Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/27

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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1874 Secretary to the Commissioner for Public Works; in 1875 Secretary to the Commissioner of Crown Lands; and in Feb. 1882 Under Secretary and Government Statist. He died on April 25th, 1890.

Andrews, Hon. Richard Bullock, sometime Puisne Judge South Australia, was admitted to the South Australian bar in 1855, and was member for Yatala in the Assembly from 1857 to 1860, and for Blurt from 1863 to 1869. Mr. Andrews was Attorney-General in the Torrens Ministry for a few weeks in Sept. 1857, and in the still more short-lived Dutton Administration in July 1863. He filled the same post in Mr. (now Sir) Henry Ayers' Government from July 1863 to July 1864, and in the second Dutton and third Ayers Ministries from March to Oct. 1865. He was also Attorney-General in the fourth and fifth Ayers Ministries from May 1867 to Sept. 1868, and from Oct. to Nov. 1868. In March 1865 he was appointed Q.C., Crown Solicitor and Public Prosecutor in 1870, and Puisne Judge in 1881. He died at Hobart on June 28th, 1885.

Andrews, Walter Boyd Tate, J.P., late Registrar-General South Australia, elder brother of Henry James Andrews (q.v.) entered the South Australian Civil Service in 1848; was appointed Deputy Registrar-General of the Colony in 1856, and Registrar-General in 1865. He retired in Sept. 1889.

Angas, George Fife, J.P., was the seventh son of Caleb Angas, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a coachbuilder, merchant and shipowner in a largo way of business in that town, where he was born on May 1st, 1789. The family was of Scotch origin, and the first of its representatives to settle on Tyneside was one Alexander Angus, about the year 1584. This Alexander, from whom Caleb was fifth in lineal descent, ultimately located himself at Raw House, near Hexham, in Northumberland, where his descendants were farmers for several generations. It was John Angus, of Scotland, Hexham, the grandfather of the subject of this notice, who first changed the spelling of the family name from Angus to Angas. Caleb Angas wished his son on leaving school to embrace the legal profession; but he preferred entering his father's business, and was duly apprenticed to the coachbuilding, working his way through the various grades of the craft, and ultimately supplementing his local experience by serving as a journeyman in a London factory, which he left in 1809 to assume the oversight of his father's establishment Shortly after his return to Newcastle he was admitted a member of the Baptist Church, a religious body to whose tenets he ever afterwards remained attached. Mr. Angas married, on April 8th, 1812, Rosetta, daughter of Mr. French, of Hutton. His father's firm was largely interested in the trade of British Honduras, where they had an agency, and from whence they were large importers of mahogany and dyewoods. Mr. Angas, at an early period, took a deep interest in the welfare of the Indian aborigines, who, in defiance of the law, were held in slavery, and deprived of all means of improvement and civilisation. Mainly through his persevering efforts their freedom was assured, and means of instruction provided by the establishment of missions. Mr. Angas also took a deep interest in educational matters at home, and was one of the founders of the Newcastle Sunday School Union, a history of the successful operations of which body was many years later (1869) published at his expense. In 1823 Mr. Angas became greatly impressed with the importance to British interests of cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Darien, on the lines recently adopted by the Nicaragua Canal Company. In the result, however, the scheme dropped through, as far as any practical action on Mr. Angas's part was concerned. A project for the establishment of a society for promoting Christianity and civilisation through the medium of commercial, scientific and professional agency was also mooted in 1825 by Mr. Angas, who thought that trade and evangelisation should go hand in hand; but this scheme, too, had to be dropped from want of encouragement on the part of the mercantile community. About this time the foreign trade of the firm rendered it necessary to open an office in London, and Mr. Angas, who had been for some time in partnership with his father and brothers, removed to the south, in order to superintend the working of the new departure. His capacity and resources

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