An unusual explanation is given for the death of 47 year old Sarah in 1841 from the 3 foot tall slab of sandstone in Saint John's Cemetery in Parramatta. The engraved inscription reads:
IN
MEMORY of
SARAH WIFE
of MR MOSES MOSES
formerly of
HOBART TOWN
and now of YASS.
Died of broken heart
from peculiar family
trials April 1st 1841.
Aged 47 Years
Peace to her Shade
May the Divine Creator
receive her Soul into
everlasting rest - and
pardon her former
unnatural oppressors
From the website link below is a bit more information about Sarah:
"Given the long, established folk tradition, Sarah’s epitaph conjures images of the quintessential sheltered gentlewoman who fell victim to a rake and consequently died the most delicate and feminine of deaths. But in this and so many other ways, the epitaph is a stone counternarrative to much of what was said about Sarah in the paper trail left in her wake."
While Sarah Brown was born in Yorkshire in 1795, it was her passing of fake notes (Bank of England notes) in 1819 that landed her in gaol. After eight months in Ilchester County Gaol she was transported to Tasmania, arriving August 1820. In Hobart she was placed with a free settler family who ran a flour mill (Mr & Mrs Arnold Fisk) as a 'maid' but the next year (after infractions) was placed with another family, where while under the Baker's her attitude and actions landed her in Hobart Gaol, before being further placed in the service of the Governor.
It was just two months later that on 18 June 1821 the 28 year old Sarah Brown married Moses Moses in Hobart, Tasmania while 5 months pregnant. [Moses had his own judicial encounters from using false weights]. It seems that Sarah 'had a mouth', which landed her in court records.
"The bare facts are that while she was a convict in lutruwita (Van Diemen’s Land / Tasmania) she regularly fled what, from the outside, appeared to be a thriving business and home life, and that she was involved in heated exchanges. However, these details alone do not unequivocally reveal the kind of person Sarah was. What was she verbally opposing and running away from? Whether it was her master, mistress, judge, gaoler, or convict husband, all those who found fault with her conduct assumed their right to have power over her."
In April 1833 Sarah boarded the Enchantress at Hobart, and sailed to Sydney with her six children - while her husband had already sailed in March 1833. In August 1833 she was issued a 'Certificate of Freedom'. But her mouth kept on getting her into trouble with her neighbours in Sydney; and she found herself in court February 1836.
A couple of years later after her being placed on 'probation', Moses moved to Yass, but Sarah seems to have remained in Sydney, possibly as a transient - as Moses seems to have separated from her. While bigamy was not allowed in the colony, Moses had declared himself a widower in Yass, and remarried to Hannah Dray. They went on to have eight children of their own.
"Sarah ‘died of a broken heart’ on Wednesday 31 March 1841, just over a year after Hannah and Moses’s marriage, a few months after her eldest daughter, eighteen-year-old Anna Maria ‘the daughter of Moses Moses of the White Hart Inn, Yass,’ married in a Jewish ceremony at Cadi (Sydney), and in the same year that Moses and Hannah welcomed their first child, Barnett." [Above information gleaned or copied from: Sarah Moses, Cemetery records online.]
Address: St. John's Anglican Cemetery, 1 O'Connell Street, Parramatta, NSW, 2150, Australia
Visited: 0949, Thursday, 27 December, 2018
[Found after visiting with my financial advisor, whose window overlooked the cemetery!]