[South Australia]. [DASHWOOD, George Frederick]

Province of South Australia. Land Grant. Under Sales in England. Country Section... [Five original land grants - printed documents with manuscript insertions - relating to country sections purchased in 1840 by the South Australian pioneer, George Frederick Dashwood, offered as one group]

Folio, five documents (approximately 387 × 240 mm each), each being a bifolium (centrefold blank, last page docketed); the first page, in each instance, contains a small hand-coloured diagram of the block (showing the orientation of the land), a paper-over-wax impressed seal, and the signature of Governor George Gawler as Resident Commissioner, and Alfred Miller Mundy as Private Secretary, dated 16 July 1840.

Three horizontal creases (when the documents are folded thus, the docketed portion of the last page becomes visible on one of the exposed panels); a few tiny marginal chips; one document has a short split along one fold, and its outer panels when folded are a little tanned; trifling signs of age; overall, all five documents are in very good condition.

The consecutively numbered land grants (1037 to 1041) are for 'Eighty acres numbered 957 [to 961] in the Provincial Survey marked with the Letter C', purchased by 'George Frederick Dashwood Esquire, Royal Navy, Forest Lodge, Bracknell, Berks'. The purchase price of £80 per section is not shown; all five documents have the word 'Duplicate' in ink in a contemporary hand at the head of the first page, and they have a slightly different title to examples we have seen where purchase prices are recorded ('Land Grant under Preliminary Sales in England and Partial Purchase in the Province').

Lieutenant George Frederick Dashwood RN (1806-1881) ... 'was a naval officer, public servant and politician in South Australia. He was appointed an acting member of the Legislative Council of South Australia, serving from June 1843 to June 1844.... He entered the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1819 and served 1832-1833 under Captain C. H. Fremantle on HMS "Challenger", noted for earlier (1829) claiming all of New Holland west of New South Wales for the Crown. He was commissioned lieutenant in December 1833, later served on the survey vessel "Sulphur". Dashwood suffered terribly from rheumatism, and was retired on half pay. Dashwood married Sarah Rebecca Loine on 27 December 1839 in a Catholic church in London. They arrived in South Australia aboard "Orissa" in November 1841. He purchased an estate 5 miles [8 km] west of Meadows, named Dashwood's Gully. He and Sarah married again in a civil ceremony for reasons of bureaucratic convenience. In 1844 he applied for partial remission of the purchase price of the land by virtue of his naval service. This was initially refused, but granted in 1850 after much argument. In 1842 he was appointed justice of the peace and sworn in as magistrate, and on 15 June 1843 he was appointed to the Legislative Council, holding this position until July 1844, when he resigned, and apart from a public meeting at which he protested against the proposed settlement in the colony of a contingent of Parkhurst boys, he took no part in public life until November 1846, when he was reappointed JP, and in April 1847 he was made Acting Commissioner of Police and Police Magistrate. Two years later he was appointed Stipendiary Magistrate for Port Adelaide. In October 1850 he was appointed Police Commissioner, a position he held until January 1852, when he was appointed Collector of Customs, succeeding (later Sir) R.R. Torrens. In July 1858 he was appointed Emigration Agent in Great Britain, and apart from a visit in May 1861 was in England until late 1862, when the office was abolished, and served as Stipendiary Magistrate in various places including Mount Barker and Strathalbyn. In 1875, he was appointed Stipendiary Magistrate for Port Adelaide and Edithburgh. He held this post until around 1880' (Wikipedia).

