Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

Travellers' Rest Inn Parramatta

Georgian building at 16 O'Connell Street, on the corner of Hunter Street Parramatta. Erected as an inn it served many purposes over the centuries including use as a hostel for homeless men by the 1890s. With the two buildings at 12 and 14 O'Connell Street, it forms the Travellers Rest Inn Group.

-33.815047002069, 150.99975448317

Property
Part of
Owned by
1830 - 1860
Owner of
1892 - 1955
Occupied by
1892 - 1910
Type

Elizabeth Agnes Miller

CC BY-SA 2.0
,
2015

Elizabeth Agnes Miller arrived in Sydney on the ill-famed 'floating brothel', the Janus, having received a 14-year sentence for possession of forged banknotes. She soon married William H Bennett and rose to become a respectable baker's wife and matriarch in the town of Parramatta in the second quarter of the nineteenth century

William H Bennett

CC BY-SA 2.0
,
2015

Sentenced to seven years transportation for theft, William H Bennett progressed from being a convict in a 'town gang' at Parramatta to being a highly respectable baker and landholder. Like other upwardly mobile emancipists, William Bennett negotiated the degradations of the convict system while keeping sight of the opportunities the new colony offered.