Adam Armstrong (settler)

Adam Pearson Armstrong (23 February 1788-1853) was an early European settler in the Perth suburb of Dalkeith, Western Australia. The suburb is named after Armstrong's cottage. Armstrong influenced development in the Swan River colony with properties in both Dalkeith and in his later property in Ravenswood.

Armstrong was born on 23 February 1788 in Smeaton, near Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland. His middle name "Pearson" was not on his birth certificate. Confusion concerning a Captain Armstrong who served in the Peninsular Wars and lost an eye, was at one time taken as accurate but disproved later. In 1810 he married Margaret Gow, whose father Nathaniel Gow and grandfather Niel Gow were celebrated Scottish musicians. Musical interests were evident in the family, and a harmonium they brought out is displayed, with other family memorabilia, in the Azelia Ley Homestead Museum in Hamilton Hill.

In 1811, Armstrong bought a part of the Drum coalfield in Scotland. However the Drum Colliery Company failed due to flooding issues and the availability of cheaper coal from England. Armstrong moved his family to England and then to Wales. In Wales, his last position prior to moving to London was as an agent for William Edward Powell, who owned the Nanteos estate. Such was the friendship between the two that when Armstrong's only daughter was born he named her after Powell's wife Laura. Armstrong was dismissed from Nanteos and went to London, where he found clerical work with Thomas Peel at 1 Eagle Place, Piccadilly. Peel was taking up an offer by Captain James Stirling to provide free settlers the opportunity to move to the new settlement on the Swan River in Western Australia.

Peel had been promised land grants if he arrived at the colony before 1 November 1829, but on arrival with the Armstrongs on Gilmore on 12 February 1830 discovered this land had been given to someone else. His other ships, Rockingham and Hooghly, were also carrying settlers so he was persuaded to accept an area of land named Clarence, between the present day suburbs of Mandurah and Rockingham and inland to Pinjarra. Armstrong was Peel's surveyor and he took up a parcel of land with good water to establish a farm on the Murray River that he named Ravenswood, establishing one of many Scottish connections. The family struggled to survive initially, in shelters made of wooden horse stalls, barrels and canvas, and eating food mostly brought by English ships. Attempts at farming were unsuccessful because of winter flooding and the theft of stock, so six families who had hoped to live there all returned to Perth and Fremantle.

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