Living

Other Events:

• School: 1898, All Saint's College, Bathurst, NSW; Alan left All Saints School in 1905. He was within Britten House. He was a good footballer at school.
• Military Enlist: 14 Nov 1914; Alan served in the Australian Army Medical Corp during World War 1 with the rank of Captain. His occupation was listed as medical practitioner and his current address at the time was Coonabrabran, NSW. He nominated his mother, Mrs R D Barton, Esrom, Bathurst as next of kin.
• _MILT: 28 Nov 1914, Sydney, NSW; Alan left Sydney as part of the 2nd Australian General Hospital on the Transport Kyarra (A55).
• _MILT: 1 Jun 1917; Alan was Mentioned in Despatches Awarded and promulgated, 'London Gazette, second Supplement, No. 30107'
• _MILT: 1 Oct 1917, Steenwerck, France
• _MILT: 4 Oct 1917; Commonwealth Gazette No 169
• _MILT: 18 Apr 1918, Sydney, NSW; Alan received a Distinguished Service Order, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, and the Victory Medal. Refer Commonwealth Gazette No 57 (18 Apr 1918)
• Military Disch: 8 Nov 1918, Sydney, NSW

Alan married Duffy, Dorothy Ellena 20 Feb 1919. Dorothy was born 17 Aug 1888; died 29 Dec 1973. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• _UID: 71AC0021361EF74C863735D55C3ED6414D24

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• _UID: 92F86CB65B6B644BBC4772DCF335D1E853F4
• Baptism: 21 May 1843, Wellington, NSW
• School: Abt 1855, The King's School, Parramatta, NSW
• Employment: 1858
• Employment: 1867, "Gurley", Narrabri, NSW
• Purchased: 1906, "Biddenham", Augathella, QLD

Notes:

ROBERT DARVALL BARTON (1843-1924)
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Born at Boree Nyrang, on Easter Sunday 16th April, 1843 (not 1842 as he recorded in his Reminiscences), the first son and second child of Robert Johnston and Emily Mary Barton, Robert was baptised there five weeks later on 21st May (not, as he suggested, when he was a year or two old) by the Reverend James Gunther, missionary priest from Wellington. His sponsors were his uncles Hugh William Barton of the Waterfoot, Co.Fermanagh, and John Bayley Darvall, barrister of Sydney, his cousin Elizabeth (Bessy) Francis and his aunt Rosamund Mary Darvall, who had been staying since February with Emily at Boree. Like his father, he was "Robin" to Emily, who thought he was 'not a pretty baby' but when he was two she wrote of his 'fine intelligent eyes and a charming disposition, very passionate but easily led'. Emily then decided that he would be 'a very handsome godson after all' to her friend and cousin Bessy Francis.

Robert grew up with a black companion, Albert, about his size 'but far more advanced in bush knowledge', and he recalled seeing 'many corroborees and festivities' when young - before the famous raid of the 'Yass blacks" broke up the camp at Boree. Emily taught him (and the other children) until at 12 he was sent to The King's School, riding alone across the mountains four times a year - once completing the trip on foot after his horse knocked up, despite being very sick with measles.

At 16 he left school (1858) and took over the management of the 700 acres of freehold that remained after his father sold off most of the Boree Nyrang run. His father died when Robert was 20 and it was a few weeks after this that he happened to ride into Goimbla Station on the morning after David Campbell had shot the bushranger O'Meally when Ben Hall's gang raided the station. He later made a long droving trip, taking Boree cattle to Victoria, and afterwards took some sheep to Scrubby Range, a property near Wyalong that he looked after for a time.

Robert visited his mother at Gladesville before J. D. Macansh engaged him in 1867, as manager of Gurley, near Narrabri. He was there for four years before looking for a place of his own. Failing to find anything suitable in Queensland, he bought a block 20 miles from Coonamble in partnership with Willie a'Beckett, who had been with him on Gurley. They called it Nelgowrie and enjoyed good seasons there, so that after three years he felt able to marry his 'best girl', Fanny Blanche Smith, second daughter of John Smith of Gamboola, Molong; he was 30, she 21.

