Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde, NSW.
ii. Emily Mary Betts was
born on July 13, 1841 at "Wilmington" near Riverstone,
NSW. She died
on July 31, 1917 in Burwood, NSW at age 76, and was buried on August 1,
1917 in Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde, NSW.
iii. Arthur Charles Betts was born on January 17, 1843 at
"Wilmington" near Riverstone, NSW. He was baptised on February 26,
1843 in St. Matthew's Church of England Windsor, NSW, and died on November
1, 1913 in Moss Vale, NSW at age 70.
iv. Francis Matthew Betts was born on January 11, 1844 at
"Wilmington" near Riverstone, NSW and died in 1894 in New
Zealand at age 50.
v. Robert Betts was born on January
30, 1847 at "Wilmington" near Riverstone, NSW. He died on August
27, 1903 in Parramatta, NSW
at age 56, and was buried in Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde, NSW.
vi. Elizabeth Betts was born on May 5, 1849 at
"Wilmington" near Riverstone, NSW and died on July 16, 1937 in
Ryde, NSW at age 88.
vii. Edith Jane Betts was born on
July 13, 1855 at "Wilmington" near Riverstone, NSW and died on
April 22, 1943 in Gladesville, NSW at age 87.
Curious is the
further Betts birth at Wilmington in 1855. So perhaps they did not
sell the property to the Halls at all, but only leased it(?).
The Riverstone Historical Society
was enquired to as to where had been the whereabouts of Wilmington.
As noted in the
Nepean Times ( 26 July 1884, page 2, column 1) Mary Ann, after the death
of William "sometime afterwards married Mr Gilbert. In the year
1854, the family came to reside at Penrith, Mr Gilbert being employed as an
overseer on the building of the first Nepean bridge".
On 19 June 1896, page 2, column 1, the Nepean Times noted the 17 June 1896
death of Charles Gilbert, aged 72, at the residence of D.J. Worboys in High
Street, Penrith.
WHERE
THEY CAME FROM - GUILDEN MORDEN, ASHWELL AND NEARBY PLACES
The Australian record of these 'first' Worboys
to Australia shows they came from the parish of Guilden Morden in
Cambridgeshire. The England Census [3] indicates that before emigrating
they lived in one of the two houses that stood in Green Nob Lane near Little
Green in 1841[1]. The Worboys' residence in this region extends back to
at least 1475 when a Thomas Worboys was recorded a warden of St Mary
Church in Guilden Morden. The records of this church mention many
early Worboys in the parish. For example in the year 1600 there was
baptism of William Warbys (28th Jan), the marriage of John Warboys (22nd June)
and the burial of John Warbys (22 June 1600). Presumably the John
who was married there on 22nd June 1600 and the John who was buried there that
day was not the same John.
"Warboys
country" - The
area of interest, with many recorded Warboy families, lies around the
triple-point junction of
Cambridgeshire,
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
x
A
Worboys grave at Guilden Morden - Albert the third son of Sarah Ann Worboys,
who died 15th of June, 1895, aged 25 years.
(Photo:
Brian Worboys)
Augusta
and family came to Australia from Guilden Morden.
Her
father William was born at nearby Ashwell, and her grandfather James was also
at Ashwell (but later lived and died at Guilden Morden).
These are very ancient places by
Australian settlement standards. The parish church of Ashwell dates
almost entirely from the 14th century and has in it mediaeval graffiti
mentioning the great tragedy of the Black Death (bubonic plague
pandemic).
'So I went to Ashwell.we first saw
its gigantic fourteenth century church tower. dominating all. And the church
inside, white and spacious and East Anglian, with arcades like a Cathedral,
clear glass everywhere, uneven floors and splendid chancel, was worthy of the
best of English villages'. ( Written by the late Sir John Betjeman, poet laureate
and lover of churches.)
This Ashwell church is dedicated
to the Blessed Virgin Mary and was built during the 14th century. No record exists
of an earlier building but there has almost certainly been a Church on the
site from early times and stones from the earlier building are probably
incorporated in the present fabric. It is now one of the largest village
churches in Hertfordshire. It is built from the "clunch"
stone, which presumably may have been quarried locally.
Graffiti,
mediaeval, scratched inside the St Mary's church at Ashwell.
(Source:
St Marys church - http://www.stmarysashwell.org.uk/church/images/graf11.jpg
)
Some graffiti
that was scratched at the time of the Black Death. Tower of St. Mary's Church,
Ashwell
(
Source: Ashwell
local government website )
Other pieces of interesting medieval graffiti
occur on the pillars inside the church:
Location
1: 'Finis virtutis pro dei Gloria et non factum suum virtutibus'
'The end (object/aim) of virtue is God's glory and not the merit of the
virtuous one'
Location
3: 'Cornua non sunt arto compugenta sputuo'
'the corners are not jointed correctly. I spit on them'
- A criticism perhaps written by a disgusted architect?
(Source:
St Marys, http://www.stmarysashwell.org.uk/church/images/graf3.jpg
,
with
some more of the same below.)
Location
4: 'Archi(di)aconus Asemnes'
'The Archdeacon is an ass'
Location
7: 'Barbara filia Barbara est ..'
' Barbara is a regular young vixen', presumably
from
an admirer of Barbara, unless a criticism?
During the medieval period the
area stagnated, which is one of the reasons why it is well preserved today
(with a wealth of timber-framed buildings and other old structures) although
Ashwell did suffer a Great Fire. From
1350 to the early part of the nineteenth century it would seem that Ashwell
stagnated.
Ashwell population reaching a high of 1,576 people in 1871, in part connected
with coprolite digging. This size was not overtaken until 1981 when
1,612 were recorded in the annual census.
After 1871 the population held steady for two decades but declined
between 1891 and 1901, after they stopped digging coprolites. Not
all that far from London with modern transport, or from closer growth centres,
the area still remain peaceful, desirable, and at many of its sites very
carefully preserved.
Ashwell
is the larger of the pleasant and well preserved villages of the district (being
home to about 1,700 people and a hub of activity). By 1086
(when Domesday Book was compiled), Ashwell was the most important settlement
in the area, being then a borough, a market town. It
was long ago settled (Iron Age hill fort, Roman ruins) as it had a good water
supply. Worked bronze Age flints and pottery from the Iron Age have been
found alongside the springs basin at Ashwell, as well as pottery from around
50 BC. The name Ashwell comes from the Anglo-Saxon 'Aescewellan',
"aesc" meaning ash, "wellan" meaning well or spring.
The water which rises from the Ashwell Springs feeds the River Rhee, one
of the main sources of the River Cam, which passes through the centre of
Cambridge. At Ely the River Cam joins the River Ouse and flows out to
sea at the Wash, 65 miles from Ashwell.
Augusta's
family lived for an uncertain period of time in Guilden Morden, but certainly
for quite some years. Seven of the children were born there,
and the remaining three were born after they reached Australia.
Where
they lived exactly in or near Guilden Morden is not yet known. However
it is thought that Augusta's father William may have worked for a Mr Frank Butterfield
there, prior to departing for Sydney. Information on this Mr
Butterfield has not yet been located, however it is known that the parish
primary school was established at premises bequeathed for purpose of promoting the education of the poor in the principles of the Established Church of England, and that in 1848 one of the first trustees was a Frederick Butterfield, Yeoman.
Note
that Frederick Butterfield was a yeoman. From the 16th century there was a substantial division between the few prosperous yeomen and a poorer
majority in the district (from ''Parishes: Bassingbourn', A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 8 (1982), pp. 12-30. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66738 Date accessed: 13 February
2009).
It
is also found, from the Poor Law Commissioners' Report of 1834, that a Mr Butterfield was at one time a distributor of poor laws relief .. and that once he refused relief to a man who refused to work for it.
A burning took place of Mr. Butterfield's stacks, to the amount of 1,500 pounds damage, a very large loss in those times. The man whom Mr Butterfield had denied relief to was arrested on suspicion of having done the deed:
"The tone assumed by the paupers towards those who dispense relief is generally very insolent, and often assumes even a more fearful character"....."The destruction of property by fire has now become so common, that where men want resolution to be the ministers of their own
vengeance, wretches are to be found who, for a trifling reward, will
execute it for them." (Poor Law Commissioners' Report of
1834. Report Made in 1834 by the Commissioners for Inquiring into the
Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws, Presented by both
Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty. http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Reports/rptPLC7.html
).
The burning of
Butterfield's stacks is also in "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fragments
of Two Centuries, by Alfred Kingston" - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21352/21352.txt
. That source also shows that another Butterfield, Thomas A.
Butterfield, was one of the first trustees of the elementary school in
Royston, established in 1832.
As
the law then stood, certain overseers were appointed to make, assess, collect,
and distribute funds for the relief of the poor. They were to decide, in the
first instance, what amount of money is wanted, what persons were to pay it,
and in what proportions; and then dole it out to those whom they considered
proper objects of relief, so as to satisfy what they thought the necessities
of those objects to be. This office was annual, but sometimes lasted
only six or four, or even three months, in places where it was the practice to
appoint more than one such agent each year and to rotate them into
service. The persons appointed were in general farmers in country
places, and shopkeepers or manufacturers in towns.
At
Croydon, in the same district as Guilden Morden, a Mr. Faircloth became
unpopular when he reduced the rates of pay for poor relief. Labourers,
gathered at his place "in a riotous body" and broke his thrashing
machine to pieces. All this "pauper insolence and
tyranny" may actually be connected with the arrival of thrashing
(threshing) machines. When the threshing machine came to do away
with the flail it was, to the mind of many, threatening to do away with their
work. The threshing machine was threatening their work, and so upon the
threshing machine wherever they found it the labourers were tempted to set
upon with vengeance. The commission of enquiry into the poor laws
administration gathered evidence in Bourn (from a Mr. Whittet) that the
poverty which compelled the farmer to use the threshing machine, bore down the
labourer to unprecedented distress, and drove him to desperation.
In Fowlmere it was stated that the he lawlessness was "Chiefly
attributable to a long course of bad execution of the Poor-laws. The cause of
the riots and fires was chiefly the cruel policy of paying the single men much
below the fair rate of wages. The object of the riots and fires was the same,
not the wanton destruction of property, but to obtain higher wages which was
too generally the result. And "Immediately after the fire at
Guilden Morden, in 1831, I went to the parish and found the farmers assembled
in Vestry, the very morning after the fire, consulting what they had better do
to put their labourers in a better state by raising their wages. I
remonstrated with them upon the impolicy of doing it then, as it would be a
bonus for such wickedness" (William Metcalfe and William Wedd).
From Meldreth, John Burr (churchwarden) told the commission "Keep up the
price of labour or there will be always cause to fear", a distinct echo
of the Guilden Morden farmers' sentiments no doubt. At Wimpole, Robert
Withers (Land Agent) stated "The fires were lighted up by malice in the
breasts of the labourers because the farmers pinched them in their wages; the
riots may be called an effort to recover their former rate of wages, and
answered their object"
During
the years of 1830-1835, great discontent smouldered. Incendiary fires
were frequent. Ashwell and Bassingbourn suffered severely. Of the
former it is said that nearly all one side of the place was burned, and of the
latter, in the course of three or four years, most of the farm homesteads were
destroyed ('Fragments of Two Centuries' by Alfred
Kingston). Kingston notes that for one riot at Fowlmere the
Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Hardwicke, rode to Royston and recruited around
twenty men as special constables. These then were taken to Fowlmere on
horseback, under the command of a justice of the peace, Mr. Hawkins. At
Fowlmere the posse of armed "specials" fought with the labouring
population of the village - having found them assembled, both male and female
- in an open space and armed with sticks and other weapons, prepared to resist.
The ringleaders were marched off under escort of the special constables to
Cambridge gaol, charged with riot.
A
result of all this was reform of the Poor Law. No longer would
each parish be left to administer such for itself. The new order
provided for grouping a score, more or less, of parishes into a
"Union", with some uniform system of administration which should be
less dependent upon the circumstances and prejudices of an individual
parish. The Royston Union was formed in 1835, consisting of 29 parishes
in Herts., Cambs., and Essex.
The
new Union began the building of a central Workhouse. But the pauperised
element in the villages look upon this great central Workhouse arising on the
borders of Royston Heath as a sort of "bastille" being built to
confine them in. There, they imagined, for the misfortune of being
poor they were to be shut away from their kith and kin. So strong did
the feeling become that there were disturbances in several parishes,
especially in the two Mordens, where the opprobrious Relieving Officer met
with anything but a friendly reception on his first visits. The Union
then cut off certain individuals from that area, from applying for relief,
until it was judged safe for the Relieving Officer to enter their parish (op.
cit., Alfred Kingston).
About
this time, another dreadful fire occurred at Bassingbourn which was so closely
associated in the popular mind with the prevailing discontent that the
services of a "Bow Street Runner" to scour the district in search of
the incendiary. This was paid for out of the rates.
Efforts
were made to reconcile the inhabitants in the villages to the new order of
things, and an address to the inhabitants was printed and circulated to them,
written by Mr. Henry Thurnall (clerk of the Union). Thurnall's
pamphlet was in the form of an address by a working-man to working-men,
addressed to "The Labourers of England." From the
pamphlet it appears that in some places the new Relieving Officer was at first
so unpopular that he was pelted when he came into the villages to pay out his
relief money.
But Guilden
Morden people still resisted the reform. The Rev. Thomas Clack, curate
of Guilden Morden, as well as the Rev. Frederick Herbert Maberley, curate of
Bourn, convened meetings of agricultural labourers in their own and
surrounding parishes. The people discussed the supposed horrors of the
new "Poor-law Prison", to which they feared they would be consigned
if they did not rise as one man to stand up for their rights. Thomas
Clack had been appointed the curate in 1836. He lived in lodgings at Litlington, being too poor to afford furniture or even a servant.
