Beulah is a heritage-listed farm at 767 Appin Road, Gilead, New South Wales, an outer suburb of Sydney, Australia in the Macarthur region. It was built from 1835 to 1846 by Cornelius O'Brien, Duncan Cameron, John Kennedy Hume, Ellen Hume; Mansfield Brothers (1884 works). It is also known as Summer Hill; Summer Hill Estate. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History Early land grants and occupation (1811–1835) The modern community of Appin celebrated the bicentenary of European settlement in May 2011, taking its foundation date as 1811 from the first land grants given to European settlers: given to Acting Commissary William Broughton (Lachlan Vale) and to Broughton's brother-in-law John Kennedy (Teston), both grants dated 22 May 1811. Four further grants were made on 25 August 1812: to Alexander Riley (Elladale); to Reuben Uther (Mount Gilead); to Andrew Hamilton Hume; and to George Best. Riley, Uther and Hume were all free settlers and Hume was connected by marriage to both Broughton and Kennedy. George Best was a former convict.State Records of NSW: Registers of Land Grants and Leases 1792–1867
By 1813 there was an established farming community at Appin. When a subscription was taken up at Liverpool in July of that year to support the building of a courthouse at Sydney, 14 of the 81 subscribers were listed as residents of Appin. These residents were a mixture of free arrivals, former soldiers and former convicts.Anne-Maree Whitaker, Appin: the story of a Macquarie town, Kingsclear Books, 2005 Several small grants to former convicts were issued in the next few years. Large landholders like William Broughton and Alexander Riley received additional large grants in 1816–1817 and both John Kennedy and Andrew Hamilton Hume received smaller additional grants in 1816. Hume's eldest son, Hamilton Hume, also received land in that year.
The four original Crown grants which today comprise the historic property known as Beulah were promised between 1814 and 1820. These four grants became parish portions 71, 77, 78 and 79, with the farmhouse now called Beulah built on portion 78 (Parish of Menangle (formerly Manangle).
Portion 78, , was granted to an Irish convict named Connor, or Cornelius, Bryan [Brien] from Clonmel, County Tipperary, transported for life on the Atlas 2 in 1802, aged 34. By 1806 he was assigned to Lieutenant William Minchin of the NSW Corps. [Minchin was also from Tipperary]. In June 1809 Bryan received a Conditional Pardon from Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson, acting governor of NSW in the wake of the arrest of Governor William Bligh in 1808. Bryan was obliged to surrender his Conditional Pardon in February 1810 following the arrival of the new governor, Lachlan Macquarie. In February 1810 he petitioned for its confirmation, declaring that he had spent most of his sentence in New South Wales as a servant of the government, and describing himself as an aged man who had left a wife and six children in Ireland to bewail his absence. He eventually received an Absolute Pardon in February 1812.
By 1814 Bryan was living at Liverpool where, from May that year, he had the services of assigned servant, Connor Boland, another Irish convict, newly arrived in New South Wales. Bryan's name was on a list of persons permitted by Governor Macquarie to become free settlers and to receive a grant of land in 1814. He was recommended for , the standard grant for a single man with no dependants.SRNSW: Musters and other papers re convict ships reel 2417; Musters of NSW and Norfolk Island 1806Colonial Secretary's correspondence 4/ 1846; 4/4486; 9/2652General Muster of NSW 1814
Portion 79, , was promised to Patrick Pendergast [Pendergrass/Prendergast] in January 1816. Pendergast was also Irish, from County Sligo, transported for life on the Britannia in 1797. He was allocated in acknowledgement of his status as a married man.Barbara Hall Death or liberty : the convicts of the Britannia : Ireland to Botany Bay 1797, B. Hall, Coogee, 2006SRNSW: Colonial Secretary's correspondence (CSC) 9/2652).
Portion 71, , was promised to a Second Fleet convict named Henry Sears [Sayers/Seers] in September 1818.Michael Flynn The Second Fleet : Britain's grim convict armada of 1790, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 2001SRNSW: CSC 9/2652
Portion 77, , was granted to 18 year old colonial-born Francis Rawdon Hume, youngest son of Andrew Hume of Hume Mount, Appin. Hume jnr petitioned for land in May 1820, his petition supported by the local magistrates who declared him to be 'an honest, sober and most industrious young man.SRNSW: CSC 4/1824A As shown on the original crown grant, Hume called his property Humewood.
Although none of these grants were formalised by an actual delivery of deeds until 1823, Bryan and Pendergast were almost certainly in occupation of their land by sometime in 1816 when both men supplied quantities of fresh meat to government stores.Sydney Gazette 25 May 1816; Governor Macquarie signed an order for Hume's grant on 31 March 1821 [SRNSW: CSC re land 2/7886].
Deputy Surveyor James Meehan's formal survey of the grants also seems to post-date occupation. Meehan's survey notebook has an entry for 6 February 1817 recording the marking out of for "Pat Pendergast" and an unspecified number of acres for "Cornelius Bryan".SRNSW: Reel 2623 SZ 906 no.88. The original entry is in pencil and has been overwritten in ink, at a later date, as 6 February 1819. The pencil may read 1817 When the grants were issued on 30 June 1823 Bryan's grant was recorded as .
