Charles Parnell - Sarah Clift.
Charles Parnell was born 28 August 1833 at Richmond he married Sarah Clift in 1861.
Sarah a daughter of Samuel and Ann Clift was born at Merriwa, NSW.The children of the marriage were - Edith Marianne 1862, --Charles 1863, --Gerald 1866.
Samuel Clift and Ann Duff married in 1824 and had several children including William 1825, Ann 1829, Mary A 1834, James 1834, Samuel 1836, John 1839, Sarah E M 1840, and George 1843.
The eldest son, William, married Mary A Callaghan in 1865, their daughter Ida Australia Clift married Gerald Parnell a son of Charles Parnell and Sarah E M Clift.
Samuel had purchased sixty acres from Thomas Boardman at Wallis Creek (Maitland) for £80, in 1826. It was here that Samuel built his first house, consisting of only one room with sleeping space in the attic.The dwelling had no stairs, a rope ladder and trap door gave access to the sleeping area, giving some protection from bushrangers and hostile natives. This building still stands today, and is known as the “Toll House”, having been used later for toll collections over the bridge at Wallis Creek.
"Bridge House”Quote: - “Built around 1830, Bridge House is one of Maitland’s oldest homes, and was constructed by Samuel Clift, a ticket-of-leave convict. Constructed of a ground floor with attic, it is Colonial Georgian in style.
The five bay verandahs are supported on six turned cedar Doric columns and the windows are the characteristic six-pane sash types. Two twelve paned sash windows on either side flank the six panelled entrance door. A stone barn with lofts is at the rear”.
“Walli-House” is next door to “Bridge-House” and was the third house built by Samuel and Ann. The Jacaranda tree to the left of Walli House is the same tree to the right of Bridge-House; the same applies to the tree between Bridge-House and Toll House.
Quote: - “Walli-House is exceptionally well built. Numerous floods have swirled through the lower floor. This is difficult to believe, as no traces show on the gleaming waxed cedar, the shining floors, and white painted plastered walls. The foundation of the house is a deep cellar, used for no other purpose and approached from the outside. A huge beam - a full tree trunk - supports the floor joists running the 70-ft. width of the house.
A hall, from which open four large rooms bisects the lower floor. The original mantles were removed and the fireplaces modernised at the same time as the new-bricked verandah was added and the Bangor roof slates replaced by tiles. The first floor comprises three wide halls and two large rooms 20’ x 18’ which can be opened into one huge room. In bygone days it was used as a ballroom.
The back portion of the house is unaltered and most attractive. Wooden pillars support the back balcony, although succeeding floods have rotted their bases and the columns are becoming shorter and the stone upon which they stand is getting higher. A semi-circular galvanised iron roof covers the short distance to the servants’ quarters and erstwhile kitchen and store. This is a low one storeyed block built of pink sandstock bricks”.Samuel and Ann also lived for some years in the two-storey Georgian Building at 40 Banks Street. This house was not built by Samuel, and became the “Red Lion Inn”.
Samuel also owned Breeza Station of 300,000 acres and 100,000 sheep, a property he acquired in 1849. In the early 50’s Charles Parnell together with Samuel George and Joseph Clift held a considerable number of shares in the new “Hunter River New Steam and Navigation Company”. At the twenty fourth annual meeting Charles failed to overthrow the sitting Directors.
Charles and Sarah had made the last payment on “Edithville”, the property where they had been living at Millers Forest, near Raymond Terrace in May of 1864. “Lidney and Millers Forest Estate” as it was advertised 6/1/1876, was sub-divided into at least thirty-seven lots. Lots 1-10 were sold as “ Riverbank Bank Farms” and 11-37 as Scotch Creek. The sale netted £20,392 /2/ 6 after paying a commission of £305/17/6. Thirteen days after the sale Sarah had written in her diary “Today was the breaking of a three year drought. We had killed 40,000 sheep on the Liverpool Plains and Breeza to save the others, had sent the horses to the Myall River”.
Exactly one month to the day after the sale of “Edithville”, Sarah spent the day boating on the Parramatta River with “Lizzie, Sarah, and the children.” The following day was spent at a meeting to discuss brickmaking and the financing of a project for the manufacture of bricks, an interest they did pursue.The couple had purchased land and lived at Paddington in Sydney, this property was in Windsor Street and was named “Mt. Pleasant” it was described as Lots 11-13 Sect 5, 38-39 Sect 1, and 101-103 Sect 2 of the Underwood Estate. Four of the blocks in Paddington each having a fifty-foot frontage, sold on the 25/12/1878 at £4 per foot.
An account was sent to Charles at this Paddington address for school fees at “MORVEN” of Double Bay. The cost was £5/5/0 for Charles with an equal amount for Gerald, to cover the Easter term 10/4/1876 - 30/6/1876, being for “General course of instruction and Drilling lessons”.Land speculation interests continued for Charles as on the 9/3/1877 he had owned and sub-divided a property near Strathfield railway station into fourteen lots, one of these lots had a frontage of fifty feet to Parnell Street and fifty feet to Lyons Street. May of the same year he received a certificate of title for three cottages in Redmyre Road near Lyons Street.
