Sarah Campbell was born 200 years ago and in her teens she was the most remarkable and sort-after woman in Ipswich in the Moreton Bay colony. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.
Sarah Campbell’s husband was the ex-convict William Horton. He’d been convicted of theft in England and transported to Australia for seven years. He was sixteen years old when he arrived, and in the early 1840s he worked in the Queen’s Arms Hotel in Ipswich which was the town’s first hotel. It was there in 1844 when he was twenty-seven that he met and married a sixteen-year-old girl.
Horton became the proprietor of the Royal Bull’s Head Inn (pictured above) at Drayton in Toowoomba and was one of the city’s founding fathers. At one time it was proposed to call Toowoomba “Horton’s Ranch” in his honour. Horton was well-liked by the judiciary, and following an extraordinary court case in 1850, he remained free to assault, beat and bruise police constables as he saw fit. But that’s another story.
Horton was a large property owner in both Toowoomba and Ipswich. As well as the Royal Bull’s Head in Drayton, he owned three hotels in Ipswich, the North Star, the Caledonian, and the Clarendon.
This is all relevant is because that sixteen-year-old bride was Ipswich’s very own Sarah Campbell. When Horton married Sarah, she was one of only three women living in Ipswich. She was single and so was clearly the most sort-after woman in town.
Sarah and her brother had been witnesses in probably the first ever wedding performed in Ipswich, and her own marriage to Horton in 1844 was likely the second one.
When Horton died in 1864, Sarah inherited everything. But stricken with grief, Sarah herself died just five months later. She was just thirty-five years old. While Sarah had been the most sort-after woman in Ipswich, and then the most desirable widow, her family were equally as remarkable.
Sarah’s brother Hugh Campbell Snr when he arrived in Ipswich in 1842 – this was the same year the Moreton Bay penal colony was opened-up to free settlers – he became recognised as the first free settler in Ipswich. Just like Sarah’s husband, her brother is considered a city founding father.
Sarah’s daughter married and went to live in Warwick. Her three sons were all amongst the very early boarders at Ipswich Grammar School.
One of Sarah’s sons Thomas won the coveted German language prize. He was a member of the first Ipswich football team to play against Brisbane. He surveyed the first railway line from Ipswich to Brisbane. In another first, the last of his racehorses was badly injured at Bundamba and the jockey was killed.
The son lived to be ninety-two and was the last surviving member of the original North Australian Jockey Club and the oldest living former scholar of Ipswich Grammar.
Sarah’s granddaughter Minnie during the Second World War was unfortunately caught at her sister’s house at Darra by her husband in one-too-many orgies with American soldiers.
Sarah’s great-grandson Thomas went shooting but tripped, and his rifle went off accidentally. He was found dead in the dry bed of Sandy Creek five miles from Ipswich.
But what’s really interesting is what’s happening to Sarah today. You see Horton’s Royal Bull’s Head Inn in Drayton has the reputation of being the most haunted building in Toowoomba. Some say one of the ghosts is Horton’s sixteen-year-old bride, and that bride is of course Ipswich’s very own Sarah Campbell.
Go there tonight, and you may see the ghost of Sarah wearing a night dress as she visits her parlour room.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.
Photo credits:
Royal Bull’s Head Inn, Toowoomba – Royal Bull’s Head Inn Facebook 29 May 2024.
Hugh Campbell Snr – Queensland Times, Ipswich, 8th August 1914, page 10.
William and Sarah Horton, Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery – Find a Grave by Lynda Krause 2019.
History Out There 