It alarmed his superiors that he 'spouted' in poor men's clubs against the new poor law, and encouraged the labourers
against the the building of Royston workhouse (from 'Parishes: Guilden Morden', A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 8 (1982), pp. 97-110. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66745 Date accessed: 13 February
2009)
Although
Rev. Clack was too poor to own furniture, this watercolour by Henry E L Dryden,
done in
1843
shows artefacts "From the Roman cemetery Guilden Morden" which the
Reverend had in
his
possession at Litlington. (Repository: Northamptonshire
Central Library).
Besides
disapproving of the new Poor Law changes, Rev. Clack is also noted for his
archaeological interests. At a meeting of the Cambridge
Antiquarian Society (May 6, 1841), Rev. Clack exhibited coloured drawings of a
tesselated pavement found in a Roman villa at Litlington (Camb. Chron. May 8,
1841). At another meeting (Dec. 6, 1841) he gave an account of his whole
proceedings in the exploration of the villa, which consisted of more than
thirty rooms and a bath (Camb. Chron. Dec. 11, 1841). It was situated
between the Ashwell Street and Litlington church, and the examination of it
was chiefly made in the year 1829 (Camb. Chron. May 29, 1829). Unfortunately
Mr Clack's collections were later sold in Devonshire, and lost trace of except
for a very few of the Roman vessels which went to the Cambridge Antiquarian
Society. His manuscript and plans also were lost. (REF:
Cambridge Antiquarian Society. Octavo Publications. No. XX, OR AN ATTEMPT TO
TRACK ROMAN AND OTHER ANCIENT ROADS THAT PASSED THROUGH THE COUNTY OF
CAMBRIDGE; WITH A RECORD OF THE PLACES WHERE ROMAN COINS AND OTHER REMAINS
HAVE BEEN FOUND. SECOND EDITION, MUCH ENLARGED. By Charles Cardale
Babington, M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A, Fellow of St John's College, and Professor of
Botany in the University of Cambridge. 1883.).
Rev.
Clack supported the rural labourer and his family, who faced the very real
fear of being driven into the district workhouse where they would be broken up
and separated by sex and age.
As
for the opposition to the new system for
changing the Poor Law, Rev. Clack probably played an influential role.
The opponents planned to call a monster meeting from
all the parishes belonging to the Royston Union, to be held on Royston Heath
in front of the unfinished Workhouse building.
Authorities
feared that an attack upon, or even the demolition of, the building could
result.
The handbill
convening the meeting was considered to be of an inflammatory kind, and the
new Board of Guardians called a meeting which appointed a deputation to wait
upon the Poor-law Commissioners and upon the Home Secretary, to see what
measures they would advise. The Parish Constable and the Beadle, and the
swearing in of special constables was about all that the local authority could
muster.
This
deputation waited upon Lord John Russell, then Home Secretary, with the result
that an inspector and a sufficient police force were promised to be despatched
from London to Royston on the day before that announced for the meeting.
Letters were also sent to the Lord Lieutenants of both counties, and to the
promoters of the meeting, warning the latter of their responsibility should
any serious disturbance occur.
The
day appointed for the meeting was Wednesday, 22nd June, 1836. Inside the
unfinished building on the morning of that day there is a strange and an
anxious company assembled - the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Lieutenant of
Cambridgeshire, is there, several local Magistrates, several of the Guardians,
and a posse of about a score of Metropolitan police, all assembled to await
the threatened storming of the bastille.
On
the day for the meeting, the labourers, with a large proportion of women and
children, came in wagons, carts, and on foot, all through the morning.
They sat down opposite the Workhouse on the road side.
Soon
after 12 o'clock the Rev. H. F. Maberley, arrived, accompanied by the Rev. T.
Clack, curate of Guilden Morden. Rev. Clack proclaimed: "This
is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it."
Some 1,500 persons, of whom at least two-thirds were said to have been women
and children, listened. The Rev. H. F. Maberley declaimed against
separating old men and women and the prospective hardships of the new order of
things. The whole proceedings lasted several hours, and a storm of rain did
not help the ardour of the crusaders. There was none of the
violence the authorities had prepared for.
The
Guardians laid the matter before the Bishop of the Diocese as to the conduct
of the clergymen.
The new
centralised system went ahead and the government later reported it was a great
success in saving money compared to the old parish-based system.
Other
evidence of the family name Butterfield in the district includes that there
was a Mr Butterfield at Bassingbourn, east of Guilden Morden, whose estate was
disposed of in 1831 ( Cambridgeshire
County Record Office, Cambridge ; Rowley,
Son and Royce [296/B/661/1 - 296/B/829/18] ). Also, a Sarah
Stickland who was baptised on 29 November 1751 in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire
. Sarah married John Archer Butterfield on 28 July 1774 in Steeple Morden ( www.mandywillard.co.uk/surnames/strickland/john_1690.htm
). At Bassingbourn the parish church of St Peter, which
dates from before 1222, was built on the site of part of the old St John’s
Chapel at the side of the Roman Akeman Street. In 1870 it was restored
and clad in faced flint to a design by William Butterfield. At the
Parish church of St Peter & St Paul the graves include one of Samuel
Butterfield, died 1836.
Around
Bassingbour the more prominent landowning families were those of Bolnest, Waller or Warren, Curtis, and Archer, and the Turpins, styled gentlemen from c. 1560, as were the Archers after 1650.
The Archers owned 80 a. under Charles I, and leased part of the Bury land from the 1640s to the 1670s.
In the 18th century their 165 a. passed by marriage to the Butterfields after 1740.
The Inclosure Act, took effecf in 1801. The fields were divided in 1804, and the award was executed in 1806.
The area to be allotted comprised 2,868 a. of open fields and commons. There were also 348 a. of old inclosures. After 739 a. had been allotted for the rectorial, and 150 a. for the vicarial, glebe and tithes, c. 570 a. remained to the Hattons, and 136 a. to the Nightingale estate. The two Beldams received 210 a. and 127 a., and three substantial resident farmers, John Archer Butterfield, Samuel Flitton, and Thomas Prime 122 a., 142 a., and 140 a.
respectively. Of the lesser estates the Butterfield property was broken up and sold by
1850 (from: 'Parishes: Bassingbourn', A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 8 (1982), pp. 12-30. URL:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66738 Date accessed: 13 February
2009).
The Abstract of
Administration of John Archer Butterfield, Farmer of of Bassingbourn,
Cambridgeshire, dated 11 June 1808 is R
26/332 in the National
Archives. Ditto there's available records for the passing on of land,
homestall, 17 tenements, orchards and nursery ground at Bassingbourn [for £5360]
and Ashwell, for Executors of Mr. Thomas A. Butterfield (dec.) at
31 July 1833 (296/B/732/7); and, Growing
wheat, barley, oats etc. at Bassingbourn for Mr. Archer Butterfield [£489
11s. 1d.] at 1 August 1833 (296/B/732/8) - at National Archives
(per Rowley,
Son and Royce [296/B/661/1 - 296/B/829/18] records).
In
Alfred Kingston's book "Fragments of Two Centuries Glimpses of Country
Life when George III. was King", there are tables showing the population
of 45 parishes in the the Royston district (of the Royston and Buntingford
Poor-law Unions), situated in the counties of Herts., Cambs., and Essex, for
each decade from 1801 to 1891. These figures show widespread remarkable
decline in the last two decades of the century. Kingston recognised the
"economic effects of which have led to the cry for bringing back the
labourer on to the land, instead of his drifting away to aggravate the social
problem in London and other populous centres" but did not detail
them. The population decline is seen for most villages and some of
the figures are as follows:
1801 1811 1821 1831 1841
1851 1861 1871 1881
1891
Ashwell
715 754 915
1072 1235 1425
1507 1576 1568 1556
Morden,
Guilden 428 489
570 675
808 931
906 1059 959
819
Morden,
Steeple 430 483
614 645
788 889
912 1018 981
810
The
Parish Council of Guilden Morden was contacted to find more information on
these events, and any material about the encouragement of people to leave Guilden Morden for Australia in the first half of the 1800s.
GUILDEN MORDEN
The long narrow parish of Guilden
Morden is of special interest here as being where Augusta was born.
It
is a very old parish and the Worboys have clearly lived there for centuries.
Others have lived there even longer. Bronze age and Iron age burial
sites have been found at the southern end of the parish, where there are also
significant Roman sites. There are parish boundary earthworks bank
(along Cobb's Lane) which some think may date from Anglo-Saxon times,
suggesting this was some 'shire' boundary also in ancient times. The two Mordens were separated in 1015 after Atheling Athelstan
left an estate to the abbey at Winchester, and the northern part of
the boundary between the two Mordens was marked along what is now Cobb's Lane.
Thus the parish then took the shape
which, with some very minor adjustments, it still has today nearly a thousand
years ago.
The
earliest written record of Guilden and Steeple Morden is in the Domesday
Book. There they are 'Morduna' - marsh hills. This
designation makes sense when approaching from the north, where there which was once low wet
land (much of it since drained). By the thirteenth century the western
moduna/morden was
termed 'Guilden' meaning rich or productive.
The
so-far earliest discovered Worboys at Guilden Morden is there in 1475.
This was Thomas Worboys. He was a warden of the large St Marys
church and so may have been a prominent or well regarded man in the village,
possibly a landholder. (REF: Court of Chancery: Six Clerks Office:
Early Proceedings, Richard II to Philip and Mary "Robert Crystemas
and Thomas Warboys, churchwardens of Guilden Morden. v. John Barnham, John
Gyles and Thomas Halyday.: Messuage and land in Guilden Morden and Ashwell:
Cambridge, Hertford" Covering dates 1485-1486). In some instances, Churchwardens were chosen by the Bishop
and it other cases they may have been selected through election by their peers.
Also in the 15th century at Parish Warboys (a large Domesday book
listed parish bordering Cambridge and Huntingdon, where the name Worboys,
as 'Wardebusc', goes back to the 6th Century) there was in the 15th Century a
manor house being leased by a John Warboys, showing some people of this
surname were then well off.
The
parish of Guilden Morden commences about 13 km SW of Cambridge and it covers 1,052 ha. (2,599 a.), forming the south-western extremity of Cambridgeshire.
Pre-conquest settlement was probably scattered
but near available springs, or where water could be got in shallow
wells. Much of the present High Street is believed to be near the 'outcrop'
(or subcrop?) of the Tottemhoe stone, which is well known to be a water-bearing stratum.
It has been remarked that the
parish boundaries of Bassingbourn, Litlington and the Mordens appear to show signs of
planning, with each being allotted a strip extending from the drier downland
to marshy river meadows. When this was done is obscure, but it is also a
feature of other areas of Cambridgeshire. It was possibly done during or soon after the period of Danish rule which came to an end in
920.
The river Cam or Rhee, which rises at Ruddery Spring, 3
km south of the village near the ancient Ashwell Street, forms the western boundary of both county and
the parish of Guilden Morden with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. The southern boundary follows for 400 m the line of the Icknield Way, later the Baldock-Royston turnpike.
From there (where the parish has only this 400m narrow tongue that was once occupied by the Cistercian
Order's Odsey grange) the parish of Guilden Morden stretches north for 9 km to Tadlow bridge across the Cam.
It is separated from Steeple Morden to the east (from which it was probably not
greatly distinguished in 1086)
by a stream whose name is not yet know to the present writer. This
stream rises rising near Ashwell Street. South of the beginning of
that stream the parish boundary followed only old field boundaries.
Guilden
Morden lies upon the Gault
clay to the north and the sometimes harder (then called 'clunch') chalk further south.
Mostly there is little outcrop but loose stone or 'float' is widespread.
The ground rises gently from under 30
m at an area by the Cam, to the north, which was known as Morden fen in
1327. It reaches ca. 40 m elevation around the village and
rise to 60 m at another rise just south of Ashwell Street. Upon that slight eminence, just south of Ashwell Street
,was a Romano-British cemetery (later partly quarried away at the village clunch
pit). Over 180
Roman or Romano-British, burials took place there from of the 1st to 4th centuries A.D.,
and this must indicate a substantial settlement existed nearby. The remains of a Roman villa
have been found 400 m NW of there.
Guilden Morden
was home to 51 peasants in 1086 (Domesday Book). There are a number of entries which
apply to Guilden Morden in the Domesday Book. 1086. Probably, there
was no great distinction between Steeple and Guilden Morden at that time - both
being very thinly populated and spread out. Steeple Morden is directly referred to
in 1086 and the other Morden (later Guilden Morden) is referred to just as the "Other Morden" or as "Morden".
Early
records refer to four people to whom the land had been given by the
William I. These four are Sheriff Picot of Cambridge, Lord Hardwin of Scales,
Geoffrey de
Mandeville, and Earl Roger. The largest early manor that was built was that of Picot's,
at 3 and a half hides, 8 freemen, one slave and a mill. That
estate passed down to his
successor, Pain Peverel and then to son William Peverel, who died without
issue. Subsequently the holdings variously passed down as five
main manors: Pichards,
Bondesbury, Odsey, Avenels and one around Town's End Farm. Geoffrey de
Mandeville's estate would become Foxleys Manor, and the Earl Roger's land passed
(along with the
Shingay manor) to the Knights Hospitallers and their successors.
[A "hide" or early records is 120 acres, and a "virgate"
is a quarter of a
hide). The Mill mentioned in the Doomesday Book is almost certainly Hooks
Mill on the Cam River.
The names of c. 130 tenants survive from
a return of tennants list of 1279 (P.R.O., SC 6/Cambs. Tower ser. no. 16, rot. 13).
The
population of the parish has been a few hundred over centuries, peaking above
one thousand during the coprolite boom. There were 222 adults in
1377, and 54 households in 1563. Under Charles II there were 80 or more households,
and in 1676 there were 224 adults. In 1728 a recorded 85 families comprised ca. 330 people.
From the 1760s onwards the population rose steadily to reach 428 by 1801. Thereafter it grew
further (by an average of 9 a year in the 1810s and 13 in the 1830s) to reach 929 in 1851.
