Born at Cleveland House 15 August 1830. Generally called John. He was only 10 when his mother died. When he was 20 it was arranged that his uncle Charles Schultze should train him in business, but he doesn`t appear to have stayed long.
One gets the impression that John, as a boy, failed to live up to his father’s expectations. In a letter written in 1849, when John was 19, his father tells John’s uncle, Charles Schultze:
Charles Schultze, who married George Weller’s sister Anne in 1849, had worked with the Weller brothers for years. By this time he had commercial operations himself, including in New Zealand, where he and Anne (formerly Weller) went to live. It is not clear where the Schultzes were living when George wrote this letter. It seems that John had been placed with Schultze to learn the business of commerce. The letter sounds as if his father thought of him as requiring improvement, but not always able to give his mind to matters like work. Behind these few lines of a letter we sense a difficult relationship, and a father who loved his son but was frustrated by him.
We do not know if John learnt anything from his uncle, or if his father managed to get him any money from his deceased mother’s marriage settlement. We do know that, at the age of 23, John married a young woman, not yet 18, who came of very humble origins.
She was Rebecca Randall, and they married at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Parramatta, on 31 August 1853. John was of the Church of England himself, but she was noted as a Catholic. She had been baptised, however, as Church of England, on 15 November 1835 in the parish of St John, Parramatta, NSW. She was born 23 October 1835, the daughter of Thomas Randall, a telegraph labourer, and his wife Mary. They were to have nine children.
John himself was a farmer at Louth Park for a while and then became an innkeeper, holding the licence of the Crown Inn at Clarence Town.