Date of Birth: 01/10/1811
Place of Birth: Barnes, Surrey, England
Date of Death: 13/09/1861
Place of Death: Hastings, Sussex, England
Parliamentary Service
| Member of the NSW Legislative Council |
01 Sep 1851 |
28 Feb 1854 |
2 years 6 months |
An Elective Member of the first Legislative Council 1843 - 1856 for the Pastoral District of Maneroo |
Qualifications, occupations and interests
Naval officer; grazier. Arrived in Sydney on 20 February 1839, on the 'Honduras'. In 1843, at the end of the long drought of 1838 - 1843, Jeffreys purchased a property of 1,742 acres, near Queanbeyan, which he named 'Acton' after a town in Denbighshire, Wales. It is now a suburb of Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). He also owned property at Canterbury (inherited from his father-in-law), now a suburb of Sydney, where he lived in 'Canterbury House', designed and built about 1850 by Edmund Blacket and demolished around 1929. He also inherited from his father-in-law a proportion of the latter's 120 acre Kirribilli estate. Jeffreys was one of sixteen attendees at the inaugural meeting of 'The Australian Southern and Western Railway Company' held in Sydney on 11 September 1848. The Company name was later changed to the 'Sydney Railway Company' and it commenced the Colony's first railway from Sydney to Parramatta. Jeffreys purchased 125 shares in 1848 and a further 25 in 1851. (The Sydney Railway Company was taken over by the New South Wales Government on 3 September 1855).
Military Service
Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.
Membership of other Parliaments & Offices Held
Local Government Activity
Personal
Youngest son of the Rev. John Jeffreys of Barnes, Surrey, England. Married on 17 February 1841 at St Phillip's Church, Sydney, to Sarah Campbell, and they had 3 sons and 1 daughter; the daughter dying in infancy. Sarah Campbell was the daughter of Robert Campbell Snr (1769 - 1846), the merchant, pastoralist and philanthropist, who was also a Member of the first Legislative Council. Jeffreys died of Bright's Disease (now known as acute or chronic nephritis, a kidney disease). One of his sons, Arthur Frederick Jeffreys, later became a Member of the British Parliament as the Member of the House of Commons for North Hants (1877 - 1906); the eldest son of Arthur Frederick Jeffreys, George Darell Jeffreys (1878 - 1960) was later raised to the peerage as the first Baron Jeffreys of Burkham.
Additional Information
The photograph of Arthur Jeffreys has been kindly supplied by Mr George
Jeffreys of Salisbury, England.
The writing of this entry was greatly assisted by the researches of Mr Ken
Kershaw.
