Albert Henry Landseer

Albert Henry Landseer (10 February 1829 – 27 August 1906) was a businessman and politician in the early days of the colony of South Australia. He is also remembered as a pioneer of the River Murray steamboat trade.

History

Landseer was born in London in 1829 the only son of Henry Landseer, and his wife Lucy. He was a cousin of the great animal painter Sir Edwin Landseer. He studied sculpture under one Johnson, but abandoned art and migrated to South Australia in 1848.^[1]

He worked as a contractor for a time but joined the gold rush to Forest Creek, Victoria around 1850 and was moderately successful in that and other goldfields, abandoning that life in 1858, when he founded a business in Port Elliot with his brother-in-law J. P. Tripp.^[2] He acted as an agent for Captain Cadell's River Murray Navigation Company, and built up the business based on the river trade; a headquarters in Milang, woolsheds and offices in Goolwa, Morgan and Port Victor, from where the wool was shipped to Europe. He also had extensive interests in flourmills in Milang and on Lake Alexandrina.^[1]

Boats run by his company on the Murray included the paddle-steamers Bourke, Despatch, Eliza, Gertrude and Industry.

He was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the district of Mount Barker in 1875, partnered with W. A. E. West Erskine, who was succeeded in May 1876, by J. G. Ramsay. Other partners in his long parliamentary career were successively F. W. Stokes, Sir J. L. Stirling, M.L.C., Dr. (later Sir) John Cockburn and C. M. R. Dumas. He retired from the Assembly in 1898,^[1] at that time a record for continuous membership of the Assembly.^[3]

Personal

Landseer married twice: to Rosina Masson (ca.1830 – 29 April 1871) on 4 November 1856, and Harriet Sarah Taylor (ca.1852 – 15 September 1928) on 15 August 1872. Their children included:

• Florence Ada (5 November 1857 – 23 July 1891) married William John Colville on 13 April 1883
• Laura (2 March 1859 – 23 January 1895) married Edward Robert Fitzgerald on 1 June 1881^[4] Their son Laurie Henry died in France during World War I.
• Blanch Rose (19 June 1862 – 6 February 1930) married J. W. Colville on 11 May 1893
• Ada Maria Louisa (22 January 1865 – 4 February 1871)
• Maud Isabelle (19 October 1866 – 9 April 1867)
• son (12 August 1868 – )^[5]
• Horace Henry Julian (2 June 1873 – 11 December 1945) attorney
• Elsie Florence (14 June 1875 – 4 September 1935) married Arthur Formby of Langhorne Creek on 5 September 1899. Their son Dr. Myles Landseer Formby was S.A.'s Rhodes Scholar of 1924.
• Laurence Harcourt (19 September 1876 – 27 August 1955) married Eva Matilda White (ca.1876 – 30 September 1945) on 3 November 1906
• Nellie Theresa (21 February 1878 – ) married Lewis Smith Richardson on 2 April 1907
• Hilda Mildmay (1 June 1882 – ) married Ronald Henry Martin (7 September 1880 – 27 March 1950) of Stonyfell^[6] on 20 February 1912. Ronald was killed in a car crash near Bordertown. Daughters Ruth Landseer Martin (married Alan Cowling in 1938) and Katherine Landseer Martin (married Dr. John Gardner McGlashan ca.1943).

His home was "Mirandahville", Milang

Sources

• A. J. Stimson, 'Landseer, Albert Henry (1829–1906)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/landseer-albert-henry-7021/text12211, accessed 2 July 2013.

References