Despite a slight drop ca. 1860, the rise of coprolite digging as an
additional source of employment curbed the emigration out of the parish which
had begun. Parish population reached 1,059 in 1871, after which it fell by 100 by 1881.
The decine continued, briefly halting In the 1910s at
ca. 660, but resuming after 1914. By 1931 the population had drecreased
to 533, which was lower than the previous low in 1821. After 1950 the
population resumed growing, to 590 in 1971. The area
seems destined for future population growth, including commuter workers, and
for continued diminution of agricultural pursuits.
The main village lay in the wider northern section of the
parish. From the church a short street (Church Street) ran south-west to meet, south of Pound Green,
with the main long, winding 'high street'. This runs on south for 800
m through the 'South End' (mentioned in 1556), to the Town's End (named by
1625).
In the mid 19th century there were ca. 40 houses along Church Street, over 20 at Pound Green, and
about 50 along the high street further south. North and northeast of the village were
tiny hamlets or outlier clusters of dwellings. The main ones are Great Green and Little Green, the latter recorded in 1699
(and perhaps, as 'Little End', in 1689). About 1850 there were
15-20 dwellings at each of Great Green and Little Green, but these hamlets later shrank until in the 1970s there were
merely 3 cottages
left at
Little Green, and 5 or 6 houses at Great Green. Now (2010) only
one of the old cottages survives at Little Green ("Thatchways").
After the Norman conquest
when the bulk of the manorial rights were acquired by Baron Picot, the Sheriff of Cambridge, he seized some land from the Abbey of Ely, where the monks recorded their opinion of him for posterity - "a famished lion, a roving wolf, a crafty fox, a filthy swine, a shameless dog".
However, he later used rectoral rights of Guilden Morden to endow Barnwell Abbey, where he was more kindly remembered.
"""""""
Major events in the life of the village:
- 6,000BC .. "Wotsisname" loses an
axehead near Mobb's Hole, Guilden Morden.
- 300s AD .. Roman road from Arrington bridge -
which Fleck's Lane & Silver St now respect - Roman villa built and
cemetery opened.
- 700s AD .. Anglo-saxon cemetery at Thompson's
meadow.
- 1086 Sheriff (Baron) Picot, "the crafty
fox, filthy swine" etc acquires the major part of Guilden Morden.
- 1092 .. Picot endows land and a chapel at
Ruddery or "Redreth" (a hamlet) to support St Giles - later Barnwell
Abbey. "Redreth" lay off the Ashwell Rd, left, beyond Cold Harbour
farm (an old Roman station) near to the green lane called Ashwell Street.-
also in the Norman period the earliest structures of the existing St Mary's
church were put in place.
For more of this chronology see
the continuation at http://www.guildenmorden.gov.uk/major_events.html
"""""""
Picot's manor became split into three, Bondesbury's, Pychard's, and Avenell's,
and with property belonging to the religious houses of Bamwell, and the
Knights Hospitaller at Shingay, there came to be five major manors in the
parish, near the village.
The first two named were held by Thomas Haselden. In 1381 insurgent peasants destroyed Haselden's manor house at Morden and carried off his crops.
He left two sons, Richard and Thomas. His son and heir Thomas was just under 21. Thomas had gone mad by 1408 and died by 1417.
Control of the lands passed after 1408 to Sir William Hasenhull, his guardian.
The land passed down family inheritance lines until a later Thomas ordered its
sale to pay his debts. The purchaser was Sir George Downing, Bt., whose
descendant in 1806 sold the land to Lord Hardwicke. The existing Morden Hall
on this land was probably built by the Haseldens in the 15th century. It stands 450 metres east of the village within a square moat nearly 10 metres
wide. It was noted to have 9 hearths in the 1660s.
Another notheworthy
holding, at the southern end of the parish, was Odsey,
between Ashwell Street and Icknield Way. Odsey has long been
different. By the 12th century Picot's holdings had passed to his
grandson William Peverel, who granted his land between Ashwell Street and the
Icknield Way to Warden Abbey in Bedfordshire. Odsey thereby became a monastic
grange and without residents other than those required to manage or farm it.
It has remained to the present a private estate with a
single landowner. After the land was bequeathed to Warden Abbey in 1160,
this Cistercian abbey established there its grange of
"Odsey". It was probably a farm by 1400. It later
passed in 1793 to the brothers Edward King Fordham and George Fordham, then bankers
of Royston.
About 1865 Herbert Fordham replaced an old farmhouse, perhaps on the original
grange site, with a substantial mansion in grey brick, that he named 'Odsey'.
North
of Odsey, land was under an open-field system. Around the village itself
lay about 265 a. of
inclosures, stretching from a detached block near Little Green in the north-east to Town's End in the south.
One block of 50 a. inclosed around Morden Hall belonged entirely to the lord
of that manor.
The principal crop from the Middle Ages was
barley, although slome significant cultivation of rye, wheat and malt also
took place. In 1381 Thomas Haselden's barns were plundered of 155 qr. of barley.
A yeoman in 1512 bequeathed 90 qr. of barley and 16 of malt. John Morgan, apparently the rectory lessee, in 1557 left 10 qr. each of wheat and malt but only 3 each of barley and rye.
Saffron was also cultivated there before the 17th century.
In
1800, when open-field arable land was still being farmed on a triennial rotation and divided between the tilth, edge, and fallow fields, wheat and spring barley
would be planted in the lately-fallow fields, and legumes might be sown in the 'breach season' after them. Clover was also then being sown in the fields.
To the west, by the Cam
River, lay some 120 acres of marshland. This was used for meadow and Lammas
ground. And along the northern border of the parish were Pillam (later
Pelham) common of over 80 a. (recorded by 1525) and probably other commons
areas. Cannon Green in the north-east (named by 1528), and perhaps later
on Little Green also,
were apparently commons (Vancouver, Agric. in Cambs. 84; P.R.O., DL 30/118/ 1830, rot.
5).
Numerous sheep were
kept over the centuries. In 1347 the parish contributed to the levy in wool c. 93 stone, probably representing
a sheep population of about 800. Of this, 21¼ stone came from three manorial flocks and
ca. 56 stone came from from 32 other sheepowners who were rendering 1 to 3 stone each.
The main manor was said in 1617 to have liberty of fold for 700 sheep, and in 1517 Francis Haselden left his brother Anthony 320 sheep out of his flock.
After
inclosure the lords of the manors claimed sole right of sheep walk over the fields encircling the
village. A lord's leave might then have been required for sowing fields
at any time when they were subject to that right of sheep walk. The smaller owners came to concentrate on
cattle rather than sheep. By 1578 there were probably about 100 cows
around the village.
From the mid 15th century there was much inequality among the peasants. Some prospered, enlarging their holdings and enjoying the profits of leasing
demesne, and some were very poor. The Morgan family rose partly by holding the rectory on lease from
ca. 1510 to 1540. Robert Morgan, worth £340 in 1522, was the richest yeoman in the parish.
Such prosperity contrasted with the poverty of others. In 1524 only 15 inhabitants had goods taxed at over £4, worth altogether
£290.
By the 1790s the largest estates were Simeon Leete's 445
acres., and the main manor's 417 acres. Odsey at that time covered ca. 260.
A few other major holders had 100-278 acres each, whereas all the other residents
held nothing over 20 a. each. Leete was farming 220 a. besides his own
land; and together with the lessees of Morden Hall farm (314 a), and another farm
(557 a), these few owners occupied more than half the parish.
Inclosure
was first proposed in 1796. It was delayed because the landowners would not, since the commons had never paid tithe, accept the impropriator's demands over tithe commutation.
Agreement was reached in 1799 and an Act was obtained in 1800.
Its provision for a new common pasture for continued stocking by the commoners was ineffective because
the owners of commonable houses all elected to take separate allotments.
The division of land was accomplished late in 1801, and the award was finally executed in 1805.
The area involved included 1,922 a. of open fields and commons. There were also 545 a. of older
inclosure involved in the re[planning, almost half at Odsey.
After 400 a. had been allotted for glebe and tithes, the manorial estate
emerged with 376 a., including 83 a. of old inclosures. By 1810 its its new purchaser,
Lord Hardwicke, had added his own 64 a., and two other allotments (198 a.
and 93 a).
Following the division and sale by 1845 of the Leete estate, over half the parish was
still occupied by five large farms.
Large sheep flocks survived for a time.
One farmer had 240 mature sheep in 1812, another 400 in 1818. However
total sheep numbers fell from over 1,400 in 1885 to below 800 by 1905.
Shee numbered below 300 by 1925.
The area of permanent grass also fell - from 540 a. in 1866 to ca. 290 a. in
the 1920s, and down to 108 acres by 1955. Likewise, the
industries of dairying and pasturing cattle around the village seem to be totally abandoned today, and
it is reported that the hedges are also disappearing.
In the 19th century most inhabitants were farm labourers.
In 1821 there were 101 families who depended on farming, and only 18 depended on trades and crafts. In 1831 there were 90 adult labourers, and 40 more under 20.
The farms, however, could not provide work for all of them.
The labourers' income
for a time was partly bolstered by many of their
women. The chief female industries was that 87 of them in 1851, and 83 in 1861,
engaged in straw plaiting for hats. Females may also have
grouped together for cottage industry like clothing manufacture.
In the 1660s the poor had apparently received 6 qr. of corn or grist from the yield of the town lands. After inclosure it was decided in 1806 to use the balance of income from
parish lands for the poor in a more systematic manner - after allowing £12 yearly for church repairs, for apprenticeship fees, clothing, and other
forms of relief for needy persons. Such income available to help the
poor was about £55 per anum in the 1820s. In the 1830, the parish
derived income from its holding of 35 a. near the village, wehich it let as allotments to 43 labourers.
From 1843 the value of the 'town grain' went for a time to widows and old people, in bread or cash doles.
A townhouse owned by the parish was converted in 1779 into a workhouse with 4 beds. The parish allowed
the master of this establishment 1s. for each inmate.
By 1803, the provision of poor relief had risen to costing £304. There were 31 people on
relief-for-work, and 17 such by 1814 (besides the 4-5 living in the
workhouse). Poor relief expenditure had then reached£455.
It was thereafter averaging £500 in the 1830s, at which time the parish would
use 7 or 8
of the unemployed agricultural labourers on roadworks. In 1833 an overseer was the victim of arson, supposedly committed by a man denied relief for refusing the work offered
him
(further on this is below). From 1835 the parish was included in the Royston poor-law
union and the old parish poorhouse was sold off by 1842.
The
under employment in th parish lead to emigration, and in 1845 some twenty three former villagers were drowned on the voyage to
Australia (further on this is below).
Coprolite
digging began around 1860 and boosted things for a time. In 1871 the farmers employed
90 or so adult labourers, and another 70 men (only 10 of them born outside the
parish) were engaged in
coprolite digging.
The
number of adult farm workers declined to 45 in the 1920s.
Except in trades ancillary to farming, the village had few craftsmen.
In the 14th century there were two or three butchers. Weavers were recorded
from 1269 till 1768, a chandler in 1470, and a glazier ca. 1742.
Millers operated from before 1150 till the 1930s, mainly using water mills but also
there was one windmill (which has lost its sails by 1975). A
"Brick-kiln Furlong", so named by the 1690s, was perhaps near the site of the
brickworks known to have stood at the northern side of Great Green, where several water-filled brickpits survive.
These were disused by the 1930s. In the 19th century there were also carpenters,
blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailors and saddlers. The houses of the
1800s were mostly of the greyish yellow bricks ("Cambridge whites")
made by firing the local gault clay at these brickworks north of the village,
e.g. at Great Green.
Great
Green shown on the 1891 Ordnance Survey map. Note the words
"Kiln" and "Brick Works".
Same
area today. A pond survives, west of the kiln position, but the
kiln and brickworks sites are today empty ground.
A
Worboys wheelwright's business grew into a small building firm that was still active in the
1930s. At Bassingbourn village to the east Worboys were regarded
as a timber-merchants family since the 1870s, and they operated there a builder's yard between 1900 and
1930. Both being in the construction business, these two
operations may have had some relationship(?).
At
least some of the Worboys may have been nonconformists. Seven Presbyterians
are said to have had a meeting house in 1728, and a few Methodists were
present in 1807 (perhaps connected with those at Steeple Morden). An organized Independent congregation, including several leading farmers and tradesmen, was established
in the 1830s. In 1840 it opened a chapel, now a plain classical building in white brick with an arcaded front, on the east side of the street north of Pound Green.
A Communion Table presented in 1900 by the Reavell family honours their
parents who it was said formed the church from "a small band of
Christians in about 1832". The Chapel was built
on land given by a Mr Leete, then living in the Avenells and it called its
first minister, Joseph Stockbridge, in 1840, from Homerton College.
Joseph Stockbridge ministered all his life in Guilden Morden, dying in 1892. In 1873 there were 550
chapel-goers in a population of
ca 1,050; but from 100 in 1914 membership declined slowly to 56 c. 1935, 37 by 1953, and 24 by 1965.
The chapel, still open in the 1970s when its adherents included several leading villagers, did not join the United Reformed Church.
(REFS:
For more on Guilden Morden parish history see the Guilden Moden parish council
documents and website ( http://www.guildenmorden.gov.uk
) and see.
British History online - http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66745&strquery=Guilden%20Morden
)
Six
Bells and Edward VII pubs at Guilden Morden - then and now (Photos per:
GM parish council)
High
Street, Guilden Morden - then and now (Photos per: GM parish council)
Guilden Morden
parish church, St. Mary the Virgin. Rev. Robert Alfred Rackham of
here certified the Worboys family application for
assisted
passage to Sydney. Rev. Rackham was
also the transcriber/author of a "Towne Book of Guilden Morden,
1661-1819",
which was produced in 1842 from the records of the church.
