NameTerry, SamuelPlace of ResidenceSydneyBiographySamuel Terry was a labourer at Manchester England when he was convicted of the theft of 400 pairs of stockings and sentenced to transportation to Australia for seven years.
He arrived in Australia in 1801 aboard ‘Earl Cornwallis’, and was assigned to the Reverend Samuel Marsden (known as the ‘flogging parson’) at Parramatta, where he worked on building the Female Factory and Gaol. Samuel was flogged several times for neglect of duty.
In 1810, he married Rosetta Marsh or Madden (nee Pracey). Rosetta’s background is unclear. She arrived as a free settler in 1799 on board the ‘Hillsborough’ and was possibly the wife of convict, Edward Madden. It is suspected she later became the widow of another convict, Henry Marsh. Rosetta, like Samuel, was an innkeeper, when they married.
Esther had two children when she married Samuel;
Henry born c.1798 (died 1825, Rangoon)
Esther Marsh born c.1800 (married John Terry Hughes, died 1873, Sydney)
Samuel and Esther had three children;
Edward b.1810 (married Elizabeth Mann, died 1838, Sydney)
John b.c.1811 (married Eleanor Rouse Wingate, died 1842, Hawkesbury)
Martha Foxlowe b.1812 (married John Hosking Jnr, died 1877, Penrith)
Terry prospered and between 1817 and 1820, held more than one fifth of the total value of mortgages in the colony, more than the Bank of New South Wales. Terry acquired his wealth through frugality and shrewdness and quickly gained the reputation of ‘The Botany Bay Rothschild’.
On 9 January 1821, Governor Macquarie issued a grant of 2000 acres to Terry. This grant was to become the Terry’s Meadows Estate, now known as Albion Park.
By 1828, Terry had increased his estates to 21,580 acres, and became one of the richest men in the colony. In 1834, he suffered a stroke, became paralysed and died four years later. He left a personal estate of £250,000, an income of over £10,000 a year from Sydney rentals, and an unknown sum of landed property.
The estate was inherited in the 1840s by Samuel Terry’s nephew, John Terry Hughes, who married Samuel’s step-daughter, Esther. John renamed the estate, Albion Park.
The township of Albion Park grew around the centre of the estate, which had been a meeting spot since the early days of European settlement, when the road from Wollongong crossed the timber track from Calderwood and Tongarra, on the way to the port at Shellharbour.
Samuel Terry.