Beulah is a heritage-listed farm at 767 Appin Road, Gilead, City of Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1835 to 1846 by Cornelius O'Brien, Duncan Cameron, John Kennedy Hume, Ellen Hume; Mansfield Brothers (1884 works). It is also known as Summer Hill; Summer Hill Estate. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History
Early land grants and occupation (1811-1835) The modern community of Appin celebrated the bicentenary of European settlement in May 2011, taking its foundation date as 1811 from the first land grants given to European settlers: given to Acting Commissary William Broughton (Lachlan Vale) and to Broughton's brother-in-law John Kennedy (Teston), both grants dated 22 May 1811. Four further grants were made on 25 August 1812: to Alexander Riley (Elladale); to Reuben Uther (Mount Gilead); to Andrew Hamilton Hume; and to George Best. Riley, Uther and Hume were all free settlers and Hume was connected by marriage to both Broughton and Kennedy. George Best was a former convict.
By 1813 there was an established farming community at Appin. When a subscription was taken up at Liverpool in July of that year to support the building of a courthouse at Sydney, 14 of the 81 subscribers were listed as residents of Appin. These residents were a mixture of free arrivals, former soldiers and former convicts. Several small grants to former convicts were issued in the next few years. Large landholders like William Broughton and Alexander Riley received additional large grants in 1816-1817 and both John Kennedy and Andrew Hamilton Hume received smaller additional grants in 1816. Hume's eldest son, Hamilton Hume, also received land in that year.
The four original Crown grants which today comprise the historic property known as Beulah were promised between 1814 and 1820. These four grants became parish portions 71, 77, 78 and 79, with the farmhouse now called Beulah built on portion 78 (Parish of Menangle (formerly Manangle).
Portion 78, , was granted to an Irish convict named Connor, or Cornelius, Bryan [Brien] from Clonmel, County Tipperary, transported for life on the Atlas 2 in 1802, aged 34. By 1806 he was assigned to Lieutenant William Minchin of the NSW Corps. [Minchin was also from Tipperary]. In June 1809 Bryan received a Conditional Pardon from Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson, acting governor of NSW in the wake of the arrest of Governor William Bligh in 1808. Bryan was obliged to surrender his Conditional Pardon in February 1810 following the arrival of the new governor, Lachlan Macquarie. In February 1810 he petitioned for its confirmation, declaring that he had spent most of his sentence in New South Wales as a servant of the government, and describing himself as an aged man who had left a wife and six children in Ireland to bewail his absence. He eventually received an Absolute Pardon in February 1812.
By 1814 Bryan was living at Liverpool where, from May that year, he had the services of assigned servant, Connor Boland, another Irish convict, newly arrived in New South Wales. Bryan's name was on a list of persons permitted by Governor Macquarie to become free settlers and to receive a grant of land in 1814. He was recommended for , the standard grant for a single man with no dependants.
Portion 79, , was promised to Patrick Pendergast [Pendergrass/Prendergast] in January 1816. Pendergast was also Irish, from County Sligo, transported for life on the Britannia in 1797. He was allocated in acknowledgement of his status as a married man.
Portion 71, , was promised to a Second Fleet convict named Henry Sears [Sayers/Seers] in September 1818.
Portion 77, , was granted to 18 year old colonial-born Francis Rawdon Hume, youngest son of Andrew Hume of Hume Mount, Appin. Hume jnr petitioned for land in May 1820, his petition supported by the local magistrates who declared him to be 'an honest, sober and most industrious young man. As shown on the original crown grant, Hume called his property Humewood.
Although none of these grants were formalised by an actual delivery of deeds until 1823, Bryan and Pendergast were almost certainly in occupation of their land by sometime in 1816 when both men supplied quantities of fresh meat to government stores.
Deputy Surveyor James Meehan's formal survey of the grants also seems to post-date occupation. Meehan's survey notebook has an entry for 6 February 1817 recording the marking out of for "Pat Pendergast" and an unspecified number of acres for "Cornelius Bryan". When the grants were issued on 30 June 1823 Bryan's grant was recorded as .