MALCOLM TRAILL, award-winning Great Southern historian, examines the stories behind colourful Albany pioneer Patrick Taylor.
I F you mention the name of Patrick Taylor to Albany folk, chances are they may recall the little old cottage in Duke Street that bears his name. Yes, it is Patrick Taylor Cottage, which is quite possibly the oldest surviving private house in WA.
It is indeed historic and has been recognised as such by a listing on the State Heritage Register of Heritage Places in 2009.
In that listing it states that the core of the house dates from about 1832, so it is one of the earliest examples of European construction in Australia west of Launceston.
However, this piece is less about the building and more about the man, Patrick Taylor. How did he come to live here and what is his background?
The more I looked into this, the more I became fascinated with his global connections and the different phases of his life.
It turns out that Patrick was not the first owner of the house. It was built by one of the original European settlers, John Morley, about whom less is known.
What we can say is that Morley saw potential in this tiny settlement.
His official position as Assistant Government Commissariat Officer gave him some backing to his plans to bring twelve Indian servants as indentured labourers to the colony, some of whose descendants are still in WA.
Quite correctly, Morley saw a need for labour in the infant colony but, by taking this action, he unwittingly came close to Patrick Taylor’s Caribbean background, as we shall see.
By August 1834, some more settlers had arrived in the colony on the ship the James Pattison. Three of the ten male saloon passengers stayed in Albany – Peter Belches, Thomas Brooker Sherratt and Patrick Taylor. All three were to have some influence here.
Patrick obviously had money. He quickly purchased the little cottage in Duke Street from Morley for £205 and he also bought land in the Kalgan River district where he intended to farm.
He was single, but had fallen romantically for another immigrant on the James Pattison who was going to join her family on the west coast. Her name was Mary Bussell.
Patrick and Mary married in 1837, despite Patrick’s misgivings about the family into which he was about to marry. He visited the Bussell family before his engagement but was dismayed by their harsh treatment of the aboriginal population.
There were a number of confrontations between the settlers and the local aboriginal people which led to several deaths.
This strengthened his decision to bring his new bride to Albany, after their marriage in Fremantle in September.
Mary, Patrick and Mary’s sister Fanny Bussell were on board the ship the Champion, whose arrival was greeted in celebration by a cannon shot. This somehow misfired and blew off the arm of the shooter, James Dunn. Their marriage was off to an interesting start!
Initially, Patrick with his wife and sister-in-law settled on his property on the Kalgan River which he called Glen Candy (after his Scottish heritage) but later become known as Candyup.
Patrick had great hopes of a successful and well-funded farming life, and to become part of the Albany aristocracy.
All this changed in 1840 when he learned that much of his wealth had vanished, probably pilfered by his financial advisors.
Patrick was near destitute, was forced to return to Scotland to sort out the financial mess, and his dreams of a substantial inheritance had vanished.
But where did his original wealth come from? Up until recently, this was little-known but it appears that much of it was a product of investments in the slave trade in Jamaica.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade became one of the blights on European civilization which prided itself on the Enlightenment, a movement of the 17th and 18th century which purported to place European society, learning and morals on a level above those of other nations.
The urgent push to create wealth from new colonies gained in the Americas led Britain and her European neighbours to capture West African men, women and children, and ship them across the Atlantic where they would work as slaves for generations, until slavery was outlawed in the 1830s.
Current estimates show that between twelve and thirteen million people were transported during that period, with possibly as many as two million dying on the dreadful trans-Atlantic crossing.
Patrick’s father John Taylor had gone to Kingston, Jamaica in 1783 to set up a company, McBean, Ballantine and Taylor.
According to researcher Ciaran Lynch, the firm began trading in plantation supplies, dry goods, and various other commodities, most of which would have profited from slavery.
However, on the back of fears over abolition, the demand for labour was booming and Taylor’s company could not resist joining in, quickly becoming known for its efficiency in unloading and selling slaves.
Not only was John Taylor benefiting from the slave trade, but he formed a relationship with a slave named Polly Graham, who was owned by his profligate cousin, Simon Taylor.
Polly gave birth to John’s son, James, in 1786, and, in the words of John Livesay from the University of Michigan:
“In the next several years, the couple would have three other children together, John, Simon and Catherine. John made no attempt to hide this mixed-race family from his friends in Jamaica, nor from his family back in Scotland, but he did not generally broadcast his liaison beyond those circles.”
John Taylor appears to have had a change of heart towards his discredited business and returned to Scotland, probably in 1792. He abandoned Polly Graham but took their four children back to Britain where they were schooled and probably joined the booming middle classes.
