Salisbury. The rear of the 1858 built Courthouse. Now the Heritage Centre and Museum.
Salisbury and the Courthouse Museum (1859).
Sir Montague( or Montagu) Chapman, Third Baronet of Westmeath near Dublin Ireland, used a loop hole in the Special Survey regulations of 1839 and selected his 4,000 acres for £4,000 in different areas. He took 800 acres at Koonunga near Kapunda; 500 acres at Kapunda (a friend of his Bagot also got land there); 500 acres near Waterloo and Marrabel; and later in 1842 he selected a further 2,200 acres between the Little Para River and Dry Creek at what is now Mawson Lakes, Salisbury and Cross Keys. At Killua Castle in Ireland he had 9,000 acres and hundreds of tenant farmers. He wanted to do the same in SA. In 1840 he sent out Captain Charles Bagot from Ireland with 224 Irish immigrants to settle his, and Bagot’s lands, at Kapunda with Irish labourers and tenants. Then in 1842 he sailed out to SA himself with 120 Irish tenant farmers whom he installed on his lands at Cross Keys. Sir Montague Chapman returned to Ireland the next year. Then in 1847 he sent out a further 214 Irish immigrants to be tenant farmers on his Cross Key to Salisbury lands. They came out on the ships named Trafalgar and Aboukir. Sir Montague Chapman lived in Ireland not SA but returned to his SA estates in 1852 and drowned at sea in 1853 off Portland when returning to SA from Melbourne. His brother inherited the SA lands and estates. Many of his immigrant tenants soon became independent landowners themselves.
Daniel Brady, another Irishman was a self-made Irish immigrant to the area. He purchased 100 acres, now the Parafield Airport in 1845. He then got the license to the Cross Keys hotel. Much later Brady laid out the town of Virginia in 1858. But there were other Catholic influences in Salisbury too. William Leigh of Staffordshire (and of Leigh Street Adelaide) was a great land investor and speculator in SA and donated lands early to the Anglican Church ( in Leigh St.) then he converted to Catholicism and donated lands to the SA Catholic Church for the first church and bishop’s palace on West Terrace etc. At Salisbury he donated 500 acres to the local Catholic Church along the Little Para where the reservoir is now situated. The local church rented that farm out as income until it was sold in 1896. Thus, because of two major Catholic British aristocrats Salisbury thrived as a centre of Catholicism and had one of the largest Catholic Churches in SA in the mid-19th century. The church itself was set up when the state Government was offering glebe lands for churches to get established. The Catholics of Salisbury received 20 acres of land under this system through Bishop Murphy in 1850. The foundations of St Augustine’s Church were laid in 1851 with the church being used before its final official opening in 1857. This grand stone church replaced an earlier pug and pine church which had opened in 1847 on the site. The tower was added in 1926.
But the main story of Salisbury is centred on St Helena and its links to John Harvey the acknowledged “father” of Salisbury. His father, confirmed by recent DNA tests, was a native of St Helena of West African heritage and was probably a sailor who had an illegitimate child with a Scottish woman in Wick. Harvey’s mother was probably a herring worker or a street worker. There are no official records of Harvey’s birth which occurred between 1820 and 1823. Harvey’s appearance was African and on his death in 1899 the Barrier Miner of Broken Hill on 26 June referred to Harvey as a half caste. But who was John Harvey? Is his main claim to fame that he brought out from South Africa the first soursob bulbs? He was a man of ideas wanting to make money. He came out to SA alone when he was 16 years old arriving in 1839 on the ship named Superb with Allan McFarlane who took out the Mount Barker Special Survey in 1839. Harvey was probably employed as a labourer by Allen McFarlane before they left Scotland. By 1843 Harvey had moved to Gawler where he drove mails between Adelaide and Gawler. This gave him the idea of grazing cattle on the unoccupied plains between the two settlements. He started squatting. He let overlanders from NSW depasture their flocks on these lands, for a fee, although he had no legal right to do so. He accepted cattle for fees and soon had stock of his own. To this he added some horses which he bred for sale (or export to India) and once he had fattened the cattle he sold them for meat for the Adelaide market or through his butcher shop in growing Gawler. He became a major meat supplier for Adelaide and Gawler. He also experimented with cereal growing on the Salisbury plains and claims to have been the first to do so. Within a few years he had amassed a sizeable amount of money from almost nothing and he purchased his first land at Gawler, where he built his first stone house and at Salisbury when the Hundred of Yatala was declared in 1846. He was temporarily forced off the land he was squatting upon until he purchased 172 acres in 1847. He subdivided a small part of it to create the town of Salisbury with the main street named after himself and the street parallel to it named Wiltshire where his wife Ann Pitman (cousin of Sir Isaac Pitman of shorthand fame) was born. His town plans were submitted in 1848 as he hoped to make money from this action. Harvey continued living in Salisbury and went into building houses for people, breeding race horses and encouraging agriculture. He was elected to parliament in 1857 for one term and served on the Yatala District Council. His land deals included selling the area of Gawler that became Bassett Town by the old Gawler railway station. He was a mainstay of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Adelaide Racing Club. He was a local Justice of the Peace. John Harvey died in Salisbury in 1899, aged 78 years but his descendants stayed on in the town to be orange growers. John and his wife Ann are buried in St John’s Anglican cemetery. He left three sons and daughter.
