Supporting those less fortunate.
Tony Clift is a sixth-generation member of the Clift family and has been researching his family history for around 30 years. Among the many community contributions and family achievements he has uncovered is evidence of the family’s involvement with the Maitland Hospital. He has written the following account for the Maitland Hospital records.
Left: A.G. (Tony) Clift beside an 1870s painting of his forebears’ house on Breeza Station.
Samuel Clift Senior
As early as 1846 patriarch Samuel Clift, gave a generous £1/1/6 subscription to the Maitland Hospital Committee. The following year, after winning a court case against a neighbour due to trespassing cattle, he donated the 7 shilling fine to the Hospital Committee. In 1848 he is recorded as a trustee of the hospital and, in 1849, just prior to the new hospital being opened, he became a member of the Hospital Committee. His support of the hospital with donations and being on the committee continued into the mid-1850s.
Who was Samuel Clift?
RIght: Samuel Clift Senior (1793-1862)
From humble convict beginnings and no formal education Samuel Clift created a colonial dynasty in New South Wales.
He arrived in Sydney on 5 May 1818, after being sentenced to transportation for 14 years for having forged notes in his possession. In the 1828 census he is recorded as a farmer with 60 acres at Wallis Plains (Maitland). He subsequently established a butchering business in Maitland and, over the next few years, acquired more land and commercial enterprises in the district. In the mid-1930s, he began acquiring runs on the Liverpool Plains: Doona, Mooki River, Breeza, Weia Weia Creek. The consolidated area of these runs totalled 198,300 acres (80,250 ha) and became known as Breeza Station. It stretched from Spring Ridge and Goran Lake in the west to the ranges east of Werris Creek.
Early on, Clift built his home in Maitland. His first three dwellings still survive in Maitland today. They are all adjoining and located at the very eastern end of High Street, near Wallis Creek. They range from the earliest one, the Toll House (circa 1826), through to Bridge House (1828-31) and Walli (circa 1840).
Toll House (left) and Bridge House (right), Sydney Mail, 9 March 1904.
In 1824 Samuel Clift had married Ann Duff. The couple had 10 children – 6 boys and 4 girls, with one dying in early infancy.
Breeza Station and Clift’s sons
Samuel Clift did not live on his land on the plains but generally employed assigned or former convicts to establish and work his runs.
In the later half of the nineteenth century Breeza Station was run as a partnership called Clift Brothers that included William (1825-1889), Joseph (1827-1917), Samuel (the Younger) (1836-1912) and George (1843-1912). At its peak they sheared over 100,000 sheep and ran up to 1,000 head of cattle. They also bred from draft horses totalling up to 800 at times. The partnership employed around 50 people with that number doubling at shearing times. Closer settlement legislation, family deaths and property succession to various family members saw the aggregation of the property much reduced and split by the early twentieth century with the Breeza Station name centred on the homestead lands near Breeza Village.
The brothers took a ‘hands on’ approach to running the enterprise but all had town houses, which still survive today, in and around Maitland. They were Walli House (Maitland), Clifton (Lochinvar), 40 Banks Street (East Maitland) and Roseneath (East Maitland). As well as other business interests, the brothers were also strong contributors to numerous charities and church activities. Three of the brothers became magistrates in the early colonial legal system even though they were sons of a convict.
The next generations and Maitland Hospital
After a break due to the death of Samuel Clift (Senior) in 1862 and his sons establishing themselves and working away at Breeza and elsewhere, history repeated itself with Samuel Clift (The Younger) being elected to the Maitland Hospital Committee in 1871. Other members of the family also supported the hospital with donations of time for fundraising and in-kind with consumables such as wine and fat sheep.
Samuel’s brother Joseph, Joseph’s wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Jane were heavily involved in supporting the hospital. In 1877 Joseph Clift’s name was placed on a tablet in the hall of that institution as a public benefactor while his daughter, Jane, due to her significant fundraising efforts in collecting £50 from the stations of the Clift Brothers of Breeza was also added to the tablet and was made a life member. Jane had started regularly collecting for the hospital from at least 1871. Her mother, Elizabeth, strongly supported both the Maitland Hospital and the Benevolent Society, being later made an Honorary President of the latter institution.
Samuel Clift continued on the Hospital Committee during the 1870s and 1880s. For Christmas 1880 he asked the Matron of the Hospital to provide the inmates with a good dinner at his expense and repeated the gesture the following year. By the mid-1880s the Clift Brothers of Breeza took over that charitable function and also acted similarly on regular occasions for the Maitland Benevolent Society. There seemed to have been some good spirited competition between other hospital benefactors in supplying dinners to the inmates on special occasions and, if the Clift Brothers missed out for Christmas, they did it for New Year’s Day.
Left: Samuel Clift The Younger (1836-1912)
By the late nineteenth century local fundraising for the hospital also came from annual collections around Maitland whereby various parts of the locality were divided up to be targeted by a women’s group. Samuel Clift’s wife, Anne, looked after East Maitland where they lived. By the early 20th century this event became known as Hospital Sunday. One of Samuel and Anne’s daughters subsequently took over organising the East Maitland part of the collection.
One of the more interesting and pleasurable fundraising activities for the hospital started in 1901 in the form of the Maitland Hospital Benefit Races held at the Rutherford Racecourse. The then surviving Clift brothers of Joseph, Samuel and George, owned and built the Maitland Racecourse at Rutherford in the 1880s. They even constructed a private railway line to the site. For a number of years, they provided free use of their facility to the hospital for this annual event.
View of the racecourse in 1904.
Perhaps one of the major milestones in the hospital’s history started in 1900 when five Maitland locals formed a delegation to Sydney to meet with the Colonial Secretary in regard to the proposal to erect a new hospital at Maitland. One of that number was Samuel Clift. Again, the population it served had grown to such a point that a new hospital building was badly needed. The delegation proved successful with a new hospital building erected in 1905.
History had repeated itself with Samuel Clift (Senior) on the committee when the first purpose-built hospital was erected in Maitland in 1849 while his son of the same name was on the committee and heavily involved when a new hospital building was successfully acquired over 50 years later.
All in all, the Clift family’s contribution to the establishment and running of Maitland Hospital from the mid-19th century into the first decade of the 20th century is a legacy to be proud of.
The images and portraits in this story are from Tony Clift’s personal collection and from his family history research.