Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/193

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
[Fys

was a member of the Finnis Ministry as Commissioner of Public Works from Oct. 1856 to March 1857, when he retired rather than relinquish the permanent post of Surveyor-General, which he resigned in 1861, and returned to England. He was then lieut.-colonel in the Royal Engineers, but became major-general on retiring, and succeeded in 1871 as 5th baronet of Ford and Hatchings, Sussex. Sir Arthur (who was the elder brother of Sir Sanford Freeling, K.C.M.G.) married, in 1848, Charlotte Augusta, daughter of Sir Henry Rivers, 9th baronet, who still survives. Sir Arthur died on March 26th, 1885, when he was succeeded by his son Harry, the 6th and present baronet.

French, Colonel George Arthur, R.A., C.M.G., ex-Commandant of Defence Force, Queensland, son of the late John French, of Mornington Park, co. Dublin, was born at Roscommon on June 19th, 1841, and educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned as lieutenant of the Royal Artillery, on June 19th, 1860, and became captain in 1872, major in 1881, and lieut.-colonel in 1887. He was adjutant of the Royal Artillery at Kingston from 1862 to 1866; Inspector of Artillery in the Dominion of Canada from 1870 to 1878, being appointed Lieut.-Colonel of Canadian Militia in the former year. He was Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police in Canada from 1873 to 1876; and Inspector of Warlike Stores at Devonport from 1878 to 1888. He organised the Permanent Artillery and Mounted Police of Canada, and commanded the expeditionary force of 300 mounted men and two guns, sent from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, in 1874. He was made a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George on May 30th, 1877. In Sept. 1883 he was appointed Commandant of the Queensland Local Forces with the local rank of colonel, and arrived in the colony on Jan. 4th, 1884. Colonel French married, in 1862, Janet Clarke, daughter of the late Robert Long Innes, formerly of the 37th Regiment. Colonel French retired in 1891, and returned to England.

Frome, General Edward Charles, was a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, and arrived in South Australia with a surveying party of sappers and miners in 1836. He succeeded Captain Sturt as Surveyor-General in Oct. 1839, and was also Engineer-in-Chief till 1843. Returning to England, he became Colonel Commandant R.E., and rose to the rank of General in 1877. He died on Feb. 12th, 1890, at the age of eighty-eight. He was formerly Governor of Guernsey.

Furner, Luke Lydiard, M.P., represents Wallaroo in the Legislative Assembly of South Australia, and was Commissioner of Public Works in the Downer Ministry from June 1886 to June 1887. He was first returned for Wallaroo in 1878.

Fysh, Hon. Philip Oakley, M.L.C., was born at Highbury, London, in 1835. In 1859 he emigrated to Tasmania. After a successful commercial career he went into politics and became Premier of Tasmania, was member for Hobart in the Legislative Council from 1866 to 1869, and for Buckingham from Nov. 1870 to July 1873, when he left the Upper House for the House of Assembly, in which he represented East Hobart from August 1873 to Nov. 1878. In March 1884 he was re-elected to the Legislative Council for Buckingham, for which constituency he still sits. Mr. Fysh was in the Kennerley Government from August 1873 to March 1875 as Treasurer, and from that date till July 1876 as a minister without portfolio. He became the recognised leader of the Opposition in July 1877, and the next month formed an Administration, in which he took the position of Premier without office. In March 1879 Mr. Giblin became Premier, Mr. Fysh remaining a member of the Ministry without portfolio till its retirement in the following December. In March 1887 Mr. Fysh, who is President of the Central Board of Health, and was major commanding the Tasmanian Volunteer Rifle Regiment from 1880 to 1884, formed his second Government, of which he is still Premier and Chief Secretary. He was one of the delegates from Tasmania to the Sydney Federation Convention in 1891.

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