By 1845 less hills land was available for settlement and some saw the potential of the fertile Little Para river valley close to Adelaide and on the main copper mine routes from Adelaide to Kapunda and Burra. Among the first public buildings was the Anglican church/school room dated as 1846 but probably built in 1849. John Harvey is known to have sold two lots to Anglican Bishop Short for a nominal amount for an Anglican Church in 1850. It is possible that the Anglicans were allowed to build before 1850 but that is before they officially owned the land. A number of Primitive Methodists were also drawn to Salisbury and they held their first services on the banks of the Little Para River in 1849. In 1851 they opened their Primitive Methodist Church called Hephzibah which was replaced with a solid stone church in 1858. The Primitive Methodists purchased their land from John Harvey. The Wesleyan Methodists had a church at the Old Spot (1857) but they too constructed a Wesleyan church in Salisbury West in 1858 after the arrival of the railway to the town. It has been a residence since 1904. No cathedral emerged as in England but the town had its churches, hotels, a flour mill and industry. From its early years it had a Courthouse and Police station with lock up cells behind it. The Salisbury courthouse, now the city museum was built in 1859.The architect was Edward Hamilton the government architect for many government buildings. It cost £730 to erect and it is a very elegant well-proportioned structure. Salisbury soon had a private school too. Charles James Blatche Taplin, my great great grandfather had a licensed school in Salisbury from 1855 until his death in 1867. His wife Eliza Taplin had a separate school for girls which she continued after his death. After the Education Act of 1875 the government built the old Salisbury School in 1876. Charles Taplin was also the treasurer of the St Johns Anglican Church for many years and was present at the laying of its foundation stone with architect Daniel Garlick in 1858. The town remained a local service centre until World War Two when the government purchased land at Penfield for an ammunitions works and secure storage area and a further 58 acres of land, mainly from descendants of John Harvey, along Park Terrace in Salisbury for emergency war housing which became known as the “cabin homes”.
Salisbury. The rear of the 1858 built Courthouse. Now the Heritage Centre and Museum.
Salisbury and the Courthouse Museum (1859).
Sir Montague( or Montagu) Chapman, Third Baronet of Westmeath near Dublin Ireland, used a loop hole in the Special Survey regulations of 1839 and selected his 4,000 acres for £4,000 in different areas. He took 800 acres at Koonunga near Kapunda; 500 acres at Kapunda (a friend of his Bagot also got land there); 500 acres near Waterloo and Marrabel; and later in 1842 he selected a further 2,200 acres between the Little Para River and Dry Creek at what is now Mawson Lakes, Salisbury and Cross Keys. At Killua Castle in Ireland he had 9,000 acres and hundreds of tenant farmers. He wanted to do the same in SA. In 1840 he sent out Captain Charles Bagot from Ireland with 224 Irish immigrants to settle his, and Bagot’s lands, at Kapunda with Irish labourers and tenants. Then in 1842 he sailed out to SA himself with 120 Irish tenant farmers whom he installed on his lands at Cross Keys. Sir Montague Chapman returned to Ireland the next year. Then in 1847 he sent out a further 214 Irish immigrants to be tenant farmers on his Cross Key to Salisbury lands. They came out on the ships named Trafalgar and Aboukir. Sir Montague Chapman lived in Ireland not SA but returned to his SA estates in 1852 and drowned at sea in 1853 off Portland when returning to SA from Melbourne. His brother inherited the SA lands and estates. Many of his immigrant tenants soon became independent landowners themselves.
Daniel Brady, another Irishman was a self-made Irish immigrant to the area. He purchased 100 acres, now the Parafield Airport in 1845. He then got the license to the Cross Keys hotel. Much later Brady laid out the town of Virginia in 1858. But there were other Catholic influences in Salisbury too. William Leigh of Staffordshire (and of Leigh Street Adelaide) was a great land investor and speculator in SA and donated lands early to the Anglican Church ( in Leigh St.) then he converted to Catholicism and donated lands to the SA Catholic Church for the first church and bishop’s palace on West Terrace etc. At Salisbury he donated 500 acres to the local Catholic Church along the Little Para where the reservoir is now situated. The local church rented that farm out as income until it was sold in 1896. Thus, because of two major Catholic British aristocrats Salisbury thrived as a centre of Catholicism and had one of the largest Catholic Churches in SA in the mid-19th century. The church itself was set up when the state Government was offering glebe lands for churches to get established. The Catholics of Salisbury received 20 acres of land under this system through Bishop Murphy in 1850. The foundations of St Augustine’s Church were laid in 1851 with the church being used before its final official opening in 1857. This grand stone church replaced an earlier pug and pine church which had opened in 1847 on the site. The tower was added in 1926.
