When the celebrated Hawkesbury ex-convict Andrew Thompson died in 1810, there were several vying for his top business position, including Thomas Gilberthorpe.
Gilberthorpe and Thompson had known each other for 20 years from 1791, when at 15 years of age, Gilberthorpe had found himself aboard the Pitt transport with Thompson, who was only three years older.
The two had kept in touch, it would seem, as they arrived at the Hawkesbury within a few years of each other, and each settled on a property in the same neighbourhood by 1802.
When Gilberthorpe bought John Fenlow’s riverside farm at Pitt Town Bottoms and married Mary McCarty by 1806, he was well placed to watch and replicate Thompson’s developing business acumen.
Thompson (after whom Thompson Square would eventually be named) had acquired vessels to transport his produce to market, and in 1805 Gilberthorpe heeded the lesson and purchased a boat for £80. As agent for a high-flying Sydney ex-convict trader, Thomas Abbott, he began trading and receiving wheat as payment for goods.
Immediately after Thompson’s death, but again following Thompson’s lead, Gilberthorpe ventured into inn-keeping. Macquarie’s 1811 decree for settlers to live in the newly created township of Pitt Town, was acted upon by Gilberthorpe who sold his vessel to fund a brick pit and kiln, not just to make bricks for his new inn and nearby grazing premises, but to supply bricks to those who, like himself, meant ‘to occupy those town lands’.
This was the original Pitt Town on the ridge behind today’s township, which was abandoned by 1815 as the present site developed instead. Thomas Gilberthorpe may not have finished this inn, but he advertised for two sawyers ‘to cut Timber for Building contiguous to Pitt Town’, giving his address as ‘Cottage Farm’, Hawkesbury.
Gilberthorpe’s troubles began when he added gunpowder to his sales, having to prove it was not done ‘improperly’. When Abbott died in 1812, Abbott’s executors took Gilberthorpe to court to retrieve the substantial amount of 1000 pounds owed for the goods, not allowing the agreement that the amount should be paid in wheat.
Not only did Gilberthorpe survive financially, but in 1814 Macquarie praised him as ‘the only Settler in the Colony who last year delivered into the Store the Complete quantity [of wheat] he had tendered at the Stipulated rate’. This reflected Thompson’s efforts four years before, in supplying grain for Macquarie, rewarded with the colony’s first ex-convict magistracy.
Whilst applauded by the governor for his efforts, Gilberthorpe was accused by the ministers Robert Cartwright and Samuel Marsden of collecting the wheat by charging high prices, and ‘turning it into the Store at a great profit to himself’. However, Macquarie accused them of seeking to profiteer by withholding their own grain to drive up prices, while retaining his high opinion of Gilberthorpe.
The Pitt Town farmer went on to expand into grazing properties just like his role model, Andrew Thompson.