John married Maria Field on 17 Feb 1817 in Christ Church, Castlereagh, New South Wales, Australia. Maria was born on 1 Sep 1801 in Parramatta Nsw Australia; died on 28 Aug 1842 in Castlereagh, New South Wales, Australia. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Anthony was baptised on 1st August 1755, at St Marys, Norton Subcourse, Norfolk, England.
He was illiterate and a labourer. Anthony came from a family of Carpenters and Brickmakers, handy skills which he brought with him to Sydney Cove. He was tried at Chelmsford on 10th March 1785 he was found guilty of stealing clothing and coin to the value of 35 shillings from Robert Gosling and Robert Bradley; he was sentenced to transportation for 7 years.
Left England on 13th May 1787.
Ship:- the ‘Alexander’, before she left Portsmouth, a fever broke out on board that killed 16 convicts. She left carrying 195 male convicts, 15 more convicts died on the journey, the most for any ship in the first fleet.
Arrived on 26th January 1788.
Upon the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, all the convicts were put to work in various jobs necessary to build shelter and feed all the people. Anthony Rope was sent to work in the brickfields, which were located near what is now Central Station in Sydney. In Anthony’s small amount of spare time he built a hut there for himself and this was finished by May 1788. Elizabeth, along with other women, would have been put to work sewing, cleaning, washing and cooking.
Anthony and Elizabeth met on the first night that the women of the Fleet were set down at Sydney Cove on 6th February 1788. They were married on 19th May 1788 by the Reverend Richard Johnson, celebrating with meat from a goat that one naval officer reported as missing. They had 8 children between 1788-1808, their son Robert Rope was possibly one of the first children conceived and born in the settlement.
Anthony was given a grant of land at The Ponds which is now part of the Sydney suburb of Dundas, but this later had to be sold to repay debt. Farming was very harsh and the settlers were constantly deluged by floods and ravaged by fires and droughts.
The family moved to various farms out in the west of Sydney as they looked for land that would safely grow crops. It should be noted that although the farms were granted to the owners, Anthony was the first settler at all of the farms he moved to, so he first had to clear the land before he could put crops in. He also had to build the family home every time they moved.
Anthony did extra jobs to make money along the way. At one stage he was employed to build a dwelling for the workers on Elizabeth King’s farm Dunheved in 1807.
Recent research by Rope family historians has identified at least five sites where the family lived as they moved from leasehold to leasehold: Rope’s Farm at The Ponds, now Dundas; a farm at Toongabbie; Tumbledown Barn at Mulgrave Place, now Riverstone, near Windsor; Badgery’s Farm on the Nepean River near Richmond; and Jordan Hill in what is now Llandilo, on the west bank of South Creek. The stretch of land leading to this leasehold was known as Rope’s Paddock for many years. The new suburb, Ropes Crossing, has been named after him as it lies near where the family farmed at Jordan Hill.

Anthony married Elizabeth Pulley (maid. name (Convict first fleet to Australia)) in 19 May1788 in Port Jackson, Sydney, New Suoth Wales. Elizabeth was born on 27 Mar 1763 in Hethersett, Norfolk, England; died on 9 Aug 1837 in Evan, Castlereagh, New South Wales, Australia. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Elizabeth was born in Felthorpe, Norfolk, a village just thirty kilometres north-west of Anthony Rope’s birthplace at Norton Subcourse. Her baptism took place on 21 Feb 1762 at St Margarets in Felthorpe with her parents listed as Tobias and Alice Pully. She and her three brothers were orphaned by the time she was 6 and all four may have been then sent to the workhouse.
During her teenage years Elizabeth ran wild. In July 1779 she was acquitted of stealing clothes and just a year later she was sentenced to three weeks in Wymondham Bridewell prison for stealing clothes from a house near Drayton. Her punishment included a public whipping in the market place.
Things were getting worse by 1781 when again she was in court for stealing clothing and money belonging to a Mr Pightling of Heatherset. This crime earned her a year’s hard labour at Aylsham Bridewell. Not long after her release she was in trouble again and in March 1783 she was tried at Thetford Assizes and convicted of stealing a large quantity of food and material (worsted) from the shop of a Mrs Elizabeth Minns of Hethersett. This time she was sentenced to death by hanging but was reprieved by the judge as he left for London and she then spent three years languishing in gaol at Norwich castle while awaiting transportation. A short time in the ‘Dunkirk’ hulk at Plymouth preceded her voyage to New South Wales on the transport ‘Friendship’.
Along with 20 other female convicts Elizabeth suffered dreadfully, as she herself was in irons for 72 days of the 93 days from 13 May till 13 August 1787. Lt Ralph Clark’s diary pinpoints five fighting women which he at one stage labelled as damned whores. Elizabeth Pulley was listed as one of the five. The ship travelled in extremely hot weather and it was lice-ridden, so her conditions were very uncomfortable. Thankfully, when the Fleet reached Cape Town (South Africa), she was transferred to the Prince of Wales ship with other female convicts. This was to make room for animals and other supplies to be taken on board the Friendship.