Ann Bellamy’s memorial stands out among the others due to her recorded age of 100 years.  She arrived as Ann Fay, a convict on Marquis Cornwallis in 1796 and married William Bellamy in 1798.  The marriage was recorded in St Johns Church Parramatta which was not unusual for Catholics.  Reverend Samuel Marsden was the Chief Cleric of the colony which was a Church of England establishment.  He decreed that anyone marrying in the Catholic Church was not really married but a concubine.  To make their union legal in the eyes of local authority, many Catholics married in the Church of England Church.  Searching the records shows that many Catholic couples then went to the Catholic priest and married according to the rights of their own church – so were married twice.  Ann’s headstone reads,

Sacred

to the memory of

Ann Bellamy

Who departed this life

2d January 1843

Aged 100 years

The burial register entry records her as 103 years.  She was certainly a great age but possibly not that age.  Records vary but her family obvious thought she was very elderly.  Maybe she looked 100 after transportation and a hard life under a harsh sun rather than the softer climate of Ireland.