In the next five years they had four sons, and Fanny went home to Llanarth, Bathurst, for each confinement. Meanwhile, in 1876, the partners bought a neighbouring block, Conimbia, but in the following year they were hit by severe drought. The next two children were girls and both were born at Nelgowrie. In April 1882 they lost little Claude, their third son and 'the flower' of their family, to an attack of 'inflammatory or acute croup'.

Not long after this (about 1883), Robert and Willie decided it was time to split up: Robert took the Conimbia block and sold it, while Willie took Nelgowrie (and married Fanny's younger sister in February 1884). Again Robert went to Queensland looking at properties but then 'lost some months of [his] time and about £3000 in cash' by investing in and managing a meat freezing works at Orange. When this failed, the search for land took him to the North Island of New Zealand, but he finally bought Burren, near Walgett, in April, 1886 - 180,000 acres of leasehold for £11000. Meanwhile Fanny had installed the family in Bathurst and presented him with another son, born at Avonbank, where they lived until she bought Esrom.

The family stayed in Bathurst where the boys went to All Saints' College, while Robert, known for some reason as "Tye", developed Burren, building a new homestead and woolshed and enjoying 'some of the happiest times of [his] life'. The older boys would go up for school holidays and learn to ride and shoot, during the 20 years their father
spent at Burren, putting in fencing and wells and weathering many drought years and the troubles with the shearers' union in the early 1890s. Tye bought the freehold of some 15,000 acres, well improved, which he gave to his third son in about 1904. He had also bought a small property, Tooree Vale, 20 miles from Cassilis, in about 1896, but sold it again soon after.

In 1906, at 63, he bought Biddenham on the Nive River, near Augathella, Queensland, a sheep and cattle property of about 120,000 acres of leasehold, which he also improved, building dams and sinking six or seven bores. Selling up there in about 1911, he took up Headingly Station near Urandangie on the Northern Territory border and spent nearly five years fencing and sinking eight or ten bores before selling up in 1914 and moving to Sydney.

He dictated his REMINISCENCES OF AN AUSTRALIAN PIONEER, published by Tyrrells in March 1917. He spent his last years in a cottage at The Grove, Roseville (where his housekeeper was Mrs. Woodward, a widow one of whose sons became Lieutenant General Woodward and Governor of NSW). He promoted an ambitious water conservation scheme entailing the construction of a 'Great Water Canal' on the western side of the Divide, between Goondiwindi and Albury.

Tye died in August 1924, aged 81, and was buried near his younger brothers Edward Hugh and Henry Francis Barton, in the Field of Mars cemetery, survived by his wife, four of their five sons and two daughters.

Birth:
457 Peabody Road

School:
Emily taught him (and the other children) until at 12 he was sent to The King's School, riding alone across the mountains four times a year - once completing the trip on foot after his horse knocked up, despite being very sick with measles.

Employment:
Description: At 16 he left school and took over the management of the 700 acres of freehold that remained after his father sold off most of the Boree Nyrang run

Employment:
Description: as station manager

Purchased:
At 63, he bought "Biddenham" on the Nive River, near Augathella, Queensland, a sheep and cattle property of about 120,000 acres of leasehold, which he improved, building dams and sinking six or seven bores. He sold the property about 1911.

Buried:
He was buried near his brothers Edward Hugh and Henry Francis Barton.
His gravestone reads:
"In loving memory of
Robert Darvell Barton
of Nelgowrie & Burren Stations
Born 16th April 1843
Died 16th Augsut 1924
Eldest son of
Captain Robert Johnstone Barton
of Boree Nyrang
Orange Distract NSW"

Robert married Smith, Fanny Blanche 15 Apr 1875. Fanny (daughter of Smith, John) was born 15 Jul 1851; died 15 Dec 1935. [Group Sheet]

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Notes:

Moved:
They lived at the "The Grove".

Other Events:

• Employment: 1824; Charles was fifteen when he went to sea as a midshipman with the East India Company merchant fleet. His father had died five years previously.
• Possessions: 1840, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW; Boree Nyrang was sold to John Smith 1865.
• NOTA: Notation: 1846, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW; When Robert "had a compound fracture of his leg through being thrown out of a gig in 1846, the doctor wanted to amputate his leg but Emily would not hear of it. "They managed to save the leg but my father was ever after a cripple, which certainly spoilt his temper." [RDB] Emily's life became just that little bit more difficult, though everything continued "to go on like clockwork" as John Hood wrote after an early visit.

