The pastoral families of the Hunter Valley, 1880-1914

Abstract

The Hunter valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a burgeoning rural society. Its population of humans, cattle, sheep and horses grew rapidly. The number of its farms increased from 5,000 in 1885 to over 11,000 by 1914. Although legal and social attacks were launched on the unequal distribution of property in this society between 1880 and 1914, the economic structure remained fairly stable. While the community as a whole grew richer, the rich grew richer too. The principal forms of property in the Hunter valley were land and animals; in 1880 ownership of this property was concentrated in a marked way into the hands of a few score families and after more than thirty years remained almost as concentrated. Ownership of property among this handful of families was largely hereditary, and although there was a good deal of transference of property from one individual or partnership to another, estates tended to remain with the same few score families. These families were a stable and distinct economic elite in a prosperous expanding society. The economic elite did not form a complete marriage or social elite, being divided within itself into circles of connubiality and acquaintance which on occasion crossed the lines of economic class . Religion acted as an arbitrary divider of th economic elite, but education seemed to unite many members of the group - along with other well-to-do people - into something of a status elite. The economic elite clearly dominated certain fields of political , military, magisterial and other power in the Hunter valley and was certainly disproportionately influential in most. On the other hand, many members of the economic elite took no part in public life and did not act as leaders. In two particular environments important to the economic elite - their estates and their homesteads - they were clearly distinguishable in their customs from all other people in the community. The economic elite - which I have dubbed 'the pastoral families' - was a successful propertied group which had acquired, and was acquiring status and power in varying degrees. Those status and power forms that could be paid for in cash were common to all the pastoral families. But where personality, public presence and other intangibles came into play - as in so many institutions of rural society - only some pastoral families held authority or were admired by their economic inferiors.