Agnes Susan MacLean
7 June 1826 — 20 January 1911
Agnes Susan MacLean (5‑107‑19)
Susannah Agnes Kable, as she was christened, was the grand-daughter of First Fleet convicts Henry Kable and Susannah Holmes and Second Fleet marine William Charlton and convict Mary Gittos. Born in Bathurst, Susannah was the eldest of six children. Susannah's father, William Nathaniel Kable, died when she was eleven. Her mother, Elizabeth, remarried and with her new husband, Matthew Smith Finley, had another five children.
When Susannah was about six and living in Bathurst, her mother Elizabeth went one night to investigate an intruder in their house. An escaped convict was hiding in the bedroom. Taking the only weapon at hand, a small cobbler's hammer, Elizabeth levelled it at the intruder as if it was a pistol, saying "If you move, I'll fire." While covering the man with the hammer, she managed to attract the attention of a household servant. When the escapee found that he had been taken by a woman with a hammer, he vowed vengeance. The family lived in fear of his escaping again until he was sent to Cockatoo Island for a lengthy sentence.
When Susannah was 19, she married John Shand Maclean, the son of a Equity Court judge in Jamaica. John had arrived in Australia seven years earlier in 1838. The first of Susannah's ten children was born in 1847. Susannah followed her husband around as he pursued his various interests. John attempted farming and for a time taught at a gentlemen's academy in the Richmond area of New South she gave Wales.
Susannah was in Bathurst in 1853, where she gave birth to her third son. By 1856, where the ever-growing family had settled in the Burnett region of Queensland. Susannah's final four children were born on various cattle properties in the Burnett region.
Susannah struggled to raise her growing family with only the occasional help of indifferent servants. She was often left alone in the unlined slab house. At times Susannah would see eyes peering at her through the cracks. To ward them off, she would take a firearm from the rack and handle it as if she was about to use it. Her ruse appeared to have worked.
Tragedy struck in November 1862 when John fell off a horse and died on Gyandrah Station near Cracow, Queensland. Susannah was left with ten children under the age of fifteen and a cattle property to manage. She suffered another setback in the 1870s when a fire swept through Gyandrah, destroying all her photographs and heirlooms.
Susannah brought up her large family with the assistance of her brother and sister-in-law on a nearby property. The children learnt to swim in the Dawson River and reputedly all became expert riders.
In 1884 Susannah's youngest child, Eric, married sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Penhallurick at her residence at Westwood, via Rockhampton. From about this time, Mrs Agnes Maclean, as she became known, developed a reputation as a midwife, delivering many children in district, including a number of her own grandchildren. In October 1893, Agnes delivered Elizabeth's second son at Westwood. While Eric and Elizabeth had moved north to Bowen by 1895, it seems that Agnes moved south.
Agnes claimed the right to vote in 1905, her 80th year. She was registered on the electoral rolls as living with her youngest daughter, Elvina, and her schoolmaster husband, Charles Marshall, at the Nerang State School.
Agnes died of nephritis at the Nerang Hospital on the 20th of January 1911. She was buried at Toowong Cemetery next to her sister-in-law, Mary Ann Kable.
The grave of Agnes Susan Maclean was restored in 1998 with funds provided by the Kable family.
Acknowledgement
This story was contributed by Wendy O'Brien.