Name Albert Landseer | Died August 27, 1906 | |
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.
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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.
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. 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.
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, at that time a record for continuous membership of the Assembly.
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:
His home was "Mirandahville", Milang