'From Almanda to United States: Lost Localities in the City of Onkaparinga' (consulted online) records more specifically that Dashwood 'had purchased sections 955, 956, 957, 958, 959, 960 and 961 in the Hundred of Kuitpo in 1840 while still living in Berkshire', that Dashwood Gully had a post office and a school which operated from 1863 to 1869, and that the area continued to be known as Dashwood Gully until at least the 1950s. George Gawler (1795-1869) was South Australia's second governor. 'Disputes between the first governor, Captain (Sir) John Hindmarsh, and the resident commissioner, (Sir) James Fisher, over their respective jurisdictions had retarded the colony's development, so the two offices were combined in Gawler. Thus, as governor he became representative of the Colonial Office in the province, and as resident commissioner, representative of the non-governmental Colonization Commission which was responsible for the control of land sales, for applying the proceeds to the emigration of labourers and for raising loans until such time as the colony had sufficient revenue to support itself.... On 12 October 1838 Gawler with his wife and five children arrived in Adelaide in the "Pestonjee Bomanjee" and found conditions far worse than he had been led to expect.... The most urgent necessity, he believed, was to promote rural settlement. He persuaded Charles Sturt to accept the post of surveyor-general and, until he could assume office, Gawler himself took charge of the Survey Department, reorganizing it and conducting preliminary explorations. He also hired every available surveyor, including some of Light's former officers. In October 1839, to his dismay, he was ordered to dismiss them. The commissioners had appointed Lieutenant Edward Frome as surveyor-general and sent him out with a party of sappers. Gawler solved the problem by amalgamating the two forces, feeling justified by the increasing volume of land sales. In 1839 over 170,000 acres (68,797 ha) were sold'. Gawler produced results: within twelve months 200,000 acres had been surveyed, and by May 1841 mapping of 7000 square miles had been completed, and over 500,000 acres divided into sections. These rare land grants are evidence of Gawler's energy and zeal. Unhappily for him, history was about to repeat itself: his 'major weakness was his complete failure to understand political realities.... His recall and his successor, Captain (Sir) George Grey, arrived together on 10 May 1841' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography').

Alfred Miller Mundy (1809-1877) has his own claims to fame as well. He 'enlisted in the army and was stationed in Sydney in November 1827 when he was promoted ... [to lieutenant]. He was appointed a Magistrate in Tasmania in March 1835 and as Justice of the Peace in 1837. He resigned his commission in 1839, but was later commonly referred to as "Lieutenant Mundy". On 11 July 1839 Mundy, John Bourke and Joseph Hawdon set out from Melbourne for Adelaide, Mundy and Bourke on a light tandem and Hawdon on horseback, following the route taken by Charles Bonney via Portland Bay and the Glenelg River. They arrived in Adelaide exactly a month later, and estimated it could easily be done in half that time. He joined with Edward Bate Scott and Edward John Eyre, who had a scheme to purchase and transport livestock from Adelaide to the Swan River Colony (now Perth), aboard chartered ships as far as King George's Sound (then the only deepwater harbor in Western Australia) and then drive them overland to Perth. On 30 January 1840 they loaded some stock onto the schooner "Minerva" and a few days later the remainder onto the barque "Cleveland". Eyre sailed aboard "Minerva" while Mundy was aboard the "Cleveland". The stock consisted of 1700 sheep, which included over 1000 ewes and 450 lambs, 6 horses and 100 cattle. They achieved good prices in Perth, and would have made a tidy profit except many sheep and cattle died on the track in Western Australia, ascribed to their eating poisonous plants. On 3 April 1840 Eyre and Mundy were elected honorary members of the WA Agricultural Society. They arrived back in Adelaide aboard "Minerva" in May 1840. Mundy was appointed acting Clerk of (the Legislative) Council in June 1840 and Private Secretary to the newly appointed Governor Grey in May 1841. He was appointed by the Governor to the Legislative Council on 15 June 1843, originally as a non-official appointee, then as Colonial Secretary from 15 June 1848 to 14 June 1849 when he returned to England on leave of absence. His brother Edward Miller Mundy, who was MP for the constituency of South Derbyshire had died childless on 29 January 1849 and Alfred resigned on succeeding to the family estate, which included lucrative coal mines. He was Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1855, and a JP and DL for that county and a JP for Nottinghamshire. He died on 30 March 1877 while on holiday in Nice' (Wikipedia).

These documents indicate Mundy was also private secretary to Governor Gawler by mid-July 1840, little more than two months after he arrived in Adelaide. He was successful in securing another important government contract too: less than a year later, on 5 June 1841, he married Jane Hindmarsh (1814-1874), the eldest daughter of the colony's first governor, John Hindmarsh. He had been recalled by the Colonial Office, and he sailed for England on 14 July 1838. The 'recall was not considered a disgrace either in Adelaide or at the Colonial Office' and he 'had high hopes of reinstatement and left his wife in Adelaide.... she married off her daughters with enviable success: in July 1840 Mary to G.M. Stephen, a cousin of James Stephen at the Colonial Office and in July [sic] 1841 Jane to Alfred Miller Mundy, a cousin of the earl of Lincoln. Mrs Hindmarsh also managed the sale of her husband's land to such effect that her account of £12,000 was by far the largest in the Adelaide branch of the Bank of Australasia when she left to rejoin her husband in 1841' after he was appointed governor of Heligoland in 1840 (ADB). [5 items].

Item #123505

Price (AUD): $6,000.00
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