History Notes - Spencer Family early settlers
History Notes
There has not been a lot of activity at the museum this week apart from a couple of visitors. However, the next few weeks leading up to Christmas promise to be busy with two markets and a visitor or two. A reminder to those members who have not yet paid their membership for 2022/23 – they are due now.
As mentioned last week, the Spencer family were early settlers in the Barraba District. William Spencer, the eldest of eight children, was born in Suffolk in England in 1806. There were four more sons in the family and as they grew up, they worked on farms around the Wickambrook and Moulton villages.
As the years passed and the family married and moved around the area the sons became interested in the New South Wales settlements especially after their brother, the Reverend Charles, travelled to Sydney in 1839.
Stephen and his sister, Ellen, were the next to arrive in 1842 with their spouses and various other relatives. Finally, William and his wife, Elizabeth, and party arrived in 1945. All the family settled on a farm in the Hunter Valley but it was obvious that Comleroi farm was far too small for the number of people there.
John Keele had taken up Ironbark Station to the west of Barraba in the 1830’s and by the mid 1840’s was ready to sell it to the Spencer family. William Spencer together with his brother, Stephen, their wives, and a servant or two arrived at Ironbark in 1846. The family lived under very primitive conditions in a hut that had been built for stockmen.
Williams’s wife delivered her first child in this hut but sadly he only lived a few weeks and was the first to be buried in the Ironbark graveyard. Stephen’s wife, also pregnant, decided to return to the Hunter Valley for the birth but sadly her baby also died at birth. The Spencer family were all back in the Hunter Valley by the end of 1846 and set to work to pack up for another trip to Ironbark the following year.
The 1847 trip to Ironbark included more people and was more successful with servants and family included. Houses were built and Stephen and Mary and William and Elizabeth Spencer each had a home to live in. The farm in the Hunter Valley was leased to tenants in 1849 as all the Spencer clan had successfully moved to Ironbark. William Stephen Spencer was born to William and Elizabeth on 11th May,
1848, at Ironbark, and grew up to manage Ironbark, marry Minnie McKid, and leave a family to carry on his heritage.
A fair quantity of the above information has come from Pam Whalley’s series of booklets produced in 2018 – the series of booklets is kept at the museum.