Historical Society - The Darby Family

21st September 2022

History Notes

At last a decent flood in the river when it was actually forecast.  It is a long time since we have had a ‘banker’ and I hope that will pressure the relevant body to get busy and clear the privet out of the river to let it flow easily.  This flood is a warning – it is a long time since the water came into town!

Now back to historical matters.  The main street book is progressing and the Woodsreef volume is selling regularly.  The calendars are proving to be popular and we are getting a regular printing of these so just let us know if you have not been able to find one.

This week readers of the Land newspaper will have noticed a large landholding to the west of town for sale.  This area was originally held by a number of settlers including Ogilvie (Tareela), Darby (Campo Santo) Wilson (Plumthorpe) and Chambers (Mayvale).

In recent times I have found out more about the Darby family who initially settled in the Tingha area.  Sydney Hudson Darby and his wife Mary Ann and 4 children arrived in Sydney on 23rd January, 1840 on the “Florentina” after a five month journey from London.  It seems that Sydney’s brother, Arthur Darby also travelled with the family.

They soon moved to Cressfield in the Hunter Valley where Sydney left his family and travelled north with his friend John Goldfinch to look for land.  They took up 80,000 acres near present-day Tingha and named it “Tiengah Run”.  Sydney built his home “The Grove” here in 1842.

As they settled at “The Grove” the Darby men travelled around the north looking for more land and eventually Arthur Swift Darby selected land to the west of Barraba known as Campo Santo.  We know he was there in 1884 as he appears on the electoral roll, but it is likely that he had taken up land there in the late 1870’s as he appears in Arthur Witten’s diary from 1876 until his death in 1894 – he had been in Australia for 54 years.

Arthur S. Darby did not have a family but his nephews from Tingha appear to have visited and taken up land nearby as there is a photo of the first Mayvale home which has come back to Barraba with Darby information on the back of it.

Campo Santo was sold to the Capel family the next year and they were responsible for building the brick home which was photographed so many times.  The stone home built by Darby was also still in existence when the whole area was cleared about twenty years ago.

News for September 2022