Bolongaia (Boorooberongal) Lock (abt. 1805 - 1878)

Born about 1805 in Richmond, New South Wales, Australia

Ancestors

Wife of Dicky Bennelong — married 1822 in Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia

Wife of Robert Lock — married 26 Jan 1824 in St John's Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia

Descendants

Died 6 Jun 1878 at about age 73 in Windsor, New South Wales, Australia

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Maria (Boorooberongal) Lock was an Indigenous Australian. Join: Indigenous Australians Project Discuss: INDIGENOUS_AUSTRALIANS

First nations people(s) should be aware that this biography contains content referring to people who have past into the dreaming.

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Biography

Maria (Boorooberongal) Lock is Notable.

Descendant of Gombeeree, who has entered the Dreaming.

Maria (Boorooberongal) Lock was born in the Colony of New South Wales (1788-1900)

Bolongaia was a Darug woman from the Boorooberongal clan. She was the daughter of an elder of the Boorooberongal, named Yarramundi, but details of her mother are unknown as yet.^[1]

In the early 1800s, when Bolongaia was born, very few institutions systematically recorded birth records of Indigenous Australians. In New South Wales before 1856, birth records were collected by parishes so it is rare to find First Nations records except through marriages with colonists or the activities of missionaries. ^[2]. No birth record for Bolongaia has been located and it is unlikely that an official record exists.

However, it was estimated in the 1828 census that she was born circa 1808. ^[3] Despite this, it is likely that she was born earlier, with her age at death being recorded as 84 in 1878 ^[4] and a newspaper report describing her academic achievements suggesting she was aged 14 in Apr 1819. ^[5]

Work in progress

Yarramundi was a Boorooberongal elder who had met Governor Phillip-196 on the banks of the Hawkesbury in 1791, where the Governor was presented with a gift of 2 stone axes. The Clan lived in the area later referred to as Richmond, Sydney, New South Wales.

She may have been given the name Maria when she first came into contact with non-Aboriginal people or when she was admitted to the Parramatta Native Institution, whose founder and Patron was Governor Macquarie, on 28 December 1814 or she may have been named Maria Cook if the marriage record is correct and not a transcription error.^{[6] [7]}

Maria has been described as "amazing", "exceptional, "A Remarkable Woman", which the biographies clearly demonstrate. For example, in 1819, the Sydney Gazette, reported that an Aboriginal girl aged 14 won first prize in the NSW Anniversary Schools Examination, ahead of 20 Aboriginal and 100 non-Aboriginal candidates. This is thought to have been Maria, who in 1822 was living with the Reverend Thomas and his wife Anne in Parramatta, when she married 'Dicky' a son of Bennelong, who had also been in the Institution with Maria (who was there from 1815 to 1823^[8] but moved to the house of a Wesleyan missioner William Walker, and was baptized Thomas Walker Coke [only in Bibliography 3]. Within weeks of his marriage he became ill, died, and was buried on 1 February 1823 at St John's Church of England, Parramatta.

Maria had obtained a job working in the household kitchen of Governor King, where her future husband, Robert Lock was assigned to her after their marriage, as he was a convict, illiterate and a carpenter, who was also working there as a guard for Governor King. On 26 January 1824 they were married at St John's Church, Parramatta, the first official Aboriginal-British marriage in the Colony.

Her name Lock is sometimes spelt Locke, as that version is found in her granddaughter Michelle Lea Locke.

No marriage record has yet been seen for her first marriage. The second is under the name Maria Cook and was registered in Parramatta, New South Wales in 1824. She was rewarded at the commencement of her marriage to Robert with the offer of 40 acres of land in the Liverpool area - the first grant of land made by the British to an Aboriginal person - where they lived before moving to Blacktown in 1844. Jack Brook has that "she settled on land granted to her in Blacktown" (ref.2) that she owned from 1844 to 1878. This reference also has that Maria became the owner of land of her brother Colobee and Nurragingy from 1843 to 1878.

There are different versions as to how Maria became a landowner in the different bibliographies but she certainly required a strong strength of character for an Aboriginal woman in those extremely difficult times for the First Peoples of the Land! Maria died on 6 June 1878 aged 70 with her death registered in Windsor, New South Wales, and was buried in the cemetery beside Robert at St Bartholomew's Church of England, Prospect.

