Maryland Homestead 773 The Northern Road, Bringelly, NSW Historical Context February 2015 Rosemary Broomham Consultant Historian/Archaeologist 49 Darghan Street, Glebe NSW 2037 M 0417 411 486 E [email protected] Contents 2.0 Historical Context 2.1 Introduction 1 2.2 More numerous than expected – the inland Aborigines of New South Wales 2 The Cowpastures Frontier 3 Conflict on the southern frontier 4 2.3 John Dickson: a favoured immigrant 6 Nonorrah, John Dickson’s country estate 6 Sale of Cowpasture Estates 1840 – 1854 10 2.4 Thomas Barker – apprentice engineer to public figure 12 Thomas Barker – mentor to young, single immigrants 13 Maryland, Thomas Barker’s country estate 15 Thomas Barker – grazier and wine producer 17 Maryland in 1876 18 2.5 Thomas Charles Barker Esquire, Maryland, Bringelly 1863-1940 20 2.6 Ninian Alan Thomson – Maryland, company director’s retreat 21 2.7 Elizabeth and Annette (Annie) Thomson – dairy farmers of Maryland 24 2.8 New owners for Maryland 2009-2013 25 2.9 Appendixes 27 2.10 Select Bibliography 40 Maryland, Bringelly, Contextual History Rosemary Broomham 2 2.0 Historical Context 2.1 Introduction Figure 1: Maryland in on The Northern Road [Route 18] about half-way between Narellan and Luddenham. Google Maps The property called Maryland is a remnant of a 3,000 acre grant that Governor Macquarie issued to John Dickson, an engineer who emigrated to New South Wales in 1813. Dickson’s land occupied a prominent position, east of Cobbitty in the Parish of Cook, County of Cumberland. It was surrounded by several other large grants to men who were regarded as settlers of the ‘superior class’. Perhaps because of its position high above The Northern Road and the land surrounding it, perhaps because of its simple colonial style, Maryland homestead has been perceived as a fabled place by several writers through the years but few understood its heritage. Having written many stories about significant houses, G. Nesta Griffiths provided this description of Maryland in 1956. Maryland stands high on its hill, overlooking the lovely sloping country around Bringelly and Cobbitty. To the north lie Wallacia and Mulgoa on the road to Penrith. To the south the rich pastures of Camden, all historic ground. A charming gatehouse of slightly later date than the old house guards the entrance to a steep drive where grand old trees give shade and shelter.’1 1 G. Nesta Griffiths, Maryland, Bringelly, 4-page typed MS signed ‘G. Nesta Griffiths June 1956’, SLNSW Maryland, Bringelly, Contextual History Rosemary Broomham 3 Nesta Griffiths presented a romantic view of Maryland’s history that has confused later researchers. She believed that the grantee John Dickson had given his daughter Joanna ‘part of his Bringelly farm up on the hill henceforth known as Maryland’ as a wedding gift. However, Joanna, was not John Dickson’s daughter, but his niece and she did not receive a gift of land when she married his former apprentice, Thomas Barker in 1823. Another enduring source of confusion has been the idea that John Dickson’s homestead on Nonorrah was on the same site where Maryland was built in the late 1850s and that the later house had part of the of the Nonorrah homestead within its walls. Several factors made this impossible. The first was the construction of The Northern Road, shown on some early maps as ‘The Great North Road’ or ‘North Road’. This road was made some time between ca. 1826, when a surveyor drew a map titled ‘Parts of the Districts of Bringelly, Minto and Cook’, and 1834 when the map of the Cobbitty District was made. [See Figure 5]. This road divided John Dickson’s grant so that the site of Nonorrah homestead was on the eastern side of the road and the site of Maryland was on the western side. The second major impediment to the idea that Thomas Barker built Maryland on the remains of Nonorrah homestead was that Thomas Barker did not ever own the site of Nonorrah. A third misunderstanding was that while Thomas Barker was one of the trustees of Dickson’s assets after he left New South Wales and returned to England, Barker never lived on Nonorrah as a manager or in any other capacity. Any supervision or maintenance he organised for the property was done from Sydney. A fourth problem has been created by some researchers relying on second-hand versions of information rather than the primary sources. This is particularly noticeable in relation to the information gleaned from David Lindsay Waugh, Three years’ practical experience of a settler in New South Wales: being extracts from letters to his friends in Edinburgh from 1834-1837. As this publication is a selection of letters rather than a diary, it is difficult to discern the time and place of Waugh’s scattered comments about particular properties and even more confusing second hand. An additional problem with these letters is that those extracts published in local newspapers may not be exactly identical to those released in book form. This history of Maryland aims to avoid conjecture by relying on primary sources wherever possible, and, in particular, through a careful study of the relevant land title records. 