William and Mary née Sullivan FORD 

The property now known as North Logan was one of the first established settlements on the Lachlan River at Cowra. Surveyor General Lieutenant John Oxley volunteered to lead an expedition into the interior of NSW in 1816, and William Cox and a small detachment of troops from the 46th NSW Regiment were sent to the Lachlan River in December 1816 to establish a depot for stores and horses to equip Oxley’s expedition. The depot was set up at Soldiers Flat on the banks of the Lachlan River, 240 miles from Sydney, near the present site of North Logan.

The first owner of North Logan Station was James Sloan, a servant who travelled to Australia in steerage aboard the same boat as his master, Arthur Ranken in 1826. He was Ranken's overseer at Glen Logan from 1827 before becoming a substantial landholder in his own right.

The following is from a book, 'Cowra On The Lachlan':

James Sloan, the servant, wrote to the Surveyor General in June 1835 seeking "to purchase 640 acres, two miles west of the north-west corner peg of Mr Arthur Ranken's grant, situated on the Lachlan River, and surrounded by unlocated land". It is believed Sloan was not successful with this application. However, the following year, on May 30, he paid £257/15/ for 1,030 acres "situated in the County of Bathurst, at Warwick Plains, bounded on the south by a marked tree on the Lachlan River". This holding was the first of many blocks purchased by James Sloan and the start of North Logan station. On January 2, 1839, Sloan paid £286 for two blocks adjacent to his home block, which totalled 1,784 acres.

After his marriage in 1843 to Marion Stoddart, in Bathurst, Sloan lived at North Logan in a small cottage with slab walls and bark roof while a more substantial pisé home was built.

When Arthur Ranken left Glen Logan in 1847, the property was mortgaged and later sold to John Tindall. James Sloan leased it from Tindall until 1857, when he purchased it for £5,000 and amalgamated it into his North Logan holding.

Sloan leased many district properties, including Bong Bong, which he quit in 1856, selling "all the sheep thereon depasturing in number 8,000 more or less, for the sum of ten shillings a head" to George Campbell.

James Sloan died at North Logan in 1859. He was 51 years old.

It was the custom in the early years of pastoral development for overseers and station hands to be paid all or part of their remuneration in rations and livestock, their animals being allowed to graze along with the owners'. In this way, it was possible for James Sloan to accumulate stock of his own during the time he worked as overseer for Ranken on Glen Logan.

By the mid 1840s, many of the property names of the Lachlan area were established. These included William Rothery's Cliefden, Arthur Ranken's Glen Logan, Edwin Park's Woodstock, Thomas Kite's Kangarooby, Edward Sheahan's Goolagong, J.A. Kinghorne's Cucumgilliga, Estate Dr Wm. Redfern's Waugoola, John Liscombe's Liscombe Pools, Patrick Brougham's Taragala, Dixon Owen's Bumbaldry, William Norman's Wattamondara, George Pack's Pack's Grant, John Grant's Merriganowry and Patrick Neville's Mulyan. (Neville's run was on the southern bank of the Lachlan and should not be confused with the 3,200-acre block, owned by the estate of Dr Wm. Redfern on the opposite side of the river, which later became Mulyan).

With frequent disputes to establish division lines when different owners' stock mingled, generally shepherds managed to avoid stock boxing.

The Squatting Act of 1847 dramatically improved the security of squatters and leaseholders by giving them a pre-emptive right to purchase 320 acres surrounding their homesteads, with 14 years fixity of tenure over leasehold for which they were required to pay £10 per annum for each block capable of carrying 4,000 sheep. This encouraged pastoralists to build permanent homes, sheds and yards and to clear and improve their holdings. It was also an incentive for landholders to concentrate their leaseholds into one large block around their homesteads.

Each station was self-contained with its own shanty and store from which employees drew supplies against wages. The landholders gained from this system since they made a profit on goods sold, and by keeping the men in debt, maintained a secure hold over them, thus keeping up their labour supply. Most stations employed about 30 men including shepherds, ploughmen and shearers, who were paid an average of £10 to £12 a year, plus rations.

On North Logan, James Sloan used Arthur Ranken's vacated homestead as a tavern from which he was licensed, in 1848, to sell beer in quantities of no less than two gallons.

A significant change was made to the land tenure system in October 1861 when the Sir John Robertson Land Act permitted free selection before survey of up to 320 acres of unsurveyed land at one pound per acre with 25% deposit on application and three years to pay the balance. Selectors were required to reside on their blocks for three years and effect improvements of at least one pound per acre.

The act was ill-conceived and inefficiently administered. The practice known as peacocking developed whereby speculators selected strategic blocks, which either split squatters' runs inconveniently or kept their flocks from water, forcing leaseholders to buy from them at inflated prices. Peacocks did not intend to settle - their motivation was to sell for a quick profit. Leaseholders countered by dummying - using family members and employees to select the best portions of their leases, which they later bought from them. While dummying blocked the peacocks, it also kept out genuine selectors seeking quality farmland.

The Robertson Land Act had only limited success. By the end of 1867, less than half the selectors were resident on their selections and less than one in fifteen had paid for them. Although many genuine selectors had moved onto land in the Lachlan Valley and established themselves as effective farmers, the main result of the Act was to convert the big leaseholders of the Cowra district into big freeholders.

Pioneer families, who date back to the 1830s, include Bourke, Dowd, Higgins, Jordan, Keys, Newham, Ousby, Noble and Whitty. Ancestors of families prominent after 1850 were Anderson, Brien, Bryant, Butler, Cameron, Campbell, Carpenter, Chivers, Dwyer, Goodacre, Houghton, Langfield, Morrison, O'Brien and Paton. Later, forebears of the Brown, Delaney, Fagan, Freebairn, Henderson, Oliver and Scott families arrived in the district.

The term 'Canowindra' derives from the language of the Wiradjuri People who occupied the area prior to white settlement. It is said to mean 'home' or 'camping place'.

Koorawatha is said to be an Aboriginal word signifying "A place of pines". (Source NSW Railways). It is a small town with a current population of 249 and is situated on the Olympic Highway between Cowra and Young on the bank of Bang Bang Creek. The area was originally known as "Bong Bong" or "Bang Bang". James Sloan was the first pastoralist in the Koorawatha district and the estimated area of his "Bong Bong" run as detailed in an early Government Gazette was 30,000 acres with grazing capabilities of 4,000 sheep.

The original reserve for a town at Koorawatha, gazetted on 25 October 1852, covered an area of nine square miles. Following the need for a resting place for the many itinerants between Cowra and Murringo the reserve was surveyed and opened up for sale by notice in the Government Gazette of 29 December 1861. However, the official proclamation of Koorawatha Town was not gazetted until 20 March 1885.

A note about William and Mary's Family:

Two other children, Sophia, born Bang Bang, Koorawatha c1860 and Sarah Ann, born Bang Bang, Koorawatha 1863 thought to have been daughters were not related; they were born into another Ford family.