SMITH, MARIA ANN ('GRANNY')(1799-1870), orchardist, was baptized on 5 January 1800 in the rural parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Peasmarsh, Sussex, England, daughter of John Sherwood, farm labourer, and his wife Hannah, née Wright. Maria followed her parents into farm service. On 8 August 1819 in the parish church at Ebony, Kent, she married Thomas Smith (1799-1876), a farm labourer from Beckley. Both bride and groom signed with a mark. The Smiths lived at Beckley for the next nineteen years, during which time Maria bore eight children, three of whom died in infancy. With several other farming families from Peasmarsh, Beckley and surrounding villages in eastern Sussex and western Kent, the family migrated to New South Wales under the government bounty scheme. They reached Sydney in the Lady Nugent on 27 November 1838.

Thomas found employment with a settler in the well-established fruit-growing district of Kissing ...

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Source:

Australian Dictionary of Biography