James Rigby Beevor

James Rigby Beevor (1811–1849) was a pioneer colonist and pastoralist of South Australia and a murder victim of the Australian frontier wars.Mount Beevor in South Australia is named after him.

Beevor was born 1811 at Norwich, Norfolk, England, into the family of James Beevor, a brewery proprietor at Norwich, and Mary Beevor (née Rigby). He was descended from a prominent and titled Norfolk family, having a common ancestor with the Beevor baronets. His older brother, Rev. Edward Rigby Beevor (1798–1878), graduated B.A. at Cambridge.

His father having sold the brewery, 20-year-old Beevor enlisted in the British Army on 3 October 1831 as an ensign in the East Suffolk Regiment of Foot. On 31 August 1832 he was promoted to lieutenant rank in that same regiment. In 1835 he eschewed the regular army to join the British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War in Spain, serving as a cavalry captain in the 2nd Regiment Queen's Own Irish Lancers. His comrades there included Lieutenant Inman and Colonel Wakefield. Through them and others he was attracted to plans to establish a free colony in South Australia and, his father having died in 1836, decided to migrate there.

An amiable bachelor, Beevor departed London in January 1839 aboard the barque City of Adelaide, along with 75 immigrants. The barque suffered many storms. Having been dismasted in the English Channel it returned to port for repairs, and then needed further repairs at Rio de Janeiro, not arriving at Port Adelaide until July 1839.

Beevor promptly pioneered a sheep station northeast of Mount Barker, near Dawesley, on the eastern flanks of the Mount Lofty Ranges. His sheep run and homestead, then at the frontier of European settlement, was at the base of a prominent peak first discovered in January 1838 by European explorers Dr George Imlay and John Hill. That peak was consequently named Mount Beevor (498m). He there became firm friends with neighbouring pioneering pastoralists, the brothers Edward and Alexander Blucher Lodwick, who had arrived from London as cabin passengers aboard the ship Ganges in June 1839, about the same time that Beevor had landed.

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