FF George Guest, Convict‘Alexander’(1767–1841)
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George Guest (1767-1841), convict and
settler, came from Gloucester, England, where on 24
March 1784 he was sentenced to transportation for seven
years. He sailed in the Alexander in the First
Fleet for New South Wales. On 17 March 1790 he arrived
at Norfolk Island. After his sentence expired he became
a settler there and received rations until 1794. In
December 1796 Guest was granted fourteen acres (5.7 ha)
at Norfolk Island, and later he supplied pork and maize
to the government. When plans for the transfer of
Norfolk Island settlers to Van Diemen's Land were
announced he had 600 ewes and 342 wethers, and was
recommended by Major
Joseph Foveaux
as a most industrious settler.
With his wife Mary Bateman, a convict
from the Lady Juliana, and six children, and 300
ewes, Guest went to Port Dalrymple but, not wishing to
join the five Norfolk Islanders already at Norfolk
Plains (Longford), they continued to the Derwent and
landed there in September 1805. Thus he was the first
Norfolk Islander to settle in the south and the first to
introduce sheep into Van Diemen's Land, though he had
lost a 'considerable part' of them en route.
He was offered accommodation at New Town
but preferred to use a warehouse built by
William Collins
and lent by Captain Forrest, while he began negotiations
for 424 acres (172 ha) to which he considered he was
entitled. On 1 January 1806 he was granted twenty-four
acres (10 ha) near Macquarie Point, but since there was
no school for his children he proposed to return to
England. Stating that he would come back, he departed
with his family for Sydney almost immediately, and
arrived there on 15 February. He was there to sign an
address to Governor
William Bligh
in September 1806; some time afterwards he returned to
Hobart Town. On 12 September 1808 his daughter, after
whom Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour was named by
James Kelly
in 1815, was married to
Thomas Birch.
On 8 July 1809 Bligh, on board the Porpoise at
the Derwent, recorded that Guest and another had
supplied them with fresh provisions.
After Governor
Lachlan Macquarie
arrived Guest was constantly engaged in controversy over
claims for land. For three years he occupied a farm
belonging to a settler named Pitt thinking that
formalities for its transfer to him were being completed
in Sydney; then he found that the title meantime had
been vested in another and he received little
compensation for the improvements he had made. About
1812 he let several small houses, on allotments near the
Town Rivulet opposite the site of the market, to the
government as barracks for the 73rd Regiment. During one
of his frequent absences in Sydney and at the time of
the detachment's departure these building were
demolished, the land remeasured and wrongly conveyed to
S. Gunn,
Anthony Fenn Kemp
and
George Gatehouse.
He sought compensation for this and for land taken to
widen streets and open new ones. On 1 May 1818 by
decision of a board of inquiry he was to receive £400,
300 acres (121 ha), cattle, other town allotments and a
year's rations for his family to cover all his claims,
but he remained dissatisfied. On 21 December Macquarie
wrote to Lieutenant-Governor
William Sorell:
'I regret to find that the claims of that tiresome man
George Guest are yet unadjusted to his satisfaction … I
shall most readily approve of your final decision on
this Man's Claims as I have now been sufficiently
plagued and tormented with them for nearly these last
nine years'. Sorell at least was still being 'tormented'
in March 1820 and, after applying for further grants in
1825, Guest was still negotiating in 1828.
By that time his wife was in the Insane
Asylum at Liverpool, New South Wales.
In 1825 Guest appears to have opened the
Seven Stars Inn in Campbell Street, Hobart.
He died on 23 March 1841.
by
E.
R. Pretyman
1988.
The Fellowship of First Fleeters
installed a FFF Plaque on George Guest’s Grave on 2nd
November 1988.
Refer FFF Web Site:http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/graves.html
Under
see
FFF Plaque 71 – Installed 2nd
November 1988for
FF GEORGE GUEST Convict‘Alexander’(c
1767-1841)
This article was published in
Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Volume 1, (MUP), 1966
Select Bibliography
-
Historical Records of Australia,
series 1, vol 6, series 3, vols 1-3
-
J. B. Walker, Early Tasmania
(Hob, 1902)
-
CSO 1/307, 1/7393 (Archives Office of
Tasmania
-
LSD 9/331 (Archives Office of
Tasmania)
-
manuscript catalogue under George
Guest (State Library of New South Wales).
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