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James DENT 1782-1837

Convict reinterred at Woronora

        

The photo above was taken in 2019. The touching verse engraved on this tall, rounded memorial cut from Sydney sandstone marks a single grave in the Anglican section of Woronora Cemetery.[i] It indicates the final resting place of James Dent who died 16 January 1837 aged 55. Another inscription on this headstone reads ‘Thomas Dent who died Jany 22nd 1829 aged 3 years’. The existence of this headstone in Woronora Cemetery is a mystery because it predates when the cemetery was gazetted as a General Cemetery, for the use of all denominations, on 2 April 1895.[2] About five kilometres from the cemetery is Dents Creek where an attempt to harvest the underlying coal seams was made in the late 1880s. Fred Dent was said to be in charge of this venture at some point which is how the creek got its name.[3] Is there a connection between Fred Dent and the Dent memorial?

By 1820 a new Sydney burial ground was required when the George Street burial site, now under the Sydney Town Hall, became overcrowded and a health risk. Devonshire Street General Cemetery was consecrated in 1820 and provided for burials in denominational areas. In the summer of 1829, three year old Thomas, son of James and Elizabeth Dent, died at Cooks River. His burial was recorded in the parish register of St James, Sydney and he was laid to rest in the Anglican section of Devonshire Street Cemetery. Thomas’ father, James Dent died in 1837, and was buried with his little boy. The photo below, taken in 2008, shows the three large faded red numbers, 244 indicating the plot number. [4]

 Twenty one years earlier at the Middlesex Gaol Delivery, 33 year old James Dent was charged with ‘having forged bank notes etc’.[5] A butcher by trade from Essex, he was found guilty on 14 February 1816 and sentenced to 14 years transportation. James sailed from Spithead on board the transport ship Elizabeth on 4 June 1816, one of 155 male convicts bound for Port Jackson. Built in 1809 this was the Elizabeth’s first of a number of voyages fitted out as a convict ship.[6] Also on board the vessel were the new Judge Advocate John Wylde and his extended family.

About 1819, James petitioned Governor Lachlan Macquarie for a conditional pardon. In the letter, he stated that he acted as a servant in the cabin of the Judge Advocate, John Wylde for the entire voyage of the Elizabeth and that he had continued to serve the Judge since his arrival. Although the 1822 muster shows the letters CP next to his name, indicating James Dent had received a conditional pardon, there is no other documented evidence to support this claim. On the letter to the Governor, the large pencilled letters TL in the margin indicate a Ticket of Leave was also granted.[7]

The year after he petitioned the Governor, 37 year old James Dent married Elizabeth Hood on 14 May 1820 in the newly built St Lukes Church of England at Liverpool.[8] The location of this marriage is puzzling as all of the early events found, relating to this family, took place in the Sydney or Petersham area. Perhaps Elizabeth was located in Liverpool before her marriage or maybe she just liked the new church. Elizabeth’s origins are unknown. The 1828 census shows that she was 24 years old when she arrived in the colony on the Elizabeth, the same ship on which her husband arrived, although she was not a guest of the British government. Could Elizabeth have also been in the employ of John Wylde who was travelling with his wife, children and father? Was she the nursemaid to Mrs Macquarie as suggested in the biography of the Dent’s eldest son George?[9]

James and Elizabeth had four children, George Richard, Sarah, Thomas, and Henry. The Dents lived in Sydney in the first years of their married life and George was born in Hunter Street.[i0] He was baptised at St Phillips church as was his sister Sarah.[ii] On 21 February 1829, before his third birthday on 22 April, Thomas was baptised at St James church. The reason for the late baptism could be that although the Dents were at Cooks River when Thomas was born, the journey to the nearest church was too difficult. St Peters at Cooks River, whose registers begin in 1838, had not been built. Perhaps Thomas had an accident or was very ill as he was baptised just three days before he was laid to rest in Devonshire Street Cemetery. Henry was also baptised at St James church in Sydney.

The 1828 census records James as a landholder of 30 acres at Petersham. With him are his wife and children George aged 7, Sarah aged 5 and ‘John’ aged 1½.[12] Of his 30 acres, twelve had been cleared with two horses and four horned cattle on the property. None of the property was under cultivation although in the following years, 1829 and 1830 when Thomas and Henry were baptised, James’ occupation was shown as farmer.