The large and stately church of
St Mary at Guilden Morden, so named by 1472, consists of a chancel, aisled and clerestoried nave with south porch, all battlemented and mostly built of field stones with freestone dressings, and a west tower, entirely of ashlar, with a short spire. The earliest surviving portion is the three eastern arches of the nave south arcade, probably representing its original length. Their double-chamfered arches on octagonal piers are probably of before 1300. Next, perhaps before 1350, four bays of the north arcade, with elaborately moulded arches with headstops on quatrefoil piers, were built as far as the crossing between the north and south doorways. The chancel, whose arch has similar responds, was probably contemporary. The two west bays of the north arcade, and three west bays on the south, were added later, in a similar style, but beyond a visible break. The tower arch, on octagonal responds, otherwise matches those western bays. The massive three-stage west tower is probably of the 15th century, when also all the windows were inserted, the taller twolight ones in the chancel being perhaps earlier than the three-light ones in the aisles. The roof line was raised to accommodate five two-light clerestory windows on each side. The south porch, whose outer doorway with pierced spandrels is like one at Ashwell church (also
named St Marys), is also 15th-century, as is probably the ashlar vestry, added north of the chancel.
The spire was possibly cut down when reconstructed in the 17th century. The church was substantially restored in the late 1850s. The walling again required extensive repairs in the 1960s, and in 1972 the spire, then threatening to fall, was dismantled and re-erected.
People
have lived in Ashwell since the Stone Age. Ashwell Village Museum has objects
from all periods
from
the Stone Age, Iron Age, Roman times, Anglo-Saxon, Mediaeval to the
present day.
(
The Curator is Peter Greener, peter.greener@care4free.net
)
Ashwell
Village Museum, on Swan Street, Ashwell. A former the 16th-century
town house. (Wikipedia)
Susan Cooper of Essex and her sister Julie, outside Ashwell Village Museum. [Susan is a Worboys family descendant via
Tott.
Her gt-gt-gt grandmother is Elizabeth Worboys,
born in Ashwell c. 1818, daughter of William Warboys and Mary Whitehead
(born 1781,
Ashwell), who married at Ashwell in 1805. One of Elizabeth's daughters, Mary, married a James Tott who also
came from
Ashwell. Compare to Augusta Warboy's mother who was Mary Ann Tott (not yet traced by the present writer).
(Photo and info: Sue Cooper, pers. com. 2009).
Southwest
Cambridgeshire. Guilden Morden, Steeple Morden, Litlington are seen in
the SW corner. Note the major roads running
SW
from Cambridge and compare to geological map. Potton and Ashwell lie
just west of Cambridgeshir boundary, in
Bedfordshire
and Hertfordshire.
Ashwell is seen WSW of
Royston. Northfield Road, to the north of Ashwell, runs on a slight rise across the
landscape.
Most of the area is very open
and exposed, as in the following photos. Large acreage
of arable land is often
the sole landscape viewed, which may
be interrupted only by recent roadway plantings of trees.
Chalk outcrop map (per Valuing
chalk geodiversity, at The East of England Geodiversity Partnership
( www.geo-east.org.uk/
special_projects/geology.htm )
[ Geo-East is a partnership of
organisations active in conserving and promoting Earth heritage in the six
eastern counties.
Geo-East runs a forum at http://geoeast.org.uk/smf/index.php
]
Ashwell map showing the location of
the village Museum, the church of St Mary the Virgin, The Springs and Arbury Banks.
AT
ST. MARY THE VIRGIN, IN ASHWELL, HAVE BEEN BURIED THE
FOLLOWING 50 WORBOYS
( "6m" = 6 months / "inf" = infant )
(these are dates of the burials ..)
19 Nov 1810
Catharine Warboys
10 May 1802
Elizabeth Warboys inf
17 Jun 1807
Elizabeth Warboys
6 Nov 1808
Hannah Warboys
3 Oct 1818
Hannah Worboys
7
24 Jun 1824
James Worboys
75
30 Nov 1824
Jane Worboys
29
11 Mar 1813
John Warboys
68
17 Dec 1822
John Worboys
73
27 Apr 1824
John Worboys
66
14 Oct 1825
John Worboys
16
21 Nov 1825
Martha Worboys
27
28 Apr 1804
Mary Worboys
28 Jul 1804 Mary
Warboys inf
26 May 1802
Rebekah Warboys
14 Mar 1819
Samuel Worboys
inf
23 May 1808
Sarah Warboys
62
20 Jul 1816 Sarah
Worboys 43
6 Feb 1820
Sarah Worboys
35
23 Sep 1825
Susan Worboys
6m
4 Jul 1825 Thomas
Worboys 5
10 Oct 1804
William Warboys inf
29 Sep 1812 William Worboys
10 Aug 1813 William Worboys
39
26 Dec 1825 William Worboys
67
3 Mar 1826 Rachael Worboys 3
5 Jan
1827 Elizabeth
Worboys 74
13
Apr 1827 Mary Worboys
21
25 Feb 1828 Mary Worboys
80
11 Apr 1829 William Worboys
52
4 Feb 1832 Sarah Worboys
18m
19 Aug 1832 James Worboys
1
10 Jun 1834 William Worboys
18m
3 Jan 1839 Anne Worboys
85
6
Aug 1839 John Worboys
inf
17 May 1840 Anne
Elizabeth Worboys
16
2 Mar 1841
William Worboys inf
31 Aug 1841
Samuel Worboys
39
30 Nov
1841 William Worboys
74
3 Oct 1843
Samuel Worboys
34
29 Oct
1843 Rebecca Worboys 12
5 Jul 1844 Mary Anne Worboys 6m
22 Sep 1844
Rosina Sarah Worboys inf
21 May
1846 Jane Worboys
22
21 Feb
1849 James Worboys
37
28 Aug
1849
Samuel Worboys
14m
24 Jun
1850
William Worboys
65
27 Nov
1850 Fanny Mary Worboys 2+
3
Jun 1851 Ann Worboys
2
Ashwell
Springs, west of southern end of Springhead road. St Marys church is
seen at left.
Ashwell village is mentioned in the
Domesday Book and has probably been occupied for ca. 2000 years. Many Saxon
coins
have been found there, as well as
Roman sites. The vicinity of the main road to Royston at the
southern end of the village
(Ashwell Street) has traces of the
ancient "Icknield Way". The
Icknield Way ran from Sailsbury Plain to East
Anglia. Where it crossed the
Ermine way (which ran between London and York) there used to be a stone
cross (Roisia's Stone, of which only
the base remains). The town that formed around the crossroads
became known as Roisia's Town, and,
eventually Royston.
Guilden Morden
Steeple Morden
FAMILY
DATA
This
webpage was developed in December 2008 from an interest in tracing the life or environment of
Augusta Worboys, the daughter of William Worboys and Mary Ann Tott, born in
1838 in Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire - and who later migrated with her
family to Australia. Here she had thirteen children and the daughter
called Kate (Maria Catherine Hall Cummins) married the writer's father's grandfather
(William Taylor Byrnes) :-
William Worboys family
data recorded in the 1841 census (Source: kindly supplied by Jacqui White). The data on the tree is as found
off Internet via
Google. There are other indications that the word 'Born' in above tree
may mostly be wrong and should be entirely or
mostly replaced by 'Baptised' (born and baptised might or might not be
close in time - this is to be checked). Their address
looks
here to be "Green Nob Lane". The places sequence in the
census listing was: Great Green, Little Green,
Green
Nob Street, Green Nob Lane. In Green Nob Lane there seems to
have been only two houses. The
next
door house was that of Robert Clark (25) and Mary Clark (35) and in that house
there was also
staying
a John Worboys, aged 10.
Area
of Green Nob near Little Green (1891). Note "Green Knoll
Barn".
Same
area today
Thatchways
Holiday Homes for Pets, and Green Nob Barn. The pets place has the
sole
surviving
old cottage of Little Green.
According
to the 1841 census, in another ?nearby street, there was a house with a Joseph
Worboys (35, Carpenter) and Mary Worboys (40), with three children (James,
William, Mary). Ten people appear to have been at that house at
the time of the census, including three adult females listed as dress makers
and one as ?chairwoman (?overseer). This looks like a cottage
clothing industry(?). Another lane (?Fosley lane, ?spelling)
contained Worboys in half a dozen houses. They include young Worboys
children in houses of families not of that surname. One (John
Worboys, 35) is listed as a farmer but most of the males in that lane were
agricultural labourers (one Worboys man there was something else, but it is
unreadable). More Worboys (nine) lived at Great Green in
1841. The 1851 Census gives ages, and a William and Mary Worboys
born 1774/1776 were both born at Guilden Morden. There were also
several others listed as born in late 1770s.
Augusta Worboys:
Birth: 10 Jun 1838 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
Death: 27 Aug 1903 in Penrith, NSW
Father: William Worboys b. 26 Oct 1807 in Ashwell, Hert, Eng
Mother: Mary Ann Tott
Burial: Anglican church "St Stephens the Martyr" Penrith
Arrival
in Australia: 26 Jun 1844 'Royal Saxon', Sydney, NSW
Husband: Thomas Cummins, b. ca. 1832 in Belfast, Ireland
Marriage: 9 June 1856 in Penrith, NSW
The
children
of Augusta Worboys (Cummins):
William Worboys Cummins
b. 1856 in Penrith, NSW
Mary Ann Augusta Cummins b. 1858 in Penrith, NSW
Jane Cummins
b. 1860 in Penrith, NSW
David Joseph Cummins
b. 1863 in Bathurst, NSW
Thomas Cummins
b. 1865 in Bathurst, NSW
Mary Cummins
b. 1869 in Penrith, NSW
Julie Elizabeth Cummins
b. 30 Apr 1870 in Penrith, NSW
Joanna Cummins
b. 12 Oct 1871 in Penrith, NSW
Maria Catherine Hall Cummins b. 18 Nov 1872 in Penrith, NSW
Theresa May Cummins
b. 31 Oct 1876 in Penrith, NSW
John B Cummins
b. 31 Aug 1878 in Penrith, NSW
George Albert Cummins
b. 29 Jun 1880 in Penrith, NSW
Ada Georgina Cummins
b. 5 Mar 1882 in Penrith, NSW
Augusta (age 18, dressmaker) was married to Thomas Cummins (age 25, labourer;
born in Belfast, Ireland) on 9 June 1856. The normal place of
residence of both Augusta and Thomas was given as Penrith.
Augusta's mother's name was recorded as "Mary Ann Gillbert formerly
Worboys", and Augusta married under the name Worboys. The
marriage was recorded as "Wesleyan" and took place at the house of
Charles Gilbert.
In
December 2008 an internet search was made for anyone looking for Augusta
Worboys (Warboys) or family.
This
located one person who had been searching extensively in 2001-2003 on noticeboards in
Australia and England, Suzanne Santos, and two others who knew they had
Augusta Worboys as an ancestor - Gail Sommers and Robyn Hamilton. None of
these three have been contacted, however it was learned that Robyn Hamilton
had passed on data to others (BDM data herein may derive via her) and it was
also learned that Suzanne Santos did finally get in touch with others
interested in these Worboys (although no current contacts for SS were found).
Suzanne
Santos posted several search messages ----- like "Looking for descendants of Thomas Cummins and Augusta Worboys they were my 2 great-grandparents"
s-santos@yahoo.com (Posted: 23 Apr 2003 4:35AM GMT );
"Hi, I too have the WORBOYS name in my family tree who came from Cambridge in the 1840's would like to see if we have a connection"
Suzanne - Posted: 12 Feb 2003 3:41PM; "Family Names WORBOYS, TOTT, TODD -
I would like to hear from any WORBOYS... my 3 great-grandfather, William
Worboys/Warboys/Warbois and his wife, Mary-Ann TOTT or TODD came from this area, their daughter, Augusta
Worboys, my 2 great-grandmother was also born in Guilden Morden" Suzanne;
"WORBOYS, William - Born - 26-10--1809<br>Died - 27-12-1851<br>Married -
TODD/TOTT, Mary-Ann<br> came to australia free per"Royal Saxon" 1844<br>their children are...<br>Anne Todd
Worboys, 1829-1864<br>Joseph Worboys, 1831-1832<br>George Adam
Worboys, 1833-1889<br>Josiah Worboys, 1836-1854<br>Augusta Worboys,1838-1903 [ my 2
great-granmother]<br>David Worboys, 1841-1913<br>Albert Worboys, 1849-1892<br>Mary Jane
Worboys,<br>would like to hear from descendents " (October 28, 2003 04:51PM)
(http://www.australiagenweb.org/data/read.php?6,251); and "I would like to
hear from other Worboys descendants my 2 great grandmother was Augusta Worboys born 1838 in Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England her father was William Worboys and mother was Mary Ann Todd.
William Mary and children came to Australia in 1844"
- Suzanne, suzannesantas@bigpond.com
( http://www.warboys.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/WFT/notice.htm
).
Suzanne was the only
person noted to have made a concerted search for others who may know of
Augusta Worboys, but there are no doubt some others who have information but
who are not found via such searching.
Suzanne's
efforts gained only one online reply, in 2001: "G'dy Suzanne, Augusta is my Great Aunt, her brother Albert James Worboys is my Great Grandfather, his son Albert Arnold Worboys is my Grandfather."
Gail Sommers (2001), sommersg@ozemail.com.au
Although
Suzanne Santos could never be located by this writer, material which is the
work of "Suzanne Santas", doubtless the same, has come my way in
copy and so I am grateful for her efforts.
Gail
Sommers is also listed elsewhere as contact in regard to "WORBOYS, Albert James b.11.1.1849".
A
second contact for Albert James has also been noted: "WORBOYS, Albert James;
Born 11 Jan 1849; Died 7 Jan 1892 at Kempsey, NSW - Contact: Beverley Collins at
squeaker@ozemail.com.au
"
Re 'WARBOYS' generally, at http://www.warboys.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/WFT/Christnings.htm
there is listed 709 christenings for all variations of the name. These have been collected from parish records and the
IGI. The entries have been listed as found so may include spelling mistakes from the original transcription.
