Hunter Living Histories

Emeritus Professor John Fryer provided us with this reprint of this amazing plan of Maitland by the original name:

Plan of the Town of Maitland As Approved By His Excellency The Governor A.D. 1829

Digitised from a mounted reprint created in July 1986 by the Central Mapping Authority, Department of Lands New South Wales.

The original held in the Archives Office of New South Wales, (now NSW State Archives) under the location number of A.O. 3634.

Dennis Thurlow notes that:

“the “Maitland” of 1829 is now where East Maitland is currently situated.

Maitland now, is where Wallis Plains was from 1818 until its name was changed in 1835 to West Maitland, and again in 1945 to Maitland.

The geographic and name similarities have presumably mislead some people.  To make it clearer, let us say that the government in 1829 had prepared a subdivision on available Crown Land elsewhere, say near Morpeth or Hinton, and named it the Town of Maitland.  Then six years later, in 1835, changed this new town’s name to, say, North Maitland.  At the same time changing the name of the settlement at Wallis Plains to West Maitland.  Which would have a name change again in 1945 to Maitland.   Thus, this 1829 “Map of the Town of Maitland”, apart from being a neighbour, has nothing to do with the current city of Maitland.”

Kevin Short is reasonably confident that the earliest map of Maitland is the Plan of 121 Allotments in Bourke’s Paddock: see below, and accessible online.  I assume that it was originally part of the Molly Morgan (Mary Hunt) grant, as she is referred to on the northern side, between High Street and the Hunter River, and on the eastern side. This map is dated 11 February 1850 by R W Goodall, Surveyor.

There are several great maps of early East Maitland (also online), the earliest being the map that started this search: The Town of Maitland (sic) 1829.

See: Picture Maitland

Prepared by Gionni Di Gravio, OAM
University Archivist & Chair, Hunter Living Histories