Alexander Berry and the Māori Amootoo (1825-1900)

Shoalhaven & South Coast: | Amootoo | Aunty Julie Freeman | Berry's Frankenstein & Arawarra | Cornelius O'Brien | Cullunghutti - Sacred Mountain | Death ... Arawarra, Berry & Shelley | First Nations archive | Gooloo Creek, Conjola | Kangaroo Valley | Mickey of Ulladulla | Moruya monster 1788 | Mount Gigenbullen | Byamee's Hands, Shoalhaven River | Ulladulla Mission | Words | Yams |

Amootoo 1891

Contents

1. Boyd massacre
2. Amootoo
3. Somerville thesis
4. Waitangi refugee?
5. Japanese connection?
6. References

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Abstract: Māori man Amootoo - also known as John Amatto (1825-1900) - was originally born in Coromandel, New Zealand. During 1843 he was listed as an employee of the Alexander Berry Estate in the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales, Australia. Amootoo subsequently married Sydney-born Aboriginal woman Susannah Mitcham (1832-1920) and together they became members of the local Shoalhaven Indigenous community. The couple went on to reside at the Roseby Park Aboriginal reserve, Orient Point. Upon his death in 1900 John was buried in the Jerribaley / Jerry Baily cemetery at Shoalhaven Heads. Numerous descendents have been identified as living in the region up to the present day, with connections to families such as Longbottom, Timbery and Wellington. Aspects of the story of Amootoo are outlined in the present article, though little is known of the circumstances which led to Amootoo leaving New Zealand, apart from the family story that he came with Alexander Berry. Aspects of Berry's connection with Māori workers are also noted herein. A possible connection to the Japanese Moto name is also mentioned.

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1. Berry and the Boyd massacre

During 1810 Alexander Berry rescued survivors of the Boyd massacre of December 1809 at Whangaroa Harbour in northern New Zealand (Wikipedia). Following Berry's subsequent settlement at Coolangatta / Cullungutty on the Shoalhaven River near present-day Nowra, New South Wales, Australia in 1822, he employed a number of Māori to work on the expansive 10,000+ acre property. The present article seeks to reveal aspects of the life of one of those Māori and his subsequent integration into the local Aboriginal community.

Alexander Berry was a ship's surgeon and merchant trader who, following news reaching him of the Boyd massacre involving between 66 and 70 passengers and crew from the British brigantine Boyd whilst en route to England, put together a rescue mission aboard the City of Edinburgh. The survivors included Ann Morley and her baby, apprentice Thomas Davis (or Davidson), and two year old Elizabeth "Betsy" Broughton. The baby and Miss Broughton subsequently returned to Sydney, whilst Davis became attached to Berry. Unfortunately he died at Coolangatta in 1822 as a result of a drowning accident at the entrance of the Shoalhaven River. Elizabeth Broughton went on to marry Charles Throsby, a settler and early explorer in New South Wales and subsequent associate of Berry.

In early August 2025 the present writer was approached by a fellow historian seeking information on the presence of the Māori man Amootoo (alias John Amatto, c.1825-1900) in Australia and his connection with Berry. The present article seeks to reveal aspects of that association.

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2. Amootoo

A Māori man with Aboriginal descendents in the Shoalhaven district is Amootoo, commonly known as John Amatto. He was born around 1825 at Coromandel, New Zealand, though one reference cites his date of birth a decade earlier. Amootoo was subsequently brought to Australia, or emigrated of his own volition, to work on the Berry Estate at Coolangatta, arriving there by 1843. The precise circumstances surrounding his leaving New Zealand are not known, though it may simply have been to seek paid employment. Amootoo subsequently married Susannah Mitcham, born in Sydney in 1832. Her father was a convict and mother an Aboriginal woman simply identified as Lucy. Amootoo died at the Roseby Park Aboriginal reserve, Orient Point, in 1900 and was buried in the old Jerry Bailey cemetery, Shoalhaven Heads. Susannah also died at Orient Point, in 1920. Members of the immediate family include the following:

