sketcher, was the third daughter of Edward Smith Hall, founder of the Sydney Monitor , and his first wife Charlotte, née Hall. She married Francis O’Brien, who purchased the Monitor newspaper from her father in 1839. Two of Sophia’s drawings are in the Mitchell Library. A pencil sketch of a wall beyond which lies a castellated building and a nearby cottage, both buried in bushland, has a pasted inscription on the back of the mount which reads: 'One of Sophia’s sketches of the [Wentworth] “Mausoleum” from inside of the wall. I told her that the trees looked very like “flames” and asked her if the place was insured. The cottage is that little place that you pass as you come near our Gate’. A coloured crayon sketch is titled Sophia’s Waterfall, Rose Bay. Below [Tivoli] the Residence of Capt. [William] Dumaresque .

Sophia O’Brien died on 7 February 1841 at North Dapto, New South Wales, aged twenty-one. Francis O’Brien, widower, married her sister, Georgiana Elizabeth Hall, at North Dapto on 15 March 1843. Her portrait, attributed to Maurice Felton , is held at the Mitchell Library.

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Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011