This list includes:
Augusta Worboys June 10, 1838 Guilden Morden, Cambridge, England
That suggests that June 10 may be her baptism date, not necessarily birth
date (which may hence be erroneous in the family tree
above).
Going
backwards from Augusta's father's birth in 1807, Kevin Bean's data is most
useful:
http://www.kevinbean.plus.com/family_history/paf/index3.htm#Worboys
There
he listed many William Worboys:
"""""
Worboys,
William b.1831 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William b.1863 - Newnham, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William m.1830 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William b.1885 - Poddington, Bedfordshire
Worboys,
William m.1805 - St Antholin Budge Row, London
Worboys,
William b.1788 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William b.1887 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1851 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William b.1869 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William b.1816 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William b.1887 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William c.1867 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1845 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William b.1737 -
Worboys,
William c.1769 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William c.1812 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William c.1807 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1807 -
Worboys,
William m.1776 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William m.1795 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William -
Worboys,
William c.1785 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1859 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1814 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1777 -
Worboys,
William m.1768 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William d.1858 -
Worboys,
William b.1785 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1838 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1879 - Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William b.1841 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1866 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1796 - Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William m.1851 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William d.1851 -
Worboys,
William Conder b.1822 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William Cooper b.1837 - Southwark, London
Worboys,
William Craft b.1850 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William George b.1883 - Abington Pigotts, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
William Hart b.1840 -
Worboys,
William Henry b.1841 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William Pittman b.1819 -
Worboys,
William Rawlings b.1884 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William Sanders c.1809 - Saint Nicholas, Deptford, London
"""""
Two
of those might match Augusta's father:
Worboys,
William c.1807 -
Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
William b.1807 -
The
second of those is:
~~""~~
Thomas Worboys was born about 1781 in Ashwell, Hertfordshire. He
died 30 Mar 1851 - 7 Apr 1861. He married Elizabeth. Thomas was employed as
Labourer 28 May 1815 - 5 Jul 1829. He resided on 24 Nov 1831 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. He resided 26 Nov 1831 - 30 Mar 1851 in Abington Pigotts,
Cambridgeshire. He resided on 12 Feb 1832 in Abington juxta Shingay,
Cambridgeshire. He was employed as Agricultural labourer on 6 Jun 1841. He was
employed as Road labourer on 30 Mar 1851.
Elizabeth was born about 1786/1787 in Littleport, Cambridgeshire.
She married Thomas Worboys. Elizabeth resided on 24 Nov 1831 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. She resided 26 Nov 1831 - 30 Mar 1851 in Abington Pigotts,
Cambridgeshire. She resided on 12 Feb 1832 in Abington juxta Shingay,
Cambridgeshire. She resided on 7 Apr 1861 in Village, Abington Pigotts,
Cambridgeshire.
They had the following children:
| |
|
M |
i |
William Worboys was born about 1807. He was christened on
20 Sep 1807 in Ashwell, Hertfordshire. William resided on 6 Jun 1841
in Abington Pigotts, Cambridgeshire. |
~~""~~
And
the first is:
~~""~~
James Worboys. He married Ann Webb on 25 Dec 1806 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. James resided in Ashwell, Hertfordshire.
Ann Webb. She married James Worboys on 25 Dec 1806 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. Ann resided in Ashwell, Hertfordshire.
They had the following children:
| |
|
M |
i |
William Worboys was christened on 26 Oct 1807 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
| |
|
M |
ii |
Samuel
Worboys was born in 1809. He was buried on 3 Oct 1843. |
| |
|
F |
iii |
Hannah Worboys was christened on 14 Apr 1811 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. She was buried on 3 Oct 1818 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
~~""~~
That
second one of the above two alternatives is almost certainly correct person,
and via James we can then go back to John Worboys:
Descent
tree back from William to John Worboys (Received for further follow-up
2009). Adam Tott was
born
at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, and his death was registered in 1838 at Royston.
Ann Rook was
born
in Bourn, Cambridgeshire and at present nothing more is known of her.
(Their
marriage was at Bourne, on 30 Jan 1810)
The
"James Worboys 1781-" in the above chart can perhaps be amplified
perhaps to "James Henry Worboys, 25th July 1786 -3rd Dec 1861" from
other sources although that then introduces a birth date discrepancy between
1781 and 1786 (?).
William
Worboys sailed with his family to Australia in 1844, leaving his parents
behind in Guilden Morden. On the immigration
papers
it is stated that both his parents ("James and Anne") were alive at
the time he left. The above 1851 census shows
that
by 1851 the condition of his father James was widowed; a former agricultural
labourer now aged 70 and
a
pauper lodger living at "Great Green".
Other
versions of information in the above tree include these further details:
-
the "James Worboys" shown is James
Henry WORBOYS. He was born abt
1780 in Ashwell, and died abt
1851, he was 71. On 20 Sep 1804 when James Henry was 24, he married Anne
(Tott ) WEBB, in Guilden Morden,
Cambridgeshire, England.
- the "Ann Webb" shown is Anne (Tott ) WEBB. She
was born abt 1780 in
Cambridgeshire, as Anne Tott and died in Guilden Morden on 16 Apr 1848,
aged 68.
Using
Keving Bean's list ( http://www.kevinbean.plus.com/family_history/paf/index3.htm#Worboys
) the name "John" has not been very frequent for Worboys it seems:
Worboys,
John b.1877 - Poddington, Bedfordshire
Worboys,
John b.1896 - Islington, London
Worboys,
John b.1842 - Stotfold, Bedfordshire
Worboys,
John b.1842 -
Worboys,
John b.1843 - Stotfold, Bedfordshire
Worboys,
John b.1844 - Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
John b.1844 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John c.1746 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John m.1736 - Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
John c.1761 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John c.1839 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John b.1882 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John m.1773 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John A b.1825 - Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John E b.1868 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John Ernest b.1862 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John George c.1886 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Worboys,
John or William b.1838 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
John William b.1875 - March, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
John William b.1854 - Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire
Worboys,
John William b.1875 - Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Looking
for John's prior to 1737 reduces to only one candidate :
Worboys,
John m.1736 - Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire
~~""~~
John Worboys. He married Anna Maria Brown on 11 Nov 1736 in
Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire.
Anna Maria Brown. She married John Worboys on 11 Nov 1736 in
Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire.
They had the following children:
| |
|
M |
i |
William Worboys was born in 1737. He was christened on 2
May 1737 in Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire. |
| |
|
F |
ii |
Hannah Worboys was christened on 1 Apr 1739 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
| |
|
F |
iii |
Susanna Worboys died . Susanna was baptized on 4 Jul 1742
in Ashwell, Hertfordshire. |
| |
|
F |
iv |
Lettice
Worboys died . |
| |
|
M |
v |
John Worboys was christened on 20 Apr 1746 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. He was buried on 11 Mar 1813 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
| |
|
M |
vi |
Thomas Worboys was christened on 3 Jul 1748 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
| |
|
F |
vii |
Ann Worboys was christened on 7 Oct 1750 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. She was buried on 23 Feb 1752 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
| |
|
F |
viii |
Ann
Worboys was christened on 1 Jul 1754. |
| |
|
M |
ix |
James
Worboys was born about 1756. He was buried on 24 Jun 1824. |
| |
|
M |
x |
Joseph Worboys was christened on 21 Oct 1759 in Ashwell,
Hertfordshire. |
~~""~~
So
this is currently as far back as the Augusta Warboys line has been traced - to
when John Worboys married Anna Maria Brown on 11 Nov 1736 in Steeple Morden.
Their first child, William, was born there (Steeple Morden) but after that they moved to Ashwell (where nine more children were born to
Anna).
It is interesting that August Warboys father, William, married a Mary Ann,
which is virtually same name as his great-grandmother Anna Maria.
I
could not get back beyond the John Worboys who married Anna Maria Brown, and who one supposes
would have been born in the early 1700s, say about 1715 -- However, Brian Worboys (pers. comm. 2009)
suggested: "This looks like the son of John Warboys and Elizabeth (nee Wilson) baptised
14/12/1713 at Steeple Morden. John (1691, Steeple Morden) & Elizabeth (1692 Abington Piggotts) were
married in Abington Piggotts on 17/02/1711. The 1691 John would likely be the son of John (1660 Steeple Morden) who
married a Susannah (surname unknown at this stage".
At
Abbington Piggots in the church floor is this brass image of a man from about
1460
What
may also come in very handy are listings of Worboy marriages and christenings:
http://www.warboys.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/WFT/Marriages2.htm
http://www.warboys.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/WFT/Christnings.htm
In
the marriages listing (414 marriages for all variations of the name, collected
from parish records, Pallots index, and the IGI) the above marriage is not
found but the is also found there marriages of:
-
John Worboyce to Mercie Nevell at Guilden Morden, on August 5, 1635
-
John Worboyes to Mary Bennitt at Guilden Morden on 5 October, 1725.
-
John Warboys to Ann Geeves at Steeple Morden on 9 July, 1744
-
John Worboys to Grace Barley at Guilden Morden on 13 June, 1764
Other
recorded marriages in the listing for the 1600s are:
-
Oliver Warboise to Joane Foster at Alconbury Cum Weston on 17 September, 1616
-
Thom. Warboyse to Annys Frost at Guilden Morden on 21 October 21, 1619
-
William Worboyce to Elisabeth Studwell at Guilden Morden on 22 October,
1634
-
Marie Worboyce to Robert Daniel at Guilden Morden on 17 June, 1635
-
Robert Worbys to Elisabeth Nevill at Guilden Morden on 15 April, 1640
-
Robert Worbys to Kathren Burrall at Guilden Morden on 10 November 1663
-
Thomas Warboyes to Francis Adams at Potton on 25 October, 1666
-
William Worboys to Ellen (no surname) at Gamlingay on 12 September, 1675
-
Mary Warboys to Franciss Reiner at Ashwell on 24 January 24, 1686
-
Richard Warboys to Margaret Wallis at Guilden Morden on 21 September, 1688
Using
the christenings list (709 christenings for all variations of the name, from
parish records and the IGI) one find some other 1600s records of interest:
| Abraham
Worbys |
September 13,
1662 |
Guilden Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| Allexander
Worbys |
November 18,
1661 |
Guilden Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| Ann
Warbois |
March 2,
1674/75 |
Steeple Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| Ann
Warboys |
November
28, 1684 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Ann
Warboys |
October
6, 1694 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Ann
Worbys |
September
2, 1639 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Anne
Worboyce |
October
13, 1656 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Anne
Worbys |
January
24, 1669/70 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Anne
Worbys |
July
18, 1664 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Arther
Worbys |
May
16, 1659 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Arthur
Warboys |
December
29, 1692 |
Guilden Morden,
Cambridge, England |
| Arthur
Warboyse |
March
12, 1664/65 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge, England |
| Dinah
Warboys |
May
7, 1693 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Edward
Warboys |
October
25, 1687 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elezabeth
Worbys |
November
11, 1658 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warbois |
April
9, 1671 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warbois |
August
20, 1680 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warbois |
December
7, 1696 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
August
13, 1693 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
December
26, 1669 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
December
28, 1695 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
Feb
16, 1688/89 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
Feb
17, 1691/92 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
Jan
1, 1686/87 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
June
26, 1699 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Warboys |
September
13, 1674 |
Ashwell,
Hertford, England |
| Elizabeth
Worboyes |
October
6, 1653 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Elizabeth
Worbys |
March
14, 1667/68 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Ellen
Worboyce |
May
1, 1634 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Ellezabeth
Worbys |
February
20, 1658/59 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Ellin
Warboys |
July
13, 1696 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Ellyn
Warbois |
October
13, 1678 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Frances
Warbois |
July
29, 1683 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Henry
Warbois |
May
2, 1689 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Henry
Warboys |
October
7, 1621 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| Hester
Warboys |
January
28, 1693/94 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge, England |
| James
Warboys |
November
22, 1686 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| Jn
Warboys |
May
30, 1669 |
Potton,
Bedford, England |
| John
Warbois |
August
23, 1674 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| John
Warbois |
January
15, 1676/77 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| John
Warbois |
May
2, 1691 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| John
Warboys |
December
12, 1661 |
Steeple
Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| John
Warboys |
March
10, 1620/21 |
Guilden
Morden, Cambridge,
England |
| John
Warboys |
March
3, 1694/95 |
Ashwell,
Hertford,
England |
| John
Warboys |
September
14, 1667 |
Steeple
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| John
Worbis |
June
3, 1638 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| John
Worbis |
May
21, 1660 |
Gamlingay,
Cambridge,
England |
| John
Worbys |
April
22, 1667 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| John
Worbys |
February
12,
1635/36 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| John
Worbys |
January
6,
1635/36 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| John
Worbys |
March
21,
1657/58 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Katharine
Warboyse |
Feb
24,
1660/61 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge,
England |
| Margaret
Warboysse |
March
1657/58 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Margaret
Worboyce |
October
26,
1656 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Margret
Worbys |
May
14,
1666 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Maria
Warboys |
January
28,
1683/84 |
Ashwell,
Hertford,
England |
| Martha
Warbois |
August
20,
1680 |
Steeple
Morden,
Cambridge,
Engla |
| Mary
Warbois |
September
21,
1673 |
Steeple
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mary
Warboyce |
February
7,
1632/33 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mary
Warboys |
February
3,
1687/88 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mary
Warboys |
January
12,
1699/00 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mary
Warboys |
May
8,
1699 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mary
Warboyse |
February
2,
1681/82 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mary
Worbys |
January
6,
1639/40 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Mathew
Worboyce |
December
17,
1665 |
Steeple
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| MatthewWarboyse |
January
4,
1662/63 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge,
England |
| Nathaniell
Warboyes |
1670 |
Gamlingay,
Cambridge,
England |
| Richard
Warbois |
March
7,
1696/97 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Richard
Warboys |
January
2,
1685/86 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Richard
Warboys |
September
28,
1697 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Richard
Warboys |
September
6,
1683 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Richard
Warboyse |
January
24,
1623/24 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Richard
Worbys |
August
21,
1664 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Robert
Warboys |
September
30,
1621 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Robert
Worboyes |
September
16,
1655 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Robert
Worbys |
December
15,
1639 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Rose
Warboys |
April
23,
1655 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Samuel
Warboys |
April
12,
1689 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Sarah
Warboys |
February
10,
1694/95 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Sarah
Warboys |
March
29,
1691 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Sarah
Warboys |
May
21,
1692 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Sarah
Warboyse |
February
1683/84 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge,
England |
| Sarah
Worboys |
June
21,
1674 |
Gamlingay,
Cambridge,
England |
| Simon
Warboyse |
May
12,
1681 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge,
England |
| Thomas
Warboys |
September
6,
1697 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Thomas
Warboyse |
April
1620 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| Thomas
Warboyse |
August
3,
1673 |
Bassingbourn,
Cambridge,
England |
| Timothy
Worbis |
April
30,
1692 |
Biggleswade,
Bedford,
England |
| Will
Warboyse |
December
1,
1622 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Warbois |
August
23,
1674 |
Steeple
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Warbois |
November
29,
1692 |
Steeple
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Warboys |
June
21,
1695 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Warboyse |
November
28,
1619 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Worbis |
July
12,
1662 |
Gamlingay,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Worboyce |
March
17,
1634/35 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
| William
Worbys |
March
5,
1661/62 |
Guilden
Morden,
Cambridge,
England |
This
shows
the
great
concentration
of
records
of
Worboys
at
Guilden
Morden
in
the
1600s.
