John Peisley lived in the Abercrombie District with his well-known settler parents Thomas and Elizabeth. Their house was reputed a den of thieves. John Peisley was arrested in his teens for stealing. About 1840, the extended family of ticket of leave convicts Thomas Weavers and wife Sarah, previously Smith née Lake crossed the Blue Mountains to Bathurst and took up farming in the Mount Macquarie area where unofficial settlement started in 1821.  The first land grant was to Thomas Icely for "Coombing Park" in 1829.  Nearby land was taken up on Coombing and Fell Tree Creeks, and at Number One Swamp that developed into the village of Mount Macquarie, the latter renamed Neville in 1888. Thomas Weavers and stepson William Smith took up land together. On 12 May 1851, two horses missing from Thomas Weavers’ Mount Macquarie property were seen in the possession of seventeen-year-old John Peisley driving them and five more to the Abercrombie. He was arrested on warrant and indicted for stealing. The jury could not agree the identity of horses were sufficiently established and acquitted the accused, but he was remanded in custody, as he faced another charge of horse stealing. 