But the main story of Salisbury is centred on St Helena and its links to John Harvey the acknowledged “father” of Salisbury. His father, confirmed by recent DNA tests, was a native of St Helena of West African heritage and was probably a sailor who had an illegitimate child with a Scottish woman in Wick. Harvey’s mother was probably a herring worker or a street worker. There are no official records of Harvey’s birth which occurred between 1820 and 1823. Harvey’s appearance was African and on his death in 1899 the Barrier Miner of Broken Hill on 26 June referred to Harvey as a half caste. But who was John Harvey? Is his main claim to fame that he brought out from South Africa the first soursob bulbs? He was a man of ideas wanting to make money. He came out to SA alone when he was 16 years old arriving in 1839 on the ship named Superb with Allan McFarlane who took out the Mount Barker Special Survey in 1839. Harvey was probably employed as a labourer by Allen McFarlane before they left Scotland. By 1843 Harvey had moved to Gawler where he drove mails between Adelaide and Gawler. This gave him the idea of grazing cattle on the unoccupied plains between the two settlements. He started squatting. He let overlanders from NSW depasture their flocks on these lands, for a fee, although he had no legal right to do so. He accepted cattle for fees and soon had stock of his own. To this he added some horses which he bred for sale (or export to India) and once he had fattened the cattle he sold them for meat for the Adelaide market or through his butcher shop in growing Gawler. He became a major meat supplier for Adelaide and Gawler. He also experimented with cereal growing on the Salisbury plains and claims to have been the first to do so. Within a few years he had amassed a sizeable amount of money from almost nothing and he purchased his first land at Gawler, where he built his first stone house and at Salisbury when the Hundred of Yatala was declared in 1846. He was temporarily forced off the land he was squatting upon until he purchased 172 acres in 1847. He subdivided a small part of it to create the town of Salisbury with the main street named after himself and the street parallel to it named Wiltshire where his wife Ann Pitman (cousin of Sir Isaac Pitman of shorthand fame) was born. His town plans were submitted in 1848 as he hoped to make money from this action. Harvey continued living in Salisbury and went into building houses for people, breeding race horses and encouraging agriculture. He was elected to parliament in 1857 for one term and served on the Yatala District Council. His land deals included selling the area of Gawler that became Bassett Town by the old Gawler railway station. He was a mainstay of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Adelaide Racing Club. He was a local Justice of the Peace. John Harvey died in Salisbury in 1899, aged 78 years but his descendants stayed on in the town to be orange growers. John and his wife Ann are buried in St John’s Anglican cemetery. He left three sons and daughter.
By 1845 less hills land was available for settlement and some saw the potential of the fertile Little Para river valley close to Adelaide and on the main copper mine routes from Adelaide to Kapunda and Burra. Among the first public buildings was the Anglican church/school room dated as 1846 but probably built in 1849. John Harvey is known to have sold two lots to Anglican Bishop Short for a nominal amount for an Anglican Church in 1850. It is possible that the Anglicans were allowed to build before 1850 but that is before they officially owned the land. A number of Primitive Methodists were also drawn to Salisbury and they held their first services on the banks of the Little Para River in 1849. In 1851 they opened their Primitive Methodist Church called Hephzibah which was replaced with a solid stone church in 1858. The Primitive Methodists purchased their land from John Harvey. The Wesleyan Methodists had a church at the Old Spot (1857) but they too constructed a Wesleyan church in Salisbury West in 1858 after the arrival of the railway to the town. It has been a residence since 1904. No cathedral emerged as in England but the town had its churches, hotels, a flour mill and industry. From its early years it had a Courthouse and Police station with lock up cells behind it. The Salisbury courthouse, now the city museum was built in 1859.The architect was Edward Hamilton the government architect for many government buildings. It cost £730 to erect and it is a very elegant well-proportioned structure. Salisbury soon had a private school too. Charles James Blatche Taplin, my great great grandfather had a licensed school in Salisbury from 1855 until his death in 1867. His wife Eliza Taplin had a separate school for girls which she continued after his death. After the Education Act of 1875 the government built the old Salisbury School in 1876. Charles Taplin was also the treasurer of the St Johns Anglican Church for many years and was present at the laying of its foundation stone with architect Daniel Garlick in 1858. The town remained a local service centre until World War Two when the government purchased land at Penfield for an ammunitions works and secure storage area and a further 58 acres of land, mainly from descendants of John Harvey, along Park Terrace in Salisbury for emergency war housing which became known as the “cabin homes”.