Name Henry Smith | Role Politician | |
Henry Gilbert Smith (1802 – 1 April 1886) was an English-born Australian politician.
Life and career
Smith was born in Northamptonshire to Thomas Smith and Frances Flesher. He migrated to Tasmania in 1827 and from there to Sydney, acquiring land on the Molonglo Plain. He ran an importing and mercantile firm in the early 1830s and later became a director of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. In 1839 he married Eleanor Whistler; he would later remarry Anne Margaret Thomas in 1856 and Anna Louisa Lloyd later than that. From 1856 to 1858 he was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Smith died at Brighton in England in 1886.
Smith was the founder and developer of the Sydney suburb of Manly, where he built a home called Fairlight House facing Delwood Beach. It was demolished in 1939. A more lasting memorial was erected by Smith in 1856, in the form of a large statue of a kangaroo, located in Kangaroo Street, Manly.