Richard Charles Pritchett came to my attention during my research into the life of Richard Ridge who, strangely, had two daughters named Mary Ann, born thirty years apart and alive at the same time. This story about Mary Ann Ridge the elder and her partner Richard Charles Pritchett is written from the viewpoint of the Ridge family and is not a comprehensive biography of Pritchett, about whom many more details can be found from various sources. This blog post obviates the need to include this story as an Appendix in the already lengthy volume about Mary Ann’s father.
Mary Ann's partner was born on 14 June 1787 at St. Petrox, Pembrokeshire, Wales. He married Mary Ann Sampson in Calcutta, India in 1808, and his son Robert John Pritchett (or John Robert Pritchett) was born there in 1809. The fate of that wife and mother is unknown but her son would come alone to Sydney in 1825.
Pritchett, a merchant captain in the East India Company, regularly travelled between Sydney, Hobart and India. During a visit to Sydney in April 1810 he was in support of Governor Bligh, who was about to sail to England: 'a splendid farewell Fête was given by Robert Campbell, Esq. to a large party; of whose number were His Excellency and Lady, Commodore Bligh and daughter, Mrs. Putland; Captains Pasco and Pritchett, with many other principal Officers and their Ladies'.[1]
On his trips to Sydney he crossed paths with a young lady named Mary Ann Ridge, born at the Hawkesbury around 1798, who now lived in The Rocks district of Sydney with her Irish mother and Irish stepfather William O’Neal, a baker and publican. Her biological father was the Third Fleeter Richard Ridge. Mary Ann’s childhood story is told in more detail in the forthcoming book about her father, 'Richard Ridge: Trader and Bailiff in Early Colonial NSW'.
Pritchett’s de facto relationship with Mary Ann was probably established by the time she left Sydney aboard the Frederick on 14 January 1818, her age then given as 19 years. The Frederick was bound for India via Hobart, one of its regular trips between Sydney, Hobart and Bengal from 1810 to September 1818, when it was wrecked on a reef in the Torres Strait. Prior to her departure Mary Ann placed the usual advertisement, announcing her departure from the colony, and requesting claims against her to be presented, and those indebted to her to settle up.[2] Was she in business of some kind?
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| Sydney in all its glory, c 1817 From ‘Edward Charles Close - sketchbook of New South Wales views’, SLNSW digital image a2821023h |
In February 1820 Pritchett was in Hobart when he asked for claims to be presented against him as he was travelling from Hobart to Sydney aboard the brig. Pritchett offered an eclectic range of goods from India for sale at the premises of a Mrs Kearney in Hobart from February to April 1820: Benares Sugar, Dacca Ball Soap, Bengal Rum, Luckipore Hummums & Bastas (mortars and pestles for grinding spice?), Bengal Chintz, British Imitation Shawls, English and Daccas Muslins, China Silk Shawls, Black Silk Handkerchiefs, Nankeen, Umbrellas and sundry other articles.[3]
No sooner was he back in Sydney, he departed again in the brig Haldane in April 1820, before returning to Sydney from Calcutta two years later aboard the Nimrod.[4] At Mrs Reibey’s stores in Sydney in April 1822 he offered ‘3-bushel canvass bags, Bengal chintz of extra width, nankeen, best sail twine, sago, arrow root, dungaree jackets and trowsers, &c. &c’.[5]
A month later he announced his plans to leave Sydney aboard the Almorah.[6] He promptly changed his mind. Giving his address as Marrs Buildings, Sydney, Pritchett wrote to Governor Brisbane on 20 June 1822, explaining that he’d arrived from India in April, ‘on leave of absence on account of my health from the Export Warehouse in Calcutta’ and ‘having derived as yet but partial improvement in health, and the opinion of Doctor Bland being decidedly inimical to my return to India, I beg leave to solicit the permission of Government to become a settler in this colony’.[7] He’d obviously heard about the benefits of the Hunter Valley because he wrote: 'That Your Memorialist imported a Capital of £2500 which he is desirous of investing together with the residue of his assets daily expected from India amounting to £1500 mostly in the agricultural line. That Your Memorialist has no land in this colony and he therefore respectfully solicits your Excellency will be pleased to grant him such an allotment in the vicinity of Newcastle for the purpose of grazing and cultivation as will enable him to invest the capital abovementioned'.[8]
He nominated Thomas Macvitee and Thomas Winder as his referees and Brisbane granted his application to settle. Pritchett lived more-or-less permanently in Sydney from this point, with occasional trips to India. On 1 July 1822 he was admitted to the partnership of Messrs. Macqueen and Atkinson, as an Auctioneer and Vendue Master. Macqueen, Atkinson and Pritchett intended to hold regular weekly sales at their new auction room.[9]
Within weeks Pritchett proceeded again to India, aboard the Nimrod in late July 1822. Back in Sydney, on 4 December 1822 Governor Brisbane promised him a grant near Newcastle: 2,000 acres at Durham in the Hunter Valley. (By the time Pritchett died this acreage had more than doubled.) This property was named St Petrox after his birthplace.