ASSISTED
IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA
Australia was sparsely populated for a long
time (maybe 80,000 years or so - uncertain beyond about 40 ka) by a dark-skinned race
who may have come here by
way of southern India (also quite uncertain) until just 2-3 hundred years ago
when it began to be converted to European civilisation with the establishment
of an English penal colony at Sydney. At first this was a mainly convict
population with a lesser number of civil/military governing people. Quite
soon, however, free settlers from the motherland of England were also being
encouraged to come on over.
The first small shipment of free settlers, in
the late 1700s, established the would-be agricultural settlement of Liberty
Plains about half way between the towns of Sydney and Rose Hill
(Parramatta). Liberty Plains failed with a short number of years
and settlers could not make a living there. More assisted immigrants who
followed went instead to much more fertile land along the upper Hawkesbury
River near Windsor, and along South Creek which comes to that river
thereabouts from the south (the waterway shown in the Australian places map
above).
One of this second wave of more successful free
settler assisted immigrants was Richard Rouse. Richard Rouse arrived in the
Colony on the Nile in 1801.
Rouse was one of seven free settlers who had been given assisted passage and a promise
of land, supplies from government stores for twelve months and two
convict servants (similar as the earlier Liberty Plains settlers had been
given). Rouse received a grant of 100 acres north of Richmond
Hill from Governor King in March 1802. He named this "Oxford Farm".
To this was added a further 50 acres in 1806. Rouse received various
important jobs from the Colonial government and prospered as a superintendant
of public works; also receiving
further land grants. By 1820 he had built a "most suitable" home
on another 450 acre grant which had been given to him on 8th October,
1816. This was described at the time as being at
Vinegar Hill (later changed to Rouse Hill). Vinegar Hill (exact position
challenged by some) was where government forces caught up with an uprising of
convicts who were marching to liberate more convicts on the Hawkesbury.
This place where the uprising was put down was popularly given the name
"Vinegar Hill" after the most famous of the battles in the failed
and short-lived Irish war of independence of 1798 (when the United Irishmen
and the Catholic 'Defender' movements joined forces against English rule of
Ireland). The Colonial government did not like the popular name of
Vinegar Hill here and took measures to suppress it. Governor Macquarie changed the name of the
locality to Rouse Hill. The building which Richard Rouse built is now known as Rouse Hill
House and has been acquired by the Historic Houses Trust of New South
Wales.
Richard Rouse also acquired a grant of 320 acres
at about the junction of
Richmond Road and South Creek. This was named "Berkshire Park". A
further grant of 347 acres nearby was named "Jericho" after his
family home in England and he built a home for his son George on this
land. Richard Rouse had been born on 26 February 1774 in Jericho
House in Oxford England, and he died on 10 May 1852 in his own Jericho House
near what is now called Windsor Downs. This latter Jericho House
is now lost (burned down).
Who assisted the Worboys' passage to
Australia has not yet been learned of. However the being gathered
at first suggested that it could have been the Rouse family, or some other relatively prosperous settler
in the Jericho area.
Another name known
of in regard to the "Jericho" area is John Bowlin, overseer to Mrs
Jonathan Hassall at "Jericho". This again is a
Rouse connection as Mrs Johnathan Hassall was Richard Rouse's eldest daughter,
who returned with her children to live at her father's estates land after the
accidental death or suicide of her husband at their Cowpastures (Cobbity)
property. On 22 November 1819
Johnathan Hassal had married Mary Rouse, the eldest daughter of Richard
Rouse. In 1834 after Johnathon had been forced to sell his property at
Cowpastures they were living at Richard Rouse's Berkshire Park property
near the junction of South Creek and Richmond Road. From there Mary
wrote to her brother-in-law, Thomas Hassall, on 27 March 1834: "I am
sorry to inform you that my poor Jonn is very ill * he has keep his bed for
several days an is growing very week an at intervals very delirious * he wishes
to converse with some pious friend * I have rote Mr Scoufield at Whindsor * he as
promised to come an see him * I trust the first time you come near us that you
will please to pay us a visit of love to his presious soul * who can tell that a
worde or two in season might have the desired affect". Later
that year Jonathan was dead. He may have taken his own life by drowning,
as a report in the Sydney Gazette of 16 December suggested suicide: "We
regret to state that Mr Jonathan Hassall of Matavai, Cowpastures, who has been
in a deranged state of mind for the last three months, put a period to his
existence on Saturday last." Soon
after Jonathan's death, Samuel Marsden wrote to his son-in-law, Thomas
Hassall: "I have been much concerned at the awful Event that has
befallen Jonathan - the mysteries of Divine providence are past finding out
and some of the Divine Dispensations are covered with thick Darkness; so that
main events which occur in this life will not be revealed to us in the reasons
for them, until that day when God will bring the light to hidden things of
Darkness ... The state of your Brothers mind would naturally lead him into
much danger. From all that I can learn - that he was attempting to cross the
creek and failed - why take his Gun and Shot, unless his mind was impressed
with the apprehension of meeting with some bushranger. However we cannot tell
what influenced his deranged mind to leave home - It is clear that he did not
know what he was about and that he was under the influence of Insanity."
Mary
Hassall, the daughter of Richard Rouse referred to above
(Secretary
of the Hassall Family History Group, David N.H. Hassall, can be
contacted at d.hassall@optusnet.com.au
)
Mary lived almost 50 years after the
death of her husband, living at Berkshire Park with the children. Thus
the term "Jericho" may also extend over part of Berkshire Park it
seems. In 1840, six years after Jonathan's death, Richard Rouse built a
new single-storey brick house of Georgian design at Berkshire Park for Mary
and her children - and, later, her grandchildren. The family of Mary and
Jonathan's son, Edwin Otoo Hassall, spent much of their childhood at Berkshire
Park and five of his children were born there.
John
Bowlin (or maybe a son/namesake) is noted not only as overseer to Mrs Jonathan
Hassall at "Jericho" but also as the first manager of the Riverstone
meatworks, where he lived in a house on Richards Avenue. The
Riverstone Meatworks had apparently been established by Benjamin Richards on
part of the Jericho Farm estate in 1878. However the company owned
a large area, of over 2,000 hectares, which were used for cattle grazing,
dairies and holding yards, and exact locations remain uncertain at the
moment. In the late 1980s the Angliss Group, which now owned the
Riverstone Meatworks, donated part of the original Jericho Farm to become
Windsor Downs Nature Reserve in 1990.
Richard
Rouse jnr., a first cousin of Richard Rouse of Rouse Hill, is also known to
have been born at Jericho (REF: Marjorie Lenehan, 1976. 'Rouse, Richard
(1843 - 1906)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, Melbourne
University Press, page. 65 - http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060503b.htm
). He was the son of Richard Rouse's son George (d.1888), for whom
Richard had built the house at Jericho.
It also becomes better known, as time goes on, how the
important landowners are interrelated - the Hassalls, Rouses (Mary Hassall was
daughter of Richard Rouse), Betts, and the family of Reverend Samuel
Marsden. Two daughters of the Rev Marsden, of Parramatta, had married John and Josiah Betts,
and there was similar strong connection to Hassalls as already mentioned.
By
February 2009 it was learned that the Worboys family went into the employ of
Betts after reaching Australia, not the Rouse family as had been first
guessed. At this time still little was known about exactly where
the Betts family had land but it seemed that the family had extensive
landholdings (Windsor, Vale of Clywd, maybe South Creek near
Riverstone). The Betts family have been in the shoes and boots industry
in Australia for over 150 years, which suggests some possible connection to
the Riverstone meatworks (for the leather).
The Worboys of Augusta's family where the first
of a large burst of people who left Guilden Morden parish to come under
assistance to Australia. Augusta's family were the only ones from
there to come in 1844. However, the following year many more
people set out from Guilden
Morden for Australia - and all were drowned.
In 1845 twenty-tree former villagers from
Guilden Morden were drowned whilst voyaging to Australia. They perished
when the Cataraque, bound for Port Phillip, struck rocks and sunk with the
loss of most on board:
Source:
The English in Australia, by
James Jupp, 2004. Cambridge University Press.
"Wreck of
the emigrant ship Cataraqui on King's Island, 1845"
The Cataraqui was purchased and registered in
Liverpool by
Smith & Sons, for the purpose of transporting assisted emigrants to Port
Phillip in the colony of Victoria. On 20 April 1845, the ship sailed
from Liverpool under the command of Captain Christopher Finlay. It
carried 367 emigrants and 41 crew (a total of 409 including
the captain). The voyage was fairly uneventful apart from the loss of a crew
member overboard. By the time the vessel neared Australia, five babies had
been born and six others had died. As the Cataraqui entered Bass
Strait in the early morning of 4 August she encountered a severe storm and was
driven onto rocks just off Fitzmaurice Bay on King Island, off Tasmania.
Eight crewmen
managed to reach the shore by clinging to floating wreckage, where they
encountered the only emigrant survivor, Samuel Brown. This was the worst disaster in
Australian
maritime history.
We know from the above (Jupp's "The English in
Australia"), that Josias Johnson, a Poor Law administrator, was
responsible for persauding the poor of the area to leave for Australia after
1850. Who influenced the ones who came in the 1840s has not yet been
learned of. Curiously, some other ancestors of the writer, the Clout
family (my mother's mother's family), came on the same ship (Royal Saxon
1844). The Clouts who came on the Royal George were Bounty Scheme
emigrants assisted here by the Macarthur family. This is a famous
pioneering land-owning family. John Macarthur (1766–1834) was an
Australian wool industry pioneer and his estate near Camden to which they were
going to work on was a major development of its times. In
the NSW Legislative Council Votes and Proceedings 1838, Minutes of
evidence, William Macarthur gave evidence before a committee on immigration:
As to how males were employed, he stated "Since 1835, my brothers and
myself have supplied ourselves with labourers from Europe to a considerable
extent, by importing Emigrants on our own account; and also by hiring them in
the Colony. Those imported by us consist principally of agricultural
labourers, viz: 16 families from the County of Dorset...and 6 families of vine
dressers from Marko-Brunner, on the Rhine in the Duchy of Nassau...The
agreement with them (which has been adhered to except that occasionally for
their better encouragement they have been allowed to perform work by the
piece) was as follows, £15 per annum for 3 years to each man, with a ration
consisting of 11 lbs. seconds flour, and 7 lbs fresh beef, or mutton; to the
wife, for the first six months only, half the above ration; the milk of a cow
to each family; a piece of good ground of not less than a quarter of an acre;
permission to keep a pig and poultry, provided they are not suffered to commit
any mischief; and a comfortable cottage to each family". As
to how females and children would work, William testified that they were less
often employable directly but that they would find other work:: "At
Camden, my two brothers and myself have about thirty women; and it does not
often happen that more than five or six will accept of employment at 1s. per
diem. They find means in the neighbourhood to engage themselves in washing,
needlework or other employments, which are more profitable. The labour
proposed to the women is of that description which women are capable of
performing, and are accustomed to in England. We have generally ten to twenty
children, from five and six years old to sixteen, employed at wages from 3d.
to 1s. per diem. Their labour remunerates for the wages paid. These are paid
with reference to the value of their work; and frequently, where circumstances
admit, it is performed by task, when they not infrequently earn considerably
more than the daily wages I have named".
At this time Australian
(greater Sydney) development, initially a penal colony, was still being
largely supported by convict labour. Importing the labour from
Europe was an additional measure. In his evidence to the
Committee, William said in regard to this: "We
think that principally from a spirit of emulation, the prisoners perform more
work than they did before the emigrants came, and that their moral conduct has
decidedly improved. At the same time I am not aware that the moral character
of the emigrants has at all deteriorated from being placed on the same
establishment with the prisoners. The two classes are not intermingled at
their work, and their residences are quite apart. The statements which the
emigrants have sent home to their friends in England, has [sic], as far as we
know, been very satisfactory, and expressing themselves greatly pleased with
their situation and treatment. It is true that some misconduct has occurred on
the part of a few; but, by the exercise of firmness and good temper, any
irregularities of conduct have been repressed or reformed".
Almost all of the people who
were English emigrants employed by the Macarthurs belonged to the Church of
England. The writer has been informed also that Mr Rouse snr would also
have only CofE workers on his property, and because of the Jericho/Rouse
connection tried to determine if William Worboys family were such.
