Sarah (Chidley) Welsh (abt. 1786 - 1866)

Sarah Chidley Harpur Walsh

Mother of Charles Harpur

“Wheogo” was owned by Sarah Walsh, who had three step-daughters, Kate, Ellen and Bridget, and a son, Johnny. Bridget (“Biddy”) was married to Ben Hall and Ellen was married to John McGuire.  By 1861, the bushranger, Frank Gardiner, was camping on  “Wheogo”, on which his mistress, Kate, still living with her husband. By 1861 also, while Hall was away mustering horses on the Bland, Biddy had left for the Fish River with her lover, James Taylor, taking her son by Hall with her. Hall acquired a new mistress, with whom he had a daughter. By early 1862, Hall had already fallen in with Gardiner. In April, 1862, Hall was arrested by the head of the Lachlan police, Frederick Pottinger, for highway robbery. Positively identified by two carriers who were bailed up, Hall was committed for trial in Orange, but one of the witnesses changed his evidence due, it was believed, to pressure placed on him by Hall and subsequently Hall was acquitted. Three months later, on Sunday, June 15, 1862,  the Eugowra escort raid took place, when four police officers escorting a gold delivery were ambushed and shot in an organised assault. Seven to ten men, disguised and in ‘uniform’ of red shirts and caps with blackened faces, placed bullock carts across the road to halt the escort and, emerging from behind rocks and trees, surrounded the officers and fired on them to the precision, British military-style orders of Gardiner, who commanded them as an army general. Every man but one in the escort – Sergeant James Condell, Senior-constable Henry Moran and constables James Phelan and William Havilland, was shot and wounded. The driver of the coach was also shot without major injury but constable Havilland shot himself dead as the coach arrived in Orange after the raid, although whether deliberately or by accident it was uncertain. The “Eugowra escort raid”, had been co-masterminded by Gardiner and Hall, planned on McGuire’s property and perpetrated by Gardiner, Hall, McGuire, John Gilbert, John O’Meally, Bow, Fordyce, Manns and Hall’s close friend, Daniel Chartres. Also recruited into the gang was Hall’s nephew by Biddy, her brother, the boy, Johnny Walsh, nicknamed “Warrigal”, who acted as Gardiner’s groom and scout. Following the raid, several of the gang were captured by parties of the Forbes police led by Pottinger. One of the perpetrators, Daniel Chartres, turned Crown evidence whereby only three of the perpetrators, the three illiterate stooges, Bow, Fordyce and Manns, were convicted. Hall was among those originally arrested. He feigned innocence of any part in the raid but escaped prosecution, only, it was believed, due to a deal made with Daniel Chartres. A relative of Hall’s by marriage, Member of Parliament, J. J. Harpur, accused that Hall evaded conviction only because Hall paid Chartres £200 to leave his name out of his testimony. Hall also paid good money to his lawyer, William Redman, to my knowledge, identified for the first time by myself as the Member for Queanbeyan at the time, to get him off. Frank Gardiner fled to Queensland with Kate, where under his real name, Christie, he owned an inn, until he too was captured and jailed. Under Ben Hall, the gang expanded their activities across New South Wales, from the Lachlan, penetrating  Queanbeyan, Braidwood and Yass to Gundagai, where the Jugiong raid took place in 1864, and Collector, where another police officer, Constable Nelson was shot dead and Nelson’s unarmed son shot at. After two years of perpetrating hundreds of attacks and several murders had taken place at the hands of his gang, Hall was shot by NSW police in 1865.

Annette Ross Notes : Sarah is Walsh and or Welsh in some articles Charles Harpur was the Gold Commissioner at the time. His mothers new life made it impossible for him to have contact with her. The Gold Escort robbery put Charles in an impossible position ,here were the men that were keeping his mother property going and sustaining her existence.

The day she died was the day he lost his job as Gold Commissioner

In the grand scheme this did not change who he was but knowing this some of his poems have a very different meaning. To be in the mind of such a brilliant poet so conflicted by personal events that he could speak about. Poetry was away of saying what he could not say in real life.