In August of the same year he purchased a house and property on twenty acres named “Thornleigh” for £3620.00. “Thornleigh” on Concord Road and including what is now the corner of Patterson street and Thornleigh Ave. The two story house still stands today and has been used for some years as a home for aged people, the house still reveals the grandeur that it once had, but is now in a state of severe dilapidation. The home was valued in 1889 for the sum of £7,250. “Thornleigh” was, before Parramatta road only a short walk from the Parnell street property, at Strathfield, (then known as Burwood).
The boys attended “The King’s School” during the years the family lived at Concord. Sarah had received a four page letter from the headmaster dated the 6/6/1879, the letter was quite scathing in regards to Charles’ recent studies, the letter made no mention of the fact that the boys father had died only five months earlier.
An entry in the diary of Sarah Parnell on the 1/3/1880 reads “I received a telegram today to advise that William (brother-in-law) had been killed in a coach accident”.
After the death of Charles, Sarah placed an order with the stone masons “Monumental Works” Elizabeth Street Sydney, for what was described as a “handsome monument”. The company advised that the columns would not be exactly as the design submitted by Sarah but very similar. An extract from a letters to Sarah 16/8/1879 “The handsome monument you ordered is arriving from our factory in Italy”. I will attend to the draining of the vault, and will sent the specifications on”. Second letter 30/3/1880 “The monument is arriving on the “Kosciusko” but is 79 days overdue”.
This is the monument referred to earlier in the cemetery in Morpeth.
In Sarah’s will dated 2/5/1865 she appointed her children Charles, Gerald, and Edith as Executors. Some of the benefactors were Roger Taylor Burton Gaden who had married her sister-in-law Susannah two years earlier and Major William Beaver Blayney Christie who later married her sister-in-law Wilhelmina Alice. Sarah also made provision for her brother Samuel and £125 each to nieces Elizabeth, Sarah Eckford and Harriet Sophia her sister’s daughter.
St. Peter’s church in Maitland proudly remembers the contributions made by the Clift, Parnell and Eckford families. The magnificent carved stone and marble reredos behind the altar is in memory of Samuel and Ann Clift. “Fillans and Company”, Missenden Road, Camperdown made out the receipt for the payment of this wonderful piece of work. The date was 21/12/1904 for a total value of £130, comprising three instalments, two at £50 and one of £30.
The beautiful carved wooden altar is dedicated to Charles’ Parnell's wife Sarah. The window on the north side of the chancel to George Clift, and the Altar rails to Mable Clift.
Jane Eckford imported a very spectacular pulpit in marble and alabaster from Italy in memory of her parents John and Eliza.For many years it was considered too elaborate for the congregation and was not dedicated until 1893. John Eckford was one of the first eleven people to settle at “The Camp”(East Maitland) in 1818, they had travelled there via the Hunter River.
John married Eliza Duff sister of Ann Clift.The Parnells’ Leasing Act of 1874. Edited Extract.
This was an act to enable Sarah Elizabeth Parnell (formally Clift) the wife of Charles Parnell of Edithville, Millers Forest------ to lease certain lands. Whereas Samuel Clift late of West Maitland in the colony of New South Wales landholder deceased, had during his lifetime purchased numerous blocks of land in the Maitland and Greta districts.
It was later confirmed that some of these blocks contained “valuable stratas of coal and other minerals and substances”. In Samuel’s will he left to Sarah a life interest in ten of these blocks. This left Sarah with a dilemma; Samuel’s trustees could not sell the land and give Sarah the money, as Sarah only had a life interest. Consequently the trustees had to find someone willing to mine it on a royalty basis. Before you can extract a “substance” you must enter upon the said land “and to sink and make shafts, pits, levels, drifts, trenches, air-gates, way-gates and water courses and to erect and use any smelting refining and other furnaces” etc.
It was not possible to arrange for any Company to be involved in this type of expense without long term security of tenure. The trustees did not have the power to lease the land. Further to grant a long lease to a mining company was resisted as it was thought to be detrimental to the interests of the remaindermen.
This special Act was passed to release Sarah from the predicament her father had left her in, by the wording of his will, and allowing her to lease the land. About six partners operated the shafts, the story goes that they only paid royalties on about half the coal extracted.~~~~~~~
The Government of the day, by acquisition on the 3/7/1941 for the sum of eight hundred pound purchased 229 acres of land at Greta from Gerald C R Parnell. A further 9 acres was claimed from the estate of Sarah Clift. In 1939, 730 acres had been obtained from a cattle dealer named W F Buffier.
The Property became the Greta Army Camp, then after the war Greta was the largest migrant camp in Australia, it is estimated that over 100,000 migrants made their start in Australia at Greta.