The Clouts came from Kent,
probably wishing to leave there after having been through agricultural
depression. This depression began in southern England 1834.
By the end of that decade over 15% of the population of Kent was on relief.
The demand for agricultural produce was low and parishes were putting
labourers to work on the public roads as relief works. The roads became
better but farms became poorer.
More
has yet to be learned on just how the assisted passage system
worked. There was variation. At times landowner arrangements
closely monitored
who was spoken for before arrival. However, other arrangements
were of more "common pool" type and after arrival in Sydney assisted
immigrants may have appeared before an Examining Board which looked into their
character and best prospects.
Exactly what was the case for the Worboys is
still being learned of. Shipping records have been consulted by some
descendants and it is known that the William Worboys family arrived in Sydney
on 26 June 1844 in good health. At the time the general payments for bounty migrants William, Mary Ann and
oldest child Ann would have been 18 pound and 14 shillings. For the the younger children
(George, Josiah, Augusta and David) the assistance rate would have been 9 pound
and 7 shillings each. William's occupation was registered as farm labourer
and Mary Ann's as needlewoman. Daughter Ann was registered as a
potential house servant. William could read but not write. Mary
Ann was able to both read and write. Their religion was given
as independent. This is the sort of information the
authorities of assisted immigrant shipping schemes required as proof of
entitlement or qualification to fit within the ambit of the scheme.
Health, character and occupation had to be attested to or
certified. William was certified by Edward Tindale of Ashwell
(a surgeon) as to his and family health. Frederick Butterfield of Guilden Morden
and Mountford Strickland of Royston certified as to William's character.
Frederick Butterfield was noted as his employer in England. A clergyman
confirming such details was Rev. Robert Alfred Rackham of Guilden Morden (Rev.
Rackham was also transcriber/author of a "Towne Book of Guilden Morden,
1661-1819", produced in 1842 from the records of the Guilden Morden
Parish Church - National Archives, P121/8/4).
After docking in Sydney, William and the family remained on board the ship
for five days. This suggests that they had not specifically been matched
to any landowner before leaving England. There was then a wage agreement
signed with Josiah Allen Betts. Betts owned the property "Wilmington"
near Windsor. Exactly where his fine stone/brick dwelling is, or
was, is not yet learned of. Evidence exists of the Betts family
having a widespread range of property holdings but perhaps this came later
on(?). Mr. Betts snr is believed to have retained in employment as many
as either men to maintain his garden, stock etc. In addition he had three domestic servants.
Apart from being an important landowner, Betts was also a bookkeeper and
accountant. His name may be found mentioned here and there in connection
with other major landowners - e.g. as a member of a colonial winegrowers
association.
Augusta Worboys and her children appear to have
been connected with the Salvation Army. The Byrnes family whose daughter
Kate Cummins married to was at the time Wesley and in the line which Kate
married to, offspring of Samuel Byrnes, a photo of Samuel himself in Salvation
Army uniform survives. The founder of the Salvation Army, General
Booth, was likewise an ordained Methodist preacher. As the
Salvation Army did not reach Australia to 1880 it seems likely that the
William Worboys family was Wesleyan too. One of the William Worboy sons
(Albert James who was born on 11 Jan 1849 in Windsor) moved to Kempsey, where
he died in 1892. This likely why Augusta's mother Mary Ann is recorded
as buried at the West Kemsey Methodist church, that she had moved to be with,
or was visiting, her son there. One of the Worboys in Kempsey in the
late 1800s was a George Wesley Worboys, which adds to the suspicion that the
family was Wesleyan. Also in the Kempsey-Hickey Creek region a
Rachel Ann Worboys (married name Perry) named one of her sons John Wesley
Perry. In 1868 a Mr Worboys was a lay preacher involved in a
revival in a Methodist revival that catered for children of East and West
Kempsey schools. The Methodist magazine the "Advocate" reported that
several of the children in the schools were converted to God during the
revival. The 1872 Greville's Directory recorded a G. A. Worboys,
carpenter, at West Kempsey.
Two influential Methodist evangelists were
Matthew Burnett, who arrived in Victoria late in 1863, and and
"California" Taylor (William Taylor).
Taylor rose to fame as a
pioneering missionary in California at the time when the gold rush was at its
peak. Many who went to California to get rich quickly became broken and
derelict. Many of them died there. Some became rich, but many had
to return to where they came from much poorer. Taylor preached in the streets
of San Francisco, and began efforts to help as many of the needy as he could.
San Francisco was a city of tents at the time. The winter that year was
very severe, and many got sick and died. Taylor later on visited
and inspired almost all of the Methodist Circuits and churches which then
existed in Australia. /Taylor was a very popular preacher, and drew
great crowds at some of the places he went to. Kate Cummins husband,
this writer's great grandfather, was named after him - William Taylor
Byrnes. Taylor left Australia in 1870. Preceeding
Taylor, and continuing after his departure, Matthew Burnett had been rising in
evangelical prominence in Australian Wesleyan circles. According to the
Wesley Chronicle of 1871, Burnett had been brought to conversion or salvation
by his wife-to-be:
"In her Christian work
amongst 'the poor and fallen', she had met Matthew, who was five years younger
than herself. A reckless youth, hastening to early ruin, engaged her
compassionate concern. She sought to save him.... For twelve months she
pleaded without ceasing for this, until, being in an agony, she prayed more
earnestly, and in the climax of her mighty intercession, cried, 'Lord, let me
die rather than his soul be lost.' The Lord gave her a distinct
assurance that he had heard her concerning this thing also, and that this soul
too should be part of her crown in the day of the Lord Jesus. At the same
time, the sin-convincing Spirit arrested the youthful profligate, and wrought
strangely on his heart. That very evening he sought God's mercy, stricken and
penitent, with strong crying and tears, at the altar of prayer."
Matthew and Sarah had migrated to
Australia in 1863 and lived in the Melbourne suburb of
Prahran. At one of Burnett's revival meetings a young woman who
was dumb recovered the power of speech and this was reported in the
newspaper.
Burnett discovered that the poor
of a city would attend outdoor meetings in great numbers if they were also
entertained. In pursuit of this he then developed a program of
torch-light processions, with banners and flaming torches, brass bands and
singers. He emphasised the standard evangelistic message, and also
heavily emphasised a call to total abstinence, and signing a pledge.
This pattern of activity all developed before the entry of the Salvation Army,
whose activities were often similar.
Mr Henry Reed, a wealthy Tasmanian
convert to Wesleyanism. He preached widely and also sailed to England
many times, where he preached up and down that country, also. He built houses
for the poor in Doncaster and Leeds, and gave generously to back William Booth
in the early days of the Salvation Army. Within the last few years of
his life, Reed even severed his connection with the Wesleyan Church, believing
that it had lost its concern for the more needy classes of
society. Reed's biography by Sir Hudson Fysh tells of a
night Reed spent in gaol with six men who were to be executed the next
morning, on 10th November, 1837. Fysch calls it "one of
Reed's most striking acts right at the height of the Non-conformist revival,
when men of the Wesleyan-Methodist Mission went into action on every possible
occasion." Reed sympathised particularly with one of the
condemned, named Hudson. Hudson was a convict on a chain gang. The
Overseer ordered him to carry a heavy weight by wheelbarrow over a newly
surfaced piece of road. He remonstrated that it would cut his shoeless
feet if he had to do that. For this he was to be flogged so many lashes
for disobeying orders. Feeling injustice of this treatment, he took up a piece
of wood and struck the Overseer. For that he was tried, and ordered to
be executed. Reed, a JP, in talking to the men also discovered one of
them was innocent. He then rode one of his best horses the 120 miles to
Hobart, breaking the record for the distance, to get a reprieve, and then rode
as fast back again, before the execution. After the execution he wrote
to Hudson's sister in England, which communication survives in the biography.
Thus the Salvation Army and the
Primitive Methodists in particular had a great deal in common, especially in
working with the less priviledged classes of society. Burnett, and
other Wesleyans too, had adopted the well known practices of the Salvation
Army well before the Salvationists established their presence in Australia in
1880.
[ The 'revivalist' information here comes via
Rev. Robert Evans. Robert was born in Sydney in 1937 and ordained
a Methodist Minister in 1967. he retired in 1998 and now lives at
Hazelbrook on the Blue Mountains.. He graduated from the University of
Sydney, majoring in philosophy and modern history. He published
"Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia" in 2000. He is
currently the President of the Uniting Church Records and Historical Society
in New South Wales. ]
The assisted immigrants to Australia, by the name of
WORBOYS, were:
Worboys
('Warboys')
assisted immigrants to New South Wales
These
Worboys came
mainly in two batches; the first in 1844 on the Royal Saxon, and again in 1855
on the Speedy. The "Speedy" 'Warboys' apparently went to
the Hunter, as in 1872 there were two Jabez 'Worboys', one as "farmer
Bolwarra Maitland West" and the other as "farmer Edithville Miller's
Forest"; as well as three other Worboys ( "John - farmer Bolwarra Largs",
"Thomas - farmer Wallabadah Ck. Wallabadah" and "William - farmer Wallabadah Ck.
Wallabadah" (Greville's 1872 postal directory).
Jabez Worboys ex West Maitland died at North Maitland and is buried in the
Methodist cemetery there.
Record of arrival of the Royal Saxon (1844):
|
Jun 26
|
Royal Saxon
|
barque 700 tons
|
Capt Charlsworth
|
from London the 2nd
and Cork the 18th March
|
with emigrants and merchandise. Passengers
- Mrs and Master Towns, Miss Wentworth, Mrs and Master Bailey, Messrs C and J Beck, Mr R Back,
Mr H Bloomfield, Mr Swifte, and Mr Gordon, Surgeon Superintendent.
|
Of William Warboy's known family till that
time, born at Guilden Morden (Ann Tott born 1829,
Joseph 1831,
George Adam 1834,
Josiah 1835,
Augusta 1838,
David John 1841,
Martha Jane 1843), Ann Tott (Ann 'Todd'), George Adam, Josiah, Augusta and David are
all found listed as emigrant arrivals on the ship (above). The
"baby" Martha Jane seems unaccounted for; as does Joseph also.
The
family had emigrated from Guilden Morden as their last place of residence but
on the list of immigrants William Worboys gave his native place as
Hertfordshire, unlike the others in the family who were recorded as from
Cambridgeshire native place. This is because William was born in Ashwell.
William
had probably moved to Guilden Morden. There he married Mary Ann Tott on
21 October 1827.
At arrival, William was
recorded as a Farm Labourer (aged 35) and wife Mary Anne (aged 33) as a
Needlewoman. William could read, and Mary Anne could both read and
write. The ship was a bounty ship, and the bounty was 18 pounds 14
shillings per adult and 9 pounds 7 shillings per son or daughter.
The William
Worboys
family who arrived on the Royal Saxon, with age at arrival, were:
William Adam Worboys (age 35) [Born 26th October 1807, at Ashwell,
Herts.] (could read). Farm Labourer.
Mary
Ann(e)
Worboys
(age
33)
(but maybe actually aged
35,
sources
vary)
(could read and write). Needlewoman.
[Ann Tott Worboys]
(age
15)
- b. 24 May 1829
- Guilden Morden, Camb,
England
Joseph Worboys -
b. 25 Sep 1831
- Guilden Morden, Camb,
England
{No arrival on Royal Saxon recorded}
George Adam Worboys (age 10) - b. 6 Jul 1834
- Guilden Morden, Camb, England
Josiah Worboys (age
8) - b. 27 Dec 1835 - Guilden Morden, Camb,
England
Augusta Worboys (age
6) - b. 10 Jun 1838 - Guilden Morden, Camb,
England
(A photo of Augusta exists, and is herein)
David John Worboys (age 3) - b. 22 Apr 1841
- Guilden Morden, Camb, England
Martha Jane Worboys -
b. 28 Jul 1843 - Guilden Morden, Camb, England {No arrival on Royal Saxon recorded}
Thus
two of Mary Anne's offspring never made it to Australia. They
would likely have been buried at the local church, St Mary's. This
is confirmed for Joseph Worboys who was
buried in 1832 at St. Mary's. There is no month of day recorded
but he was aged 16 months.
Martha Jane Worboys,
who died only the year before the family left for Australia, must have died
very young also. Her death was in the September Qtr.
1843. Her birth was registered in the March Qtr. 1843 (doesn't fit
with b. 28 Jul 1843?). The registration was at Royston which is the Registration District for Guilden
Morden. This can be found via http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl
After arrival at Sydney, further known births in William's family are:
Charles William Worboys b. 2 May 1845 in South Creek, Windsor, NSW
Albert James Worboys b. 11 Jan 1849 in Windsor, NSW (A photo of Albert
James exists)
Mary Jane Worboys b. 2 Apr 1851 in Jericho Creek, Windsor, NSW
Gencircle links (Ancestors
of Robyn Hamilton by Robyn
Hamilton):
| William
Worboys (Husband) b. 26 Oct 1807 in Ashwell, Hert, Eng |
|
| Marriage: |
21 OCT 1827
in
Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
|
| Children: |
|
- Ann
Tott Worboys b. 24 May 1829 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- Joseph
Worboys b. 25 Sep 1831 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- George
Adam Worboys b. 6 Jul 1834 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- Josiah
Worboys b. 27 Dec 1835 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- Augusta
Worboys b. 10 Jun 1838 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- David
John Worboys b. 22 Apr 1841 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- Martha
Jane Worboys b. 28 Jul 1843 in Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
- Charles
William Worboys b. 2 May 1845 at South Creek, Windsor, NSW
- Albert
James Worboys b. 11 Jan 1849 in Windsor, NSW
- Mary
Jane Worboys b. 2 Apr 1851 at Jericho, South Creek, Windsor, NSW
|
This shows that they were working at Jericho after a short time but at first
they were bonded for one year minimum by a contract or agreement entered into
to work at nearby Wilmington, owned by J.A. Betts:
On
4 July 1844 William and Mary Anne Worboys were 'disposed' of from bounty
immigrant records by an agreemen to work for one
year
to Mr. J.A. Betts at his Wilmington property, for wages of 16 pounds per annum
for the pair of them - he as a Farm Labourer
and
she as a 'Laundrefs'. In addition the deal would be sweetened by
the issue of weekly rations consisting of 5 pounds
of
sugar, 10 ounces of tea, 30 pounds of flour and 25 pounds of meat (beef or
mutton) per week. Only William 'signed'
the
agreement, with a cross, for 'Self & wife' (although Mary Anne could write
according to shipping records).
