Note: Bella had been a passenger on the first official ship the "Buffalo" with the Governor, Capt. later Sir John Hindmarsh, and landed on 28 Dec 1836. She was the ninth in a family of 12, her parents being John Sladden and his first wife Susannah Daniels of Herne. Seven members of the family came out on the "Buffalo", including Bella's father and Jane, his second wife. The Sladden family, originally Sloden has been traced back to when Henry Sloden born C.1390, paid tithes at Lyminge, Kent and was a juror at the Manor Court and mentioned in Burke's Landed Gentry. Bella's father John Sladden died at Black Forest, S.A. aged 88 on 16 Dec 1852. Bella's mother Susannah had died at London cir. 1836.
Bella and most of her family had been residing at Paddington, London at the time of their departure. Some of her brothers travelled by the "Cygnet". Bella was personal maid to the mother of George Stevenson, appointed Colonial Secretary to Governor Hindmarsh but remained with that family only a short time in S.A. living at North Adelaide, then married, to the great annoyance of the Stevensons. Mrs. George Stevenson even wrote a poem about "scampering" and "marrying" servants.