His business partnership evidently did not suit him and on 4 July 1823 he withdrew from the firm Macqueen, Atkinson, and Pritchett ‘and commenced business on his own account, as Commission Agent and Auctioneer, in Charlotte-place, opposite the Church.[10] He’d moved to George St, Sydney by 1824.
Mr. Pritchett ('son to Mr. R. C. Pritchett') arrived in Sydney in late May 1825 aboard the Elizabeth, from Portsmouth via Hobart.[11] This was his son by his legal wife Mary Ann Sampson. Aged about sixteen when he arrived, Robert John (or John Robert) Pritchett’s life did not go well in Australia.
By November 1825, Pritchett Snr was well-entrenched in Sydney society when he spoke at a public dinner at Nash’s Inn, Parramatta farewelling Governor Brisbane: 'Gentlemen; I cannot let the present occasion pass without offering my testimony to the worth of the Colonists of New South Wales [Hear, hear!] Gentlemen; I came to this Colony from the East Indies with a small investment, prejudiced, I must confess, against the people whom I looked upon as a set of rogues and vagabonds, and assigned servants [Hear, hear!] But, Gentlemen, I am proud to say, that upon an acquaintance with the Colonists, my former prejudices were removed, and I have ever since continued among them, and this public acknowledgement I consider as a tribute due to the utmost integrity and honour I have ever found amongst them. [Loud applause!]'.[12]
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Assorted Residents of Sydney, c 1817. From ‘Edward Charles Close - sketchbook of New South Wales views’, c. 1817, SLNSW, digital image a2821039h |
In December 1825 he was a newly elected Director of the Bank of New South Wales.[13] It prompted a rather snide remark from The Australian newspaper: 'Mr. Pritchett is highly gratified with the Directorship. He felt so anxious about the result of the election, as to be unable to rest during the night for nearly a fortnight before it took place'.[14]
The comment upset Pritchett, apparently a status-conscious man, and he immediately responded to the Editor: 'I consider a Newspaper very much to be applauded for the introduction of humour, provided no particular individual be selected as a butt for public ridicule. Your Paper, I am sorry to say, has, as it regards myself, violated the principle here laid down, and in representing me to be so imbecile in character, and so much the victim of a foolish vanity, as to suffer my sleep to depart from me, lest I should lose the election to the Bank Directorship, I consider you have done me great injustice. My indifference as to the event of the election is well known to my friends and supporters on that occasion; and were your Newspaper confined in its circulation to Australia, I could laugh at your Joke with others, from a consciousness that they also would consider it as such. But I have connexions in England of considerable respectability, who read your Paper, and whose good opinion (though now many years separated from them) I feel desirous to retain. When they last saw me, I humbly conceive they formed a very different opinion of me to that which your said Joke is calculated now to give them; and I assure you, there is nothing in New South Wales, blessed as it is with Newspapers of such merit as The Australian, which will compensate me for the loss of the opinion of my friends in England — therefore I assert, that your Joke was misplaced, and towards me unjust'.
