The eagerly-anticipated function is taking place at the Muswellbrook and District Workers Club on the weekend of September 10 and 11.

Thomas and his new wife Mary arrived in Sydney on September 7, 1841, in the ship China. 

They were bounty immigrants from Wicklow Ireland and, within two months, Thomas was working as a shepherd on Binjeberry Estate.

They were allocated a slab hut on Rouchel Brook and provided with an allowance of 10 pounds of meat, 10 pounds of flour, two pounds of sugar and a quarter of a pound of tea per week and an annual salary of £10.

In 1841, this was a very remote location as there were only about 1500 people in the entire Hunter Valley.

By 1855, Thomas had saved enough to buy 99 acres of land on Rouchel Brook, which he called Rouchel Vale.  

Thomas and his sons gradually increased their total land holding at Rouchel to about 2500 acres. 

He became the first postmaster at Rouchel with the post office operating from Rouchel Vale for several years in the 1870s.  

The family were pioneers in the growing of lucerne as a commercial silage crop in the Rouchel valley.

They also provided the land for the construction of St John’s Anglican Church at Rouchel, which was also used as a public school from 1881 to about 1896.

Thomas and Mary retired to a house in Muswellbrook in the mid-1880s.

Thomas died in 1888 and Mary passed away in 1901. 

The family sold Rouchel Vale in 1888.

Thomas and Mary had 12 children (the first eight were born in the slab hut at Binjeberry) – six sons Thomas, Matthew, John, Absalom, William and Edward and six daughters Mary, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Susan, Sarah and Amelia. 

The Spencer family is particularly interested to make contact with descendants of Mary Spencer and Stephen Dowell (Stephen was a mayor of Muswellbrook in 1886) and also of Rebecca Spencer and George Hayne (George had a blacksmith and wheelwright business in Muswellbrook). 

For more information about the Spencer family of Rouchel and details of the reunion, visit www.thespencerfamily.id.au