Thomas FARMER was born in Shropshire(England) in 1808. He left home for London seeking to "make his fortune" and there he met and married Ann Catherine (sometimes Ann Sophia) EVANS of Merionethshire in Wales. He joined the 63rd Regiment and in 1829 he and his wife and two sons (Thomas and William) sailed with the 63rd on the HMS Sulphur, accompanying the first ship of settlers to the new Swan River settlement of Western Australia. He was a "Cordweiner" (shoemaker) in the military in Perth when their son Samuel was born. Private Thomas FARMER drowned at the Causeway in Perth in 1832 while his wife was pregnant with their son Joseph.
Ann is thought to have been the first white woman ashore in Western Australia. After the death of her husband, she married again, this time to William WATSON, an innkeeper at Redcliffe. Ann and William WATSON had children James, Charles, Annie, Matthew Henry. After her husband William died, Ann married again, this time to Thomas WALKER, a bricklayer. With Thomas she had another son, Isaac WALKER.
Thomas FARMER, the son of Private Thomas FARMER, is thought to have been the first white child ashore in Western Australia. He was a tailor in Perth, a staunch Methodist and Temperance Worker, and was very active in the Wesleyan Church. His brother William was only a baby when carried ashore at Swan River. William left his family behind and travelled east, to work as a splitter and fencer at the Victorian goldfields. After the death of his wife (Mary LAVIDGE), he moved to the mines of Gympie in Queensland, where he married Bertha HANSEN. The remaining brothers, Samuel and Joseph, were pioneering police constables in Western Australia, each of them eventually retiring to be a pastoralist.