Edward Stone Parker

Edward Stone Parker

Edward Stone Parker (born May 17, 1802 in Great Britain , † April 27, 1865 in Franklinford , New South Wales , Australia ) was a Methodist preacher and Assistant Protector of Aborigines in the district of Port Philip , in colonial New South Wales under George Augustus Robinson . Parker established the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station in Franklinford for the Dja Dja Wurrung and administered it from January 1841 until its dissolution in late 1848.

Youth and education

Edward Parker was the son of Edward Stone Parker and his wife Mary. He received training as a painter and became a teacher at a Sunday school of the Methodist Church and its parish candidate. In 1828 he married Mary Cook Woolmer. In 1838 he was given a teaching position at a Methodist day school in London and the Colonial Office in Great Britain named him one of Robinson's four assistants.

Assistant Protector

He reached Sydney and Melbourne with his wife and six sons in January 1839. In March, Robinson Parker gave the order to establish an Aboriginal protectorate to protect the Dja Dja Wurrung . Initially, Parker planned to set up the station in a location that was not suitable for agricultural use, so he selected the area on Mount Franklin , which the Aboriginal people call the Lalgambook . There he built the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station with a homestead, school, church and other buildings. Initially, the station was occupied by 200 Aborigines, who could shape their lives according to their needs and cultural habits. There was a teacher and other employees, including the doctor Dr. W. Baylie. Parker's missionary work in the Protectorate met with little success; only a few young Aborigines became Christians and settled as farmers. The protectorate was closed on December 31, 1848 - when only 20 to 30 Aborigines lived there.

personality

Parker believed that the aboriginal people just lacked the proper morals for successful civilization. In his opinion, this lay in Christianity and in the brotherhood of all men. He assumed that the integration of the Aborigines into society could succeed if they were given the opportunity to work their land for their benefit and not for the whites. Parker also saw the lack of equality between whites and Aborigines as the main cause of the numerous sexual attacks on indigenous women during the time of the border conflicts between Dja Dja Wurrung and settlers. In letters to Robinson and Governor Charles La Trobe , he pleaded for a more generous policy towards the Aborigines.

Edward Parker got to know the language of the Aborigines and their culture and traditions, especially the Jajowurrong clan, also known as Loddon Aborigines . On May 10, 1854, he gave a lecture before the John Knox Young Men's Association , which had published the book The Aborigines of Australia . His writings in the La Trobe Library are still a valuable source of information about Aboriginal life today.

At Parker's initiative, the European settlers Henry Monro and his employees who had massacred Aborigines in January 1840, and William Jenkins, William Martin, John Remington, Edward Collins and Robert Morrison, who had committed a similar act in February 1841, came to court. Both cases were dismissed in court because the Aborigines did not invoke their statements on the Bible and therefore made it impossible to find the truth in accordance with the judicial opinions of the time.

Parker was a senior lay minister in the Methodist Church at Port Philip and, in 1853, a councilor at the University of Melbourne . For the Victorian Legislative Council he was nominated from 1854 to 1855 and from 1857 to 1862 inspector of the Denominational Schools Board .

Parker's first wife Mary died in 1842 and in 1843 he married Hannah Edwards.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bain Attwood: My Country. A history of the Djadja Wurrung 1837–1864 . In: Monash Publications in History . 25, 1999, ISSN  0818-0032 , pp. 23-36.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} H. N. Nelson: Parker, Edward Stone (1802-1865) , Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp. 396-397. Online at adb.online.anu.au , in English, accessed November 19, 2011
3. ^ Bain Attwood, 23-28, My Country. A history of the Djadja Wurrung 1837-1864 , pp. 23-28, Monash Publications in History: 25, 1999, ISSN  0818-0032