Gentleman John Smith

Molly Morgan is the best known today of Maitland’s first settlers, but John Smith runs her close. Both ‘made good’ from difficult convict beginnings and amassed considerable wealth. Of the original dozen who were given plots of land at Wallis Plains in 1818, these two prospered the most although Molly was to die poor. Probably, she was too generous with what she had acquired.

Smith, born in Manchester in about 1787, was transported to Sydney in 1809. Within two years he had absconded and returned to England but he offended again, was tried again and transported a second time. Back in Sydney he was convicted yet once more, of robbery, and sent to Newcastle. He shares with Molly Morgan the ‘achievement’ of returning to England from the other side of the world (a none-too-easy feat) and being transported a total of three times.

Right: Pawel Zawislak’s imagining of John Smith, in Cynthia Hunter: Bound for Wallis Plains.

Once in Newcastle, Smith began to turn his life around. Probably by ingratiating himself with Commandant James Wallis, he was made Chief Constable, a position he held until 1823 when he received a conditional pardon. He was in charge of up to 17 constables and supervised the gaol in Newcastle. These positions placed him in good stead to become one of the dozen people who were given land at Wallis Plains in 1818: on this start he was to build a sizeable property empire in Maitland and Newcastle over the following half century.

An entrepreneurial career

Smith was without doubt a man with an eye for the main chance. He was ambitious and determined, a sycophant to those in authority and a tireless seeker after commercial opportunity. His land at Wallis Plains, sited on the eastern bank of Wallis Creek, was productive thanks to the toil of the convicts assigned to him. His own efforts in terms of physical labour were probably relatively modest.

An advertisement placed by Smith in the Sydney Gazette, 14 August 1823.

He lived largely in Newcastle, where he set himself up as a publican, a provider of accommodation and a retailer. He bought a small ship, the Elizabeth, for trade between Newcastle and Sydney, and he became involved in flour milling. He also acquired land in the Fullerton Cove area on which he raised cattle. His portfolio of commercial interests became large and varied.

Numerous convicts both male and female were assigned to him at his various land holdings over the years. Some of these he had brought before magistrates for trial and punishment when they neglected their duties or absconded. He had numerous appearances before magistrates himself as late as the 1860s. His life was always lived close to the law. He used it as well as being hurt by it.

At Wallis Plains Smith expanded his farm by acquiring land from neighbours and building cottages on it. Other land was also acquired, and by 1828 he had 775 acres ꟷ a far cry from the roughly 30 he had started with only a decade earlier. He also had a hotel on what became Newcastle Rd, plus a steam flourmill on the same road and several shops and cottages.

The building that housed Smith’s original flour mill on the New England Highway, East Maitland.

(Photo credit: Kevin Short)

One of his holdings was on the Bolwarra Flats. Called ‘Smiths Island’, it was part of the original grant to Thomas McDougall and on the Pig Run meander of the Hunter River. This meander, still visible as an elongated depression next to Glenarvon Rd, was cut off when the river changed its course after a flood in the late 1870s.

Reputation

Smith’s success was not always welcomed by others, especially the free settler ‘landed gentry’ who, beginning in the early 1820s, took up most of the best land in the Hunter Valley. Not all of them were successful in their farming endeavours and some must have harboured jealousy over Smith’s considerable and lucrative business activity. According to Cynthia Hunter’s book about Maitland’s original settlers (Bound for Wallis Plains), he was called a ‘scoundrel’ who affected ‘airs’, and his lifelong habit of ingratiating himself with those in authority would have irritated many.

Sycophancy is never an attractive characteristic, though Smith could perhaps be excused for using it as a means of overcoming the disadvantages he would have experienced as an ex-convict. To the landed gentry, an ex-convict was still a convict.

A supreme egotist, he styled himself ‘Gentleman’ John Smith and exaggerated his contribution to the community in a letter published in the Maitland Mercury on 11 August 1855. In it he painted himself as a benefactor who had generously provided land for a court house. But without doubt he proved that convicts as much as free settlers could play a significant entrepreneurial part in the development of Maitland.

John Smith died a wealthy man in 1870.

References

Hunter, Cynthia, Bound for Wallis Plains, Maitland’s Convict Settlers, Maitland City Council, Maitland, 2012.

Keys, Chas,, ’Our past: convict John Smith, one of Maitland’s first settlers who made good’, Our Past, Maitland Mercury, 3 May 2020.