The Editor replied: 'The paragraph which Mr. Pritchett alludes to, and which we are sorry to find has given him so much uneasiness, was certainly not published as a “Joke”, but as a piece of history connected with the Bank Election. In our opinion there is a much greater degree of injustice in treating the favors of our friends with indifference, however trifling they may be, than there is of imbecility or vanity in shewing great anxiety to profit of those favors. Had we viewed the insertion of the remark in so serious a light as Mr. Pritchett, we should not have given it publicity. We are very glad; at all events, that he succeeded in his election, whether he was careless or not about the matter. If the paragraph represented him 'to be imbecile in character,' the Bank will soon find him active, useful, and energetic'.[15]
Mary Ann Ridge now re-enters the story. Her daughter Harriet was recorded in the 1828 Census of NSW as 8-year-old Harriet Ridge, born in the colony, putting her date of birth around 1820. Harriet was living in George St, Sydney with Mary Ridge, housekeeper to R C Pritchett. When she died in 1907 she was said to be 85, implying an 1822 year of birth, with her place of birth given on Ancestry as Calcutta. Mary Ann Ridge never married Pritchett or used his surname (it would have been very confusing if his legal wife Mary Ann was still alive), but Harriet later called herself Harriet Armstrong Pritchett.
The long gap between the birth of Harriet and her brother (or could it be half-brother?) Samuel Ashmore Pritchett, born in Sydney on 14 October 1830, might mean that Mary was not co-habiting with Pritchett in Sydney until the later 1820s. The new baby was named after Samuel Ashmore, another influential resident of Sydney and famous as a merchant sea captain plying the Indian Ocean and Torres Strait. In the Timor Sea off the north west coast of Australia he had discovered the Hibernia Reef in 1810 and Ashmore Reef in 1811. It wasn’t long before Ashmore reciprocated the favour by naming his second son, born in Sydney in 1832, as Richard Pritchett Ashmore.
Later transactions reveal that, in 1831, Mary Ann Ridge was granted land in Castlereagh St, Sydney, between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets: 19 perches, Lot 6 of Section 14 (near the southern end of Hyde Park, see the map), bordered by Castlereagh St on the east, lot 7 on the north, lot 21 on the west and lot 5 on the south, and described in a government notice of 26 September 1831.[16]
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| Map of Hyde Park, Sydney, highlighting southern half Parish of St Lawrence, Regional Charting Maps, online at HLRV, NSW Land Registry Services. Mary Ann Ridge's land was in Section 15 and the adjacent Section 14, immediately west of Hyde Park. |
Pritchett, an auctioneer, was also involved in a number of town land property transactions, including the following examples:
- A Sherriff’s sale against John Payne c.1823 saw land at Parramatta sold to Richard Charles Pritchett, as the highest bidder for the sum of £300. By indenture of the 11th of May, 1829, Pritchett assigned his interest to a William Barnes.[17]
- On 10 February 1830 Pritchett sold an allotment of land in the heart of Windsor to Richard Fitzgerald for £87.10.0.
- On 11 & 12 May 1832 Pritchett and John Booth sold land in Macquarie St, Windsor, bordered by Samuel Terry and James McGrath and at the rear by John Booth, to Abraham Johnston for £37.10.0.
- In 1842 officialdom (via Michael McQuade’s Case No 1172 in the Court of Claims) was still trying to sort out an earlier transaction by Pritchett in the town of Windsor: 31 perches, Allotment 19, bounded on north-east by Bridge Street, on south-east by Macquarie St, on south-west by Allotment 20 and on north-west by Allotment 27. ‘According to the Maps in the Surveyor General's Office, this allotment No 19, in 1827, belonged to one McGrath, but whether he was the original occupant does not appear. The Sheriff sold against McGrath to R. C. Pritchett, who sold to James Quin who sold to claimant.’[18]
Pritchett’s young adult son John Robert, now aged about twenty-three, was of a more literary bent than his father, and in May 1832 he announced his involvement in the publication of a new monthly literary magazine, with thirty-two pages devoted to a wide range of topics.[19] By July the publication, priced to make it ‘accessible by the poor as well as by the rich’, was no more. It seems his father arranged for his son to depart Sydney for New Zealand aboard a ship captained by family friend Samuel Ashmore in mid-September.[20]
Did Pritchett Jnr refuse to go, upsetting his father, because at the end of September 1832 the young man placed an unusual advertisement: 'To the friends of the destitute. The Undersigned wishing to proceed to India, or the Isle of France, by an early opportunity, begs respectfully to inform his friends, who from time to time have promised him their support in case of need, that now is the opportunity of coming forward in his behalf. This appeal to their benevolence he hopes will not be disregarded. Donations will be thankfully received at the office of this paper by the Editor, or by the undersigned, at the Post Office, Liverpool, in which town he at present is residing. John Robert Pritchett'.[21]
The response to his plea was such that the young man stayed in New South Wales!
