People Australia

Mount Buninyong Homestead, built in 1884 for Robert Scott

National Trust of Australia (Victoria)

Celia Scott (née King) was born on 23 June 1796 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, to Daniel King (1757-c.1819), a merchant trading between the Caribbean colonies and Port Glasgow, and Ann Bird (1771-1804), the daughter of a plantation owner.[1] Available evidence suggests that Celia spent her formative years in Scotland, likely after a period of travel with her father during early childhood.[2] When she and her siblings Ann (1795), Martha (c.1797), Thomas (c.1799), and Maria (c.1799) were still young, the King family settled in Glasgow. Just a few years later in 1804 her mother died giving birth to a child that did not live past a year. On 12 July 1821 Celia King married Andrew Scott (1792-1853), a Scottish solicitor, at Springbank, near Port Glasgow. His background was modest compared to the King family, and after their marriage he struggled to establish himself as a solicitor, which led him to partner with his wife’s brother, Thomas, in a trading venture in Glasgow.[3] Over the next few years, while Celia Scott was giving birth to their children Robert (1822), Andrew junior (1824), Martha King (1828), and Thomas King (1828), their business endeavours encountered substantial financial difficulties, further compounded by the debts they had accumulated following Thomas senior’s death.[4]

This strain on the Kings’ finances was to be short-lived, as through Celia’s maternal grandfather, Thomas Bird, they had deep ties to the British colonial plantation economy in Tobago.[5] Thomas Bird was an early acquirer of land in the northeast St John Parish of Tobago, where he established a successful two-hundred-acre estate named ‘Sherwood Park,’ which relied on the labour of enslaved people for its production and export of sugar.[6] Following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, Celia Scott, along with her sisters Martha Fleming and Ann Isaac and their husbands, successfully filed a claim acting under the will of their grandfather to receive a share of the £20 million in compensation that was being awarded to slave owners at the time. In return for the 107 enslaved people living at Sherwood Park the sisters were collectively awarded £1,035 4s 7d.[7]

Although small in comparison to claims from larger plantations in Tobago, the compensation enabled the Scotts to emigrate without government sponsorship, and in December 1838 they and their four children set sail on the Glenbervie from London to Sydney. The Scotts’ relocation was part of a broader trend where former slave owners sought new opportunities in Australia, driven by the promise of cheap land, economic stability, and imperial expansion.

On arriving in Sydney, the family moved to the Port Phillip District, an area that was experiencing a rapid expansion of European settlement. In late 1839 they settled at Mount Buninyong in Victoria, where they established a cattle farm of 16,000 acres that was later known as Mount Buninyong Station, with Celia reportedly becoming the ‘first white woman’ in the area.[8] The Scotts’ pastoral lease was situated on the land of the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation.[9] By 1843 the Scott family were running cattle on Mount Buninyong Station, and their growing success soon became apparent.[10] Five years later they acquired a new lease for a vast 124,000 acres in the Wimmera District, where they established a second station, Warracknabeal, on the land of the Wotjobaluk People of the Kulin Nation.[11] This expansion also marked the point at which their sons began to play a more significant role in the family’s pastoral ventures, with all leases henceforth attributed to ‘A. Scott and Sons.’ This vast second estate appears to have placed the Scotts in a privileged minority of settlers in the region, with an article in The Port Phillip Patriot later that year listing Warracknabeal as an example of the ‘monster runs’ which were criticised for having ‘monopolist holders’ who appropriated more than what the author considered to be their fair share of land.[12] In 1869 Warracknabeal Station was labelled ‘one of the largest, and … one of the most valuable runs on the Wimmera … with 60,000 sheep.’[13] By this point, the Scotts’ status as significant landholders in the colony seems to have been cemented.

