Start Searching the Answers
The Internet has many places to ask questions about anything imaginable and find past answers on almost everything.
The Question & Answer (Q&A) Knowledge Managenet
The Internet has many places to ask questions about anything imaginable and find past answers on almost everything.
1791
Mary Reibey, whose name is spelled variously Reiby, Rabey and Reibey, arrived in Sydney in 1791 as a teenaged convicted horse thief and, through a fortuitous marriage and her own business acumen, became a leading colonial entrepreneur and philanthropist.
She died in 1855, a wealthy and respected member of colonial society. Mary was a favourite of Governor Macquarie as he saw her as an example of the value of integrating convicts who had served thier sentence back into society. Macquarie’s official encouragement of this was calling his Emancipist policy.
An enterprising and determined person of strong personality, during her lifetime Reibey earned a reputation as an astute and successful business woman in the colony of New South Wales. Mary, the matriarch of the family, had been transported to Australia in 1790 for the crime of horse stealing, then aged 14.
On 7 September 1794 she married in Sydney Thomas Reibey, a young Irishman in the service of the East India Co., whom she had met in the transport and who had returned to Sydney in the Britannia that year.
Convict Mary Reibey, was born on the 12th of May 1777 in Bury, England.
After gaining her freedom, she was viewed by her contemporaries as a community role model and became legendary as a successful businesswoman in the colony. Reibey baptised Molly Haydock, was born on 12 May 1777 in Bury, Lancashire, England.
This is the only convict listing for Mary that could be located. The other typical convict records, such as a ticket of leave, pardon, assignment or permission to marry, appear not to have survived. This is common for the convicts who arrived in NSW before the 1830s.
Draw a line across your page (landscape orientation). On the far left write the year that Mary Reibey was born (You will have to work this out from the information given). On the far right, write the date of when she died. In between mark when major events happened in her life.