Sarah Cobcroft (1772 – 1857) was a midwife and farmer who emigrated from England to Australia. She arrived in the

Colony of New South Wales The Colony of New South Wales was a colony of the British Empire from 1788 to 1901, when it became a State of the Commonwealth of Australia. At its greatest extent, the colony of New South Wales included the present-day Australian states of New ...

on 28 June 1790 aboard ''Neptune'', as part of the

Second Fleet The United States Second Fleet is a numbered fleet in the United States Navy responsible for the East Coast and North Atlantic Ocean. The Fleet was established following World War II. In September 2011, Second Fleet was deactivated in view of ...

Biography

Sarah Cobcroft (née Smith), 16 of

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of Lond ...

, Essex was one of a small of group of women and their children who embarked on ''Neptune'' in late 1789. They had accepted a government offer of a free passage to the colony for the wives or de facto partners of convicts on the second fleet. Cobcroft was the common law wife of John Cobcroft (1763–1853), who had been sentenced to life in the Colony, along with John Wood and

William Fielder William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conques ...

, for assault and highway robbery. They did not marry until 24 December 1842 at the Macquarie Schoolhouse in

Wilberforce, New South Wales Wilberforce is a small town in New South Wales, Australia, in the local government area of the City of Hawkesbury. It is just beyond the outer suburbs of north-west Sydney and lies on the western bank of the Hawkesbury River. History Wilberf ...

, when John was 79 and she was 70. Some publications have incorrectly identified her as a female convict of the same name who arrived on ''Neptune''; Cobcroft stated in her 1825 memorial that she had come free to the colony together with six other females sent out by Government for the purpose of practising midwifery per ship ''Neptune'' as part of the

to arrive in the Colony of New South Wales. It seems almost certain that she embarked as John Cobcroft’s de facto wife. Two of the other women who embarked on ''Neptune'' were legally married to John Wood and William Fielder, who had been convicted with John Cobcroft for crimes pertaining to highway robbery. John Cobcroft was granted a conditional pardon on 12 December 1794 by Lieutenant Governor

Francis Grose Francis Grose (born before 11 June 1731 – 12 May 1791) was an English antiquary, draughtsman, and lexicographer. He produced ''A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue'' (1785) and ''A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Pr ...

. On 22 July 1795 he was granted 30 acres of land at ''Wilberforce'', New South Wales by Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cobcroft, Sarah 19th-century Australian farmers Australian women farmers English emigrants to colonial Australia English midwives Australian midwives