In early September Richard relinquished his stockholding in, and partnership of, the Bank of New South Wales.[22] Perhaps the ill-health he;d mentioned back in 1822 was again of concern.
Contact between Mary Ann in Sydney and her Ridge family of origin at the Hawkesbury seems to have been minimal until ‘Ridge’s Farm’ beside South Creek at Windsor was advertised for auction on 12 December 1833.[23] This was the 50-acre grant to her father in 1804, in trust for his two children at that time, Mary Ann and Martha. Martha had died in 1821, while Mary Ann was away from Sydney. Had Mary Ann become aware of her rights to this farm? The auction did not proceed and the land was soon controlled by Mary Ann.
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| Location of Ridge's Farm at Windsor Lower centre of map, 50 acres beside the Common, Parish & Historical Maps, County of Cumberland, Parish of St Matthew, Sheet Ref 3, undated, online at HLRV, NSW Land Registry Services |
Richard’s ill-health was soon made public: 'There was a sale of Crown lands in the Market-place yesterday. Mr. Paul, senior, officiated as Auctioneer, in consequence of the indisposition of Mr. Pritchett'.
Within four days, on 15 April, Pritchett lay dead at his Pitt Street residence, aged forty-seven.
He left a Will (which has not been consulted for this story) but his estate of £10,000 in 1834 has been calculated to equate to $1.88 billion by the early 2000s, when it earned him place number 135 on a list of the all-time richest Australians.[25] How much he might have been in debt is another matter.
One of Pritchett’s executors, his friend Samuel Ashmore, soon took charge. In May 1834, at Maitland, nearly 400 head of Pritchett’s excellent cattle were sold at auction.[26] On 12 June 1834 Ashmore advertised a seven-year lease over Pritchett’s land in the Hunter Valley: 'Four Thousand Five Hundred and sixty Acres, situated on the River Hunter, in the Parish of Stanhope and Durham; adjoining the Estate of Vicars Jacobs, Esq, as also a Crown Reserve. The superior condition of the cattle just sold from the Estate, renders further comment unnecessary as to its capabilities for the Depasturing of Cattle. Tenders will be received till the first of July, by Samuel Ashmore, Upper Castlereagh-street, Sydney. June 12, 1834'.[27]
In early July, ‘Ridge’s Farm’ at Windsor, now under Mary Ann's control, was offered for rent for a term of five years, with particulars available from Samuel Ashmore, Upper Castlereagh-street. Sydney.[28]
Several days later the house in Sydney where Mary Ann had lived with Pritchett was to be auctioned on 25 July, without a reserve price and available for private sale beforehand: 'An Excellent and Handsome Verandah House, situate in Castlereagh-street south, containing six rooms, kitchen, pantry, cellars, coach-house, a two-stall stable, granary and other conveniences, & a well of excellent water always supplied, late the residence of R.C. Pritchett Esq., deceased. Also an Excellent Cottage adjoining the above, most conveniently arranged and in good condition and repair, now occupied by Mr. Rogers of the Supreme Court, at a rental of £52 per annum'.[29]
In September 1834, at the impressive ‘Winburndale’ near Bathurst, occupied by John Brown, Esq, Pritchett’s executors put up for auction about 1,400 superior-bred sheep and lambs, and offered a seven-year lease on the property’s 2,000 acres of excellent land, a substantial brick dwelling with four bedrooms, and various outhouses, accommodation huts, stockyards, blacksmith’s shop and other manufactories. Once the property was let, six mill horses with the working harness, one dray, five working bullocks, with harness, one iron plough, blacksmith's tools and other items were to be sold for cash.[30] In January 1835, 600 of Pritchett’s sheep were to be sold.[31]
A year after his father’s death, on 25 May 1835 the adult Pritchett son, academically-inclined, found work for six months as Acting Schoolmaster and Clerk of the church at Penrith, where Rev. Fulton attested that he was ‘sober and industrious, and attentive to the duties of his station’ but, once a permanent appointment was made, the young man was again looking for work in November 1835: 'desirous of engaging himself as an Assistant in a School. He will also be glad to avail himself of an opening in a Family where there are perhaps several children, to act in the capacity of Private Tutor. Town and Country alike preferable. Address (if by letter, post-paid) to Mr. John Robert Pritchett, 17, Phillip-street North, Sydney'.[32]