James applied for permission to bid for land with a view to purchase in June 1830. The land was described as 80 acres, a swamp in the district of Bulanaming bound on the west and north by James Moor, on the north by Edward Langton and on the east by James Wain.[13] He was leasing James Waine’s farm at this time. James Waine, was convicted to seven years transportation at Northampton Assizes. He arrived on the Scarborough in November 1789 and was granted 30 acres in September 1795 as a reward for good behaviour.[14] The swamp was Gumbramorra Swamp, fed by a creek from the west to become the head of Gumbramorra Creek which drained into Cooks River at Tempe. By the 1840s people were living on both sides of the swamp and a track was formed to cross it. This track became Sydenham Road.[15] A map showing Waine’s Farm and Gumbramorra Swamp can be found in Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader’s book, Marrickville: Rural Outpost to Inner City.

On 24 August 1831, James drew up a will. In it, he declared he was living at Waines Farm near Cooks River and bequeathed a brown mare in foal, a muse-coloured filly, three heifers, two working bullocks, a cart and harness, and a fowling piece to his son George who was then nine years old. He requested ‘that Mrs Shaughnessy will take my son George Dent her God Son with the articles specified in this Will and Apprentice him to the Cabinet Business’.[16] James died on 17 January 1837, six years after making his will. It is not known if his request regarding George’s apprenticeship was carried out. George was 15 when his father died and it was at this time that he ‘left Sydney and went bush to become a sawyer’. George later became a shipbuilder of note, the founder of the industry at Jervis Bay in the early 1860s. He owned land at Huskisson right on the Bay where his shipyard and sawmill were located. Steamers, schooners and many smaller craft were built here.[17] Today the site is close to the Lady Denman Museum where the ferry of that name, built by George’s son Joseph, can be found restored and on public display.

Henry was seven years old when his father died. He was a sawyer all his working life and possibly worked with his brother during the 1840s supplying timber for the Sugarworks on Cooks River.

One month short of her 17th birthday, Sarah Dent married Isaac Parkes on 4 January 1841 at St Peters, Cooks River witnessed by her brother George. Two months previously, George had married Isaac’s sister Elizabeth Parkes. Isaac and Elizabeth were children of John and Margaret Parkes who had settled at ‘Parkes Camp’ later known as Earlwood.[18] The two couples continued to live in the Cooks River area, Isaac and George recorded as sawyers in the parish register of St Peters, when each of their children was baptised during the 1840s and 1850s.

In 1901 Devonshire Street Cemetery was resumed for the extension of the railway terminus and the creation of Central station. It had been closed for new burials since 1867. Relatives of the deceased interred in the cemetery could obtain exhumation permits to move the remains of loved ones to other cemeteries  established in the broader Sydney area. Sarah Parkes, the only daughter of James Dent obtained a permit to exhume her father’s and little brother’s remains. What were the choices? Sarah’s mother died in 1858 on 13 August and she was buried in the churchyard of St Peters Cooks River.[19] Buried in the same grave are the two wives of George Dent, Elizabeth nee Parkes who died in 1866 and Harriet nee Arundell who died in 1887. The last burial in this churchyard was 1896 so reinterment could not take place there.

In 1901, Sarah’s address was Forest Road, Bexley a reasonable distance to Woronora General Cemetery which was six years young. Rookwood Cemetery was also an option. Sarah was 77 years old, perhaps she considered where her final resting place would be when she chose Woronora for the reinterments. Henry Dent, in his twilight years retired to Wollongong and lived in a ‘pretty villa…situated in a good position and command[ing] a fine view of the Pacific Ocean’.[20] When he died on 22 September 1905 at the age of 76, he was buried with his father and little brother in Woronora Cemetery. Sarah Parkes died 12 November 1912 and was buried in the Methodist section of the cemetery.

Finally, the connection to Dents Creek is not proven but James Dent did have a grandson Frederick Charles born in 1860 and great grandsons Frederick Dent and Alfred Dent born 1870 and 1871. Could one of them have been Fred Dent who drilled for coal in the late 1880s?

Sue Hewitt

First published in The Endeavour September 2008, Revised 2019.