50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge - Day 13
Fragments of Family History – Thomas Rose – Sedition
Jennifer Jones from TRACKING DOWN THE FAMILY has initiated a 50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge. This is a big writing commitment, but I have decided to participate. I have decided my topic will be “Fragments of Family History”. I will write short posts of newspaper items or single stories connected to my family history. This may expand over the 50 days.
Thomas Rose – Sedition
When Governor Lachlan Macquarie arrived in New South Wales in 1809, he cancelled all the land grants and commutation of convict sentences that Lieutenant Governor William Patterson made, as he did not have the authority to do so. Thomas Rose’s land grant of forty acres in the Evan District was cancelled. It was regranted in 1813. However, this grant was cancelled again on 25 September 1816 along with grants of four other people in response to “their recent seditious conduct”.1 For the same reason Thomas failed to retain his liquor licence between 1817 and 1820.
Thomas Rose was a signatory to a petition addressed to the Parliament of the United Kingdom that complained about Governor Lachlan Macquarie. The petition was organized by Ellis Bent, N.S.W. Judge Advocate, who disagreed with Macquarie on a number of policies he implemented; using emancipists as attorneys, having judicial independence from the Governor, creating ordinances or laws that conflicted with English law, proclaimed that anyone trespassing on the Government Domain would be flogged including free settlers, and extensive expenditure on public buildings.2 It is not know what Thomas Rose objected to.
“There was a publican named Rose, who had been “very nearly executed”. He not merely lost any chance of further land grants and favours.” Dr D’Arcy Wentworth refused to sign Thomas’ application for a renewal of his liquor license and urged the Governor to refuse it. Wentworth deemed that, “since the Governor had given both Mr Rose and his wife’s father free pardons and considerable land grants, the miscreant’s conduct showed “such a degree of baseness and ingratitude that I could not sign his petition””.3
Luckily for Thomas Rose, Macquarie did not press charges. Had he done so, Thomas may have received a fine or been imprisoned.
In 1819 Thomas clashed with the governor again when Macquarie decided to build St James's parochial school on part of Rose's Castlereagh Street block. Negotiations were intense. In exchange for the school site he was granted 300 acres on the main southern road east of Campbelltown.4 About the same time he purchased a 400-acre farm on the Appin Road, from Reuben Uther, called Gilead Farm.5 Thomas changed the name to Mt. Gilead. Later he gradually added to his Campbelltown estate, which by 1828 was estimated at 2460 acres.6
Records NSW, Index to the Colonial Secretary's Papers, 1788-1825, Reel 6005, [4/3495], p.149.
Parliament of New South Wales, 1810 to 1821 - Governor Lachlan Macquarie, About Parliament, accessed 24 June 2025, https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/1810-to-1821-Governor-Lachlan-Macquarie.aspx; State Library of NSW, Opposing the governor, The Governor – Lachlan Macquarie 1810 to 1821, accessed 24 June 2025, https://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/events/exhibitions/2010/governor/11_opposing/index.html.
M.H. Ellis, Lachlan Macquarie, His Life, Adventures and Times, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1978, p. 345.
Ancestry.com. New South Wales, Australia, Registers of Land Grants and Leases, 1792-1867 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Registers of Land Grants and Leases. Microfilm Publication 2560–2561, 2846, 2548–2550, 2700–2702, 2704–2705, 11 rolls. Record Group NRS 13836. New South Wales, Australia.
"OLD MT. GILEAD." Sydney Mail (NSW : 1912 - 1938) 5 January 1921: 41. Web. 23 Jun 2025 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article159037896>.
Malcolm R. Sainty & Keith A. Johnson (ed.s), Census of New South Wales November 1828, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1980.