Alexander Walter Scott’s impressive land grants on Ash Island, Stockton and the coastal grant of 456 acres between the harbour and Merewether, together with the large footprint he left on early Newcastle’s industrial development, have ensured that history books continue to record him as an early Newcastle mover and shaker.

The story of the Scott family, who played an important part in the early development of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley, begins in India with a medical practitioner, Dr Helenus Scott. Dr Scott was President of the Medical Board and Assay Master in Bombay. The son of a Scottish minister, the Reverend David Scott, D.D., he distinguished himself by scientific research and writing. His research was in the field of chemistry, and his writings were varied. He wrote a pamphlet about the use of nitric acid in gunpowder, another pamphlet On the Arts of India, and a romance entitled The Adventures of a Rupee. As a friend and pupil of Dr Jenner he introduced vaccination into India.

Over the last three decades Alexander Walker Scott’s daughters, Harriet and Helena, referred to largely as “The Scott Sisters”, have been celebrated on Ash Island. The Sisters’ list of Ash Island plants as well as their sketches and paintings of the flora and fauna that surrounded them on the Island in the mid-1800s is proving an invaluable blue print of the vegetation to be replanted and the caterpillars, moths and butterflies which may one day return to call Ash Island their home. In the last decade media exposure and museum collection showings has meant the legacy they have left for early Newcastle’s flora and fauna is being celebrated and the fact that these sisters were made honorary members of the Entomological Society in 1864, after the publication of the father Alexander’s book Australian Lepidoptera and Their Transformations, is becoming more well known.

Harriet and Helena Scott were the foremost natural science painters in New South Wales from 1850 until turn of the century, despite being born in an age when female scientific education was limited, women’s ‘gifts’ were to be kept in the private sphere of home and hearth, and the professions were a male preserve. In Australia, as in England, the study of natural history was the pursuit of gentlemen, for whom amassing a collection was a status symbol. Yet, through prodigious talent, Harriet Scott and her younger sister Helena became esteemed as professional artists, brilliant natural history illustrators and meticulous specimen collectors. Contemporaries hailed their contribution to late colonial natural science, yet they were mostly forgotten until the twenty-first century.

Harriet and Helena Scott are currently being celebrated in an exhibition at the Australian Museum. Their work has remained largely unrecognized for 150 years since they lived and worked on Ash Island researching and illustrating the plants, insects and animals that inspired them. Marion Ords 1988 publication that included reproductions of the plants and butterflies of the island reintroduced the world to the work of the Scott’s and reminded us of a world on Ash Island that has been largely lost as a result of heavy industry that used the Island as a dumping ground.

Mother to Helena and Harriet Scott and wife of Alexander Walker Scott, Harriet was born into emancipist society of the early colony. Harriet was born in 1804 in Sydney, New South Wales to Richard Calcott, an ex-convict sent to Sydney in 1799 for stealing, and his de facto wife Catherine White, a free settler.

Helenus Scott was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1758. His baptism was recorded on the 28th August 1758 in the Parish of Auchterhouse, County of Aberdeen in Scotland.Auchterhouse is 9 miles/14.5 Kilometres, North-West of Aberdeen Helenus’ parents were David Scott, a clergyman, and Mary Mitchell. Both of his parent’s names have been given to many descendants. In the autobiographical introduction to his book, “The Adventures Of A Rupee”, Helenus pays tribute to his father, saying “The father had genius; and it was the only inheritance he could pass to his son”.

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, (MUP), 1974

David Scott Mitchell (1836-1907), book collector and national benefactor, was born on 19 March 1836 in Sydney, only son of Dr James Mitchell and his wife Augusta Maria Frederick, née Scott. In October 1852 he became one of the first undergraduates of the University of Sydney (B.A., 1856; M.A., 1859), where he won scholarships in mathematics, with prizes also in physics and chemistry; he also played cricket outside the university.

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, (MUP), 1988

Rose Scott (1847-1925), feminist, was born on 8 October 1847 at Glendon, near Singleton, New South Wales, fifth of eight children of Helenus Scott, Indian-born pastoralist and later police magistrate at Newcastle, and his wife Sarah Ann, sister of George William and Henry Keylock Rusden and an accomplished linguist and scholar. Rose and her closest sister Augusta (Gussie) were educated by their mother while their brothers went to boarding school. A renowned beauty and well-connected, Rose regularly visited Sydney.

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, (MUP), 1967

James Mitchell (1792-1869), physician and industrialist, was born in Fife, Scotland, the fourth son of David Mitchell, farmer of Capledrae and Feuar in Aberdour, and his wife Margaret, née Low. Educated locally he joined the Army Medical Corps in 1810, and in April 1812 qualified as a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons at Edinburgh.

The story of the Laurels begins with the marriage of Augusta Maria Scott to Dr J ames Mitchell in 1833. Agusta Scott was the sister of Alexander Walker Scott who received a land grant of 50 acres at Stockton on 16th January 1835. This grant of 50 acres was for the portion approximately east of Church street, from the harbour up to Clyde street, and east to the Pacific Ocean.

Patrick Scott, a poet, came to Australia in 1840, the year of his mother’s death. He returned to England where he died at Glendon, Surrey, in 1887

https://www.jenwilletts.com/helenus_scott.htm
Robert Scott and his younger brother Helenus Scott were born in Bombay, India. They arrived in New South Wales on 4th February 1822 on the Britomart. Their father, Dr. Helenus Scott who had been head of the Bombay Medical Staff of the East India Company was accompanying them however died on the voyage out in November 1821 and was buried at the Cape of Good Hope.

