This picture shows the matriach of Meroogal, Jessie Catherine Thorburn, nee McKenzie, (1824-1916) with her eldest daughter Mary Susan Thorburn (1850-1927). Jessie McKenzie arrived in Australia from Scotland with her parents and five siblings in 1839, aged 15. She married a farmer named Robert Thorburn in 1846 and like her own mother, had eight children. She was widowed in 1869 and in 1886 relocated with her four unmarried daughters from the family farm at Barr Hill, near Jasper's Brush, to live in a newly built house - Meroogal - in Nowra.
Mary Susan married Roderick McGregor in 1868. They lived with their family of eight children at Torrisdale at the foot of Mt Cambewarra in the Shoalhaven district of New South Wales.
Refer: Janet K. Ramsay
The women of Meroogal Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 1988.