1. John Amatto born c.1825, Coromandel, New Zealand, died Orient Point, 1900, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 3 April 1900
2. Susanna (Micham) Amatto, born 1832, Sydney, died 1920, registered Nowra 
3. Jane Amatto, born 1850, died 1886, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 16 October 1886
4. John Amatto, born 1853, died 1866, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 24 August 1866
5. Thomas Matto, born c.1854, died 1912, buried Jerry Baily cemetery
6. Maria Amatto, born c.1858, married James Longbottom 1881, and John Anderson 1895
7. Charles Amatto, born 1862, married Elizabeth Rowley, 1885, died 1893, Berry
8. John Amatto, infant, died 1885, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 4 February 1885
9. William Amatto, infant, died 1885, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 9 September 1885
10. John T. Amatto, born 1891, died 1894, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 31 January 1894
11. Ellen Amatto, born 1893, died 1898, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 31 May 1898
12. Catherine Amatto, born 1895, died 1895, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 3 October 1895
13. Joseph M. Amatto, born 1896, died 1896, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 25 August 1896
14. (Unnamed) Amatto, infant, died 1898, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 1898
15. Ada Amatto, born 1901, died 1906, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 15 March 1906
16. Catherine Amatto, born 1902, died 1903, buried Jerry Baily cemetery, 11 January 1902

A more fulsome family history can be found in the records of the Native Title Services of New South Wales (NTSCORP). These are made available to descendents of Native Title applicants. Records are also available on open access family history sites such as WikiTree, Ancestry.com and My Heritage, listed in the References section. A readily accessible and significant resource is the 2022 Somerville thesis discussed below.

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3. Somerville thesis

In 2022 Wendy Somerville, a direct descendant of John and Susannah Amatto, completed a PhD thesis at the University of Canberra. It was entitled Koori Critical Storytelling - Re-imagining to re-connect with memories, archives and Country and made a deep dive into aspects of her family history, going back to the early 1800s, her linkages with John and Susannah Amatto, and their descendents. The following is an example relevant to our search for information on Amootoo:

.... I found my Māori great-great grandfather in the ledgers of the Coolangatta Estate. There he was in 1843. Originally written as Amootoo, then later gaining a first name to be called John Amootoo and finally morphing into John Amatto, my ancestor was 18 years old when his name was mentioned working alongside that of Monkie, sometimes written as Monkey. There were a number of Māori workers mentioned in the books on the Estate at this time: Ahiah, Aicute, and Tommy Borline. Like Amootoo, over time, and at the hands of the bookkeepers, Tommy Borline’s name changed and morphed into Tommy New Zealander. The names of Māori and Koori people employed by the Estate were recorded phonetically and according to the subjectivities of the person keeping the ledgers. Aicute, Acutie, Accutie are the same man; his name rendered differently by different ledger keepers.

In the family tree documents provided by the Native Title Services Corporation of New South Wales (NTSCORP) my great, great grandmother Amatto was said to be Susan Mitcham Edwards, Susannah Edwards, Susanah Shaw, Susanah Micham or in the case of the day books, Amootoo’s wife. In the records her mother is noted as Lucy Aboriginal and her father as Michum, convict. One of Susanah’s children had Mitcham as a middle name, suggesting not only that this was her original surname but also that that she enjoyed a good relationship with her father (Somerville 2022).

A 66 year old man identified as Amootoo is seen in the following photograph from a Berry Estate collection in the collection of the State Library of New South Wales. It is dated 1891. Amootoo is seated in the middle of the front row.

[Amatto men], Photographic album of the employees and inhabitants of the Coolangatta Estate, Shoalhaven River, N.S.W. Source: State Library of New South Wales. Reference: Somerville 2022.