Bottom
of the Wilmington work agreement.
Baptisms were at St Phillips church - which was at "Clydesdale, Richmond Road, Marsden Park NSW'
William was buried at "Clydesdale NSW".
Mary Jane is recorded baptised there:
'WARBOYS' | Mary Jane | parents - William & Mary Ann | born - 2 Apr 1851 | baptised - 27 Apr 1851 | Abode - Jericho | Labourer"
Two of those who travelled here on the Royal Saxon are buried at Clydesdale,
with Josiah seen to have died at the early age of 18:
'WARBOYS' William | abode = South Creek | died 27 Dec 1851 | buried 28 Dec 1851 | age 44 | Labourer
(reg. no. 756 V37)
'WARBOYS' Josiah |
South Creek | 30 Mar 1854 |
31 Mar 1854 | 18 | Labourer
(http://www.hawkesbury.net.au/church/burials/spbr1848.html)
Search
for more information on Clydesdale showed that the church of St Phillip was
built there in 1845-46 on land (perhaps two acres) given by Charles
Thomson. It was consecrated on 21 September 1846 in the parish of
"Windsor and Cydesdale". It was erected on the eastern
side of South Creek and the area was flood prone. Clydesdale was
also where there was once a toll gate on the Richmond Road. Charles
Thomson Jnr who is recorded in church records of 1848 as a resident of
Clydesdale was a pupil of Henry Fulton's at his classical academy for young
gentlemen at Castlereagh.
The
church at Clydesdale was almost completely submerged in the flood of 1867, in
which year the officiating minister the Rev. Henry Stiles also died. It
is possible the church never fully recovered its popularity after that time
but any rate after it was further innundated and damaged in 1889-1890, and the
building after that time left to fall into ruin. There is said to
be no trace of the church findable today, even though old photographs show a
well-built church of brick (recorded dimensions: "36 by 18 feet with a
deep chancel of twelve feet, a porch, vestry, and high gable with bell
turret"). There were twelve burials that took there between
1848 and 1872 and still-recorded headstones there apparently only number
four: William Worboys 1851, Joshian Worboys 1854, Jane Lock and
Henry Nichols. Clydesdale is also one of the first places were
alpacas were run, for their wool.
After
the deaths abovementioned, some of the family, or at least David and his
sister Augusta, may have moved to Penrith - where David is found recorded as a
bootmaker. David John Worboys also served as an Alderman on
Penrith Council for the years 1876 and 1877.
It's known not all the family stayed in the
Windsor/Penrith area following the 1850s when William and Josiah
died. The movements and issue of George Adams Worboys are know -
and he moved to Mudgee and later on to Kempsey or Macleay River :
George
Adams Worboys as in the Hawkesbury Pioneer Register, Vol. 2 which was published by the
Hawkesbury
Family History Group in 2001.
Dr. Ken Knight of Hornsby contributed this information.
Is
it presumably because of George's move to Macleay River, Kemsey, that we find
William's wife Mary Ann Tott buried at Kempsey.
This is as far as research on assisted
immigrant Worboys has gotten to date. It shows that they came in two batches, one
family in 1844 who are thought to have settled at Jericho on South Creek west
of Sydney, and eleven years later another two or more families that went to
the Hunter. That the "Hunter Worboys" might possibly
have known or been related to the South Creek Worboys is possible.
It
is interesting in that context to note that one of the second influx of Worboys who went to the
Hunter, namely Jabez Worboys, moved subsequently from West Maitland to North Richmond
where he died. As that is the area where the first batch of Worboys had
gone to, and where some may well have remained in the area it does suggests
that the
second batch Worboys knew the first batch ones (William Worboys family).
When
this webpage was commenced no indication was easily findable of anyone having researched the family
of Augusta Worboys in Australia except for a "Suzanne
Santos" who tried doing that in 2001-2003 (and stated she was descended
from Thomas Cummins and Augusta Worboys).
Suzanne could has not been located, however other descendants of William and
Mary Ann Worboys were later located.
No effort has been made
yet to enquire about the
"Hunter Worboys", however as there were considerable more of those
who came in 1855 they would have given rise to very many Worboys possibly
still living in the Hunter region. It seems likely that
considerable family history research may have been been done on those,
and therefore that more on them will be found out about on further
enquiry. Some of them might turn out to be from the same area of
England as Augusta came from(?).
The
Worboys who arrived in Sydney on 26 June 1844 were:
Ann Tott Worboys
b. 24 May 1829 , Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng [Died at Glebe, 1864]
Joseph Worboys
b. 25 Sep 1831 , Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
George Adam Worboys b. 6 Jul 1834
, Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng [Died at Kempsey, 1908, Methodist burial]
Josiah Worboys
b. 27 Dec 1835 , Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
Augusta Worboys
b. 10 Jun 1838 , Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
David John Worboys b. 22 Apr 1841
, Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng [Died at Penrith, 1903]
Martha Jane Worboys b. 28 Jul 1843
, Guilden Morden, Camb, Eng
Recently seen to survive is a
photocopy (almost illegible) of a document that no doubt pertains to Ann Tott
Worboys. It is a filled-in form Memorandum of Agreement on which Ann has
made her mark as "+"
(not he usual "X").
In the agreement "Anne
Worboys", a "free Immigrant per Ship Royal Saxon" on 11
July 1844 agreed to become a "General" (clear) ?"Servant"
(unclear) and to "otherwise make himself generally useful" (part of
printed form) for the term of three calendar months, at the rate of ten pounds
per annum, to a Mrs Ellen Graves. This Mrs Graves has not been
further identified.
Another record pertaining to
"Anne (sic) Todd (sic) Worboy", unmarried female immigrant by the
ship Royal Saxon, exists out of some register of the same year (1844) in which
"According to her own statement" Ann was indeed a "General
house servant". The agreement signed with Mrs Graves
appears to provide for lodgings as well as salary. It is also noted that
she'd lived with Thomas and Ruth Worboys who kept a shop in Ashwell.
This then appears to be recording his arrival in the colony and what used to
be her former calling back in England. It records her parents as
"William & Mary Anne on board" and states that "Relations
in the Colony" were none. Religion is stated as "Inderpendant"
(sic), so we know they were not Church of England. Native place is
stated as "Gildedmorden" (sic). "Anne Todd
Worboys" was assessed as useful to the Colony .. .. with state of bodily
health, strength and probable usefulness all
"good". As to whether she could read or write, it
is recorded "Both" (unclear), although the same year she made a mark
on a servant's agreement rather than sign.
Ann Tott no doubt later went to be
with her
parents at Wilmington (later to Jericho) at South Creek.
A few years later, in 1850 she married at age of 21, and according to then
record she was Wesleyan. Thus by 1850 the Worboys family at South
Creek may have been Wesleyan. It's even possible they were
Wesleyan before they left England. Not only did Ann Tott
marry as Methodist, but also her brother, George Adam Worboys, married
Ann Buttler on 15 February 1854 at the Wesleyan Church in Windsor. And to further show they were Methodist, one of the sons
of this couple was named George Wesley Worboys.
Ann Tott Worboys married on 30 May 1850, to James
Gillard (also recorded as "Wesleyan Methodist"). The
witnesses were John Gillard and Louisa Connell, both of Pitt Town Bottom near
Windsor. This John Gillard is perhaps the same John Gillard who
married Mary Ann Cavanough in Windsor on 19 September 1845 (cf. Merle Kavanagh who wrote on the life of John Lees
- "John
Lees The Chapel Builder" ISBN 0 7316 0188 2)..
Ann and John were married by
minister William Schofield (1793-1878). He had been a Wesleyan
missionary who sailed for Sydney in 1827 in the Alacrity, going on from
there to Van Diemens Land and returning to Sydney in 1832. He
maintained circuit work around Windsor (1834-38), Sackville Reach (1838-39),
Parramatta (1845-47), and Windsor (1847-50). So 1850 was in his
last year at Windsor. In 1851 he became a supernumerary minister and he
later on became associated with the church's acquisition of York Street House
as a depot for Methodist literature, dying in 1878. He left a
surprisingly large fortune of £50,000. In 1849 he'd acquired from the
Hawkesbury Benevolent Society its Mooki River cattle-run. On his death he
bequeathed about £9000 to relatives, most of whom he had never met, and the
"The Rev. W. Schofield's Free and Perpetual Loan Fund" stems from
his savings. His ability to endow a substantial fund was an unusual
outcome what was often at that time a very ill-paid vocation. His name,
via his third wife, is also seen in in Schofield Hall, Methodist Ladies'
College, Burwood. No children were born to any of Schofield's marriages.
Pitt Town is one of the five
'Macquarie Towns' established by Governor Macquarie in 1810. A
site for a village was laid out in 1811 but it was never as good, in terms of
its land, as the other sites. Macquarie observed that 'the ground is not so
good or so conveniently situated for the settlers in general as might be
wished, it being not less than 3 1/2 miles from some of the few of the front
farms; but no better is to be had and therefore there is no alternative left
but to place the town on these heights...the great square, burying ground, and
the principal streets being all marked by strong posts...and the post, with
the name of the town nailed to it, has been erected in the centre of the great
square.' Similar as with the laid out site for Castlereagh,
a problem was that the intended village was located too far from the rich
river flats. In reality the farmers had no desire to make a long
daily trek from the town to their holdings, and by by 1841 there were only 36
houses in the would-be town. Along Bathurst Street, Pitt Town,
there are a number of late nineteenth century weatherboard houses; and at 132
Bathurst Street there are some very old slab cottages and
outbuildings. Bathurst Street descends into Pitt Town Bottoms Road
and this was the location of the first settlement in the district.
This was where Ann Tott's husband's family was from and is where, in
1794, Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose granted fifteen 30 acre farms to
a number of free settlers. These early settlers provided much of the
fresh produce for the infant colony, shipped down the Hawkesbury to Sydney
town. Also at the bottom of Bathurst Street, overlooking Pitt Town
Bottoms, is the "Old Manse". That Manse belonged to the oldest
Presbyterian Church in Australia, which was situated down river at Ebenezer.
At the moment nothing more is
known about Ann Tott Worboys/Gillard for certain until her
death. She died aged only 35, at Glebe Street in Glebe
in 1864, where she and James were living. She died 2 July 1864 and was
buried 3 July 1864 at "Wesleyan Cemetery" (where?) and the
undertaker was Eliza Hanslow. She died after a nine month duration
illness, recorded as cancer of the womb.
The exact relationship of this
younger 'Ann Todd/?Tott Worboys' and the elder one who was Williams wife, was
a little uncertain for a time but it was later noted that Robyn Hamilton's
book clearly regards her as the first born daughter in the family.
FreeBDM (http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl) finds no Ann Tott Worboys,
but she does occur with the family in the 1841 census.
OTHER
POTENTIAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION:
* Salvation Army
archives.
* Methodist
archives.
The Methodist achives, kept near
Parramatta have never been open on days that I have happened to be passing by
Parramatta. They should also be of potentially much interest re
Lees and Byrnes and descendants at Upper Castlereagh. Some years ago on
a geneology forum,. "Carole" (carell@bigpond.com)
wrote looking for her Grandfather's first wife Agnes Myra Carpenter. She
was trying to find more information about her randfather in the years 1888-1890 when he was married to Agnes.
She wrote "He was obviously so distraught after her sudden death he enlisted in the
Salvation Army. His enlistment was probably at the same time as Agnes's brother George, who we know went on to become the first Australian born
General of the Salvation Army. My grandfather mourned Agnes for 7 years before marrying my grandmother in
1898". To this, Daryl Lightfoot (then the Archivist/Librarian
for the Uniting Church in Australia (NSW Synod) replied "Hi - dropping in re General George Carpenter and the Salvo's. George was
converted at a mission in the Raymond Terrace Wesleyan Methodist Church c. 890 which was written off as a "glorious failure" a/c the few who
responded to the missioner's invitation. I haven't researched how it was that George Carpenter (and also some RT Wesleyans including some of my
Boyle/Gilbert ancestors both at RT and in the Taree area) went over to the Salvation Army. Has anyone done anything on
this?". No further information on the topic seems to have
flowed in that particular forum.
Contacted in February 2010, Daryl
Lightfoot advised that he had not been UC archivist for over 2 years now, and
now worked at the Presbyterian Archives, as research officer. Although
Daryl had left working at the UC archives he advised that he is also an elected Vice-President of the World Methodist Historical Society.
Daryl advised that the Uniting Church Archives were also effectively closed while
making major readjustments regarding off-site storage and access to records.
He thought that visiting the Methodist archives would likely not be possible until around
mid-year (2010). Daryl advised also that regarding Worboys who went to
the Hunter Valley, there are still people of that name associated with the Bolwarra Uniting (formerly
Methodist) Church, and that quite recently when re-indexing "The
Methodist" (NSW Methodist church paper) he had noted, but did not
specifically index) the Worboys name elsewhere too, on the North Coast.
SEE
THE ASSOCIATED PAGE ON NATURE AND GEOLOGY OF SOUTHERN CAMBRIDGESHIRE REGION
Footnotes
[1] Ancestry.com [Census Records]
[2] The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England.
[3] Information was greatly assisted by correspondence with Judith Adams (whose family had also once lived at Penrith, owning the land which is now the Weir Reserve).
With thanks directly to Judith's knowledge of English records and her advice on
how/where to search them.