Throughout this period of expansion, Mount Buninyong Station became a postal centre and subsequently a focal point around which a bourgeoning community of predominantly Scottish settlers formed.[14] The Scotts were leading participants in this community. In 1847 they donated land for the construction of the Buninyong Church—for which Celia laid the foundation stone—and in 1851 Andrew senior was appointed a Magistrate of the Territory, tasked with protecting peace in the Colony of Victoria through hearing and determining ‘the felonies, poisonings, trespasses, extortions, unlawful assemblies, indictment’ and other crimes in the area ‘according to the Laws and Statutes of England’.[15] After his death in 1853, his widow managed the family estate, overseeing their extensive property along with her sons, who soon after began marrying and having children themselves.[16]

In 1858 Celia Scott's nephew, John King Fleming (1837-1916), emigrated from Glasgow to join his relatives in Victoria, where he reportedly gained ‘his first colonial experience on Warracknabeal Station.’[17] His great-grandfather, William Park, had been a prominent West Indian merchant and plantation owner in Jamaica, which meant that, like many other British settlers, he was the beneficiary of plantation- and slavery-derived wealth.[18] John—whose mother, Maria, had also received compensation from the claim on Sherwood Park—then went on to become a large landholder and pastoralist in his own right.

In 1870 Celia Scott remained at Mount Buninyong Station while her sons, Robert and Andrew junior, divided the Warracknabeal property between them.[19] The brothers managed their respective sections separately until 1883, when they chose to relinquish their Warracknabeal licenses to focus on building substantial homesteads on the original Mount Buninyong Station, which they also divided.[20] Andrew’s portion, named ‘Yuulong,’ appears to have remained in the Scott family until it was sold in 2008 for three million dollars.[21] As recently as 2019, descendants continued farming the original land acquired by Celia and Andrew Scott and played a central role in Buninyong life.[22]

Celia Scott died in March 1879 at the age of eighty-two, having lived to see her family celebrated as prominent settlers of Victoria.[23] The Scotts’ legacy was commemorated by the renaming of the area around Mount Buninyong Station to ‘Scotsburn’ in their honour, a name the town still holds today. The family's impact is further celebrated through the naming of multiple streets after them in both Scotsburn and Warracknabeal, the erection of memorial cairns, and through numerous historical accounts that describe them as ‘the first white people to settle in Scotsburn’ and ‘pioneers who sailed from Scotland.’[24]

 Notes

[1] 'Memorial Page For Celia King Scott (Jun 1796–5 Mar 1879),' Find A Grave, 2024, accessed 20 August 2024, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/165245241/celia-scott; ‘Daniel King’, Scotland, 1757, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950, via Ancestry; ‘Ann Bird’, 1771, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812, Bristol Archives; ‘Andrew Scott and Celia King’, 1821, Scotland, Marriages, 1561-1910, via Ancestry; Alan Lester and Nikita Vanderbyl, 'The Restructuring of the British Empire and the Colonization of Australia, 1832-8,' History Workshop Journal 90, no. 90 (2021): 179.

[2] Celia’s older sister, Ann, for instance, was born in Dunkirk just a year earlier, indicating that the period in which the children were born in quick succession could have also coincided with substantial travel: ‘Ann Toby’, 1851, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, United Kingdom.

[3] Glenice Wood Lake, The Land They Learnt to Love: Ten Years in the Life of a Squatting Family in the Port Phillip District: 1839-1849 (Ballarat: Glenice Wood Lake 2018), 1, 10.

[4] ‘Robert Scott’, 1822, Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950, via Ancestry;  'Memorial Page For Andrew Scott (24 Apr 1824-2 Aug 1889),' Find A Grave, 2024, accessed 20 August 2024, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208250850/andrew-scott; 'Memorial Page For Martha King Gillespie (20 Apr 1828-24 Jun 1891),' Find A Grave, 2024, accessed 20 August 2024, www.findagrave.com/memorial/155361168/martha_king-gillespie.

[5] Henry Iles Woodcock, ‘Table showing the Lot numbers in each Parish as originally granted, the name of the Lot where applicable, the original grantee and present Possessor,’ in A History of Tobago (London: Smith & Grant, 1867), 167.

[6] Returns submitted for Sherwood Park throughout the early nineteenth century give the number of enslaved people living on the estate as 150 (1807), 157 (1810), 161 (1811), 158 (1819), 135 (1825), and 129 (1829), a majority of which were consistently female. An explanation for this gender imbalance in 1811 suggested their ability to serve as an ‘incentive to domestic union’ for the male enslaved, in turn increasing the number of enslaved children born. See: John Fowler, 'List of the sales in the Parish of St. John showing the original purhaser(s) and present proprietor(s),' in A Summary Account of the Present Flourishing State of the Respectable Colony of Tobago, in the British West Indies (London: A. Grant, 1774); Papers relating to Population and Clerical Establishments in W. Indies, 1811-13, 478, 177, Proquest UK Parliamentary Papers; ‘Sherwood Park,’ 1819, 1825, and 1829, Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834, TNA.

