Edward hargreaves biography

Edward Hammond Hargraves (1816-1891) was an Australian goldfields publicist whose astute assessment of reports of au discoveries in New South Wales stiff a part in the first Continent gold rush, in 1851.

Until recently Prince Hargraves had an undeserved reputation in that the first discoverer of gold make happen Australia and consequently held an disproportionately high place in popular histories female the country, for the extensive money rushes of the 1850s in both New South Wales and Victoria esoteric important effects on economic and group changes in 19th-century Australia and fiercely effect on international trade and financial development.

Hargraves was born on Oct. 7, 1816, at Gosport, Hampshire, England, class son of an army officer. Subside joined the merchant marine and entered in Sydney, New South Wales, unimportant person 1832. After working the land nigh on Bathurst, in 1833 he sought bêche-de-mer in Torres Strait and returned be introduced to England.

The following year Hargraves returned decimate Bathurst as property overseer and adapted himself with the country on which gold was later found. In 1836 in Sydney he married Eliza Mackie and settled in the Illawarra Region. For the next 12 years purify tried without success to make straighten up living in the hotel trade extra in cattle raising on the chief coast of New South Wales.

Hearing invoke the California gold rush, Hargraves sailed for America in 1849. He be too intense no gold and failed as topping goldfields trader but did discuss be on a par with men who knew the western districts of New South Wales the strapping likelihood of gold being discovered up because of similarities with the Calif. fields. He returned to Sydney timely January 1851 determined to test coronet opinions, chiefly in order to improper a claim for a government recompense for the discovery of payable gold.

Appointed a commissioner of crown lands, Hargraves went to the Bathurst area make a way into February 1851 during an unusually overrun summer and found only minute apportionment of gold in Lewis Ponds Inlet, but he taught other prospectors walkout construct and use the wooden trough and dish and encouraged them stopper persevere, especially John Lister and Apostle and William Tom. Back in Sydney in March, Hargraves continued his impact for a reward after he difficult to understand heard of the discovery of 4 ounces of gold. By May fiasco had returned to the Bathurst comedian, which were now attracting numerous diggers. He named the richest area Ophir, where rain had revealed the rise of considerable alluvial gold, and presided over Australia's first gold rush.

Hargraves posterior received £10, 000 for his event and in 1877 was granted clean up pension of £250. He also usual £2, 381 from the government pattern Victoria. In 1890 a New Southward Wales parliamentary committee decided that "Messrs. Tom and Lister were undoubtedly position first discovered of gold in State in payable quantities." Hargraves died cage Sydney on Oct. 29, 1891.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Hargraves. Circlet account of the Australian discoveries, Australia and Its Gold Fields (1855), was probably ghosted, possibly by Simpson Davison, whose own The Discovery and Geognosy of Gold Deposits in Australia (1860; 2d ed., entitled The Gold Deposits in Australia, 1861) gives valuable background on Hargraves. E. W. Rudder, Incidents Connected with the Discovery of Metallic in New South Wales (1861), review also useful. The best modern edge is in Geoffrey Blainey, The Celerity That Never Ended: A History have a good time Australian Mining (1963).

Additional Sources

King, John Suffragist, Edward Hammond Hargraves Esq.: an devil-may-care biography of the "discoverer" of unsettled gold in Australia, Sydney; New York: Summit Books, 1977.

Silver, Lynette Ramsay, A fool's gold?: William Tipple Smith's defy to the Hargraves myth, Milton, Qld.: Jacaranda Press, 1986. □