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Introduction - The Scholey Family Papers

The suburb of Mayfield was born from the township of Waratah, when John Scholey decided to sell a portion of his land under the name of his daughter May (see picture) in 1881.

John Scholey was a butcher who had rented the land as a slaughterhouse paddock, with a slaughterhouse and residence for slaughtermen. The paddock was heavily timbered with thick ti-tree bush growing along the Maitland Road. He had the land cleared, stumped and subdivided and called it Mayfield.

According to T.A.Braye's "History of Waratah, N.S.W" the subdivision originally was bounded on the west by Kerr Street, on the north by Crebert Street, on the east by a line about five chains from Church Street southerly to the Maitland Road and along Maitland Road back to Kerr Street. This land grant was originally made on the Ist February 1854 to James Price of Buttai. From him it passed through two owners until being conveyed to John Scholey on 2nd April, 1881.

During the early part of 2001, negotiations began with Mrs Marion Faulkner and her family for the deposit of her significant collection of papers, photographs and artefacts of the Scholey and Upfold families with the University of Newcastle's ARBSC (now Cultural Collections) Unit.

For more information on the Scholey family please consult the University of Newcastle Cultural Collections Unit's illustrated finding aid entitled "The Scholey and Upfold Family Papers of Mrs Marion Faulkner " that contains many scanned and digitised images of photographs, letters and documents from the collection.

The papers arrived in May 2001 and completely accessioned in June. The shelf listing contains shelf numbers and descriptions of the items in the collection. Where the item has been scanned or digitised, a clickable thumbnail image is provided to allow access to the larger image. We sincerely thank the family representatives who have given their permission to digitally reproduce selected items from the collection for our researchers. I hope you enjoy our presentation.

Gionni di Gravio
ARBSC Unit
June 2001