By 2005 "dozens of families can trace their descent through Maria to Yarramundi and to his father Gomebeeree, an unbroken link stretching back to the 1740s"!

Kinship and Naming

Suggested use of naming fields (please click on hyperlinks for definitions):

• Proper first name: Bolongaia - As no birth was officially recorded, it is assumed she was born outside of the reach of a colonial institution. Her descendants have recorded her name (totem) as Bolongaia ^[9] and thus, this is suggested as a formal first name in this field.
• Preferred name: Maria - was a name bestowed upon Bolongaia ^[10] as part of the intention colonial administration led by Governor Macquarie to Christianise and Europeanise Aboriginal children ^[11] It is included in this field as a first name at death, or one that was adopted as a proper name, likely as a result of her institutionalisation.
• Skin name: unknown - this name is not public knowledge and may or may not be known, thus it cannot be used in a public profile.
• Clan/family group: Boorooberongal - in light of Bolongaia's skin name not being publicly available, Boorooberongal is considered to be the most appropriate name to to be used in the Last Name at Birth (LNAB) field, representing her family group.
• Current Last Name: Lock/Locke - a name obtained via marriage
• Other Last Names: Coke/Cook - two variations of an Anglicised surname bestowed upon 'Dicky' who Bolongaia married prior to her official marriage to Robert Lock.

Sources

1. ↑ Green, Richard. 'Blackstown and Windsor' in Dharug and Dharawal Resources, accessed 28 May 2019.
2. ↑ New South Wales State Archives & Records (n.d.) 'Aboriginal Resources: An Overview of Records', Accessed on 27 May 2019.
3. ↑ New South Wales Government. 1828 Census: Householders’ returns [Population and Statistics, Musters and Census Records, Census, Colonial Secretary] . Series 1273, Reels 2551-2552, 2506-2507. State Records Authority of New South Wales. Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; cited in Ancestry.com. 1828 New South Wales, Australia Census (Australian Copy) [database on-line] Name: Maria Lock Estimated birth year: abt 1808 District: Cabramatta Residence Age: 20 Residence: New South Wales, Australia Residence Date: 1828
4. ↑ Sydney Diocesan Archives, Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Baptism, Burial, Confirmation, Marriage and composite registers; cited in Sydney, Australia, Anglican Parish Registers, 1814-2011 [database on-line] Name: Maria Lock Death Age: 84 Event Type: Burial Birth Date: abt 1794 Death Date: abt 1878 Burial Date: 8 Jul 1878 Burial Place: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Parish as it Appears: Prospect
5. ↑ The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842) Sat 17 Apr 1819 Page 2 On Tuesday last an Anniversary School Examination took place at Parramatta, at which the children of the Native Institution were introduced, their numbers not exceeding twenty; those of the schools of the children of Europeans amounting nearly to a hundred. Prizes were prepared for distribution among such of the children as should be found to excel in the early rudiments of education, moral and religious; and it is not less strange than pleasing to remark, in answer to an erroneous opinion which had long prevailed with many, namely, that the Aborigines of this country were insusceptible to any mental improvement which could adapt them to the purposes of civilized association, that a black girl of fourteen years of age between three and four years in the school, bore away the chief prize, with much satisfaction to their worthy adjudgers and auditors. Other prizes were designated to children of much desert ; and it was declared generally that the attention paid to their instruction by their various instructors was entitled to much praise for their zeal in so good a cause, manifested in the improvement of their pupils. At the time HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR MACQUARIE was pleased to institute and patronize the Institution for the maintenance and instruction of these poor children, it was considered by very few otherwise than as a benign wish to withdraw them from a condition which had no rank in the scale of human nature; but under this benign auspices, aided by the zealous exertions of the Gentlemen appointed to its Committee, we have already the happiness of contemplating in the infant bud the richness of the expanding flower. That they might have been for many years to come reserved for the contempt of the more enlightened world no doubt may be formed; but do not all late accounts inform us that the black natives of Africa are in the exercise of high offices in St Domingo ; which they not only conduct with precision, but fill with a degree of urbanity (which may nevertheless be more confined to the reception of strangers than to common habit) and why then should we despair of these poor people being equally redeemable from their state of abjection, which was in itself but natural to persons whose only associates were the animals of the forrest? It is true, that repeated instances in our natives, have occasioned their adapting themselves in youth to European manners, and in the end retreated to the woods to rejoin their kindred ; but in this there can be no- thing to be wondered at ; that state amongst the white population that was assigned to them was possibly little bettter than the one they had forsaken ; the meanest offices of drudgerery always reflecting upon their minds a picture of debasement, a want of attention to their common wants, of which our very dogs and horses had not to complain. Such treatment could not be considered a fair trial of their capacities or fixed inclinations. On the contrary, it was sufficient to disgust instead of withdrawing them from habit which at maturer age appeared to themselves to be even less intolerable. In a Gazette ten years ago we recollect ascribing to another cause their voluntary return to original habits. Man can not be happy without society, for nature has enriched him with a mind which unfits him to the state of solitude. A poor native boy in a kitchen was worse than in a state of solitude ; for he had constantly, and the more so as he improved in faculty, to lament a debasement which nature alone had stamped upon him. There is an assocíate which man in every condition finds congenial to his wishes; the smallest bird has its mate; the untamed lion of the forest defends his den, and protects his yet inoffensive family of yelping cubs ; out of the woods the poor half civilized native had no chance of a mate; no chance of ever sharing in the tender feelings of a parent, which the very crocodile evinces. The doubt of their capacity and fairness of intellect must now wear off; and it will no more be doubted that this our infant Native Institution will prove eventually honorable to its earliest Patronage, and add additional honor to the Country whose benevolent efforts are sounded throughout all parts of the habitable world.
6. ↑ New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages Marriage Certificate 3275/1824 V18243275 3B Groom: LOCK, ROBERT Bride: COOK, MARIA District: CB
7. ↑ New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages Early Church Codes Denomination: Church of England Parish/Circuit/District: Parramatta, St Johns
8. ↑ Parry, Naomi (2005) Maria (1805–1878)'', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed online 26 May 2019.
9. ↑ Locke, Michelle Lea (2018) 'Wirrawi Bubuwul – Aboriginal Women Strong' Australian Journal of Education 62(3) pp. 299–310
10. ↑ "A History of Aboriginal Sydney - North West - Settlers not recognising Aboriginal names and bestowing English names", Dept. of History, University of Sydney; accessed Dec 2019.
11. ↑ New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage (n.d.) Blacktown Native Institution Accessed 27 Mar 2020

