William Giles (colonial manager)

William Giles (* December 27 1791 in Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire in England; † May 11, 1862 in Beaumont Adelaide, Australia ) was an English Manager of the South Australian Company and a former politician in South Australia, the instrumental in the founding of the original colony South Australia was involved.

Life

Giles was the son of Thomas Giles and Mary Stokes. He attended Kimbolton Grammar School in Kent and after his graduation he became the private secretary of a banker. In 1813 he married Sarah Roper with whom he had six sons and three daughters. He lived first in Surray at Mitcham and later in London. His first wife died in 1833. According to a five-month voyage October 16, 1837, he came to the three-masted Hartley with his second wife, Emily Elizabeth McGeorge, and their two children, together with his own nine children to Kingscote on Kangaroo Iceland on. In Kingscote, the first European settlement of South Australia, there was the seat of the South Australian Company, which had the task to colonize the country. Originally, there arise the capital of South Australia. Later it was decided to Adelaide.

In Kingscote Giles took care of the whaling and shipping companies of the Company, which was successful little there. Special attention he set up the social conditions of the Walf and sealers on the island, the vegetated there and he helped the immigrants.

Work

In January 1841 Giles was the third colonial manager of the South Australian Company in Kingscote to Adelaide. In the subsequent economic depression, the Company reduced its economic activities and he managed a small area for them where he raised sheep and selling wool. In the economic boom of 1845, the copper mining industry, the Company purchased land, he developed and increased the economic success of the Company by advancing drove the number of tenants of agricultural land, which belonged to the Company. For example, it increased in the years 1846-1851 the number of tenants from 124 to 476 with the gold rush, many people came to this area. They managed to lease Giles country and to achieve high prices both for the lease as well as for agricultural products of the Company, such as wool.

Giles he was extremely successful in the agricultural development of the colony South Australia, the positively developed and economically stabilized. He was the most successful manager and largest employer in the colony at that time.

Giles was for many years including as a lay preacher for the Society for the Preservation of Religious Freedom. In 1851 he was elected to the colonial government of South Australia. In 1861 he resigned from the service of the Company.