In September 1831 both Bryan's and Pendergast's grants were re-gazetted, during a period in which Surveyor-General Mitchell had decided to tidy up paperwork around lands, presumably on the assumption that these grants had never been issued. It was in this second issue of the grant that Bryan's name was transmuted to Cornelius Ryan, an error that has led earlier historians of Beulah to misidentify the original grantee of this parcel of land and lose the thread of the history of the land ownership.Sydney Gazette 17 September 1831; NSW LΠ :Serial 30 p.21
The Irish story By 1831 Connor Bryan had long since left the colony, the first to return home in what became a rite of passage for a series of Irishmen associated with Beulah. This aspect of Beulah's history is a challenge to the orthodoxy around Irish convicts in Australia: the assumption that they were literally transported for life.
In April 1817 'Cornelius O'Bryan' announced in the Sydney Gazette that he was "leaving by an early opportunity" and requested all claims to be presented forthwith. On 26 November 1817, on the eve of his departure, he had a Letter of Attorney drawn up, giving authority to his assigned servant Connor Boland and to a man named Thomas Connell to cultivate his farm during his absence. In this document Bryan refers to his "thirty acres", declaring that it had been marked out for him by Mr James Meehan and that he had already cleared 16 acres. Boland was to collect the deeds from the Colonial Secretary's Office when they were ready and he and Connell were to look after Bryan's interests in any way they thought proper and deliver up the farm to him on his return to the colony. He sailed for London on the Harriet in December 1817.Sydney Gazette 5 April 1817.Sydney Gazette 8 November 1817.NSW LPI: Old Systems Book 7 no. 217 & original deed held in Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection.SRNSW: Ships Musters Reel 561 4/4771 no.43
Thomas Connell was one of Connor Bryan's shipmates on the Atlas 2 and also from Clonmel in County Tipperary. He was younger than Bryan, aged 19 when he was convicted and transported for life. In 1817 he petitioned for a mitigation of sentence and was granted a Conditional Pardon.SRNSW: Musters and other papers re convict ships reel 2417.SRNSW: CSC 4/1850. Boland's name is variously spelled: Bowlan, Bolan, Bowling, Boylan.
Connor, or Cornelius, Boland was assigned to Connor Bryan soon after his arrival in New South Wales. He had been tried in County Galway in March 1813, sentenced to life for uttering forged notes, along with a man named Denis O'Brien. They were both labourers from County Clare, Boland aged 28 and his mate aged 26. They were transported on the Three Bees, arriving in Sydney in May 1814 and sent straight to Liverpool for distribution: Denis O'Brien assigned to a man called William Day and Boland assigned to Connor Bryan.SRNSW: Convict indents 4/4404.CSC 4/3493. O'Brien's surname is variously spelled Bryan, Brian and O'Brien.
Assignment to Bryan was a lucky break for Boland. The accumulated evidence of many small references – in colonial newspapers, census returns and in the NSW CSC – suggest that Boland was a man of energy and ambition. Not ambition for political or public office but an ambition to prosper. For Boland, Bryan's power of attorney was a catalyst for an entrepreneurial colonial career. Within weeks of Bryan's departure Boland petitioned for a Ticket of Leave and in July 1820 he and Denis O'Brien both received conditional pardons on the recommendation of Captain Francis Allman of the 48th Regiment. Allman, it seems, knew them both in Ireland, O'Brien from his childhood. Boland had been an Allman family servant in Ireland.SRNSW: CSC 4/1862; 4/4430
In August 1820 Boland made his first land purchase, buying the grant adjoining Connor Bryan's grant to the north, the land originally granted to Henry Sears (portion 71). Sears had sold his grant to one Thomas Colligan in February 1819 and Boland purchased the property from Colligan (Original deeds, unregistered, in collection of Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection). In November 1822 both Boland and O'Brien petitioned for "a grant of land and a few cattle", each "having a few of his own", and in August 1823, again in concert, they sought land to depasture their cattle.
Their petitions were endorsed by Francis Allman and they were both given permission to select on Tickets of Occupation. By January 1824 Boland had selected an unoccupied spot of forest called Ferrah [Fairy] Meadow in the Illawarra. O'Brien had chosen a tract of land at Illawarra called "Bullseye" lying under a mountain. Boland's cattle were branded on the off hip with the letters CB and were to be placed under the charge of an Irish convict named Patrick Teefy [Teafy] who had arrived per the ship Brampton in 1823. O'Brien's cattle were marked DB.CB on the off hip – and also under the charge of Patrick Teefy.SRNSW: CSC 4/1834A.4/3509.4/3510.4/1836A.
Around this time Denis O'Brien bought Patrick Pendergast's grant, adjoining Connor Bryan's grant on the west (portion 79). Pendergast had sold his grant to Sydney merchant Daniel Cooper in July 1822.NSW LPI: Old Systems Book 8 no.536.Book L no.208
Between them Boland and O'Brien had at Appin and in June 1824 they again petitioned for a grant of land, again in identical terms, again endorsed by Allman. They each declared that they had been able to purchase a few acres of land, which they had been busy cultivating and had secured through their industry and perseverance some cattle and horses, but the small amount of land now occupied by each was "much too limited" to allow them to maintain themselves by cultivation and to support the stock in their possession. They were each promised . But Boland clearly had hoped for a larger grant and a few months later he submitted another memorial declaring that his purchased farm at Appin was too small and that he had the means to cultivate a large farm. He had 4 assigned convicts, Patrick Teefy being one of them, as well as a man named John Teefy. Boland was allowed an additional .SRNSW: CSC 4/1836A.4/1836B; 4/3511.General Muster List of NSW 1823, 1824,1825