Jock Winter

Last updated

Jock Winter, Ballarat Historical Society collection Jock Winter.png
Jock Winter, Ballarat Historical Society collection

John Winter (c. 1800 – August 1875), familiarly known as Jock Winter, was a Scottish squatter and pastoralist in Ballarat, Victoria. Winter emigrated to Australia in 1841. He became a wealthy shepherd at Buninyong, buying a run from Henry Anderson and renaming it Bonshaw for his wife, daughter of the laird of Bonshaw. One of his employees struck gold in 1850.

Contents

Winter later sold Bonshaw and earned a great profit. After his wife's death, he remarried and lived frugally on a secluded house at the top of Stuart St, said to be the richest man in Ballarat. The suburb of Winter Valley and a Redan street is named for Winter, and Bonshaw his estate. His third son was politician William Winter-Irving.

Biography

John Winter was born in Lauder, Scotland. After attending the village school, he was apprenticed as a butcher in Edinburgh before working as a stockbroker in the Scottish Highlands. In 1825, Winter married Janet Margaret ( née  Irving). She was the daughter of the laird of the Barony of Bonshaw. Winter worked as a butcher for sixteen years and earned a considerable amount of money buying "Queen of Spain bonds" after the First Carlist War. [1]

In 1841 Winter emigrated to Australia. Impressed by the beef in John O'Shanassy's shop, he became a shepherd in Buninyong where it was raised. He was paid his wages in sheep after his employer got into difficulties and his flock tripled. He bought a run from Henry Anderson and George Russel, originally named Waverley Park, but named it Bonshaw after his wife's birthplace. Kemp, a shepherd in his employ, first discovered gold in the colony between Winter's Flat and Buninyong Rd. in 1850. By this point, he had a large tract of country and around 20,000 sheep and made "enormous profit" selling to diggers and butchers. [1]

From 1852 to 1854 Winter earned a great amount of money and bought sheep stations for his two sons. In his well-known selling of Bonshaw, he earned £23,000 for a portion of the 640 acres, which he purchased at £1 per acre, and obtained £50,000 from the Winters Freehold Company for 1359 acres. He purchased a great amount of land from nearby colonies. After his first wife's death, he remarried and lived frugally on a secluded house at the top of Stuart St., reputed to be a millionaire. He died in August 1875. [1] [2] An obituary in the Melbourne Leader said of him: "Jock Winter has retired from this world of wool and weariness, money and muddle [...] Of Mr. Winter it might fairly be said that he never said a wise thing and never did a foolish one." [3] He was said to be the richest man in Ballarat. [4] [5]

While an 1875 obituary says he was born 1803, [1] the website for the William-Irving clan gives his birth at 30 June 1794, to Thomas and Betty Winter ( née  Yellowlees). It dates his first marriage 26 April 1825, his emigration 17 June 1841, and says he had six sons and three daughters by his first wife and three sons and one daughter by his second wife, Mary Cowie, who he married in 1850. The website also gives his date of death at 12 August 1875. [6]

Legacy

Winter had many children who all possessed stations of their own, including two sons from his second wife. [1] His third son was politician William Winter-Irving. [7] Winter built the Lauderdale Homestead (7 Prince Street, Alfredton), designed by architect J. A. Doane, in 1863. It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register and the National Trust of Australia. [8] [9] In The Courier in 2015, Winter "was said to be a pioneer who gave generously to those less fortunate". The suburb of Winter Valley and Winter St., Redan is named for Winter, [10] [11] while Bonshaw is named for his wife's birthplace. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ballarat</span> City in Victoria, Australia

Ballarat is a city in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 census, Ballarat had a population of 111,973, making it the third largest city in Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Division of Ballarat</span> Australian federal electoral division

The Division of Ballarat is an Australian electoral division in the state of Victoria. The division was proclaimed in 1900, and was one of the original 65 divisions to be contested at the first federal election. It was named for the provincial city of the same name by Scottish squatter Archibald Yuille, who established the first settlement − his sheep run called Ballaarat − in 1837, with the name derived from a local Wathawurrung word for the area, balla arat, thought to mean "resting place".

The Ballarat Cricket Association is a cricket league which runs in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The league has different divisions for under-13s, two grades of under-15s, 1 grade under-17s and three 2-day senior grades as well as a one-day competition with 2 grades. The league also has select teams for different competitions, as well as for the 'Country Week' competition against teams such as Maryborough, Grampians, Castlemaine and Bendigo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Buninyong</span> Mountain in Victoria, Australia

Mount Buninyong is an extinct volcano in western Victoria, Australia rising to 745 metres (2,444 ft) AHD. It lies within the Mount Buninyong Scenic Reserve, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) north of the town of Buninyong and 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of Ballarat, on the regional city's rural-urban fringe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buninyong</span> Town in Victoria, Australia

Buninyong is a town 11 km from Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. The town is on the Midland Highway, south of Ballarat on the road to Geelong.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfredton, Victoria</span> Suburb of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

Alfredton is a suburb of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, west of the CBD. The population at the 2021 census was 11,822 making it the most populated in the Ballarat urban area.

