Elizabeth Farm - History - John and Elizabeth Macarthur

John and Elizabeth Macarthur

In 1788, when the young soldier John Macarthur married Elizabeth Veale in Bridgerule, Devon, she was over 4 months pregnant - a timid 23 year old villager from Devon, south western England. At the age of 7, her father died. Her mother, in financial difficulties, remarried shortly afterwards and then once again in later life. Elizabeth was raised almost entirely on charity. John Macarthur, son of a Plymouth draper, was, at the time of his wedding, on unauthorised leave from his regiment in Gibraltar, on orders to return. Having borrowed money to enlist, John had no intention of fighting abroad. Wars with Spain and America were over by the time he’d drawn his first salary. The more lucrative postings to India were unavailable to someone of John’s low social standing. Seven years in the army had left him restless and dispirited.In the anxious months following his marriage, Macarthur agreed to an alternate posting with the New South Wales Corps and the prospect of advancing both his military career and reputation. The company’s mission was to protect the remote prison settlement, although its officers soon found opportunities in trading, farming and land ownership hard to resist. The Macarthurs arrived in Sydney, two years after their wedding, in 1790. It was another three years before a house was built at Parramatta, 23 kilometres upstream from Port Jackson. By the late 1820s, this small, solid 3-roomed brick cottage was transformed into a smart country house, surrounded by 'pleasure grounds', orchards and almost 1,000 acres (4 km²) of semi-cleared lands. From nine births, seven children survived infancy. Until the late 1790s, officers and governors used public money to carry out private business, buying and selling incoming cargoes and undertaking highly risky trading ventures in the south Pacific. During these early years, the Macarthurs' shipping and farming interests, along with John’s political conflicts, ambitions and affairs, came to dominate colonial society. Elizabeth Macarthur, not always content, remained in Australia for the rest of her life, while John returned twice to England forging contacts and patronage and directing his sons’ education. Towards the end of his life, John Macarthur’s work focused entirely on developing and promoting trade in colonial wool – the backbone of Australia’s economy for the next century. As a result, Elizabeth Farm is stamped on the national consciousness. Although enveloped within later extensions, the Macarthur’s early cottage has survived intact, making it Australia’s oldest European dwelling. By the 1830s, having enlarged and refined his Regency Bungalow, Macarthur’s health was in serious decline, along with his grasp on politics, business and family affairs. His death in 1834 brought renovations to a halt, leaving the homestead unfinished. His handsome library, drawing and dining rooms, though newly formed and plastered, were still unpainted. Cedar joinery was yet to be fitted. A much needed wing of bedrooms was never built. Elizabeth Macarthur remained at Elizabeth Farm, despite her children's wishes to leave, until her death in 1850. As the mansion at Camden became the Macarthurs' 'family seat', Elizabeth Farm fell slowly into disrepair. A lifetime’s residue of furniture, paintings, ornaments and books were finally cleared out by family agents in 1854.