People Australia

Benjamin Jones was sentenced, at the Warwick Assizes on 23 March 1790, to seven years transportation for theft. He arrived in Sydney aboard the Britannia as part of the Third Fleet.

Jones married Mary Ann Fleming on 20 April 1798. He worked the 30 acre grant of land belonging to his wife's young son at Mulgrave Place. By 1801 Jones had bought another 60 acres of land. In June 1803 he received a further grant of 200 acres north of what is now Pitt Town. In 1815 it appears that with his immediate family he returned to England and then settled in Tasmania in 1816 and set up as a merchant in Hobart Town — the Sydney Gazette of 6 May 1815 noted 'Mr. & Mrs. Benjamin Jones and family of five are leaving the colony'. Jones's stepson, Henry Fleming, became trustee of the Jones' estates.

In 1818, he was a supplier of meat to the Commissariat. Some 14 years later, in 1832, he is listed as having by grants and purchase 2128 acres including 'Rosehill', Jericho. He continued to prosper, living in Hobart as a merchant while his sons ran the property. He was also one of the original shareholders of the Bank of Van Diemans Land. He died in Hobart on the 13 April, 1837.