He also had aspirations to enter the Scottish aristocracy and quite quickly married Mary McCall. His new family expanded to ten and included one of the youngest, Patrick, who brought some of his wealth to the new colony of Western Australia, where his money was welcomed with open arms.
Patrick had been born in 1807 but both of his parents died a short time later. There is no indication that he knew much of his father’s business background – he was brought up by his elder siblings – but it may have made a real impression on his later life and his generous attitude to the indigenous workers who he and his wife’s family, the Bussells, employed.
So he returned to Albany, and, to pay his debts, began the process of selling part of his property portfolio, including the little cottage in Duke Street, to John Randall Phillips, who was later to be appointed as Government Resident.
Later, Patrick was able to buy back the cottage from Phillips but spent much of his time at Candyup as a virtual recluse.
Phillips himself, one of the supporting cast of interesting and somewhat shady characters in Albany around the 1840s, was implicated in violence against Perth aboriginals when he was farming in the Canning River area, prior to his Albany appointment.
Settler cover-ups in that era abounded, following shootings involving the Bussell family and subsequent retaliations in Pinjarra in 1834.
Always an introverted and insecure character, Patrick’s fall from financial grace coloured his attitudes to others in the little town of Albany and he was shunned by many of the important names in society.
Despite his poor mental health, he did serve on the Town Trust and on the Vestry of St. John’s Church but made little impact on the growth of Albany.
One of the most astute diarists and observers of the period, Reverend John Wollaston, described Patrick in 1848 as:
“… a great hypochondriac - great pity for in other aspects he is a fine character for truth, integrity and piety with well-informed mind cultivated by reading. Yet he fancies he is not well enough to come to Church, although he goes about his garden, and works a great deal in the house having no servant. Has met with great reversal and I suspect this has something to do with his seclusion. Alas human pride!”
Wollaston’s remarks were probably accurate. Patrick’s diaries reflect a man who was severely depressed and could not see a way forward. His writings are dark and his long-suffering wife Mary and their six children lived apart from him for many years.
However it was clear that he was unusual in that he treated his aboriginal servants and farm workers with a degree of dignity that was uncommon in that period.
Candyup, Patrick’s farm, was a traditional crossing place on the Kalgan River so had been used by the Menang for millennia. Hence there was always a constant aboriginal presence on the Taylor farm.
And in town also, Patrick was concerned with the educational welfare of aboriginal people. Again, according to Ciaran Lynch:
“Patrick proved his own subscription to the notion of education and Christianisation by penning a letter to the … Aborigines’ Protection Society established in London six years earlier and now a key political mouthpiece and potential avenue for funding. The society was concerned with native people from across the British colonies, not just Australia,” he wrote.
“In his letter, Patrick detailed the native vices and pitfalls he witnessed and expressed the need for civilisation, his words reiterating everything stated above about the inadequacy and failure of traditional Aboriginal culture in the face of colonisation. He called for the establishment of an institution at Albany, an industrial boarding school much along the lines George Grey had advocated.”
His advocacy also extended to the development of a church for Albany to replace the building which was owned by the same Thomas Sherratt who arrived with Patrick on the James Pattison in 1834, although he made it clear he was no longer in a financial position to help out.
He wrote to the Aborigines’ Protection Board in 1841:
“I have not funds sufficient to justify me in providing any assistance in the shape of money or provisions for such an Institution; but I should be glad to assist in so far as any exertion or advice might be thought likely to conduce to the interests of such an Establishment.”
His second son Campbell Taylor was a pioneer of the Cape Arid district, east of Esperance. Campbell and his wife Charlotte (Gresham) also showed great kindness to the shrinking Aboriginal population which was oppressed from many sides.
Campbell was to die after a tragic buggy accident in 1901. It took two weeks to bring him to hospital in Albany but the epic journey was ultimately to no avail.
Meanwhile, Patrick had died at Candyup in 1877, a bitter and sad man after the financial and social ruin that he had suffered.
His widow Mary and daughter Catherine became joint owners of the little cottage in Duke Street, where they continued to live.
Mary Walpole, an intrepid English traveller and author, visited Albany in 1883 and described Catherine Taylor (Patrick’s daughter) as a lady who:
“… lives in a little house, so small that it is almost lost in its own beautiful garden … She is a great rider herself. She lives with an invalid mother [Mary Taylor] and they have been here many years. Mr. Taylor was one of the first settlers in Albany; his son is now living on a station called Candyup 25 miles away.”
Mary Taylor died in 1887 but not before beginning a diary of her own where she recalled many of her past farming days at Candyup, the years of misery she suffered with a difficult and tyrannical husband, and the interactions she had with the Menang people.
Seen from today, it is without doubt a primary source document of great historical value in uncovering and explaining the relationships between Europeans and Noongar people in the Albany region in the 19th century.