Children admitted to Parramatta Native Institution

Six year old Tommy and his older sister Betty Cox from the Hawkesbury together with ten year old Milbah and a slightly older Betty Fulton (from The Cowpastures) plus two abscondees are admitted to the Parramatta Native Institution. Betty Fulton and Milbah are captured during the Appin Massacre. Governor Macquarie had put in an order for 6 girls and 12 boys between four to six years to populate his Native Institution from survivors of the ‘punitive expedition’. Betty Cox is 2 years older than Maria and comes from Sackville (Portland Head Rock). After leaving school, Betty marries an Aboriginal man of a different tribal group: Woorrerwuda (“Johnny”) on Eastern Creek. Many Cox children marry men with links to Branch Natives. In keeping with the Institution’s assimilation aims, one authority reports:

“Three girls who have been several years in the School have been married to native young men. To each of which has been given ten acres of Land with a Hut and some common domestic articles. They also have a Cow each”. Their land became the “infant settlement” at “the black town” on Richmond Road, later renamed Plumpton. (Jack Brook, in Ford p151)