John O’Sullivan writes: After the Clark gang of bushrangers attacked Nerrigundah on the 9th April 1866, Sergeant Hitch of nearby Gulph diggings organised a posse which included Charles Harpur, then serving as Gold Commissioner. Harpur’s exertions in the pursuit of the Clark gang are open to question. According to the police historian, Martin Brennan, who was not impressed by Harpur’s magisterial ability in Araluen, Harpur could not last the distance and had to to be left at Eulowra Flat in the care of another of the posse. The poet’s daughter, however, put Harpur in the forefront of the pursuit. She also describes the panic felt by the isolated families on the Gulph goldfields when they heard the shooting at Nerrigundah. The boys were sent to melt lead for casting bullets and Mrs Harpur and the servants gathered all the money and valuables in the house and buried them in the bush.

In 1859 John Robertson, minister of lands, appointed Harpur an assistant gold commissioner on the southern goldfields, where he was efficient and just, popular and successful; his appointment was ended on 30 June 1866. 


The Lachlan.

When Gardiner arrived at Wheogo in 1861, Maguire stated;

I came across a man standing behind a tree. I at once recognised him as Frank Gardiner, "Hello Frank!" says I. What's up?" for I noticed he was terribly cut and hacked about the face. "Oh, I have had a terrible fight", was his reply, and I am pretty well done for. I shot Middleton at Fogg's yesterday.

The friendship between Maguire, Hall and Gardiner evolved through Gardiner's Lambing Flat butcher's shop. John Maguire and Ben Hall were then commencing a new venture. A cattle station called Sandy Creek, sixty miles distant. The two men also drew cattle from the adjacent Wheogo Station. Through Hall and Maguire, Gardiner fell for the beautiful Catherine Brown. A vivacious blonde, 5ft 3in tall. Wheogo Station was owned by Sarah Walsh nee Hurpur nee Chidley the stepmother of the men's wives Elen Maguire and Bridget Hall, following the women's father's death in 1858.

Bridget Hall c. 1860 Penzig Collection The new beef producers herded cattle to the lucrative Lambing Flat goldfield. Gardiner's business relationship with the men may have been facilitated through John O'Meally, whom Hall and Maguire knew well, including the happy go lucky John Gilbert, who ultimately joined Gardiner along with O'Meally and Hall bushranging.

The relationship between Gilbert, O'Meally, William Hall and Ben Hall, including Daniel Charters, whom Hall had been close friends with since 1854, was founded c. 1859/60 according to a Lachlan squatter who knew them all well. Highlighting their relationship in a letter published in November 1863;

About four years since, whilst taking some cattle overland from my station on the Lachlan, I fell in with young Hall, who was then stock-keeping for his brother near Bundaburra. He, O'Meally, Gilbert, and some others had all just returned from their usual trip after cattle, and on my asking them what luck they had met with, they replied: "they had camped out for three nights at a place called Humbug Creek, but had met with little or no cattle, only in one mob there were a few duffers." The term "duffer" is too well known to need description here; it simply means clean-skinned animals, which are appropriated by whoever can get them into a yard.

Note; Letter published below.

I got this reply from our expert on Harpur history:

"I did a fair bit of work on the Harpur-Hall link back in 2017, chasing up probate etc at NSW Archives and corresponding with interested people (like Mark Matthews at https://www.benhallaustralianbushranger.com/ ). CH's mother Sarah Harpur, widowed, did marry a John Welsh in 1847. The question is, how do we know for certain that that John Welsh was the John Walsh who was father of Bridget Walsh, wife of Ben Hall? Or put another way, how can we be absolutely sure that Bridget’s stepmother Sarah was really Sarah Harpur, mother of the poet? Personally I think it's very likely, but I've found no really solid proof.

Annette Ross is right about Sarah being buried at Penrith (we have the death cert); JJH was bringing her from Forbes, Ben Hall country. And she's right about CH chasing bushrangers but she has the wrong gang – it was the Clarke gang at Nerrigundah in 1866. Whether she's right about the Harpur-Hall link I can't say for sure."

Sarah Chidley Harpur Walsh is buried at Penrith in an unmarked grave. Two of the Walsh daughter married bush rangers. She is the stepmother in law to Ben Hall the bush ranger, and Frank Gardener. The Hall gang robbed a gold escort. Sarah’s son Charles Harpur was the gold commissioner at the time. He was with a group of police after the Hall gang.