Last update July  2009   Created by Tony Maple:  imlac2005@grapevine.com.au
Thomas Maple & Elizabeth Ansley
Thomas MAPLE                     b. 1816, Wingham, Kent, UK     d. 9-04-1893 Yankalilla 
1m.  01-08-1841                           Elizabeth ANSLEY                 b. 1815, d. 23-1-1867 Yankalilla
2m. 12-06-1871
Isabella FRETTER              b. 1833   d.  6-11-1909 Adelaide
Charles MAPLE  m. Elizabeth GANN   
Thomas Maple was born in 1816 at Wingham and lived at Adisham, before emigration. Elizabeth Maple was from the same area and both were illiterate when they married in 1842. 
On 4 October 1852 Thomas and Elizabeth Maple and their three children, Charles (10), Caroline (9) and Stephen (7) emigrated to Australia as ‘government immigrants’. In the passenger manifest Thomas is described as an agricultural labourer.
Thomas and Elizabeth landed at Port Adelaide on 19 Jan 1853.  They then lived in the Willunga area south of Adelaide for two years. Here in September 1854 Thomas is recorded as having donated the small sum of 2s.6d. to a Crimean War Relief Fund.
Doubtless Thomas was saving to buy property of his own. In 1855 Thomas and Elizabeth travelled by bullock dray to join other pioneering families at Hay Flat near Yankalilla. There they bought a small farm called ‘Springbank".
They had no more children and Elizabeth died in 1867 aged 52 years. Thomas, then 54, remarried in June 1871 to Isabella Fretter, a 41 year old spinster. Thomas lived on at Yankalilla in a thatched cottage until his death from a cancer of the lip in 1893. Isabella seems to have moved to Adelaide.
In his later years he is reported to have been a caretaker of the Methodist church at Yankalilla and was considered a sincere and god-fearing man. He and Elizabeth are buried in the Yankalilla Public Cemetery under a wooden bed-head grave marker.
Thomas and Elizabeth’s three children all survived and prospered.
Charles married Elizabeth Gann in 1864 and appears to have taken over the farm. Their story is recorded in the following pages.
Caroline married William Polkinghorne and they raised several daughters.
Stephen married Frances Pearce and in 1869 they moved to the Casterton area of  western Victoria where they raised six children.
Caroline MAPLE                    b. 1844  d. 15-12-1901
m. 4-10-1866
William POLKINGHORNE  
Stephen MAPLE  
b. 1845  d. 30-08-1904 Casterton
m. 21-03-1866
Frances PEARCE