Mary Hyde's Treasure

**This trackable has been placed on several virtual TB lists, including Facebook, without my permission!  All virtual logs will be deleted without warning!**

The 'official' story from Groundspeak regarding this trackable's history goes like this.

"Spanning the globe and the seven seas, we introduce you to the infamous Captain Mary Hyde. Her ship, The Golden Cache, was the fiercest, and the bearded buccaneers and sea legged sailors reported to her. Legend has it that she ruled the high seas for many years, and found no shortage of riches throughout her reign."

However, being who I am, I found a different Mary Hyde, one who truly existed and deserves to be recognized.

Mary Lord nee Hyde (1779-1864) in the period 1855 to 1859 sued the Commissioners of the city of Sydney, and won compensation for the sum of over £15,600 plus costs for the inundation of her property at Botany. Hyde is noted for her pertinacity. Despite in late 1855 partially wining her case through the New South Wales courts, Mary appealed and three years later in early 1859 won fully after taking her case as far as the Privy Council in England, the final court of appeal then available to British subjects living in New South Wales. Her case, largely ignored by historians, was nevertheless an achievement: women did not have the vote; and Hyde lived in a male-dominated society governed by British law where women had little power. Married women had no power at all, and Mary was only able to sue as being a widow she was no longer married. Having experienced life as a woman in Victorian society, single, married and then widowed, Mary became concerned with what today would be called a feminist issue. She stipulated in her will that any bequests made to her daughters and granddaughters were to be given to them in their own right, and that their husbands should not have any say. She attempted to give her daughters and granddaughters control over their own inheritances, but the law of the day overrode her stated wishes. Remembering that colonies in Australia were largely governed by English law, prior to English 1887 Married Woman's Property Act, which was a rallying point for many first-wave feminists in the late nineteeth century and was only passed after years of intense political lobbying by dedicated women, a married woman could own no property and was the chattel of her husband. Any property that she had owned as a single woman, or that she inherited as a married woman whether in goods, money or land, passed into the ownership of her husband.

Mary was born in England in 1779. In November 1795, at the age of 16, Mary was accused of stealing items of clothing from Francis Deakin, her employer, including 1 black silk cloak, 1 muslin shawl, 1 cotton gown, 1 dimity petticoat, 2 pair of cotton stockings and 1 pair of scissors. On 21 March 1796, at the age of 17, Mary, who also used her mother’s name as an alias, was sentenced at the Warwickshire Assizes to seven years' transportation to New South Wales for theft. She was not transported until 1798. After being transported to Sydney as a teenage convict, Mary became the unmarried partner of Captain John Black, the privateer (state-sanctioned pirate), whaler, ship's captain, navigator and master mariner who named King Island. She later became the wife of Simeon Lord, a wealthy entrepreneurial emancipist merchant and magistrate. When her husband Simeon Lord died in 1840, Mary had a mourning brooch made containing her husband's woven hair in a gold setting with a border of half-pearls. Simeon, the legal holder of the couple's wealth, had died an “immensely wealthy man”. Under the terms of the will, Mary, a woman, was made executor of the estate. Lord's estate was divided between his wife and 8 children, the youngest of whom was 18. Mary became one of the wealthiest women in the colony. Hyde then lived about another 24 years as a widow, and continued to reside in the family home until her death. After her husband's death, in addition to managing large livestock and landholdings, Mary continued the manufacturing business in the factory at Botany. She employed many local people in the milling and dressing of cloth, and in the making of hats, stockings, leather, shoes, candles and harnesses, until the business had to be closed due to the flooding of part of her Botany property and the loss of the stream which drove the mill.