William Charles Wentworth

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William Wentworth

William Charles Wentworth (born August 13, 1790 , at sea, † March 20, 1872 in Dorset , England ) was a writer , explorer , journalist, lawyer and politician; as the latter one of the leading figures of the young colony of New South Wales in Australia .

He was the first Australian-born politician to gain a reputation outside of Australia for demanding self-rule for the colonies in Australia. Together with William Lawson and Gregory Blaxland , he is considered the first white man to conquer the Blue Mountains .

Life

Wentworth's parents were Catherine Crowley and D'Arcy Wentworth , who was posted as a doctor on Norfolk Island - a penal colony in the Tasman Sea . The two probably only met on the Neptune of the Second Fleet , which left England on January 19, 1790. The ship reached Sydney in June 1790, where the couple circumnavigated on the Surprize . When the Surprize reached Norfolk Island in August, William Wentworth was born at sea. His mother, Catharine Crowley, was a teenage prisoner.

The family moved to Sydney in 1796, then to Parramatta , where Wentworth's father bought land and became wealthy. Wentworth's mother died in 1800. Wentworth had two brothers and probably at least seven half-siblings.

Wentworth was sent to school in England in 1803 and returned to Sydney in 1810, where he received his first position with Governor Lachlan Macquarie and was assigned land on the Nepean River . In 1813, Wentworth took part with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson on behalf of Macquarie in an expedition that found a route through the Blue Mountains and thus cleared the way into the interior of New South Wales for settlement ( Blaxland Expedition ). As a reward for this achievement, he and the other members of the expedition received additional land.

In 1816 he traveled back to England to study law at Cambridge University . There he published the first book of an Australian: A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America . In this book, he advocates an elected congregation to rule New South Wales, jury trials, and free citizens' immigration instead of convicts.

Wentworth completed his studies in 1822, was admitted to court and in 1824 he returned to Sydney.

When his father D'Arcy Wentworth died in 1827, he inherited the property and became one of the colony's richest residents. He bought the property with Vaucluse House in the east of Sydney . Since his parents had never married and his mother was a prisoner, Wentworth never became a member of the "recognized" ruling class. Embittered by this rejection, he became the leader of the emancipist party , which sought equal rights and status for ex-prisoners and their descendants.

A dedicated and gifted public speaker as well as a vicious journalist, Wentworth became one of the leading political figures in the colony of the 1820s and 1830s. He now publicly called for a representative parliament, the abolition of the deportation of convicts to Australia, court hearings with juries and a free press.

He became a bitter opponent of Governor Ralph Darling and his entourage, especially the wealthy landowner John Macarthur . Macarthur's opposition to Wentworth was both personal and political: Macarthur ended a relationship between his daughter Elisabeth and Wentworth because he refused to allow his daughter to marry someone who had a convict as a parent. Wentworth subsequently became vice-president of the Australian Patriotic Association and founded The Australian newspaper (not identical to The Australian , which was founded in 1964 ), the colony's first privately owned newspaper to spread his views.

From 1840 the political landscape of New South Wales changed: the deportations of prisoners were abolished and there was an elected legislative parliament. The dominant theme became the disempowerment of the large landowners. Wentworth took sides for the landowners against the democratic party , which wanted to divide the land and give it to small farmers. In 1843 he was elected to parliament and became the leader of the conservative party and was reconciled with Macarthur and his supporters. In 1853 Wentworth chaired a committee that drafted a constitution for New South Wales that provided for complete self-government and independence from Great Britain.

Wentworth resigned in 1856 and moved to England, where he died; he was buried in Sydney. His family members remained influential in Sydney society; William Wentworth IV, for example, was Member of the Australian Parliament for the Liberal Party of Australia from 1949 to 1977.

family

In 1829 Wentworth married Sarah Cox (1805–1880), with whom he had seven daughters and three sons:

  • Thomasine Wentworth (1825-1913)
  • William Charles Wentworth (1827-1859)
  • Fanny Wentworth (1829-1893)
  • FitzWilliam Wentworth (1833–1915) father of
  • Sarah Wentworth (1835-1857)
  • Eliza Sophia Wentworth (1838–1898)
  • Isabella Wentworth (1840-1856)
  • Laura Wentworth (1842-1887)
  • Edith Wentworth (1845-1891)
  • D'Arcy Bland Wentworth (1848-1922)

Before his marriage, he had one child with Jamima Eagar, wife abandoned by Edward Eagar .

Aftermath

The towns of Wentworth and Wentworth Falls and the constituency Division of Wentworth , the Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains and Wentworth Avenue in Canberra are named after him.

In 1963, Australia Post issued a stamp with Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson commemorating the crossing of the Blue Mountains. and another in 1974 on the anniversary of the first newspaper publication.

Publications

  • A Statistical Account of the British Settlements in Australasia (1819)
  • Journal of an expedition, across the Blue Mountains, May 11 – June 6, 1813. 1813
  • Australasia: a poem written for the Chancellor's Medal at the Cambridge commencement, July 1823. G. and WB Whittaker, London 1823

literature

  • Bernard Barton : The Poets and Prose Writers of New South Wales. Sydney 1866
  • Rusden: History of Australia. London 1883
  • Carol Liston: Sarah Wentworth - Mistress of Vaucluse. Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, ISBN 0-949753-34-3 .
  • John Ritchie: The Wentworths. Father and Son. The Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-522-84751-X .
  • Andrew Tink : William Charles Wentworth. Australia's greatest native son . Allen & Unwin, 2009, ISBN 978-1-7417-5192-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Parliament of New South Wales , accessed July 5, 2010
  2. ^ A b Michael Persse: Wentworth, William Charles (1790–1872) . In: Australian Dictionary of Biography , Volume 2 . MUP . Pp. 582-589. 1967. Retrieved August 14, 2007.
  3. ^ Wentworth, William Charles . In: Percival Serle (Ed.): Dictionary of Australian Biography . Angus & Robertson, 1949 (Retrieved August 14, 2007).
  4. ^ Australian Dictionary of Biography Online , accessed August 22, 2009.
  5. ^ Parliament of NSW , accessed July 7, 2010
  6. ^ Australian stamp , accessed July 7, 2010
  7. ^ Australian stamp , accessed July 7, 2010

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wentworth, William Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian pioneer, politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1790
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1872
Place of death Dorset , England