• Brook, Jack (2008) 'Lock, Maria', Dictionary of Sydney, viewed 26 May 2019
• Tait, Narelle (2003) 'The story of Maria Lock' Australian Broadcasting Corporation LATELINE - Late night news & current affairs: TV Program Transcript Published: 22/09/2003
• Watson, Judy (1994) 'Maria Lock - A Remarkable Woman' from The Living Floor Project.
• Ancestry.com. Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010, Name: Maria Cook Spouse Name: Robert Lock Marriage Date: 1824 Marriage Place: New South Wales Registration Place: Parramatta, New South Wales Registration Year: 1824 Volume Number: V B.
• Australia, Death Index, 1787-1985, Name: Maria Lock Death Date: 1878 Death Place: New South Wales Registration Year: 1878 Registration Place: Windsor, New South Wales Registration Number: 10382
• New South Wales, Birth Certificate Index 10382/1878 Name: Name: LOCK, MARIA AGE 84 YEARS DIED WINDSOR Father: not listed Mother: not listed District: WINDSOR

See also:

• Brook, Jack and JL Kohen. The Parramatta Native Institution and the Black Town: A history. Kensington: University of New South Wales Press, 1991.
• Crispin, Chrissie & Sahni, Neera (2018) 'Significant Aboriginal women: Maria Lock' Parramatta: City of Parramatta: Parramatta Heritage Centre
• Hinkson, M. Aboriginal Sydney: A guide to important places of the past and present. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2001.
• Soon, N. 'It's time to give it back', Blacktown Sun, 29 April 2013.