Somerville, within her thesis, tells of "meeting" him and his wife through archival records, as in the following extract:

..... I tell of meeting some of my ancestors; my Māori great-great grandfather [Amootoo] and his wife [Susannah]; my Koori great-great grandparents and their daughter, and my great grandmother, through archival research. My grandfather’s grandmother was Susanna, sometimes written as Susana, Susannah, and Susan in archived documents.

My grandfather’s grandfather was John Amootoo, Amatto, Moto as his name was variously written in archives in Australia. The first time I met John he was sitting in the middle of a row of five chairs surrounded by Koori men, the only bearded man in a sea of moustaches. I make the distinction here because John was a Māori and his children were registered as Aboriginal, their mother’s ethnicity. A chance remark by a Koori librarian working at the State Library of New South Wales led me to this image. He said that a photograph held there had been identified as John and some of his sons. The identification was by a descendant living at La Perouse. The photograph appears in an album that was donated to the library by the descendants of Sir John Hay who had inherited the Coolangatta Estate. It was presented to Hay on his return from a holiday in Britain in 1891 and was made up of photographs of some of the estate workers and their families. There were no names of workers and their families included in the album. An image containing my great grandmother on my mother’s side is in the album. Neither of my great-great grandmothers have been identified however, I draw on fractured knowledge to identify them later in this chapter.

John doesn’t look the way I thought he would. He appears to be a small man with straight, longish hair. He sits, though, as if he belongs, looking straight at the camera, legs together. There are no visible tattoos and John is not bare-chested, that is, not carrying those stereotypical Māori markers we are used to seeing in historical renderings of Māori men. As an Amatto relative pointed out, he does have the high cheek bones that run in her side of the family. But where is the square body shape and the straight shoulders I am used to seeing in our family? The younger men beside him on chairs I take to be his sons for although they look alike, they look unlike John. The young men look like most of my family, one son is the spitting image of one of my nephews, another looks like a cousin/aunt. It appears that John left little mark of his physical being on my side of the family. John’s wife, Susannah, is not with him in this photo. It must be her from whom we get our form. The men standing behind John might be sons-in-law or cousins of his children. The one at the end looks like a family I know, and I know that one of them married an Amatto daughter. They sit grouped, dressed in what appears their Sunday best. There are straw boaters beneath a few of the seats, although not John’s.

Whilst this appears to casts some doubt in Somerville's mind on the man in the photograph being Amootoo, however she does not reject it. Of Amootoo's life prior to arriving in Australia, Somerville was not able to uncover any clues. As she states in the thesis:

.... I hit a major stumbling block, seemingly my Māori great-great grandfather, Amootoo, did not exist before arriving at the Coolangatta Estate. I could find no mention of John Amootoo arriving in Australia despite rummaging through an assortment of archival material. His name was mentioned in newspapers, he appeared in accounting records and there is an image of him kept in the archives, so we rely on the family story which tells us he came with Alexander Berry. I could find no record of him in New Zealand and given the convoluted naming processes used at the time, it is likely that I will never find him. The Shipping Gazette typically provided the names of European passengers, but sailors and others were left nameless. At the time many people from the Pacific Islands boarded ships that were exploring and trading in the Pacific .... It is likely that John did come to the Coolangatta Estate to live and work with fellow Māori expatriates. It is also likely, given the existence of one letter from Alexander Berry in 1848 in which he asks a captain of his ship to recruit more Māori workers, that Amootoo was brought there by one of Berry’s ships. However it happened that he came to be there, my great-great grandfather is mentioned in the day books of the estate from 1843 that are held at the New South Wales State Library(Somerville 2022).

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4. Waitangi refugee?

The above information reinforces the serendipitous paid-employment scenario as an explanation for why Amootoo came to New South Wales, though it does not exclude the possibility that he was a member of the crew of one of Berry's ships, or that he travelled from New Zealand on a voyage in which Berry was also a passenger. Whatever the case, once an employee of the Berry Estate he settled in the Shoalhaven and raised a family there. Adventures along the way are yet to be revealed.

