ps_John_Pascoe_Fawkner

__ John Pascoe Fawkner __ Homepage | The Discovery of Melbourne | The Settlement of Melbourne | The Aboriginals Mind Map | Alex's Reflection | Danny's Reflection | Bibliography | Founding Fathers John Pascoe Fawkner October 20th 1792 - September 4th 1869 John Pascoe Fawkner was born on October 20th 1792 at Cripplegate which is in London. His father was John Fawkner who worked as a metal refiner and his mother, Hannah née Pascoe. In 1801 his Father was sentenced to 14 years transportation. So with his younger sister, Elizabeth and Mother they went with his father, to the brand new settlement that was going to be formed on the northern shores of the Bass Straight.

After a couple of hard months the settlement was abandoned because of lack of fresh water. So the settlement moved to Van Diemans Land, later to be known as Tasmania, and they lived in a small hut near Sullivans Cove. It was hard there due do lack of food and suffering. Also John Pascoe Fawkner lost the use of his right leg for a few months due to the fast outbreak of scurvy during that time.

But by the time 1806 came around the Fawkner’s were quite wealthy and had a 20 hectare land grant and only 11km from Hobart. John lived by himself for weeks sometimes, because he was the Shepard bot and needed to take care of the farm all year round while his father was in the town and his sister aided his father.

During that time Fawkner had decided he wanted to open a bakery so he found a spot in town and did. It was a quite successful business decision.

In 1814 John Fawkner assisted an escape of convicts who were going to sail to South America in seek of refuge and to escape the life of a convict. For this Fawkner supplied whale-boat and some assorted tools to make the boat sea worthy. So when the boat was ready for sea Fawkner went ashore and secretly made his way back to his farm. Later in 1814 John Fawkner was caught and convicted of aiding the 7 prisoners to escape. At the same time the boat including the escaped convicts still inside returned to Hobart because of leaks in the wooden hull. For Fawkner’s crimes he was sentences to 500 lashes plus 2 years labour.

In 1816 when he was freed from his sentence of labour, he returned to Hobart and took up the bakery business again. Apparently he claimed to do very well in the 17 months back from prison.

On December 5th 1822 John Fawkner got married to convict Eliza Cobb, and together the moved to Launceston and Fawkner began fresh as a builder/sawyer. In 1824 he built for himself and his wife a brick house with thirteen rooms and all together costing £2500. He tried to pass it as a hotel but his hotel licence was refused due to his wife still being a convict but only is given to him a few months later. Owning this hotel which he called the Cornwell Hotel, improved his financial status allowing him to pay of his debts.

In April 1835 he got a ship called the schooner Enterprise and was planning to leave for Australia but assault charges and unpaid debts didn’t let him leave for a further 2 months, his crew went without him. After the founding of Melbourne and the race to found it was all done and the goldfields were staring up in Victoria, John Pascoe Fawkner put most of his time into the political side to the goldfields and the laws towards them. Between 1852 and when he died in 1869 he was on around about 96 select comities. He didn’t like all the immigrants much mainly concerned about the Chinese and the as he called them ‘wild Americans. He thought the Chinese would cause a civil war and the Americas had no sense of the laws that had been put in place and just did what they wanted.

John Pascoe Fawkner died in 1869 on the 4th of September at his house on Smith Street, with his family surrounding him.