Francis (Frank) Hughes born in 1820 at Castleblaney, a small town in county Monaghan, Ireland, died 7 December 1891 at Ash Island. He was buried 2 days later on 9 December 1891 in the Roman Catholic Section of Sandgate Cemetery.

Witnesses at Robert’s birth on 3 May 1863 were Hannah Ivers (nee Ingram) and the Nurse “Elizabeth Partridge”. As he grew, he became known as “Bob”. He died in 1959

Information largely taken direct from “A Remarkably Fine Place: William and Mary Sparke and their Descendants in the Lower Hunter 1824-1974” by Edward James Sparke

Edward Sparke Snr (1769) – (9 February 1844) married Mary Hosking at St Petroc Church, South Brent, Devon on 29 April 1795. Mary was born in 1772 at South Brent, Devon, and died on 19 October 1852 at her son John’s residence, 400 George Street, Sydney.

Ash Island was subdivided in the 1860s and cleared and drained for further agriculture; 17 dairies, 55 families and a school were here until mid-1900s.

Daniel Lintott was born in 1816 in Somerset England and married Alice Newton born 1822 in Hampshire, England. He died on 10 October 1877. The marriage produced 11 children. Eldest daughter Eliza Lintott was born on 7 October 1841 at Hartley Maudit, Hampshire, England, followed by Elizabeth about 1843 and Daniel about 1848. The family emigrated to NSW, arriving 27 August 1850and settled at Ash Island.

THE TOWNS BROTHERS – BOAT- BUILDERS FROM DEMPSEY ISLAND
For over eight decades Dempsey Islands Towns family were noted builders of fine small boats. Racing skiffs, surf boats, Watermen’s boats and launches, they had a craftsman’s keen appreciation of a boat’s best lines for speed and stability.

Ford Family of Ash Island

James FORD was born on 11 November 1843 at Abbotsbury and emigrated as a young man in search of a better life. It is assumed that he arrived with no relatives in the colony, this assumption supported by contact with two ancestors of James’s youngest brother, Thomas, born 4 May 1852 who married Fanny Bartlett and who remained in England, dying there on 19 May 1918.

Lorenze Peterson emigrated to NSW aboard the William Miles in 1855. In 1858 he married Elizabeth Geiger (born 13 March 1837 at Kafertal, Baden, Germany, died 19 May 1918 West Maitland) at Maitland. She had emigrated with her family aboard the Helene from Hamberg in 1842 and initially settled at Narrowgut, Morpeth.

The Romel Family of Ash Island
Gottlieb W Rommel was born on 17 January 1817 in Grünbach, Birkenfeld, Rhineland-PfalzGermany, to Nicholas and Anna Rommel. Gottlieb married Margaretha Catherina Lang on 7 September 1852 in Germany. She died on 7 May 1892 at Ash Island and he 8 years later on 14 July 1898 at Waratah, NSW, aged 81 years. They had been married 39 years.

1891 Census – People who lived and worked on the islands of the Hunter River Estuary

At the time of European settlement in 1804, the islands were used by peoples of the aboriginal Worimi and Awabakal nations. For the next 30 years a few Europeans made the islands their home.

Farmers were brought from Germany to work the islands, grapes grown and dairy farming for the mail landowner A.W. Scott. From the 1860s the islands were subdived into smaller holdings and more families battled tides and intermittent floods as they tried to take advantage of the rich soils found on the floodplain.

John Jordan (1769-1830) and Catherine

Dennis Jordan (1817-1896) and Sarah Brennan
Dennis was born in Ballon County, Carlow, Ireland, and died on 10 December 1896 at Throsby Street, Wickham. Sarah Brennan was born in 1817 and died 26 September 1906 at Throsby Street, Wickham. They married on 10 January 1837 in Carlow and having spent their married life together will spend eternity the same way, buried together in the Roman Catholic Section of Sandgate Cemetery. They emigrated aboard the ship SS Hope with their 2 sons, arriving in Botany Bay back on 29 January 1842.

CROESE ANCESTRY

Cornelis Croese born Halder, Sint-Michielsgestel, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands, and Anne (Brown Family Tree on Ancestry) – no other information is known.

According to the Brown Family Tree on Ancestry, Cornelius (referred to as Charles Croese) was born in 1826 Haldert (or Helder), Holland and died on 6 December 1907 at Waratah. He married Ann Pilley in 1851 at Raymond Terrace. She was born in 1833 and died in 1918 at Waratah. Ann was a daughter of Thomas Pilley and Bridget Callan. They emigrated aboard the Psyche which departed on 6 May 1857, arriving at Cardiff, Wales, the following day and thereafter commenced the voyage to Australia.

Franz Josef Schuck was born on 9th June1834 at Roßbach, near Aschaffenburg, Germany,the third child to Farmer Martin Schuck and his wife Katharina Wetzel. He was baptised into the Roman Catholic faith, as was his first born at Edwin Hickey’s Osterley estate

George TONGUE was a convict assigned to the Newcastle district. After marriage, he had eight children, all of whom remained in the area to marry and raise families. The name can be difficult to research with many alternate spellings found to date including TONGE, TOUNGE, FONGUE, YOUNG, TUNGE and TONNY.