Old Maitland

from a series of articles published in the Newcastle Morning Herald over several years

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MOLLY MORGAN, AN 'AMAZON' PIONEER
published 17 August, 1929 (Maitland Centenary Edition)
One of the outstanding personalities of the earliest days of the Maitland district was a woman who had been a convict, but arrived in the district with a ticket of leave. She was Molly Morgan, but known in her land grant as Mary Hunt. She was a woman of dominant influence so great that for a time the present site of Maitland was known as "Molly Morgan's" Plains. She was one of the first three persons who took up residence on the site of the town of West Maitland, and received from the Crown a grant of 159 acres, covering what has since become the most valuable part of the old town.

Her grant had the river for its northern boundary, from Bulwer street to Hunter street. On its west side were Bulwer, West and Elgin streets; on the south side, Park street; from the end of Elgin street, along the back of Maitland Park, to the Louth Park road; and its east side was Hunter street, with a line extending from that street, meeting Devonshire street a very acute angle, thence along the western side of a very small grant to the present Melbourne street gate of Maitland Park and along Melbourne street to Louth Park road.

The streets which are now part of the original grant - High street, from Bulwear, to Hunter street: Bulwer, Bourke, Charles, Lee, Victoria, Free Church, Nicholson, Railway, Bent, De Courey, Gipps, Catherine, Michael, Elgin, Hunter, West, Park and Parallel Streets, and parts of Olive, Albert, and Melbourne streets. The High street frontage would be about 4000ft at £30 a foot would mean £120,000, a very low estimate in view of the fact that some of the most costly buildings and most of the busiest parts of High street are included in it. At her advent the locality was well timbered, cedar trees being much in evidence. The ground along the bank of the Hunter River was covered with scrub and through this the teamsters cut a winding track, which eventually became the main street of the town, High street.

Molly Morgan was a most remarkable character, and considerable interest was manifested in her by Governors Macquarie and Brisbane, whose attention was directed to her by her efforts to develop her property. She cleared much of her land at Maitland, near the river, and in that work had the assistance of convicts, in whom she was very considerate. In that respect she was more humane than others, some of whom were too much accustomed to have the lash flourishing on the backs of the unfortunates who were assigned to them. She was evidently a keen, self-willed, and resourceful woman. She is credited by the old hands with having gone to Sydney on one occasion to intercede with the Governor for some runaway convicts, who were in danger of being severely dealt with by the local authorities, and she was successful. She could ride, shoot, and do any manual labour, including fencing. Many stories have been handed down regarding her alleged wild drinking bouts, but they are unsupported, in view of the work she carried out. There are also stories of her sales of land for rum, which was medium of exchange with many in those days, but there is not evidence of that. It is, however, quite true that some of her land was "jumped", but not during her lifetime.

Very little was known formerly of her early history, beyond the fact that she had been transported for some minor offence, that she found favour with the authorities, that she received several grants of land, and that she played some part in the early Maitland days. Some years ago documents which were before the courts in connection with a claim made by her son, in England, in her estate have been made available, and from these her story is gleaned.

She was born in or near Diddlebury, Shropshire, England, in 1762, and was a daughter of David Jones, a rat catcher and general labourer. In 1785 she was married to William Morgan, a wheelwright and carpenter, of Hopesay, in her native county, and had two children. In 1788 some hempen yarn, valued at a few shillings, was stolen from a bleaching ground at Corfton Back, where she lived, and, as it was traced to her home, she and her husband were arrested. Her husband was rescued by some soldier friends, and escaped, but Molly was tried and convicted at Shrewsbury, and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales. She arrived at Sydney on June 18, 1790, in the ship Neptune, the captain of which was a cruel despot. No less than 164 of the unfortunate convicts, most of whom had been sent out for offences as trivial as her's, died on the voyage of neglect and lack of food while others were so weak and emaciated that they died as they were being rowed ashore in the boats. Records of the period show that the convicts concealed from the ship's officers the deaths of the other convicts, so that they could share the rations of the dead.

