Richard was the first son of Richard and Elizabeth Sandercock. He was born in the hamlet of St. Thomas Street, Launceston, Cornwall, on Christmas Day, 25 December, 1839; the date of his baptism is unknown. As a boy he attended one of the schools in the parish of St. Thomas. He was still at school at the time of the 1851 Census in Launceston, being named as a scholar in that year, when he was already 11 years of age. Richard was 14 when the Sandercocks emigrated to South Australia on the “California", and would have immediately helped his father at “Berry Hill". Some time later Richard junior may have struck out on his own. The S.A. Directory in 1865 recorded him as farming at Cudlee Creek with his younger brother Samuel, while their father was still at “Berry Hill". The fact that Richard senior was leasing land in the vicinity of Cudlee Creek since 1861, however, may account for his sons being described as “of Cudlee Creek“, though that place may have been an approximation for “Kenton Valley" as well.

On 16 October, 1867, when Richard was aged nearly 28, he married Mary Ann Lockyer at Cudlee Creek, “at the dwelling house of Mr R. Sandercock”, according to their marriage certificate. Again, whether this refers to Richard junior’s place of residence, or to that of his father, is not clear. The witnesses to the marriage were Richard's younger sister Louisa and her husband Henry Bowey, a blacksmith of Gumeracha. The Boweys had been married less than a month when Richard Sandercock married Mary Ann Lockyer.

Of great significance to the people of South Australia about this time, was the visit to its shores of H.R.H. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, a son of Queen Victoria. He arrived on 3 October, 1867, making Adelaide his first colonial port of call, to the chagrin of our Victorian neighbours. The Royal visit was therefore exactly two weeks before Richard and Mary Ann‘s wedding.

Mary Ann was the eighth child of Henry Lockyer and his wife Caroline, nee Brunswick, who were married at Christchurch Priory in Hampshire, England, on 23 April, 1833. This couple and their four children were sponsored as suitable emigrants, it seems, through the personal intervention of an English aristocrat, Lord Stuart de Rothesay of Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire, in 1839. The Lockyers came out to South Australia on the ship “Duchess of Northumberland", arriving at Port Adelaide on 19 December, 1839.

From the South Australian Directories and the 1841 Census, Henry Lockyer was listed as a labourer living at North Adelaide and Walkerville from 1839 to 1851. From 1864 to 1881 he was alternatively a labourer and farmer of “Torrens”, Chain of Ponds, near Gumeracha. His daughter Mary Ann was born at Walkerville on 31 July, 1846, and was 23 years old when she married Richard Sandercock. At the time of their wedding she was also living at Cudlee Creek, and may have been employed in the household of a family in the district.

Richard and Mary Ann stayed at Cudlee Creek for nearly a year, or at least Mary Ann did, because she gave birth to their first daughter Clara Jane, on 28 July, 1868. It was perhaps before Mary Ann was married, or before Clara was born, that Mary Ann would walk down to Adelaide to sell vegetables, leaving her home at five o'clock in the morning; this story was related by one of her granddaughters.

Richard and his brother Samuel were interested in farming land at Riverton, in the Lower North of the State. Neighbours of the Sandercocks at Cudlee Creek and Kenton Valley, the Hannaford brothers John and Frederick, had purchased land in the Gilbert district of Riverton as early as 1853, though Frederick later returned to Cudlee Creek. Perhaps the reports of a brother-in-law of Samuel from Riverton in 1867, may have prompted the Sandercocks to move north into the fertile Gilbert River valley around Riverton. Samuel was already in the district in April of 1868; it was probably soon after, once Richard's wife and daughter could travel up, that Richard came to Riverton to work in partnership with Samuel.

The District Council of Riverton Assessment of Rates, on 26 April, 1869, recorded Richard and Samuel (as “Sandycock Bros.") paying rates for land on Sections 73, and parts of, 75 and 36, being 261 acres in all, a mile or so north of Riverton township. 210 acres was rated as second class land and the remaining 51 acres as third class. Just how and where the two Sandercock families were actually living in 1869 is not known.

