(WILLIAM) EDWARD
ELLIOTT -
SCARBOROUGH
- this story is under review by Membership Team
Edward Elliott
is unusual in being one of the few convicts with a rural
background recorded as a ‘husbandman.’
Convicted of burglary at the Surrey Assize in
Croydon
on 18 August 1783 he left his home in
Coulston,
Surrey, and spent some time on Ceres hulk before
sailing in the First Fleet on Scarborough.
Due to his experience he was an early recipient of a
land grant at The Ponds, an area near Parramatta. Being
a single man this grant was limited to 30 acres. He soon
remedied this on 11 September 1791 by marrying Ann Smith
at St John's, Parramatta. A convict, she had arrived two
months earlier aboard Mary Ann.
Another partnership in December of that year was formed
with his neighbour, Joseph Marshall, who had been
granted 30 acres, though a weaver by trade. The
partnership was dissolved in 1796, but not before the
Superintendent of Agriculture, David
Burton,
had referred to them as men "who cultivated their ground
in a very slovenly manner, and are very dilatory." In
view of his later success
Elliott
may have been correct in protesting that his poor
results were caused less by incompetence and more by the
infertile land. This may have been his reason for taking
a partner in the first place or Elliott and Marshall may
have determined upon a partnership because the nature of
grants predisposed this course of action.
John Hunter recorded how "in laying out the different
allotments, an intermediate space, equal to what was
granted to the settler, was retained between every two
allotments, for the benefit of the crown; and as this
set them at some distance from each other, and there
being a wood between every two settlers, in which the
natives might conceal themselves, if they were inclined
to mischief, several
musquets
were distributed amongst the settlers."
By October 1792 Elliott had some six acres under grain
and a further three cleared. It is possible that this
initial lack of success arose from expectations that
this husbandman should "plough the Field." Judge
Advocate David
Collins
by 1796 was giving him praise for having bred a flock of
22 sheep from a single ewe which Governor
Phillip
had given to him in
1791.
He was the sole recipient of
Phillip's largesse
who kept and prospered from his legacy.
It was, then, with sheep that Elliott was successful.
His flock by 1800 mustered 120 head and by 1806 had
increased to 565 head. Excluding members of the Corps he
was one of the largest flock owners in the Colony. His
run was 96 acres acquired at Seven Hills on 28 January
1805 for 14 pounds from First Fleeter William Browning.
This was the same locality as the
Macarthurs'
Seven Hills farm, where Elizabeth
Macarthur
was successfully managing her family's flocks. Elliott
had earlier sold his grant by mid-1800 to James Thompson
and had purchased and sold a parcel of 50 acres at
Northern Boundaries.
He served between 1804 and 1805 as a volunteer private
in the
Parramatta
Loyal Association — a civil militia formed to assist the
Governor in a period of civil unrest. With the arrival
of Governor
Bligh,
Elliott, like his fellow settlers in The Hills,
supported the Governor and was a signatory of petitions
in his favour. However, despite the theories of some
historians that the Corps were principally motivated in
destroying opposition to their entrepreneurial
endeavours and the growth of their flocks when they
overthrew Bligh, Elliott does not appear to have
suffered during these years. On Governor
Macquarie's
arrival, his flocks then numbered over 400 and were
still intact.
Regrettably nothing further is known of him until his
death on 19 April 1822, aged 70 years. Only in the 1802
Muster is he shown to be supporting a child, but no
other details of this child or of his wife are known.
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