Benjamin Boyd
| Benjamin Boyd | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales | |
|
In office 1 September 1844 – 1 August 1845 |
|
| Constituency | Electoral district of Port Phillip |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
21 August 1803 Wigtownshire, Scotland |
| Died | 15 October 1851 (aged 48) Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands |
| Nationality | Scottish-born Australian |
| Residence | Eden district |
| Occupation | Stockbroker, pastoralist, entrepreneur |
Benjamin Boyd (21 August 1801 – 15 October 1851) was a Scottish-born Australian pioneer and entrepreneur, and briefly, a politician.
Boyd became one of the largest landholders and graziers of the Colony of New South Wales; before suffering financial difficulties and becoming bankrupt. Boyd briefly tried his luck on the Californian goldfields before being purportedly murdered on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Many of his business ventures involved blackbirding, the practise of coercing and kidnapping South Sea Islanders as slave labourers.
Boyd was a man of "an imposing personal appearance, fluent oratory, aristocratic connexions, and a fair share of commercial acuteness".Georgiana McCrae, with whom he had dinner when he first came to the Port Phillip District, looked at him with an artist's eye and said: "He is Rubens over again. Tells me he went to a bal masque as Rubens with his broad-leafed hat".
Born at Merton Hall, Wigtownshire, Scotland, Boyd was the second son of Edward Boyd by his wife Jane (daughter of Benjamin Yule). His brother Mark Boyd would play an active role in some of his ventures.
By 1824 Boyd was a in London and on 8 October 1840 he addressed a letter to Lord John Russell, stating that he had recently dispatched a vessel entirely his own at a cost of £30,000 for 'further developing the resources of Australia and its adjacent Islands'. He stated that he intended to send other vessels, and asked for certain privileges in connexion with the purchase of land at various ports he intended to establish. He received a guarded reply promising assistance, but pointing out that land could not be sold to an individual to the "exclusion or disadvantage of the public". About this period Boyd had floated the Royal Bank of Australia, and debentures of this bank to the amount of £200,000 were sold. This sum was eventually taken by Boyd to Australia as the bank's representative. He arrived in Hobson's Bay, Port Phillip District, on his schooner, the Wanderer, on 15 June 1842, and reached Port Jackson, Sydney, on 18 July 1842.
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