The Reunion of the Gilbert Family in Parramatta until the Death of Mary

The Reunion of the Gilbert Family in Parramatta until the Death of Mary Gilbert

And so the two convict transports each eventually reached Sydney without further incident. Mary's ship, the "Lord Melville" had left England on 29th August 1816. On that date, Sam, in the "Mariner" was still at sea, somewhere between South Africa and Sydney, she having just picked up that one extra passenger there at Simon's Bay on 16th August, 1816. Sam knew that Mary was trying to get a free trip out to New South Wales, for he had told the Bank of England that in his petition of 10th January, 1816, but, when he left in the "Mariner" on 6th May. 1816, nothing had been completed, and Mary's name was not on the list until 4th July, 1816. So he may have known nothing before Mary arrived at Windsor with their three children.

On their arrival, all of the convicts were brought up from their prisons, and assembled on deck for inspection by the Governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, of the Black Watch Regiment. They were all asked for their personal details, and they were questioned about their treatment on the voyage. The Governor picked out all of the tradesmen, like carpenters and bricklayers, and they were kept aside for working on buildings in the Settlement.

When all of the convicts were taken on shore, they were paraded in the jail yard for inspection. Mr. John Haslam, the Assistant Surgeon from the "Mariner" was there watching the proceedings. He writes about the convicts:

"There was an instance during the voyage of correct conduct in a young man about 22 years of age, which afforded some consolation for the general failure of the other convicts. This youth had received a competent education; but without being a traitor to his community, he appeared to be weaned from their practices; although being obliged to associate with the others, he never joined in their indecent merriment, nor did I ever hear an oath escape from him. He officiated as clerk during divine service, and regularly distributed Prayer Books in the chapel . His leisure time was frequently occupied in in perusing the Holy Scriptures, and he exerted a proper spirit of activity and diligence in keeping the prison clean. This continuance of exemplary behaviour had determined me to report his case to the Governor. On our arrival at Port Jackson, the convicts; according to custom, were assembled in the jail yard for inspection; where to my utter mortification, my hopeful penitent was detected in picking the pocket of an inhabitant, whom curiosity had induced, to become a spectator of the ceremony".

The remainder of the convicts were to be given to various settlers to work on their farms or runs. On 18th October, 1816, a party of 82 was assembled, and they were sent up the Parramatta River to Rev. Samuel Marsden of Parramatta, who had been given instructions where these men were to go. Forty of them were to proceed by land up to Windsor to William Cox J.P, who was in charge of the convicts there. Samuel Gilbert was No. 19 on that list. So they were marched under escort up to the Old Windsor Road through that part of Seven Hills which is now called Parklea, to Windsor, where Mr. Cox selected a convict to go to each particular settler. I do not yet know where our Samuel Gilbert was sent, but I hope that, some day, someone will find a copy of Mr. Cox's allocations, for I would like to know if he went to a good progressive master.

Samuel Gilbert would have had to work for his master without any money wages, just his keep, so that the Government did not even have to provide rations for him. He really became a slave, but there were no slaves then anywhere in the great British Empire. You may remember singing "Rule Britannia"; "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.", but there were still plenty of slaves in places like the American States and in Brazil. As England had abolished slavery, he was just like an apprentice who lived with his master, like his little boy, Sam, whom his wife, Mary, had left behind in Shoreditch.

So Sam was a general farm laborer from his posting to his boss in October until Mary and the children reached Sydney in the "Lord Melville" on 24th February, 1817. When they went on shore, the clerks soon found out that Sam was on the list for a settler up at Windsor, and I felt that there was very little delay in putting them into a cart and sending them up to Mr. Cox at Windsor. This is where we are left without the name of that master.

Mary and the children would still be able to live on rations which would be supplied for them by the Government, but, if Sam had a really good master, the settler and his wife may have made immediate arrangements for them to live together on the farm at Windsor. This arrangement must have come fairly quickly, for their next baby, little Sarah, our first Australian Gilbert, arrived on 4th January, 1818.