Another possible scenario, and one which is being pursued by family members based on tradition, is that Amootoo was a 'prisoner of war' and therefore forced into exile as a result of his refusal, along with others from Coromandel, to sign the Herald (Bunbury) sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi. This was an agreement between the British Crown and Māori chiefs signed at a number of localities in the North and South islands during 1840 (on 4 May 1840 at Coromandel harbour), aiming to establish British sovereignty over the islands and bring about peace following numerous encounters which had resulted in the loss of life on both sides. The British subsequently stated that the Treaty applied to all Māori, even those who refused to sign it and wished to maintain their traditional rights over land and custom. There was no mass exile or migration of Māori from New Zealand to New South Wales upon the signing of the Treaty, though it did open up greater opportunities for trade and movement between the two colonies, with residents of both now members of the British Empire. Whether the events of 1840 played any role in Amootoo's arrival in the Shoalhaven around 1843 remains unclear.

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5. Japanese connection?

Amootoo 1891

When the present writer first observed the 1891 Amatto family photograph reproduced above and on the right, which was identified as John Amootoo, a thought came to mind that this person looked like an elderly Japanese male, rather than a large bodied, tattooed Māori man. Subsequently, information was located referring to such conjecture, and that the name Amootoo was a derivation of the Japanese name Moto or a variant spelling thereof. 

The story that John was a friend of a person known as Monkey during his period working on the Berry Estate, as evidenced from some of the archival records of that estate, provided possible support to this conjecture, as Monkey is a famous spirit figure of Japanese mythology and possibly a nickname for the individual referred to therein. Further research may lead to clarification of this matter.

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6. References

Alexander Berry: the squire of Coolangatta, Northern Star, Lismore, 13 November 1916.

Amatto - All Australian and New Zealand Find a Grave index, Ancestry.com.au, accessed 12 August 2025.

Berry, Alexander, Particulars of a late visit to New Zealand, and of the measures taken for rescuing some of English captives there, The Edinburgh Magazine, April 1819, 304.

Betsy Broughton (A Brief Biography), National Library of Australia.

Body Massacre, Wikipedia, accessed 11 August 2025.

Charles Amatto Family History, My Heritage, n.d., accessed 12 August 2025.

Jerry Baily Cemetery Memorials, Find a Grave, accessed 12 August 2025. [81 records].

John Amatto (1825-1900), WikiTree, accessed 11 August 2025.

Māori in Sydney, Sydney Journal, Dictionary of Sydney Project, 3(1) December 2010.

McNab, Robert, Chapter 10: The Massacre of the Boyd, 1809 and 1810, From Tasman To Marsden: A History of Northern New Zealand from 1642 to 1818, J. Wilkie & Company, Dunedin, 1914.

Rhonda Amatto, Dharawal Women, n.d.

Smith, Jim, Aboriginal voters in the Burragorang Valley, NSW, 1869-1953, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 98(2), December 2012, 170-192.

Somerville, Wendy, Koori Critical Storytelling - Re-imaging to re-connect with memories, archives and Country, PhD thesis, University of Canberra, 2022, 227p.

Susannah (Mixham) Amatto (1892-1920), WikiTree, accessed 11 August 2025.

The Boyd, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 8 May 1832.

Treaty of Waitangi, Wikipedia, accessed 12 August 2025.

Williams, Nat, A toddler's survival story - Elizabeth Isabella Broughton (1807-1891), National Library of Australia, 12 November 2015.

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Shoalhaven & South Coast: | Amootoo | Aunty Julie Freeman | Berry's Frankenstein & Arawarra | Cornelius O'Brien | Cullunghutti - Sacred Mountain | Death ... Arawarra, Berry & Shelley | First Nations archive | Gooloo Creek, Conjola | Kangaroo Valley | Mickey of Ulladulla | Moruya monster 1788 | Mount Gigenbullen | Byamee's Hands, Shoalhaven River | Ulladulla Mission | Words | Yams |

Last updated: 4 September 2025

Michael Organ, Australia