His 'step-mother' Mary Ann also needed money and on 19 July 1836 she took out a mortgage over the land in Castlereagh St, Sydney (Lot 6) which she had been granted in 1831.[33]
In August 1838 Richard Ridge gifted ‘Ridge’s Farm’ at Windsor to ‘Mary Ann Ridge his daughter’ out of ‘Natural love & affection and a nominal consideration of ten shillings’, the transaction witnessed by a solicitor named David Poole.[34] Then, as the five-year lease on ‘Ridge’s Farm’ was nearing its expiry date, it was advertised for sale in June 1839, the contact addresses supplied indicating that Richard Ridge Jr, a publican conveniently located at Windsor, and Mary Ann at No. 48, Upper Castlereagh-street, Sydney were working together on this.[35] The solicitor David Poole was again involved when Mary Ann Ridge of Sydney sold ‘Ridge’s Farm’ in early October 1839 to John Teale of Windsor, a miller, for £200 paid in hand and a mortgage of another £200 at a 12% interest rate, registered in the Supreme Court.[36]
Mary Ann’s Lot 6 in Castlereagh St, Sydney was also sold at this time, on 22 October 1839 to William Bruce for £154.10.0, witness A H McCulloch.[37]
What was Ashmore doing with the proceeds of his sales of Pritchett’s assets? It seems Mary Ann wasn’t seeing much of it. On 17 Mar 1840 she sold another property on the opposite side of Castlereagh St (Lot 25, bounded by Lot 1 on the south and Lot 2 on the west), 13 perches of land in Section 15 containing a house. Terence Michlehone appears to have been living here and he paid her £300, having paid all interest due. Witnesses were John M Corry, Mary Jane McLehone, Samuel Ashmore and H Pritchett [Mary Ann’s daughter Harriet].[38]
Mary Ann’s father Richard Ridge died at Windsor on 1 January 1842. A few months later, on 23 April, his granddaughter Harriet Armstrong Pritchett married Captain Richard John Hopkins, of the ship Lord Amherst by Special License at St. Philips in Sydney.[39] That same year Harriet’s younger brother S. A. Pritchett was winning prizes at the ‘Normal Institution’, a school in Hyde Park, Sydney, as he was again in 1845.
On 7 June 1842 Mary Ann Ridge finalised the sale of another property in Castlereagh St: she surrendered a mortgage over allotment 8, section 14 (20 perches of land, with a house, bounded by Lot 9 on north, Lot 21 on west and Lot 7 on south) and further charge to William Galliott, who paid her £200, having already paid her the sum of £100. The witness was John Williams, agent.[40]
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| Hyde Park, 1842 By John Rae, from collections of SLNSW, [a128275 / DG SV*/Sp Coll /Rae/19], ML |
In May 1844, ten years after Pritchett’s death, Ashmore was still busy with his executor duties, trying to sort out another Pritchett-related matter in the Court of Claims, relating to 22 perches of land in the town of Newcastle, Allotment 69 bounded on the south by King Street.[41]
Family events complete this story. Mary Ann’s son married Margaret Louisa Hughes, eldest daughter of the late J. P. Hart, Esq., of Liverpool, England, at St James Church in Sydney on 30 November 1852.[42] The young couple sold up in Sydney (Stirling’s Cottage at Paddington) and went to England where their first child was born in 1853. They returned to Sydney before the birth of their second son in March 1856, but the two-month-old baby died on 13 May 1856.
Soon the infant’s grandmother was dead
too, on 14 August 1856. Mary Ann had likely been living with her daughter Harriet. The Hopkins family
had a townhouse in today’s Millers Point, Sydney, close to Samuel Ashmore and
his family, and a rural property ‘Benares’ in the Illawarra district. Assumed to be in need of medical attention, Mary Ann
died at 23 Kent St, Sydney, the home of Dr Ashmore, who
lived a few doors from his father. She was buried two days later at St
Stephen’s Camperdown, her death certificate stating that she was the daughter
of
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| Millers Point, c 1845 By Joseph Fowles, Collections of SLNSW, a1528046/SV11840s/1 |
On 22 August 1856, through his Sydney-based lawyers Stenhouse and Hardy, Mary Ann’s eldest ‘brother by the half blood’ James Bligh Ridge of Windsor announced his intention to prepare an application to the Supreme Court for Letters of Administration ‘in the goods of Mary Ann Ridge, late of the City of Sydney in the Colony of New South Wales, spinster, deceased’.[44] The quaint description of ‘spinster’ related to her unmarried status.