Notes:

He was only ten years old when his father died and fifteen when he went to sea as a midshipman with the merchant fleet of the East India Company. He sailed in February, 1825 on the "Kellie Castle" to Bombay and China, returning in March 1826. In January, 1827 he sailed as 6th Officer on the "Bridgewater" reaching Bombay in May and China in August, and returning to England in March, 1828. His third and final voyage was as fourth Officer aboard the "Lowther Castle", which sailed in April, 1829 and reached China in September after weathering fierce storms. The ship started for England in March, 1830 and did not reach the Thames until September. Robert left the service on 2nd October, 1830 having served for just five years 8 months and 25 days. He was 21 and eligible to receive the £2,500 his father had left him in his will.

His sister, Susanna, married in November that year and his two oldest brothers, who had inherited their father's two properties in Ireland, were married by February, 1832. The rest of the family seems to have moved about this time to Bonn, Germany, where the sons may have attended the University. Robert is said to have used his closed coach to help some German friends there spirit away one of their number who was in danger because of some political crisis - or at least this was the story that explained the teacups and saucers, painted with the coats of arms of noble families which passed down to Robert's eldest son.

In September, 1839, his own capital apparently boosted with a parting gift of about £3,000 from his mother, Robert sailed for Sydney hoping to make his fortune as a woolgrower. Within a fortnight of landing in January, 1840 he had bought, with two partners, fellow passengers on the "Alfred", Joseph Docker and Frederick Darvall, the stock and licence area (some 66,000 acres) of "Boree Nyrang", near Molong. After a few months up there Robert came to Sydney and, while Frederick Darvall managed the stations, wooed and wed Emily Mary Darvall, eldest and probably the most accomplished of the three Darvall sisters. Before the wedding Robert and Major Darvall bought out Docker's third interest in Boree (and later Emily's inheritance was used to buy up her father's share: how long it was before Fred sold out remains unclear). Mr. and Mrs. Barton spent the spring and summer settling into their bark hut at "Boree" before Emily went to Sydney to attend her dying mother and have her first child, Emily Susanna.

Emily's sister, Eliza and her husband, Henry Herman Kater, came to live nearby at Caleula after Kater was ruined by the depression (1842). Later their younger sister Rose and her husband, John Arthur Templer moved from "Nanima", Wellington to "Narambla", near Orange (1847). A further addition to the family colony came after Charlotte Shapland - whose sister was the wife of John Bayley Darvall, Emily's barrister brother - married Thomas Hood and lived for a time as a neighbour on their property at "Boree Cabonne".

The collapse of the wool market and the generally depressed economy in the 1840s meant that the stock was worth in 1842 about 1 /10th of what the Boree partners had paid in 1840 and hopes of returning to England with a handsome fortune vanished. Robert had firm expectations of a bequest of £10,000 from has maternal uncle, Robert Nathaniel Johnston, a Bordeaux wine merchant, who was probably his godfather, but these hopes were dashed when he learnt (1842) that his uncle had left his vast fortune to the church for a Bordeaux hospital. Susanna Barton and her sister contested the will, appealing to King Louis Philippe to intervene; Susanna received some £8,000 and at once sent £2,000 to Robert (1844). A few years later further financial disaster loomed when his neighbour, John Smith, brought a civil action for wrongful arrest in the famous "iron pot case" but the threat of heavy damages fortunately faded (1847-48).

After Fred Darvall's marriage (1841), Emily's younger brother Horace came to Boree for a time and looked after it when Robert was in Sydney. Later (1848) Edwin Naylor, the son of the Anglican clergyman at Carcoar, joined the staff when his father fell ill and returned to England where he died. Before this Robert had been crippled for life when he broke his leg in a fall from a gig (1846) - one of several dangerous accidents of this kind that the family suffered on rough bush tracks and the mountain road. He was lame and apparently increasingly irritable thereafter.

But economic conditions improved markedly after the discovery nearby of gold in 1851 and in the late 1850s Robert began to consolidate his holding by taking up the freehold to four relatively small areas near the homestead between 1854 and 1859 - a total of 713 acres. The broad acres of licence area were evidently disposed of about this time and when the eldest son, Robert, left school in 1858 he took over the management and disposal of the remaining stock.

