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| Sarah Mawbey (nee Clarke) |
Sarah Clarke was born in the colony of New South Wales in 1856 to English 'assisted immigrants', Robert and Elizabeth Clarke (nee Smith).
Her parents had come on the Asiatic in 1855, bringing with them their infant son James, and her mother Elizabeth's parents, Arthur Samuel and (Elsie) Charlotte Smith (nee Newson).
Robert Clarke was 21 at the time.
Sarah was born the year after her parents arrived, in a farming district about 50km north-west of Sydney called Castlereagh on the Nepean River.
*
Births Deaths and Marriages NSW indicates Robert and Elizabeth Clarke had six more children while they were living at Castlereagh, plus an additional two in Mudgee:
James
b. 1854
England
d.1882 (28) Castlereagh |
Sarah
b.1856
Castlereagh
m. 1875 Mudgee John Mawbey
d.1900 (44)
Breelong |
Betsy
b.1858
Castlereagh m. 1878 Mudgee Stephen Perry
d. 1940 Orange
|
Charles
b. 1869
Castlereagh
d.1927 Auburn |
George Robert
b. 1863
Castlereagh
m.1883 Sophia Birchall d.1949* Liverpool |
Samuel
b. 1866
Castlereagh
d. |
Frederick
W
b. 1872
Castlereagh
d. |
Harold
b. 1874
Mudgee
m. 1896 Orange Norah Hennessy d.1914 Orange |
Elsie
Charlotte
b.1881
Mudgee
m. Percy J Lee d.1937 Kingsford |
[Asterisks in chart indicate information not confirmed by BDM certificates]
Sarah met John Thomas Mawbey in Mudgee where they married in 1875 when she was 19 and he 23.
John then returned to Sydney where he lived with his mother at Newtown and worked as a carter.It is not yet known if he took his new wife with him.
As they did not have any children until the first was born in Mudgee, it appears he did not.
*
John and Sarah Mawbey's first child, John Thomas Jnr (Jack) was born in 1880 in Mudgee.
Reginald was born there in 1882 and Grace in 1884.
*
John Mawbey leased a store in Market Lane, Mudgee from 1878-83 where he sold fruit.
The couple also appear to have had a boarding house in Mudgee.
Sarah's mother, Elizabeth Clarke, died at Mudgee in 1882, the year after she gave birth to her last child, Elsie.
The following year, Sarah and John Mawbey moved further west with their three young children and Sarah's widowed father, Robert Clark, to Breelong to take up a farming 'selection'.
*
Percival, born 1886, was their first child to be born at Breelong.
He was was murdered there 14 years later in 1900, together with his two sisters.
*
Robert Clarke died at Breelong in 1891 by drowning in the Castelreagh river or the creek near the Mawbey home.
His death was registered in the Coonamble district, parents unknown.
