This is what was sent to me from Lisa Irving, a GG Grand neice of Edwin Smithers.
Edwin SMITHERS was born in South Petherton, Somersetshire in 1829. He arrived in Australia with his parents and three brothers on the ‘Alfred’ in 1839. Edwin married Mary Bartley HALL in 1851 at West Maitland. Between 1852 – 1872 Edwin and Mary raised seven daughters. Edwin died at Muswellbrook in 1898.
I checked Boyle’s Hunter Valley index at the Maitland Library and found this about the brickworks…
Maitland Mercury 8 October 1861
Edwin Smithers opens brickyard in paddock adjoining Union Inn near Toll Bar. Coal fired bricks ₤2-2-0 per 1000.
Maitland Mercury 19 September 1867
Edwin Smithers brickyards near Toll Bar.
The site of the Union Inn was on the western side of Melbourne Street, East Maitland, at its intersection with Newcastle Street. The side of the inn abutted on the Melbourne Street alignment, but the front wall stood back from Newcastle Street about sixty feet. http://www.huntervalleygenealogy.com/maitland/CircuitCourt.h...
The Union Inn opened in 1829. It operated as a hotel until the mid 1860’s when it became the Union Stores. The building ‘fell down’ in 1868 (Maitland Mercury 1 October 1868).
Edwin and Mary’s fifth child was born in Maitland in 1867, the next one was 1870 in Scone. As you noted on the Grevilles 1872 PO Directory he’s listed at Murrurundi, where the seventh and last child was also born. I guess that narrows down the period that his Maitland brickworks operated from 1861 to 1867-70.
I was hoping to include the newspaper articles themselves to attach to this email, but unfortunately the Maitland Mercury digitised pages are only online from 1843 – 1855… http://www.nla.gov.au/ferg/issn/14403676.html . Apparently they are on microfilm at the libraries in the Hunter.