Emily had been kept busy with a growing family: ten children in 15 years, of whom just one died (1845, at 10 months), the delicate twin sister to Rose Isabella. The youngest child, Arthur Sterling, was seven years old when the eldest daughter was married at Boree in December, 1860 to John Paterson. She had her first child there in October, 1862 and six months later Rose was also married at Boree to Andrew Paterson.

Early in October, 1863 on a visit to Sydney where he stayed at the Australian Club, Robert caught pneumonia and died, aged only 54. He was buried at St. Anne's, Ryde. His estate, left to his widow, was valued at £16,000.


Robert Johnston Barton, a retired East India Company captain, came to Australia in 1839. He met on the ship, and subsequently married, Emily Mary Darvall. Robert Barton brought funds with him and with the Darvall family as partners occupied "Boree Nyrang" near Molong. Mrs Barton was a well educated young woman fluent in several languages and in the isolated circumstances of their property virtually educated her own eight children. She wrote much of her early experiences in the pioneering bush.

Buried:
Robert and Emily's graves are on the north side of the church. There are memorial plaques for both Robert and Emily in Chancel.

Died:
He died of pneumonia.

Robert married Darvall, Emily Mary 30 Jul 1840, St James' Anglican Church, 173 King Street, Sydney Nsw. Emily (daughter of Darvall, Major Edward and Johnson, Emily G) was born 12 Nov 1817; was christened 3 Dec 1817, Saint Helen, York, Yorkshire, England; died 24 Aug 1909, "Rockend", Gladesville, NSW; was buried Aug 1909, St Annes Anglican Church, Ryde, NSW. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Lived: 1839, 30 Montaga Street, London. England
• Marriage: 1840, Sydney, NSW; Emily married Robert Barton, a retired naval officer and grazier.
• Moved: 1840, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW
• Lived: Jan 1840, "Roseneath Cottage", Parramatta, NSW
• Purchased: 1866, "Rockend", Gladesville, NSW; Following Roberts death, 'Boree Nyrang' was sold and Emily purchased 'Rockend' at Gladsville to be the family home.
• Published: 1910

Notes:

THE BUILDING OF ROCKEND
John Crotty, who also bought other land up the hill near the flagstaff, was probably the builder of Rockend and its first occupant. When he died in July 1859, leaving a widow and two sons, his death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald observed that he was "a master builder, of considerable eminence". He may have been involved in the construction of St Charles' church and his burial place in the churchyard there is marked by a finely carved headstone.

By 1861 John Crotty's heirs were in financial difficulties and forced to sell their Gladesville property. An auction notice in August 1861 described the building on lot 47 as "a substantial stone-built family residence, containing seven rooms and kitchen".

Lot 47 was bought by a gentleman named Edward Craig Corner who lived in the house with his young family for only a few years before he too was forced by financial difficulties to sell the property. An auction notice for "Corner's property" in January 1864 described it as "a substantially built stone residence, containing verandah, hall, seven rooms, with large attic above, kitchen and cellar, yard, with water reservoir at the rear, and flower garden in front". The rest of the land was "laid out as orangery and orchard, just coming into bearing" and there was "a bathing house at the waterside."

Emily Mary Barton died at Rockend in 1909, at the age of 92. After her death, the house had various tenants and owners until it was purchased in 1923 by Harold Meggitt, who established a linseed oil extraction plant on what had become by that time a 5-acre site. The cottage was converted into an office for the factory. When the plant closed in 1974 it was in a bad state of repair but was saved from demolition by a community campaign which also led to the acquisition of the site by the State Government for community use as foreshore parkland. Currently the cottage is leased as the Banjo Paterson Cottage Restaurant.

STRAWS ON THE STREAM
Emily Mary Barton (nee Darvall) was one of the most talented pioneering women of outback Australia. She was born in 1817 and was educated in England and France while Napoleon was in exile at St. Helena. She remembered the Chartist Riots and the Reform Bill and saw the first steamboat.

In 1839 she came to Australia with her father, Major Darvall, and the following year married Robert Johnstone Barton, whose 66,000 acre station BOREE NYRANG, near Molong, in central New South Wales, become her home for the next thirty years.

Her husband was an uncle of A.B. (Banjo) Paterson and a nephew of Mrs (Rosa Carolin) Campbell Praed, the most distinguished Australian woman novelist of the pre-Federation period.

