Mr James William BLIGH (1810 - 1869)

Date of Birth: 01/01/1810
Place of Birth: Bodmin, Cornwall, England
Date of Death: 01/12/1869
Place of Death: Woolloomooloo, New South Wales, Australia

The Parliamentary Archives does not have a picture of this Member.

Parliamentary Service

Position	Start	End	Period	Parliament	Notes
Member of the NSW Legislative Council	19 Sep 1851	29 Feb 1856	4yr(s) 5mth(s) 11day(s)		An Elective Member of the first Legislative Council 1843 - 1856 for the County of Bathurst.
Member of the NSW Legislative Council	22 May 1856	16 Mar 1859	2yr(s) 9mth(s) 23day(s)		First (Quinquennial) Appointments under the Constitution Act. Date of Writ of Summons 13 May 1856.

Community Activity

Commissioned as a Justice of the Peace in 1852.

Qualifications, occupations and interests

Lawyer (Attorney-at-Law). Bligh became a solicitor in England and practised in Bodmin. After arriving in Australia, he took a shipment of cattle to Port Nicholson (Wellington) New Zealand. He visited Tasmania in 1841. He began his practice as a solicitor in New South Wales in November 1841. In 1843, he was a collector of quit rents for the police district of Carcoar, Bathurst and Wellington, New South Wales. He was in a business partnership with Willoughby Daring who died in 1849. In 1851- 1852 poor health forced him to give up his practice. He purchased land at Cook's River, later selling it to buy 400 acres of bushland at Willoughby, Northbridge and Castlecrag.

Local Government Activity

First Chairman of Willoughby Council from 1865 until 1867.

Personal

Son of John Martyn Bligh, a conveyancer and steward to a number of large estates, and Mary Edyreun, nee Hocking or Hocken. Arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1839 but soon moved to Sydney. Unmarried. Undertook European travel in 1861.

Additional Information

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales: ML Mss 3410

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