Now, if a convict had arrived in the Territory, and like Sam, had been given to a settler as his master, if that settler strongly told the Governor that his convict servant was well conducted and was worthy of getting a Ticket of Leave, and that his wife had come free with their children, and that they were all now living together with him, the Governor usually issued a Ticket of Leave. You must remember that his sentence was transportation for 14 years, and that it did not run out until the year 1829 - he still had 12 ½ years to go.

"A Ticket of Leave contained a declaration of the Governor's pleasure to dispense with the attendance, at government work, of the convict holding it, and of his being permitted to employ himself (off the Government stores) in any lawful occupation, within any given district , for his own advantage , during good behaviour, or until the Governor's pleasure should be made known. It was either expressed to be by the command of Governor Macquarie and signed by His Secretary, or it was signed by the Governor himself."

Samuel Gilbert was granted a Ticket of Leave in June 1817, and I feel that it was issued for the District of Parramatta, which enabled him to take his wife, Mary, and their children there to find a place in which to live. You must remember that the only money they would then have might be what she had saved out of that Twentyfive pounds which she had received from the Bank of England, in March 1816. Up to the present I have found no record of their place of residence in Parramatta. The record of the baptism of their daughter, Sarah, on 25th January, 1818, does not give the place of residence of her parents.

I have included here a copy of a painting of Parramatta in 1819, by Joseph Lycett. You will notice that it was already a reasonably sized town, with St. John's Church in the centre. As we do not have their full address at that time, we cannot indicate which house might have been their residence.

The next improvement in Samuel Gilbert's status was the issue to him of a Conditional Pardon, on 26th November, 1820. Our book states:

"A conditional pardon contained a declaration of the Governor, under his hand and official seal, that the unexpired term of Samuel Gilbert's sentence was conditionally remitted to him; and the condition was expressed to be, that he should continue to reside within the limits of the Government of New South Wales during the space of the original sentence, under pain of incurring all the penalties of re-appearing in Great Britain, for and during the term of his original sentence or order of transportation; or as if the remission had never been granted."

The next interesting matter is the fact the Mary Gilbert was in the business of selling wheat to the Government Store. On 26th January, 1821, 27½ bushels at 10/- £13.15.0., and 23/2/1821, 61½ bushels at 10/- £30.15.0., .

This seems to establish the fact that her husband was growing wheat, but we do not know where he had land on which to grow it.

Samuel Gilbert was now in the practice of buying land in Parramatta. By 1823, he owned 86 George Street, 14 Phillip Street, and 32 Phillip Street, and he had a block of land on Allotment 21 on the north side of the Parramatta River.

They were both given convict servants by the Government. From 1822-24, Mary Gilbert had Peter Ney from the "Southworth" and, on 23/1/1824, Samuel Hill who had arrived in the "Asia", and in 1825, John Fogarty who came in the "Rinnelli". William Masters, who had come in the "Malabar" in 1818 appears in the 1828 census as the servant of Samuel Gilbert.

In the General Muster of 1825, Samuel Gilbert first appears as a baker, and he already owned his own flour mill. He was quickly becoming prosperous as the town baker in Parramatta. He was supplying the Female Factory there with flour which was being used to thicken the soup @ 18/- per 100 lb.

New South Wales was very short of coins at this time, and the Bank of England sent out a large quantity of Spanish silver dollars which she had been keeping in her vaults. The head of King Charles lV of Spain had the head of King George lll stamped on his neck and in 1825, the New South Wales Government decided the £1 was worth Four Spanish dollars and sixty centavos, and that Five Shillings was worth One Spanish dollar and fifteen centavos . So when Samuel Gilbert sold the Female Factory 1025 lb. of flour between March 1825 and January 1826, we find that he was paid in former Spanish money, the sum of 37 dollars and 25 centavos. The Female Factory was over on the north side of the River at the West end of Harold Street, and it was really a name only for the place where female convicts had to live and to work, until they were selected as wives by the settlers, soldiers, or convicts who had obtained definite places of employment. At the Factory they were engaged in spinning and weaving.

Samuel Gilbert might have been granted a full pardon in 1825. All that I could find was this note , made at that time on a file in the old records:

"(1825) Pardons promised by Sec T B on occ of his departure & Copy of this list sent home.

