Scott, Thomas and Catherine

The Scott family had arrived in the colony in 1838. They appear on the indent for the Parland which arrived from Londonderry on 30 October that year. The record shows that Thomas, aged 41, and his wife, aged 32, were accompanied by five children, one over 14 years, two between seven and 14 and two under seven. Thomas was a farmer from Derryvullen in County Fermanagh (Ireland) and had paid his own way to NSW. They were a Protestant family. Also on board was their oldest son, Archibald, aged 19 and like his father, a farmer. Archibald was engaged to work for a Mr G Sutton of Bathurst and was to be paid £25/a. More details of the family are found in the genealogy of the Hatfield (Hadfield) family on ancestry.com which reveals that an Annie Scott who was born in 1838 in Ireland, presumably just before the family set sail and was married in Berrima in 1856 to Thomas Hatfield.^[1] (Thomas, who originally came from Liverpool, was 13 years older than Annie. After giving birth to their seventh child in 1867 they would seem to have moved to Queensland and both Annie and Thomas died in Clermont Queensland.)

This website gives Annie’s parents as Thomas Scott and Catherine Johnson. Annie was one of six children born to the couple between 1824 and 1838, while they were living in Ireland. The website goes on to say that Thomas was born in Ireland in around 1797 but gives no date of birth for Catherine.

A second website suggests slightly different dates and provides more detail.[2] They confirm the arrival in 1838 on the Porland and are able to name the six children:
Archibald – aged 19 and travelling as a single man
Thomas – aged 14·
Margaret – aged 12·
George – aged 10
William – aged 4·
Ann – aged 1

Only a little of the family’s history in Berrima has been found. In 1841 they were living in a wooden cottage on Bong Bong Road (now known as Oldbury Road). He was over 45, his wife younger. Thomas was listed in the category ‘Landed Proprietors, Merchants, Bankers, and Professional Persons’ but what he actually did is unknown.

Catherine Scott is recorded as being called as a witness to the good character of a man being tried for assault in 1843 – he had lodged with the Scotts while in Berrima.[3] And the family were certainly still in Berrima in 1851 when a notice in the Sydney Morning Herald of 9 April 1851, under the heading BERRIMA, states:‘Mr. Thomas Scott, of Berrima, has been appointed bailiff of the Court of Petty Sessions for the recovery of small debts in the district of Berrima, in the room of Mr. Robert Freer.’.

It would seem many of the Scott family stayed in Berrima. The marriage of the youngest daughter, Annie, is mentioned above and there was a Thomas Scott married in the Berrima District in 1862 to Louisa Green, and a George Scott married in the Berrima District to Mary Murphy in 1851. The two men may also be those listed in Greville’s Postal Directory of 1872, Thomas Scott as a dairyman and George Scott as a gardener. Thomas Scott died in Berrima, his obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald of 18 September 1873 reading ‘On the 12th instant, at his residence, Berrima, Mr. THOMAS SCOTT, aged 84 years, father of Mrs. T. Hatfield, Queensland.’  This notice would suggest Thomas was born 1789 not 1799 as given on his immigration details and in the 1841 census. Is this an error or did Thomas give the wrong age when he emigrated from Ireland to ensure he was accepted, and then repeat it on the Census? One sad note, and one not verified, is that the youngest son William went astray. ‘Old Tom’, writing in 1902 says:
‘Another old identity was Scott, who lived at the top of the hill coming towards Bong Bong. He was the father of the celebrated Bill Scott, who was a member of the Clarke gang of bushrangers and was. found shot by the police of Braidwood. “Old Tom ” remembers when Bill Scott was a boy and shepherded for George Armfield, butcher at Berrima, and a more harmless fellow never lived.
He went to the Braidwood diggings and fell into bad company, and the old maxim is applicable here —”evil communications corrupt good manners.” Old Scott and wife are dead many years.’[4]

[1] www.myrasplace.net/hatfield/fam00066.htm www.queenslandfamilytrees.com/familygroup.php?familyID=F9

[2] https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-266-11004-81192-24?cc=1542665&wc=M995-25G:n1240805282

[3] Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1843

[4] Bowral Free Press, 19 April 1902