The Sydney Family Album – 6 – Thomas Moore

From Dr. Mark Thompson’s introduction to his The Sydney Family Album series, first published in 2011 –

“Evangelicals in Sydney have especially good reasons to remember our forebears and give thanks to God. The strong and clear evangelical witness of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney has not been an accident. Under God, it has been the result of the faithful labour of many men and women.

I propose periodically over this year to post brief entries reminding us about some of the key figures who have shaped Sydney Anglicanism. I will inevitably miss out many who should be mentioned, and my selection is bound to reflect my own limited knowledge, so please accept my apologies in advance if your favourites are omitted. Undoubtedly, there is good reason to start at the beginning …”

The sixth post in this series comes from guest blogger Peter Bolt:

Thomas Moore came to Australia from England at the age of thirty. Until recently, little was known of Moore’s origins. In 2005 some of his personal papers have enabled the discovery that he grew up in Northumberland, England, in the coastal village of Lesbury. Here the young Thomas would have had seafaring and shipbuilding as part of his everyday life. Many a young man was inspired to go to sea as news came to England of the discoveries of that great adventurer, Captain James Cook. Perhaps Thomas was one of them.

For when Thomas Moore first arrived in Australia on 26th July 1792, he was the ship’s carpenter on the brig, Britannia. This vessel brought much needed supplies to the almost starving infant colony. She also held a three-year licence from the East India Company to fish in the local waters. Captain Cook had reported abundant seals at Dusky Bay in New Zealand, and her master and part owner, Captain William Raven, was keen to make some profit from their loss. But on the eve of her departure from Port Jackson, the Britannia was commissioned by the officers of the New South Wales Corps for a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope for further supplies. Undaunted from his first object, after leaving Sydney on 22nd October 1792, Raven dropped off a sealing party at Dusky Bay, and then headed for the Cape.

Thomas Moore was left with the sealers. He build a house for their shelter, then began building a vessel in case Raven failed to return. Just ten months later, the Britannia appeared, and Moore’s vessel was almost completed. They sailed away, leaving it on the stocks at Dusky Bay. Raven sang his carpenter’s praises in government circles, almost certainly enhancing Moore’s reputation as a shipbuilder. In 1796 he was appointed Master Boat Builder to the colony of New South Wales. In January of the following year, he married ex-convict Rachel Turner. His marriage also brought Thomas responsibilities for Andrew, whom Rachel had born to Surgeon John White. Thomas doted on them both until they predeceased him in 1838 and 1839.

In 1809, the year after he had been caught up in the famous ‘Rum Rebellion’ against Governor Bligh, Thomas Moore resigned his position at the Dock Yard. He had built a house on the George’s River, which he called Moore Bank. ‘Thomas Moore Park’ in Chipping Norton now commemorates the site of his home, and its memory lives on in the suburb ‘Moorebank’.

In November 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie arrived at Moore Bank. Thomas joined the Governor as he chose the site of a town, which he named Liverpool. Macquarie appointed Thomas Moore superintendent of public works at Liverpool. The development of this new town was under his charge for the next thirteen years.

Also in 1810, Macquarie appointed Thomas Moore as Liverpool’s first resident magistrate, a duty he performed until the day he died.

Macquarie was also a great builder of churches, and St Luke’s Liverpool was his second, built under Thomas Moore’s supervision. When the foundation stone was laid (7th April 1818), Thomas and Rachel were present, as well as Governor Macquarie’s four-year-old son, Lachlan. Thomas and Rachel had been appointed guardians for young Lachlan, should anything happen to his parents while in the colony.

Thomas and Rachel were keenly involved with the Liverpool congregation from before the building existed, right through to when they were each buried from St Luke’s. They were hospitable people, and their visitors were impressed by their devotion to Christ. In those days Liverpool was strongly associated with missionary work. Moore had an early interest in the Church Missionary Society’s mission to New Zealand, and later actively supported the Wesleyan Auxiliary Missionary Society in the same region.

Thomas Moore’s Christian devotion was also expressed in his widely-recognised generosity. In his Dockyard days he had dabbled in the seal-trade, and did a little trading of his own in ‘exotic goods’ such as tea and asian dressing gowns, acting as agent for ship’s master. He acquired property from Petersham to the Cook’s river, then in Banks Town, Liverpool, Airds, and Sutton Forest, making him one of the early colony’s major landholders. His cattle made him one of the largest suppliers of meat to the Government stores. He bred horses with a fine reputation. Even before he became a founding shareholder in the Bank of NSW and the ill-fated Bank of Australia, he was already a banker, issuing bills of exchange and mortgages. As he accumulated wealth, he also gave it out. He subscribed to a variety of charitable organizations, such as the Benevolent Society and the Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. He assisted orphans and the poor. He had an interest in Education, and his money assisted several fledgling schools. As the responsibility for church building moved from the government to the churches, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian churches — and possibly also Baptist and Roman Catholic— benefited from Moore’s money.

On Christmas Eve, 1840, Thomas Moore died quietly in his home. His Will continued the generosity he had shown in his lifetime. He left money to the Anglican church and for the poor. Combining his long-term interest in education with his Christian faith, he also left his Liverpool home and a considerable proportion of his estate for the purposes of founding a college that would educate ‘young men of the Protestant persuasion’. It took a further 15 years before three students and one teacher (William Macquarie Cowper) sat in Moore’s Liverpool home —which had already been renamed ‘Moore College’.

See also Peter Bolt’s 2007 book –

Thomas Moore – one of our oldest colonists: essays and addresses to celebrate 150 years of Moore College – available from Matthias Media.

Image: Portrait of the late Thomas Moore, Esq., of Liverpool, by William Griffith, 1840. Image slightly brightens and enhanced. (Note the portrait on the wall of Thomas Moore’s wife Rachel.)

Original item held by Moore Theological College. Digitised from the item held in the Samuel Marsden Archives