In 1870, on 4 April, Richard and Mary Ann's son Frederick Albert was born at Riverton. In that year, rates of 2 pounds for a dwelling house on the Sandercocks’ rented land are first mentioned. By now the brothers were working 394 acres of land between them. In 1872, the Assessment Book mentions the Landlord or lessor as John James Swinden, one of the two sons of Charles Swinden, an early pioneer in the Riverton district and elsewhere, who had died in 1866. The elder Swinden was a nephew of the founder of Riverton, James Masters, who had arrived on the “Africaine” in November, 1836, and died back in England in 1861.

On 25 February, 1873, the Sandercock brothers bought the land which they had previously been leasing, 463 acres in all. Section 36, Hundred of Gilbert, contained 302 acres, and had originally been granted in 1855 to a Robert Davenport. Sections 73 and 75 contained 123 and 38 acres, respectively, and had been granted in 1859 to Charles Swinden. In 1877, on 8 August, 225 acres of land in Section 36 was transferred from the Sandercock brothers’ partnership to Richard alone, while Samuel used the remainder of the land himself. In January of that year Richard had paid 45 pounds in rates for 150 acres of first class land, 73 acres of second class land, with two acres set aside for a dwelling house. No more land was purchased by Richard Sandercock after the partnership with his brother Samuel was dissolved in 1877.

Mary Ann Sandercock had given birth to another son, Frank Richard, on 20 June, 1872, and their last child Edith May was born on 16 December, 1880, at the farm north of Riverton. Nothing is known of the Sandercocks' life at Riverton in the last years of the 1880's or any religious affiliations they had with a church in the town. Working the farm may have been a source of worry and strain on Richard, although details are now forgotten. On 17 June, 1901, he took his own life by drowning. He was in his 62nd year, and was buried in the Riverton cemetery. He had not made a Will before his death.

Richard and Mary Ann's three older children were all married before 1901. Clara had married Alfred Murphy and there were six children already by that year. Frederick married Sarah Lock and there were two sons in that family. Frank had married Janet Crawford in 1900 and their only child, a son, died aged six weeks on the same day as his grandfather had drowned himself.

Richard's widow continued to live on the farm, sharing the house with her son Frederick and his family until about 1921. It seems Mary Ann considered it her right to live in the larger part of the house, while Frederick, Sarah and their five children lived in a pug constructed addition on the back of the house. She managed the household and did most the shopping - a grandson of Samuel remembers Mary Ann driving her buggy into Riverton when she was in her seventies. To some of her family she may have been a little inconsiderate, but several granddaughters remember her with affection, possibly because they did not visit often. A special treat was to stay on the farm at Riverton over the Easter holidays.

About 1921, Mary Ann left the farm and went to live in half a house in Torrens Road, Riverton, which she rented for 10/- a week. To her grandchildren she was always “an old lady", but nevertheless easy to converse with. She always had toys and dolls for her granddaughters to play with, when they came to visit, and there were old clothes in which to dress up. Mary Ann Sandercock was a tall woman, a granddaughter remembers, and always wore long dresses. She outlived her husband Richard by almost 25 years, and died in her eightieth year, on 7 May, 1926, of apoplexy. She was buried in the Riverton cemetery with Richard. Though there was no death notice, “The Advertiser", on 8 May, mentioned the funeral: “The friends of the late Mrs Mary Ann Sandercock (late of Riverton) are respectfully informed that her funeral (motor) will leave the residence of her daughter (Mrs A. Fergusson of Saddleworth) on Sunday, 3pm, for the Riverton cemetery." Mary Ann's younger daughter Edith, referred to in the funeral notice, married Andrew Fergusson in 1902.

Under the terms of her will, Mary Ann left household furniture, wearing apparel, a horse, cow, fowls, spring cart, buggy and harness, her half share in the implements, farm machinery and the crop, to three of her children. Her estate was sworn not to exceed 300 pounds. All her 20 grandchildren were born at the time of her death in 1926.