1814  Hobart Town: Property deals, Horse races & a baby

…”Horse-racing was also popular. The few who could afford horses raced then against their neighbours’. A racecourse was formed on the government farm at New Town as early as 1810. Race meetings were established there in 1814 and quickly became a regular event.” Sharon Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: Creating an Antipodean England (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992), 45.

…”Early racing consisted of one-against-one challenges, using horses not bred for racing. The first recorded race took place in 1813 at a course at New Town, when John Ingle raced his grey mare Whyena against the Hobart paymaster's black filly Sally for the best of three 2-mile heats, the loser to pay the winner 20 guineas. Such races became popular in both Hobart and Launceston, and developed as thoroughbreds for racing were imported from England from the 1820s.” http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/H/Horseracing.htm

HOBART 1814

Thomas Peters is named in a document for the ‘Re-assignment of Land in Van Diemen’s Land’. On 3rd February 1812 an agreement is made between Thomas Newby and Sarah Jones, for part use of a dwelling house and property in Elizabeth St. Hobart Town to be assigned to Private Stephen Reid and Sergeant Grant of the 73 regiment. This use is transferred from Sergeant Grant to Thomas Peters on 26th April 1814, and Peters then transfers his interests to Joseph Wright.   (New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary's Papers, 1788-1856 Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312 via Ancestry.com)

• • Thomas Peters signs this, and other documents, with his Mark.  This is not a clear indication that he was illiterate. Often illiterate people learnt to sign their name, and until the late 1800s many literate people chose to use the X mark on legal documents. 
• • Thomas Newby and his wife Sarah Jones were Norfolk Islanders who were part of the second embarkation (the Porpoise) to leave Norfolk Island on for the Derwent, Van Diemen's Land on 26th Dec 1807. 
• • The New South Wales Corps (now known as the Rum Corps) was raised under the command of Major Francis Grose. After the Rum Rebellion, which occurred on 26 January 1808, the British Government sent Colonel Lachlan Macquarie to New South Wales along with his own regiment, the 73rd Regiment of Foot, the Royal Highlanders. All the officers of the New South Wales Corps were returned to England in disgrace in 1810. The 73rd Regiment - Royal Highlanders were in Tasmania from 1810 until 1814 when the order was given for the 73rd Regiment to embark to Ceylon.  On 28 April 1814 Governor Macquarie reported to Earl Bathurst that he had ordered the Windham to go from Sydney to Hobart and thence Ceylon.  Detachments stationed at Hobart at that time ‘being two Companies consisting of 220 men besides Officers, women and children’. The departure the of 73rd Regiment is the likely reason for the property exchange between Sergeant Grant and Thomas Peters on 26th April 1814 . http://www.bda-online.org.au/files/MR4_Military.pdf