John Macarthur (politician)

Portrait of John Macarthur

John Macarthur (* around 1767 in Plymouth , † April 11, 1834 in Camden ) was a soldier , politician , entrepreneur and the founder of sheep farming in Australia .

Life

Little is known about Macarthur's early life; he was the second son of Alexander Macarthur and his wife Katharine, who had 14 children together. His exact date of birth is not known; He was baptized on September 3, 1767. In October 1788 he married in Bridgerule Elisabeth Veale, who bore him eight children.

Career

John Macarthur joined the Fish Corps in 1782 and took part in the American War of Independence . In 1788 he joined the 68th Regiment of Foot (infantry). He joined the New South Wales Corps in 1789 and sailed with the Second Fleet on the Neptune to New South Wales in Australia. He reached Sydney in 1790 as a lieutenant and then became the commandant of Parramatta .

Major Francis Grose , the governor of New South Wales, gave Macarthur land at Rose Hill near Parramatta, and he received a pledge for further land in April 1794, which he named after his wife, Elizabeth Farm; there he grew wheat and raised sheep. Grose appointed him paymaster of the corps.

Macarthur took action against Governor Hunter , who opposed the sale of rum by the Corps. When Philip Gidley King put Lieutenant James Marshall a year, Macarthur organized a social boycott against Governor King and William Paterson . Thereupon Macarthur called Paterson to a duel , in which he injured Paterson's shoulder, whereupon King had him arrested and transferred to Norfolk Island as commander .

John Macarthur's Camden Park House in Camden Park, built by John Verge from 1832–1835

Macarthur raised sheep and produced wool for the colony, exporting wool and importing merino wool in order to later start his own breeding of merino long wool sheep . The land around Sydney that he owned was particularly suitable for this. After he was commanded back because of his duel with Paterson in England, he came back in 1805, acquired 20 square kilometers of land, which was optimally supplied with water from the Nepean River , and raised cattle. About this land there was a dispute between him and Governor King and later with William Bligh , because they provided the use of this land in their town planning differently. Macarthur was awarded justice by Lord Camden in the dispute before the Colonial Office . A park is named after Camden.

Bligh was made governor with the assistance of Sir Joseph Banks ; his primary purpose was to tackle the illegal liquor trafficking organized by the Corps that had become a currency in the colony of New South Wales. Macarthur and Thomas Jamison were the key figures in this illicit trade, and Bligh fired Jamison from public administration for private and illegal business.

In June 1807 a convict escaped and left Sydney on one of Macarthur's ships, and in December 1807, when that ship returned to Sydney, Macarthur's sailing permit from Bligh was revoked. Bligh had hired attorney Richard Atkins to issue a December 15, 1807 revocation of Macarthur's shipping permit. Macarthur disregarded this order and was arrested, but was released when he promised to appear at the next session before the Criminal Court in Sydney on January 25, 1808. When he failed to show up for the court hearing, Bligh had him arrested.

Rum rebellion

As a result of this arrest, the so-called Rum Rebellion developed . Major George Johnston gave orders for Macarthur to be released. A signature list of prominent Sydney citizens calling for the arrest of Bligh was organized for the colony to indict him. Johnston went to Bligh and appealed for him to resign and volunteer for arrest. Bligh refused, so the Corps marched to Government House and arrested Bligh, who was subsequently arrested at Government House. Then Macarthur was initially Colonial Secretary, but then had to be before the court martial in England. Significantly, the written evidence of the court martial was lost on the voyage to London. Before the court martial he was sentenced to eight and a half years of exile in England because he was unreasonable and was only allowed to re-enter Australia after this time.

Next life

When he returned, Macarthur was entirely farming and living on Elizabeth Farm. The boycott during the Napoleonic Wars made wool a coveted and expensive item and its business prospered. He bred horses and was the first to grow wine commercially in Australia. He was also the founder of an Australian Agricultural Company in London in 1824 and the Bank of Australia . In 1825 he was elected to the first NSW Legislative Council . The death of his son John in 1831 grieved him very much. In late 1832 his health deteriorated and he died in Camden in 1834. When he died, three of his sons and three daughters were still alive and his two other children had died before him.

Names

Postage stamp from Macarthur from 1934

To commemorate his achievements for Australian agriculture, Macarthur was honored with a postage stamp, issued on the 100th anniversary of his death, showing a merino sheep. He is also shown on a $ 2 bill from Australia. After him and his wife, who came to Australia as the first academically trained woman, are named: The Division of Macarthur, an electoral district in the south of Campbelltown, the Macarthur region, which includes the Campbelltown , Camden and the Wollandilly Shire. There is also a city of Macarther in the Western District of Victoria . Street names can be found in Darling Harbor in Sydney and Melbourne , for example, and a school in Ballarat is named after him.

literature

• John Macarthur (1767-1834), pioneer and founder of the wool industry . In: The Biography of Early Australia . bendigolive.com. Retrieved January 20, 2006.
• AW Jose et al. (Ed.): The Australian Encyclopaedia . Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1927.
• Rex Rienits (Ed.): Australia's Heritage . Paul Hamlyn, Sydney 1970.
• Dictionary of Australian Biography
• Evatt, HV, Rum Rebellion: A Study Of The Overthrow Of Governor Bligh By John Macarthur And The New South Wales Corps , 1943.
• A detailed article on John Macarthur can be found on Thoroughbred Heritage: John Macarthur's Influence in Colonial Horse Breeding

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Macarthur, John (1767-1834) Australian Dictionary of Biography.
2. ↑ Information from www.parliament.nsw.gov.au
3. ↑ Australia's Heritage Vol. 1, pp. 211-212.
4. ↑ View of the farm and the residential building of Macarthur, including the bedroom
5. ^ Macarthur, John (1767-1834), pioneer and founder of the wool industry
6. ↑ Australian $ 2 note ( Memento of the original dated August 22, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.