Mary Ann Roberts, born in Windsor, New South Wales, on 15 June 1793, was the eldest daughter of convicts William Roberts and Kezia Brown. Mary was part of a large family with five brothers and four sisters. William Roberts was a farmer and in 1822 the property, Hobby Farm, was described as having twenty acres of wheat, eight acres of maize and six acres of barley plus half an acre devoted to a garden and orchard. The rest of the fifty acres was pasture with livestock consisting of forty cattle and fifty pigs.
On 18 October 1813 at St Matthew's Church of England, Windsor, Mary married Richard Holland. Richard, a convict, had arrived in New South Wales on 27 July 1807. Mary was 20 and Richard was 30 when they married. As Richard had a wife in England he had to wait seven years before he could remarry.
Mary and Richard had nine children - William (1813-1897), Richard (1815-1881), John (1817-1897),
Sarah (1820-1891), Thomas (1822-1824), Thomas (1825-1913), Henry (1828-1828), Henry Edward (1830-1906) and Ann Maria (1836-1905). Thomas was fourteen months when he died and Henry was nine days old. Like many families Mary and Richard followed the custom of reusing the name of a child who had died when subsequent children were born.
Richard had a holding of land at Cornwallis, near Windsor, but also appears to also have had a shop in Windsor which at different times had been a bakery or a butcher's shop. In 1863 a paragraph in a newspaper provided a medical report on a shipment of rams that Richard had transported to New South Wales from South Australia so he was dealing with livestock. He had possibly acquired the sheep from his son, Richard Holland, who by now owned property and was farming in South Australia.
Mary and Richard had been married for almost fifty years when Mary died from influenza on 22 July 1863. She was buried with other family members at St Matthew's Church of England, Windsor.
Mary and Richard's children continued the family association with farming. The sons of Richard and Mary owned and farmed properties in New South Wales and South Australia. Their daughter, Sarah, married William Pendergast who was also a landowner while Ann Maria's husband, James Melville also owned properties.
Mary Ann Roberts was my great (x3) grandmother
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