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Paterson River history

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John Phillips Webber

[Penshurst] and [Guygallon]

John Phillips Webber was born in Overton, Wales in 1800. His brother and fellow Paterson River landholder James Phillips Webber was born at Overton in 1797. Their Anglo-Irish father Edward was a Lieutenant-General in the British army and their Dutch-American mother Charlotte was the daughter of the once immensely wealthy Frederick Philipse III of New York, a British loyalist who fled to England at the end of the American war of independence.

John Webber arrived in NSW on the ship Hugh Crawford in late 1826 and in January 1827 was granted 2,560 acres on the Paterson River. He named his grant "Penshurst" in honour of his first cousin who had recently become the first Baron of Penshurst in Britain.


James Webber's Penshurst.

John Webber sold Penshurst to George Townshend in 1834, but Webber did not give up on being a settler. In 1836 and 1837 he purchased 11 blocks of land on the Paterson River upstream from Penshurst, totalling 10,270 acres which he named Guygallon.

John Webber quit the colony some time after that and died of smallpox in London in 1845. He was unmarried and died without leaving a Will.



Walsh, Brian. Tocal's First European Setter - James Phillips Webber. CB Alexander Foundation, 1999.

Walsh, Brian. James Phillips Webber - The Man and the Mystery. CB Alexander Foundation, 2008.