1850s

Henry (Harry) Barber is born. Some of his children are born on the property of Lilburndale at Sackville Reach on the Hawkesbury River. John Luke Barber marries another Koori woman Eliza Cox. They had a son John Edward Barber born 1868 who is drowned in the river and buried at the Church of England Cemetery Sackville in 1913.

Rev. William Clarke writes: “in evangelizing of the Aborigines, however it must be carried on, if able, in other localities than Windsor [he is probably referring to Blacktown]. In so much as I am not aware that there is a single one left in the parish. A few wander hither and thither during public amusements and at the distribution of blankets. Sometimes a settler returning from a distant stock station brings with him a black boy in attendance. …We see no Blacks here between Freeman’s Reach and Portland Head on the Hawkesbury unless annual distribution of blankets in Windsor. Then they ascend from great distances. Diseases have devastated and proved fatal to many’. (Reverend William Clarke Papers 1851 ML cy3584)…

Phillip Williams, adult, an Aboriginal of Sackville Reach, labourer, is baptised at Parish of Windsor.

Mary Ann Thomas is charged by police with stealing 9 fowls. She is found ‘not guilty’ in Windsor Magistrates court. Henry Thomas is found guilty of stealing a horse and sentenced to 5 years in Parramatta gaol.

Robert Locke, Maria’s husband dies.

Some settlers are becoming nostalgic about the years of first settlement. William Cox Jr writes ‘I can myself remember seeing [locally made ground-edge axes] them in the hands of the greater number of the natives of the tribes which once inhabited the Valley of Mulgoa near Penrith; but so thoroughly has all trace of them now disappeared that I have searched that district in vain for specimens peculiar to the tribe, and if the total disappearance of them has taken place within the last thirty-five years, I think, unless some record of these rude relics on the inhabitants of this land be made, future generations may doubt their ever having existed at all. (quoted in M. Martin, On Darug Land. An Aboriginal Perspective, Greater Western Education Centre, 1988, p. 8)

Birth of Ephraim Everingham. His mother is a Darug woman, Mildred Saunders; his father is non-Aboriginal John Everingham, descendant of Matthew Everingham a convict.

Sarah Ann Lock is believed to walk from Eastern Creek to Parramatta to see the arrival of the first train. Her parents are Benjamin Castles and Sarah Moran, a Darug of the Warmuli (Prospect) clan (J.L.Kohen, The Darug and their Neighbours, Darug Link, 1993, p. 86)