In the service of the company
In the service of the company Letters of Sir Edward Parry, Commissioner to the Australian Agricultural Company Volume I: December 1829 – June 1832
Transcribed and edited by Noel Butlin Archives Centre ANU Archives Program 2005
Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email:
[email protected] Web: http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry In the service of the company: letters of Sir Edward Parry, Commissioner to the Australian Agricultural Company: volume 1, December 1829 – June 1832. Includes index. ISBN 1 920942 28 9 ISBN 1 920942 29 7 (online) 1. Parry, William Edward, Sir, 1790-1855 - Correspondence. 2. Australian Agricultural Company - Archives. 3. Australian Agricultural Company - History. 4. Pioneers Australia - Correspondence. I. Noel Butlin Archives Centre (Australian National University). 994.4202 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Transcribed and edited by the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Cover design by Brendon McKinley with a portrait of Sir William Edward Parry by Samuel Drummond reproduced by kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London, www.npg.org.uk Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2005 ANU E Press The Australian Agricultural Company’s archives are listed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register
CONTENTS Acknowledgements
ii
Preface by Professor Alan Atkinson
iii
Introduction by Dr Pennie Pemberton
vi
Note on transcript
xii
Map 1
xiv
1. 1829: Letter A – C
1
2. 1830: Letter D – Letter No. 297
5
3. 1831: Letters Nos 298 – 550
219
4. 1832: Letters Nos 551 – 636
367
Index
423
In the service of the company
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sir Edward Parry’s letter books were deposited with the Noel Butlin Archives Centre (then the Australian National University Archives of Business and Labour) by the Australian Agricultural Company in 1955, and this volume is published with the company’s approval and support. We are also grateful to the Thyne Reid Charitable Trusts for a grant towards the conservation and transcription of the letter books. The publication of Sir Edward Parry’s 1829–32 letter book makes its contents widely available for the first time. The original volume is extremely fragile, the binding having deteriorated and its brittle pages having suffered water damage many years ago, and it has not been possible to make the volume available for general use. Because of the fragility of the volume and the faded handwriting in light brown ink, transcription of the handwriting was a demanding task, ably undertaken by Dr Pennie Pemberton. Mary Paton, also of the Archives’ staff, assisted with the editing and the proofreading which required close attention to the many abbreviations and the erratic capitalisation. Kim Morris of Art and Archival Pty Ltd undertook conservation work to stabilise the original volume, Barry Howarth produced the detailed index and Winifred Mumford drew the map which also appears in the 1932–34 volume. The ANU E Press team provided valuable production assistance. Maggie Shapley University Archivist ANU Archives Program
Page ii
PREFACE The Australian Agricultural Company occupies a strange, halfway position in the story of Australian settlement. O