Referring to the treatment meted out to the convicts in the ships of the Second Fleet, of which the Neptune was a part, Dr. Lang, in his well-known work "An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales, &c" writes as follows - In the end of June 1799, three transports arrived in Port Jackson, containing part of the stores which had been saved from the Guardian and in the course of the following year the ship Gorgon, which had been converted for the

time being into a shoreship, together with 10 transports containing convicts, and constituting what was long afterwards known as the Second Fleet, also arrived. The mortality among the convicts who had been embarked in these vessels was absolutely frightful; in the Surprise there had been 42 deaths during the passage out; in the Scarborough 68, and in the Neptune 164. On board the 10 transports that formed the Second Fleet there had been embarked in England 1695 male, and 68 female convicts, of whom no fewer than 194 males and four females died on the passage out: and such was the state of debility in which the survivors landed in the colony that 114 males and two females died in the Colonial Hospital before the 5th of December, 1791. Of the 132 male convicts, also, who arrived per the transport Queen from Ireland in the year 1791, there were only 50 alive in the month of May 1792.

In a footnote, Dr. Land adds the following - "On an investigation which was instituted in the colony at the suggestion of Captain Parker, of H.M.S. Gorgon, it is shown that some of the captains of transports had very much abridged the convict's allowance, stipulated by Government for their subsistence; this inhuman practice having been carried to such an extent, in some ships that many of the convicts had literally been starved to death. The shipowner received £17.7.6 for each convict embarked at this period; and the more that died on the passage out, he had the greater profit on the voyage."

Molly was sent to Parramatta, and remained there for about five years, during which she met her husband, and was allowed to live with him towards the end of that term. She won the sympathy of the captain of the ship Resolution, and in 1796 escaped with him from Sydney to England. On arrival in England she made her way back to her old home, and taking her two children, went to live at St. George's Terrace, working to keep them. Towards the end of 1797, she moved to Plymouth, where she met and married Thomas Mares, a brass founder and bell hanger, with whom she lived happily for a while, but some trouble arose, and she was accused of having set fire to her husband's house. In later years she denied having been implicated in the crime. She escaped to London but was eventually arrested, convicted, and again sentenced to transportation.

She arrived on the convict ship 'Experiment', at Sydney, in or about the year 1809, and again went to Parramatta, where she soon won the good opinion of the authorities and she was allowed to have a place of her own and to keep stock. Molly acquired a bad habit of that and other periods and took the risk of putting her own brand on some Government stock for which she was sent to the convict settlement at Newcastle. As far as can be gleaned that would be about six or seven years, very little can be traced of her life beyond the fact that once more her wonderful personality stood to her so well that she was allowed her freedom and married a yeoman, Thomas Hunt, and that she was given the much talked of grant at Wallis Plains, now Maitland.

She confided the story of her early troubles, and, her two previous marriages to Hunt, who, however was not her equal in intelligence. They got on well and Molly went to live at Wallis Plains (Maitland) in 1819, but there were earlier settlers named, Eckford, O'Donnell and Smith, who had been there over a year. According to the old Maitland pioneer, John Eckford, who was an official at one time, Molly lived in a hut on a spot nearly on the site of the present Royal Hotel, opposite the Town Hall in 1820. It is interesting to have the authority of so reliable a witness as John Eckford to show that at the time of the great flood of 1821, there were only three houses on the site of West Maitland, Molly Morgan's opposite the present Town Hall site, William O'Donnell's nearly opposite the old Waterloo Inn, near Abbott street and another, the name of whose occupier is unknown, at the rear of the site of the Angel Inn. The flood was up to O'Donnell's wall plate, touching the shingles; up to Molly Morgan's window sill; and flowing in the hut at the Angel Inn site. Mr. Eckford was living at East Maitland. Except for a few small clearings, the whole locality was forest land.

Old Maitlanders remember a slab cottage at the rear of Paskin's Arcade, in which Molly Morgan lived. It remained intact for many years, and part of it was used as a kitchen to the residence of the late Mr. Norrie, father of Mr. C.E. Norrie, the wellknown Maitland solicitor. Molly had a farm at Anvil Creek, on the old line of road, adjoining the property of Captain Smith and Mark Turner. It comprised 203 acres and was sold inn ten farms, of from 9 to 23 acres in July of 1854. She lived at the farm for some time before her death, which occurred on June 26, 1835.

The late Mr. Joseph Clift, of Lochinvar, remembered having been with his father on a trip up country, along the road past Molly's farm, and seeing his father conversing with the old pioneer. Molly's husband is best remembered by the "old hands" of Maitland as "Joe the Marine", or as "Joe Morgan", though his real name was Hunt.

There are stories of Molly's cravings for drink of her sales of land for gallons of rum, of her wild reckless life, and so on, but there is nothing to support them.