After arriving in Sydney in 1822 as a free settler from Scotland, George Miller worked in the Commissariat Department before becoming a successful banker. In 1837 he married widow Sarah Anne Bailey whose husband had been a Commissariat employee. By 1838 Miller had finished building Forsyth Cottage and Avon House, adjacent single-storey residences, on William Dumaresq’s Boissier Estate. After 1863 Forsyth Cottage was known as Arden; a second storey and other additions were made in 1879.
The couple rented out Avon House and made Forsyth Cottage their home. Here Sarah bore seven children of whom two sons and two daughters survived infancy while a son was stillborn. In 1854 Miller took out mortgages on his Blackwattle Bay properties before applying for two years’ leave of absence from the Sydney Savings’ Bank. The following year he died aged 55 while visiting Edinburgh.
Twice widowed, Sarah returned to Sydney to await the granting of probate. Forsyth Cottage was leased to railway engineer William Randle; in 1860 it was sold for £2500 to David Macintyre.
Arden was then home to Legislative Council clerk John Jackson Calvert, export agent George Munro, wool merchant Eugene Carette and physician Rudolph Bohrsmann. In 1918 it was sold by Bohrsmann’s wife to the Anglican Church which converted it into another of Glebe’s Rescue Homes. When the welfare institution relocated to Carlingford in 1928 Arden was leased and then purchased by taxi cab owner William Treharne who found the marble staircase and garden fountain still intact. In 1971 Treharne sold to developers who replaced the eight-bedroom mansion with home unit tower blocks.
