Edward Hammond Hargraves was one of the most famed and colorful explorers of gold during the gold rush era
Edward Hargraves
@Gold Prospector, Family and Childhood
Oct 7, 1816
Biography
Personal Details
- Birthday: October 7, 1816
- Died on: October 29, 1891
- Nationality: Australian
- Famous: Gold Prospector, Miscellaneous
- Known as: Edward Hammond Hargraves
- Universities:
- Brighton Grammar School
- Birth Place: Gosport, Hampshire
Edward Hargraves born at
Gosport, Hampshire
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Birth Place
Hargraves married Eliza Mackie in 1836 in Sydney. The couple had two sons and three daughters.
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Personal Life
On October 29, 1891, he died in Sydney and was interred at the ‘Waverley Cemetery’ in its Anglican section.
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Personal Life
He was born on October 7, 1816, in Gosport, Hampshire, England in the family of an army officer, Lieutenant John Edward Hargraves and his wife Elizabeth Hargraves as their third son.
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Childhood & Early Life
He attended the ‘Brighton Grammar School’ in England.
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Childhood & Early Life
When he was 14-year-old, he went to the sea and in 1832 he reached Sydney, New South Wales. After working on a property near Bathurst, he gathered tortoise shell and bêche-de-mer in Torres Strait in 1833 and went back to England.
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Childhood & Early Life
He went back to Bathurst in around 1834-35 and started working as a property overseer and with that he got a chance to get more acquainted with the country where gold was found later.
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Career
After his marriage in 1836, he moved with his wife to East Gosford in 1839 and started serving the ‘General Steam Navigation Co.’ as an agent. He purchased land from the dowry he received from marriage and constructed the Fox under the ‘Hill hotel’. For the next decade he endeavoured in the hotel business but failed that resulted into forfeiture of his property in 1843. He left his wife behind to take care of a store, while he purchased land on the Manning River.
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Career
On July 17, 1849 he sailed for America after he came to know about the California gold rush. As he could not find any gold there, he was not successful as a goldfields trader. However, he came to know of similar landscapes in the western districts of New South Wales in Australia that raised his hope of a high probability of discovering gold there.
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Career
In this pursuit, in January 1851, he travelled to Sydney, to assess his assumption in discovering gold and more significantly to earn a fortune in the form of government reward for unearthing a payable goldfield.
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Career
He went to the Bathurst region in February 1851. While he was going to Wellington, he was encouraged by the favourable findings at Guyong and added to that he along with John Lister discovered five specks of gold on February 12 in Lewis Ponds Creek located at New South Wales.
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Career