The Wadawurrung nation, also called the Wathaurong, Wathaurung, and Wadda Wurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people living in the area near Melbourne, Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula in the state of Victoria. They are part of the Kulin alliance. The Wathaurong language was spoken by 25 clans south of the Werribee River and the Bellarine Peninsula to Streatham. The area they inhabit has been occupied for at least the last 25,000 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hiscock</span>

Thomas Hiscock (1812–1855) was an English blacksmith and prospector who settled in Australia in the 1840s. He is best-remembered today for helping to spark the Victorian Gold Rush with his discovery of gold outside the town of Buninyong, near Ballarat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Henry Darling</span> British Army officer and Australian politician

Sir Charles Henry Darling was a British colonial governor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clan Irvine</span> Scottish clan

Clan Irvine is a Scottish clan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scotsburn, Victoria</span> Town in Victoria, Australia

Scotsburn is a locality in Victoria, Australia. It is approximately 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Ballarat on the Midland Highway toward Geelong. Its local government areas are the Shire of Moorabool and the City of Ballarat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Pleasant, Victoria</span> Suburb of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

Mount Pleasant is the oldest residential suburb of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. It is located on the southern extremity of the city between the Yarrowee Creek and the White Horse Range. Physically it is largely cut off from the rest of Ballarat which contributes to a sense of a suburb apart. The traditional Wathaurung country was first settled in 1836 when the Yuille brothers established a sheep run that included the sheltered corner under the escarpment later named Mount Pleasant. In those days, before there was a town at Ballarat, Buninyong was the nearest township. When the gold rush of 1851 brought thousands of diggers to nearby Golden Point, Mount Pleasant was left alone as no gold was initially found there. Its peacefulness made it attractive to a number of Cornish miners and their families who had come to Australia to settle permanently. These Wesleyans were the founders of the community. As devout and sober church people they sought a place to live away from the drunken mayhem of the diggings around Main Road.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Livingstone Learmonth</span> Australian politician

Thomas Livingstone Learmonth of Parkhill was an early settler of Australia, of Scots descent, who established himself as a squatter on land around Ballarat, Victoria, in the 1830s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian gold rushes</span> Mass movement of Australian workers to places rumored to have gold (1851–1910s)

During the Australian gold rushes, starting in 1851, significant numbers of workers moved from elsewhere in Australia and overseas to where gold had been discovered. Gold had been found several times before, but the colonial government of New South Wales had suppressed the news out of the fear that it would reduce the workforce and destabilise the economy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yarrowee River</span> Perennial river in Victoria, Australia

The Yarrowee River is a perennial river of the Corangamite catchment, located in the Central Highlands region of the Australian state of Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Winter-Irving</span> Australian politician

William Irving Winter-Irving, born William Irving Winter was an Australian grazier, magistrate and politician, member of the Victorian Legislative Council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonshaw Tower</span> Architectural structure in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, UK

Bonshaw Tower is an oblong tower house, probably dating from the mid-16th century, one mile south of Kirtlebridge, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, above the Kirtle Water. It is adjacent to a 19th-century mansion. The tower was one of a number of structures built along the Scottish border in the 1500s as protection against incursions by the English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Davies (Australian politician)</span> Australian politician

David Mortimer Davies was a politician in colonial Victoria, Australia.

Bonshaw is a locality on the southern rural fringe of the City of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 census, Bonshaw had a population of 949. This is an increase from a population of 210 at the 2016 census and 188 at the 2011 census.

Captain Sir Robert Beaufin Irving OBE was a Scottish officer of the Royal Naval Reserve and the British Merchant Navy.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "SUDDEN DEATH OF MR. JOHN WINTER". Gippsland Times. 31 August 1875. p. 4. Retrieved 18 December 2022– via Trove.
  2. ↑ "BALLARAT". Hamilton Spectator. 13 July 1878. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  3. ↑ "INTERCOLONIAL". Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser. 18 September 1875. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  4. ↑ Strange, A.W. (1982). Ballarat: The Formative Years. Ballarat, Victoria: B. & B. Strange. p. 43. ISBN   9780959680232.
  5. ↑ Newton, Janice (September 2016). "Rural Autochthony? The Rejection of an Aboriginal Placename in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia". Cultural Studies Review. University of Technology Sydney: UTS ePress. 22 (2). doi: 10.5130/csr.v22i2.4478 .
  6. ↑ "Our Forefathers". Clan Winter-Irving. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  7. ↑ Mennell, Philip (1892). "Winter-Irving, Hon. William Irving"  . The Dictionary of Australasian Biography. London: Hutchinson & Co – via Wikisource.
  8. ↑ "Lauderdale Homestead". Victorian Heritage Database . Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  9. ↑ Sobey, Emily (2 November 2012). "Historic Alfredton home on the market" . The Courier . Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  10. ↑ "City of Ballarat Roads & Open Space Index" (PDF). ballarat.vic.gov.au . 1998. Revised 21 January 2017. pp. 4, 53. Retrieved 18 December 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  11. ↑ Cunningham, Melissa (17 June 2015). "'Mullawallah' dropped as name for new suburb" . The Courier . Retrieved 18 December 2022.

General sources

Winters, W.B. (1980) [1887]. History of Ballarat, from the first pastoral settlement to the present time (2nd ed.). Carlton, Victoria: Queensberry Hill Press.

Strange, A.W. (1982). Ballarat: The Formative Years. Ballarat, Victoria: B. & B. Strange. ISBN   9780959680232.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.