Edward Hammond Hargraves was one of the most renowned and colorful gold prospectors during the time of the gold rush. In 1851, he asserted to have discovered gold in Australia. Hargraves was the originator of the New South Wales-based Australian gold rush. His declaration that gold was available for purchase in New South Wales paved the door for an influx of immigrants and gold miners to the continent. Hargraves, a gold prospector who began his search for gold in California, worked as a shopkeeper, sailor, publican, and explorer prior to his gold expedition. In 1850, he conducted an excursion through the landscapes of California, but the results were not particularly profitable. He had mastered numerous techniques, such as cradling, panning, and digging. Finding similarities between the landforms of California and New South Wales, he concluded that the latter is likely to have gold reserves comparable to those in California. His finding of gold in the region that became known as Ophir earned him renown, notoriety, government incentives, testimonials, and trophies.
Youth and Early Life
He was born in Gosport, Hampshire, England, on October 7, 1816, as the third child of army officer Lieutenant John Edward Hargraves and his wife Elizabeth Hargraves.
In England, he attended Brighton Grammar School.
At the age of 14, he set sail and arrived in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1832. After working on a ranch near Bathurst in 1833, he returned to England after collecting tortoiseshell and bêche-de-Mer in Torres Strait.
Edward Hargraves’s Career
He returned to Bathurst in 1834-35 and began working as a property overseer, allowing him to become more familiar with the region where gold was ultimately discovered.
After getting married in 1836, he and his wife moved to East Gosford in 1839 and began working as an agent for the “General Steam Navigation Co.” With the dowry he received upon his marriage, he purchased land and built the Fox under the ‘Hill hotel’. In 1843, he was forced to relinquish his property due to his failure in the hotel industry over the subsequent decade. He left his wife in charge of the store while he purchased property along the Manning River.
After learning of the California gold rush on July 17, 1849, he sailed to the United States. As he was unable to find any gold there, he was unsuccessful as a merchant in the goldfields. However, he learned about similar terrains in the western areas of New South Wales, Australia, which bolstered his hopes of discovering gold there.
In pursuit of this objective, he traveled to Sydney in January 1851 to analyze his belief in discovering gold and, more importantly, to gain a fortune in the form of a government award for uncovering a profitable goldfield.
In February of 1851, he traveled to Bathurst. While traveling to Wellington, he was encouraged by the favorable discoveries at Guyon, and he and John Lister discovered five gold flecks in New South Wales’s Lewis Ponds Creek on February 12.
After unsuccessfully examining the majority of the territory, Hargraves returned to Sydney in March 1851, outsourcing the search job to John Lister, William Tom, and his brothers James and Henry. Before departing, he demonstrated how to construct a wooden cradle and taught them the California panning skills so they could continue the work.
After Hargraves departed, William Tom constructed a cradle and labored with others beside Lewis Ponds Creek, where they eventually extracted sixteen grains of gold in a single day. Following this, Lister and William discovered four ounces of gold.
Hargraves, who had traveled to Sydney to visit the Colonial Secretary, (Sir) Edward Deas Thomson, wrote to the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ shortly thereafter to describe the prosperous field.
He also campaigned for a prize, and after a few weeks, when he was certain of the government’s payout, he issued a news release about gold-rich regions.
May 1851 marked his return to Bathurst. He disregarded the requests of his team members, including Lister and William, to maintain secrecy, christened the location Ophir, and sparked such interest in the district that by May 15, more than three hundred diggers had flocked to the area, marking the beginning of the first gold rush in Australia.
The ‘Government of New South Wales’ paid him $10,000 and appointed him Commissioner of Crown Lands for his conclusions. In addition, he received £5,000 from the Victorian Government. Hargraves had taken only £2,381 of the whole sum by the time Lister protested and the fund was blocked.
In 1853, a Legislative Council select committee conducted an investigation that confirmed Hargraves as the first discoverer of the Ophir goldfield. In addition, the committee suggested that Lister and the other men who were educated by Hargraves each get £1000.
During 1853-54, he traveled to England, met the queen, and lived an extravagant lifestyle.
In 1855, he wrote ‘Australia and its Goldfields,’ a book that provides a historical history of the Australian colonies as well as an account of the recent discovery of gold.
In 1856, he purchased 640 acres of land in Budgewoi, New South Wales, and proceeded to construct the cedar-constructed “Northville” residence.
To obtain the remainder of the £5,000 reward awarded to him by the Victorian Government beginning in 1861, he appealed to the government and enlisted the aid of businessman and politician James Butters to persuade a Legislative Assembly member to release his payment, but his efforts were unsuccessful.
The Government of New South Wales granted him a £250 annual pension in 1877, which he received for the remainder of his life.
In 1890, another committee of the Legislative Assembly determined that while Hargraves remains “the discoverer of gold,” the individuals he instructed in the use of cradle and dish, namely “Messrs. Tom and Lister,” were indisputable “the first discoverers of gold obtained in Australia in sufficient quantity.”
Personal History and Legacy
Hargraves wed Eliza Mackie in Sydney in 1836. The couple had three daughters and two sons.
On October 29, 1891, he passed away in Sydney and was interred in the Anglican part of Waverley Cemetery.
Estimated Net Worth
The estimated net worth of Edward Hargraves is $5,000,000, and his primary source of income is adventuring. We lack sufficient evidence regarding Edward Hargrave’s cars and lifestyle.