Emily Barton could easily match her distinguished relatives (by marriage) when it came to talents as she was fluent in French and Italian, spoke enough Greek and German to teach the rudiments, was a more than average Latin scholar and was an accomplished portrait painter.

Life at BOREE NYRANG was full of incident and tribulation and she had to live through the era of the gold rushes, which denuded the stations of workmen and servants, through bouts of cattle thieving and activities of bushrangers. She had one particularly terrifying experience when a tribe of aborigines from the Yass district attacked the Boree tribe, killing a number of them. The terrified remnants fled to the Boree homestead where some of them were taken in by Mrs Barton and hidden in cupboards and under beds. Not all the tribe managed to secure refuge and those who did not make it in time were killed by the Yass blacks on the verandah and yard of the homestead. The only man present when the assault came was a young jackaroo who managed to frighten off the attacking blacks by waving a gun at them. Fortunately for him the blacks did not know the gun wasn't loaded.

Emily Barton had commenced writing poetry in childhood and continued almost up to the date of her death on August 24, 1909 when she was 91 years old. The 89 poems in this volume cover a great span of time and an enormous range of subjects reflecting life in the colony in the 19th Century. They include a number of prize winning poems which appeared in the "Illustrated Sydney News".

In addition to the poems, the volume includes a resume of Emily Barton's life and an unusual character reading made for her early in her life by a phrenologist, Professor Hamilton.

Moved:
457 Peabody Road

Robert and Emily began their life together in a bark hut on Boree Nyrang sheep station. Gradually, as their nine children grew up, the bark hut became a comfortable homestead with a large fruit and vegetable garden. Life was hard -- schools and medical help were a long way off and a baby daughter (one of a pair of twins) died "of a teething fever" when 10 months old. Emily learned to deal with both friendly and hostile Aboriginals and trained some of the girls for domestic help. Her eldest son, Robert Darvall, later reported that at one time, when he was a young boy, there was a large tribe of blacks at Boree and one day they were raided by the Yass blacks. His father was away and only a young jackeroo was in charge. Some of the Boree blacks took refuge in the house in Emily's and Robert Darvall's bedrooms after several of their number had been killed. Being denied access to the house and having collected all the young black girls they could find, the Yass blacks finally withdrew.

Lived:
"Roseneath Cottage" has on the north-east corner of O'Connell and Ross Streets in Parramatta.

Purchased:
In 1866, lot 47 became the property of Emily Mary Barton, a recently-widowed member of one of nineteenth-century Ryde's leading gentry families, the Darvalls. It was Emily Mary who gave the name Rockend to the cottage and it remained her home for more than 40 years. This association of the cottage with her, and with later generations of her family, is central to the historical significance of Rockend.

When Emily Mary Barton took up residence at Rockend, her household included various unmarried children. Within a few years the cottage also became home to her widowed daughter Emily Paterson and Emily's children.

In 1889 another widowed daughter, Rose Paterson, also sought shelter at Rockend with her youngest children. Rose's eldest son, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, had been a resident at Rockend in the 1870s while he attended Sydney Grammar School.

Visitors to Rockend were able to enjoy not only the outdoor pleasures of boating, bathing and fishing, but also the indoor pursuits of music, painting and poetry. Emily Mary Barton was a poet and published several prize-winning poems in the Sydney press in the 1880s. Her daughter Emily Paterson painted watercolours of Australian flowers and butterflies and exhibited in the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. Emily Paterson's daughter, another Emily, composed music. Emily Paterson jnr also took an interest in some of the women patients at the asylum, sometimes inviting them over for croquet and tea on the lawn at Rockend. She later went on to establish the After Care Association to assist these women as they were discharged from the hospital. Her uncle, Henry Francis Barton, was Master in Lunacy and Master in Equity at the asylum.

Published:
Description: "Straws on the Stream"

Buried:
Robert and Emily's graves are on the north side of the church. (GPS coordinates: S33' 48.927" E151' 6.274") There are memorial plaques for both Robert and Emily within the Chancel.

Notes:

Married:
Emily and Robert both sailed on the 'Alfred' to Australia. It was on this voyage that they met. They were married by the Bishop of Australia.
NSW BDM ref: V1840157 24B/1840

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