JOHN CROSS  - ALEXANDER

- this story is under review by Membership Team

 
John Cross was born in Wiltshire in 1757. He was 29 years old when arrested for stealing a sheep worth 20 shillings, He was found guilty and received a death sentence which was commuted to seven years transportation. He was kept on a hulk for two years before sailing aboard Alexander. He worked on the farm of James Furzer and is mentioned several times in the early records — for the offence of exchanging rations for clothes and for selling stock to John Palmer. 
 
John Cross met Mary Davidson (Davison), a convict who arrived on Lady Juliana in 1790. Their first child, Elizabeth, was baptised on 29 June 1794. They had a family of nine children during their life together.  

John worked on several farms in Sydney, Parramatta and the Hawkesbury, where he had received a grant of 100 acres on 4 June 1804. There the family survived floods and hostile natives, and he asked for Government help to overcome flood damage. The peak of his achievement as a farmer was in 1806 when he was recorded with crops, an orchard and vegetable garden and some livestock.  

But he got into difficulties after that time, and gradually sold off his assets to pay off debts. He was a poor man when he died and was buried at St Matthew's, Windsor, on 27 December 1824, at the age of 68 years.  

John's son, David, built the Victoria Inn, which still stands at Cross Park at Wiseman's Ferry, and for a time he operated the ferry. John's children married into such well-known families as the Cobcrofts, Cavanoughs, Herps, Douglas, Stallards and Doughertys.