2.2 More numerous than expected – inland Aborigines of New South Wales The Europeans called the Aborigines who lived near Maryland the Cowpastures tribe; they were also identified as Dharawal, a description based on their language. Their territory covered an area between Botany Bay and the Shoalhaven River and they travelled widely in the south-western regions of the counties of Cumberland and Camden. Further inland were the Dharug people whose area covered land from the Hawkesbury River to places as far west as the mountains and south to Camden and Picton.2 2 Carol Liston, Campbelltown. The Bicentennial History, Council of the City of Campbelltown with Allen & Unwin Australia, Pty Ltd, North Sydney, 1988, p 1 Maryland, Bringelly, Contextual History Rosemary Broomham 4 James Cook’s belief, that most Aboriginal people lived near the coast because they depended on a seafood diet, was proved wrong as soon as early European exploration parties moved away from Sydney Cove. They discovered that inland Aborigines lived on small animals such as possums, ‘vegetable roots and native fruit seeds and berries, with mullet, eel and kangaroo as supplements’.3 From the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the official policy towards the indigenous people was conflicted. Although Governor Phillip had been advised to treat the original inhabitants with amity and kindness, as early as the third year of European occupation, he sent a punitive expedition to kill ten aborigines in revenge for the murder of his gamekeeper.4 Another Aborigine, Coleby, identified the warrior Pemulwy as the culprit and Phillip chose Watkin Tench to lead a party of soldiers to the land around the head of Botany Bay where Pemulwy was believed to live. Tench was able to persuade Phillip to lower the number of Aborigines captured or killed from ten to six. However, on two expeditions, he and his men were unable to find any Aboriginals at all.5 Settlers in the Parramatta area shot Pemulwy in 1802 but his son Tedbury continued his father’s war against the European invaders in 1805 and again in 1809 when Young Bundle helped him terrorise settlers near the Cook and Georges Rivers. Lieutenant governors and governors from 1790 vacillated between fleeting sympathy for Aborigines and ordering settlers to arm themselves and fire on them. Macquarie, who arrived in 1810, tried to encourage Aborigines to settle on land like Europeans but they were loath to do so. The Cowpastures Frontier Europeans first entered the district known as the Cowpastures in 1795 when Aboriginals reported finding a herd of cattle there. These animals bred from the five that escaped from Farm Cove in 1788. By the time they were located, the herd had grown to 61 animals grazing on the south-west bank of the Nepean River. Aboriginal people knew the place as Baragil or Baragal but Governor Hunter called it the Cowpastures. Captain Waterhouse described it in a letter to John Macarthur in 1804. After crossing the Nepean to the foot of what is called the Blue Mountains I am at a loss to describe the face of the country other than as a beautiful park, totally divested of underwood, interspersed with plains, with rich, luxuriant grass; but for want of burning off, rank, except where recently burnt. This is the part where the cattle that have strayed are constantly fed – of course, their own selection...it appears that some meadows bordering on the banks of the Nepean River are evidently at times overflowed from the river; but it is not very common and cannot be done without sufficient time to drive away 6 any stock if common attention is paid. The area appealed to Europeans because there was little undergrowth to discourage the lush grasses that made it ideal for grazing cattle on the flats and possibly sheep on the hills towards the Razorback Range. Governors Hunter, King and Bligh ruled against European settlement on the Cowpastures, which was south-west of the Nepean River and outside the 3 Robert Murray and Kate White, Dharug to Dungaree. The History of Penrith and St Marys to 1860, Harreen Publishing Company with the City of Penrith,1988, p 20 4 Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, Library of Australian History, 1979 edition, pp 209-16 5 Ibid, pp 209-214 6 Cited in Robert Murray, Kate White, Dharug and Dungaree: The History of Penrith and St Marys to 1860, Hargreen Publishing Company with Council of the City of Penrith, North Melbourne, 1988, p 183 Maryland, Bringelly, Contextual History Rosemary Broomham 5 County of Cumberland.