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Thursday, September 20, 2012

ANOTHER ANNIE MAWBEY

I have just discovered another Annie Mawbey who was living in NSW in 1862, the same year as the forbear of the NSW Mawbeys, George Mawbey, whose wife was Ann, died.
In September that year she was the housekeeper at Wivenhoe, an estate near Camden owned by a five-time premier of NSW, Sir Charles Cowper.
At that time she also married Wivenhoe's carpenter, Norman George De Vere Clifford.
The ceremony took place in the home of a minister in Camden under the Primitive Methodist rite.
Annie was a widow and Norman a widower.
Shortly afterwards they appear to have moved to Binalong near Yass where a daughter, Adah, was born in 1863 and a son, Charles, the following year.
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The land on which Wivenhoe stood was originally granted to Charles's father, Reverend William Cowper.
It was he who had married George Mawbey and Ann Williams at St Phillips Church of England, Sydney, in July 1838.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie had granted Rev Cowper 600 acres near Camden on 23 August 1812.
In 1836, his third son Charles began building a house there named Wivenhoe after the village in Essex, England where he wife Eliza Sutton had come from.
The house, along with its vineyard that produced celebrated wines, was placed on the market in 1866.
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Wivenhoe, which is now owned by the Catholic Church, is open on the first Sunday of each month, except January, with guided tours from 10am-3pm.
The 200th anniversary of the land grant was celebrated on 23 August 2012 and a memorial plaque placed inside the house.