Lachlan Macquarie
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Major-General Lachlan Macquarie CB |
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| 5th Governor of New South Wales | |
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In office 1 January 1810 – 30 November 1821 |
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| Preceded by | William Bligh |
| Succeeded by | Thomas Brisbane |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
31 January 1762 Ulva, Inner Hebrides, Scotland |
| Died | 1 July 1824 (aged 62) London, England |
| Spouse(s) | Jane Jarvis (m. 1792–1796) Elizabeth Campbell (1807–1835) |
| Military service | |
| Battles/wars | Australian Frontier Wars |
Major-General Lachlan Macquarie CB (/məˈkwɒrɪ/; Scottish Gaelic: Lachann MacGuaire; 31 January 1762 – 1 July 1824) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. He served as the fifth and last autocratic Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and had a leading role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony. He is considered by historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century. An inscription on his tomb in Scotland describes him as "The Father of Australia".
Lachlan Macquarie was born on the island of Ulva off the coast of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, a chain of islands off the West Coast of Scotland. He was a gentleman of the Scottish Highland family clan MacQuarrie which possessed Ulva, Staffa, and a region of the Isle of Mull for over one thousand years, and his forebears were buried on Iona. Governor Macquarie's father, a "man of Intelligence, polite, and much of the world", supposedly attained the age of 103 years, dying on 4 January 1818. His mother was the daughter of a Maclaine chieftain who owned a castle on the Isle of Mull. Macquarie left the island at the age of 14. If he did attend the Royal High School of Edinburgh, "as tradition has it", it was only for a very brief period because, at the same age, he volunteered for the army.
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