His subsequent petition, dated 22 January 1857, said the deceased was his half-sister and died intestate leaving assets within the colony.[45] Richard Ridge of Windsor, Innkeeper, John Ridge of Windsor, butcher, Robert Ridge of Richmond, farmer, and the petitioner were her half-brothers, and Isabella Cobcroft (wife of Enoch Cobcroft of Maitland, gentleman), Martha Miller (wife of James Miller of Windsor, farmer), Margaret Buttsworth (wife of William Buttsworth of Wilberforce, farmer) and Mary Ann Cobcroft (wife of Abel Cobcroft of East Maitland, Innkeeper) were her half-sisters. This document proves that Richard Ridge had two daughters named Mary Ann, and that both had been alive at the same time.
The said parties were stated to be the only persons entitled in distribution to the deceased’s personal estate. Yet Mary Ann had two living children, Harriet and Samuel, both married with their own children, but illegitimate and therefore deemed ineligible. This sounds mean-spirited. Perhaps Mary Ann’s half-siblings were resentful that she had inherited a land grant via their mutual father but, being much younger than Mary Ann, they had missed out on the land grant bonanza. Or perhaps they had seen all those newspaper advertisements for the sales of various properties and believed Mary Ann to be rich, while they were poor, flood-impacted settlers at the Hawkesbury. James’ application for Administration was granted on 2 February 1857, so the Court must have been convinced of his rights. Her goods were sworn at £300. Not such a great amount to fight about.
Samuel Pritchett’s wife Margaret died at her mother’s house in Woolloomolloo in April 1858. Samuel was soon dead too, on 27 January 1862, aged thirty-one, at the home of his sister Harriet and brother-in-law R. J. Hopkins, Esq., of Benares, Dapto and he was buried at nearby Brownsville.[46] Captain Hopkins died in 1875 at the Stanmore home of his eldest daughter Elizabeth and her husband P. H. Throsby and was buried at Petersham Cemetery. Harriet, the mother of a large family, died on 19 July 1907 at Cremorne on Sydney’s Lower North Shore, and was buried at Gore Hill Cemetery.
Mary Ann’s stepson died in October 1867: 'A man, named John Robert Pritchett, died in a Hut on Mount Carmel, on or about Saturday last, of disease and neglect, he died possessed of a considerable sum of money.'[47]'
A sad tale was told at the inquest at the George Inn, Redfern: Police sergeant Condick stated that, about a quarter past 10 o'clock on Saturday morning, Mr. Ellery of Mount Carmel School reported at the No. 2 Police Station that a man named Pritchett, who lived in a hut near Mount Carmel, had not been seen about for two or three days, and was supposed to be dead; he sent constable Meehan, who broke open the door of the hut, and found the deceased's body lying across a stretcher. Searching the premises in the presence of Mr. Ellery and constable Meehan, they found a box containing three silver watches and some wearing apparel; four boxes containing books; a telescope and some letters; a box containing a few miscellaneous articles and a number of documents, including a will, dated 21 August, 1866, a fixed deposit receipt from the English, Scottish, and Australian Chartered Bank for £60, dated 1 August, 1867; £50 in bank notes and £2 4s. 6d. in specie; four sales note of shares, forty shares in the Australian Joint Stock Bank, and twenty shares in the City Bank. Valentine Ellery, schoolmaster, of Wellington St, Waterloo, told the court he had known the deceased for about seven years and had seen him last Thursday. The deceased lived alone and was then very ill, but had said he felt better than in recent weeks and he’d engaged a woman to cook for him. In a post mortem examination of the body, Dr. O'Reilly and Dr. McDonagh found that the heart and kidneys were in an extreme state of fatty degeneration, the liver was also diseased, the lungs exhibited evidences of chronic disease, and a recent attack of pleuro-pneumonia, while the stomach and intestines contained scarcely a trace of food. The verdict was that he died from natural causes, accelerated by self-neglect.[48]
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