Side by side at Sackville Cemetery

The Stephens and King families, two well-known surnames in the Ebenezer/Sackville district, share a plot at the Anglican Cemetery on Tizzana Road, Sackville. The two families were connected by marriage, when Walter King married Elizabeth Stephens in 1874. 

The Stephen & King headstones at Sackville Cemetery

Photo: M. Nichols, 2017

Walter was born in Glebe in 1849, the son of James Kelsey King, a tailor, and his wife Mary nee Baker. James and Mary with their three daughters, arrived in Sydney in 1838. The couple had an additional six children after arriving, including Walter.  The family settled in Sydney and appeared to prosper in their new surrounds. 

In the 1860s, a Provisional School consisting of a slab building was established at the junction of the Colo and Hawkesbury. Walter was appointed as a teacher and taught at the Lower Portland School from 1869 until 1872. The teacher was given a boat to row pupils to & fro across the riverways. He was noted as “an upright and a very conscientious teacher.”

A school was also established at Portland Head, but became known as Ebenezer Public School in 1887. King taught at Ebenezer from 1872 and was appointed as the Schoolmaster in the mid-1880s. Classes were originally held in the Ebenezer Church until a new weatherboard building was built on Coromandel Road. This building was destroyed by a bushfire in 1901 and the school was eventually relocated to its present site on Sackville Road with new buildings opening in 1902. King retired in 1912.

John Stephens was born in England in about 1806 and by his mid-20s was recorded as a Mason and Master Builder. He had lived in the Cornwall area for many years and was noted as a builder. John was sentenced to Life in 1833 after being caught forging a bill, and arrived on the ‘Neva’ in 1833. John married Elizabeth Brown in 1843, whilst living in Maitland, and shortly after they moved to Windsor. John and Elizabeth had six children including Elizabeth. They also raised Elizabeth’s niece from birth.  

Ebenezer School circa 1904

Photo: State Archives (NSW)

John Stephens senior is attributed as building Buttsworth’s Mill at Wilberforce, in the late 1840s. Their sons, James Brown (1849) and John Gross (1850) were also well-known stonemasons and worked alongside their father, eventually taking over the business. 

Some of the structures built in Ebenezer and Sackville include Rockleigh ca 1870; Coromandel ca 1890; Girrawa Park (now Pickwick Park); Stonehill; Ebenezer Villa; St Thomas Anglican Church, Sackville completed in 1871; Sackville North School built in 1878, now known as Brewongle Field Study centre. They also built Tizzana Winery in 1887, the Sackville Methodist parsonage and the St Albans Court House which was completed in 1892. These surviving properties, built by remarkable craftsmen, are important examples of sandstone construction, and contain outstanding heritage features.   

John Stephens senior died in 1890 aged 84 and is buried at Sackville cemetery, with his wife Elizabeth who passed away twelve months earlier. Son John died in 1922 aged 71 and James died a few months later, aged 73.  Both are buried at Sackville Cemetery.

 The Stephen home on Tizzana Road Ebenezer

Photo: M. Nichols, 2018

Walter and Elizabeth King built their own residence on Sackville Road, called ‘Twyfordville’. Walter was a popular teacher, well-like by the students and the local community. In 1912, after a career spanning over thirty years, he retired from teaching.

Report of Walter’s death in Windsor& Richmond Gazette 26 Oct 1934

Walter passed away near Gosford, aged 86 years, in 1934 and was buried at Sackville Cemetery. As a mark of respect, the local school children stood and saluted as the cortege passed Ebenezer School. Elizabeth died two years later and their headstone is side by side John and Elizabeth Stephens, in the Anglican Cemetery at Sackville.

Hawkesbury's oldest headstone

The oldest known surviving headstone in the Hawkesbury belongs to John Howorth and is located at Wilberforce.

On the 8 October 1804, eleven year old John Howorth died from a snake bite in Wilberforce. The circumstances were published in the Sydney Gazette and outlined how how he was tending sheep.

The Sydney Gazette 14 October 1804 p. 4

The following week a fuller version of the situation was published in The Sydney Gazette 21 October 1804 p. 2. Here is an extract:

The following are the particulars of the unfortunate circumstances attending the death of the child at Hawkesbury last Monday se'nnight in consequence of the bite of a snake. Two sons of Mr. John Howorth, settler, went together among some standing and fallen timber, to look after a small flock. The eldest boy, sitting near a large tree in which three apertures had been cut for the purpose of searching after the bandycoot, unhappily stretched on of his arms within the hollow, and suddenly withdrawing it much terrified, acquainted his brother that he had received a bite from a black snake. The poor little fellow, conscious of his danger, with an air of despondency remarked that he should soon die; and complaining of sudden illness, made an effort to return homeward. But his faculties yielding to irresistible lethargy and stapor, he lost his way before he had proceeded many paces, and was observed by a neighbouring settler, who enquiring what ailed him, received in a feeble tone the information of his illness, but without assigning any cause of complaint. The good man took him into his house, and lay him on his bed. The parents were made acquainted with the state the child was in, and immediately attended him; but he was then wholly insensible, and continued so during the short remaining period of his existence. About four in the afternoon the doleful accident occurred; and at about the same hour the following morning he expired, to the extreme regret of his parents, who were totally unacquainted with the cause of his death until after the event had taken place; when the other disclosed the above circumstance, and the body being examined, a wound appeared upon the left arm, thro' which the noxious viper had poured the contaminating fluid.

The sad details of the unfortunate event are carved on his headstone:

It was the subtile surpent's bite he cride

then like A Rose bud cut he drup'd and died

in life his Fathers glorey

and his mothers pride.

John Howorth's headstone, the oldest surviving in the Hawkesbury, at Wilberforce.

Sometime in the 1930s, local historian, George Reeve, arranged to have the stone re-cut. On the 5 December 1960, when the Hawkesbury was celebrating 150 years of the naming of the Five Macquarie Towns, the headstone was moved from its original location on the Hawkesbury riverbank to the St John's Anglican Church complex at Wilberforce by the Hawkesbury Historical Society. Siblings of John's Elizabeth and Catherine, who both died in infancy, are also mentioned on the headstone. The article can be viewed on Trove in the Windsor & Richmond Gazette 7 December 1960 p. 11.