Jas. Knights (?)".

"Samuel Gilbert Mariner 1st."

Maybe we may never know if he was still tied up by his Conditional Pardon of 1829. The information that was given to me about him by the School in its prospectus was not quite correct.

Young John Gilbert, who was born in 1807, was now able to help his father in the bakery business, and he would have helped me quite a lot if he had left a story of his life at Windsor when the family arrived in 1816 and when they moved down to Parramatta in the following year when his father was granted his Ticket of Leave. It would be interesting know how and when the family flour mill was founded - did Sam build it himself, where the grinding stones came from and where it was situated. We do not know how his father became an expert in baking bread. Back in England when they all lived in Shoreditch, everyone baked their own bread. You yourself would have made a damper from flour, water, and a little salt, while you were in the Guides or the Scouts, cooking it in a frying pan, and tossing it in the air to turn it over. With the addition of a little yeast in the mixture, it could have been bread.

Bread would have been baked regularly on the convict ships, and both Mary and Samuel would have seen it done, and they would have known enough to start up that baking business in Parramatta.

As Samuel Gilbert was a qualified weaver, that might have been thought to be good enough to make him into a baker when he became a convict.

During all of this time, Mary Gilbert had a further five children, making her family five in England and six in Parramatta. Unfortunately she died on 21st February, 1827, at the age of only 39 years, leaving baby William, aged only 8 months. Little Charlotte, who was then only 12 years of age, became the carer of the seven younger children.

Her death was mentioned in "The Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser" of 1st March 1827 where the paragraph reads:

"DEATHS - At Sydney, on 21st instant, whither she had come for medical assistance, Mrs. Gilbert, wife of Mr. Samuel Gilbert of Parramatta, after twelve months illness, which she bore with exemplary patience and resignation, aged 39 years. Two of the deceased's children died before her, and nine survive. She came free to the Colony, and it but seldom falls to the lot of any person to be so generally respected as was the deceased. Her relations in England are very respectable."

I think that the two children who had died were young Sam and his sister Mary Anne, who had been left with other people in England when Mary Gilbert boarded the ship, "Lord Melville", to make that long voyage of 12,000 miles all the way to Sydney.

There is no doubt that Mary Gilbert, like all mothers, had hoped to live to be there at the weddings of each of her daughters, Charlotte, Maria, Hannah, Susannah, and Martha, a privilege which she had been denied.

But I am really proud of my Grannie. She was married when she was only 17, and she had five children in England, the last baby being born when her husband was in the prison hulk "Justitia", waiting to be sent out to New South Wales. For nearly eight months she was on her own, without any money, until she went to the Bank of England herself, and the Bank gave her that Twentyfive Pounds.

Then she, herself, was able to get a ship to take her and three of her five children to the other side of the world where she was able to form a family again with her husband at Windsor.

And then, together, they started that bakers shop in Parramatta, all with no money for a start. I hope that you are proud of her as well.

Maybe, some day when you are over near the O'Connell Street area in Parramatta, you will take a few flowers and a glass jar and a bottle of water, and go through the gate into St. John's Cemetery there. Over on the hill, at eleven o'clock, you will find the group of four graves belonging to the Gilberts as they appear in the photo below -

If you ever go to the grave with the intention of taking a photo for yourself, take with you a piece of black pastel. It can be used to line the lettering on the headstone, without doing any damage, for it will all wash off with the next shower of rain. The lettering actually reads:

"Sacred to the Memory of Mary, the beloved wife of Samuel Gilbert, who departed this life February 21, 1827, aged 39 years.

Also of Samuel Gilbert who died June 20th, 1875, aged 87 years."

There are further inscriptions below regarding the burials of some of their descendants.

But, even better still. How would you like the school children from Grades V. and Vl. at the Samuel Gilbert Public School to go to the the Cemetery by bus on 21st February each year, carrying their flowers which they will be able to place on her grave, Grade V. in the morning, and Grade Vl . in the afternoon, after they all will have read this story, and will be pleased that my Grannie, Mary Gilbert, was the proud mother of six little Australians who were all born in Parramatta.

Chapter 10