[7] 'Tobago 12 (Sherwood Park),' Legacies of British Slavery (LBS) Database, University College London, http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/claim/view/27819; Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims for the colonies of Jamaica, Antigua, Honduras, St. Christopher's, Grenada, Dominica, Nevis, Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, British Guiana, Montserrat, Bermuda, Bahamas, Tobago, St. Vincent's, Trinidad, Barbados, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope., vol. 48, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1837-8 (215), (1838), 321.

[8] 'Mt Boninyong Homestead,' Victorian Heritage Database, 30 August 2024, https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/67548.

[9] 'Wadawurrung,' Deadly Story, accessed 1 September, 2024, https://deadlystory.com/page/aboriginal-country-map/Aboriginal_Country_Completed/Wadawurrung; ‘Reconciliation Action Plan - Wadawurrung Aboriginal history,' City of Greater Geelong, 2024, accessed 1 September, 2024, https://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/rap/article/item/8d87039c8c758ca.aspx.

[10] ‘Celia Scott (née King),' LBS Database, University College London, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/46768.

[11] 'Crown Lands Beyond the Settled District,' Argus (Melbourne), 3 April 1849, 1;

The Squatters' directory: containing a list of all the occupants of crown lands in the intermediate and unsettled districts of Port Phillip ... compiled from the Government Gazette (Melbourne: Edward Wilson, 1849), 18;  'Crown Lands, Port Phillip,' New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney), 26 August 1848, 1077.

[12] 'Monster Runs,' Port Phillip Patriot and Morning Advertiser, 6 September 1848, 2.

[13] 'Country News,' Argus (Melbourne), 2 October 1869, 6.

[14] 'Celia Scott (née King),' LBS Database.

[15] 'Monthly list of persons who have taken out licenses to depasture stock on Crown Lands during the month of September, 1851,' Victoria Government Gazette (Melbourne), 29 October 1851, 693; 'To the Editor of the Geelong Advertiser,' Melbourne Argus, 29 June 1847, 3; Petty sessions: return to address Dr. Thomson 23th January 1853 (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1853).

[16] While Andrew Scott didn’t have a will, through the Grant of Administration all of his ‘goods, chattels, credits and effects’ were left to Celia: 1/078 Andrew Scott: Grant of administration, 1853, Public Record Office Victoria; Crown land licenses: return to address Mr Fawkner (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1856);   'Memorial Page For Andrew Scott', Find A Grave; 'Family Notices,' Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer, 1 August 1855, 3; 'Family Notices,' Argus (Melbourne), 11 June 1857, 4.

[17] 'Fleming, John King (1837–1916),'  Obituaries Australia, accessed 1 September 2024. https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/fleming-john-king-389/text390.

[18] James Brown Fleming, John Park Fleming: 1790-1869 (Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons, 1885); 'Maria Fleming,' LBS Database, University College London, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/46766.

[19] 'Scott Family,' University of Melbourne Archives, accessed 30 August 2024, https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/60665.

[20] 'Mt Boninyong Homestead.'

[21] 'Historic House Fetches Record,' The Courier (Ballarat), 10 July 2008, Newsbank;  'Scott Family,' University of Melbourne Archives.

[22] Caleb Cluff, 'The Scott family took up land in 1839, and they are still farming it,' The Courier(Ballarat), 11 April 2019, https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/6009333/book-tells-a-remarkable-story-of-white-settlement-in-buninyong/; 'Country News,' Ballarat Star, 6 August 1918, 6; "Wills and Estates," Ballarat Star, 24 December 1921, 1; 'Family Notices,' Argus (Melbourne), 24 February 1954, 8.

[23] 'Family Notices,' Geelong Advertiser, 7 March 1879, 2.

[24] 'Bicentennial News,' Buningyong and District Community News, no. 117, February 1988, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3394679319; '1857–1988 The First One Hundred & Thirty One Years,' Buninyong and District Community News, no. 127, December 1988, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3394716559.