[Compiled by Reg Butler (Hahndorf Historian) and copied from his unpublished computer files]

Benjamin Pratt WINTER

Winter family records kept from 1606-1846, the year of John Pratt Winter’s death.

An Anglo-Irish family, belonging to the Established Church of Ireland. Lived in Agher, Co Meath, Ireland.  ‘The mode of farming, though very slovenly and defective, bears some resemblance to that of England.’ A pastoral county.

Parents JP Winter & Ann, nee Gore, married 4/8/1794, Lewisham, near Blackheath, London.  Eldest child, Samuel, born 2/8/1796.  Other children were John, Margaret, Eliza Caulfield, nee Winter, Francis, Arbella Bomford, nee Winter, Benjamin Pratt b 25/8/1808 - the youngest.  He was baptised at Agher by his uncle Frank, a clergyman, who also became one of his godparents.  The other godparents were BP Winter’s paternal grandparents.  Another daughter, Ann Humphreys, nee Winter, had already died, when her father made his will in 1846.

BP Winter became a surveyor and headed for SA aboard the ‘Canton’ in 1838.  He joined Colonel Light’s team and became one of his firm supporters, refusing to serve under fellow Irishman RR Torrens, when Light resigned his commission.  Winter lived in his own home in Grenfell St, Adelaide, and later moved to Pt Lincoln, which he had helped to survey and for which district he became coroner in 1840.

Winter bought Section 1782 in the Mt Barker Special Survey, on 4/3/1842 - 112 acres for £32.  He later mortgaged the land in July 1843 with the Bank of Australasia, but repaid shortly before his death in December 1844.

He left SA for Victoria, in the vicinity of Portland, by the ‘Alpha’ in July 1843, where he took up a pastoral lease on the edge of the Wannon River.

BP Winter died on 18/12/1844, ‘intestate, unmarried and without issue’.  Probably Captain Emanuel Underwood, master of the cutter ‘Governor Gawler’, brought back the news of Winter’s death to SA.  BP Winter was highly talented and had many friends.  Winter’s father inherited his SA land and left it to his eldest son, Samuel, his executor.

SP Winter sold the Onkaparinga section on 23/12/1850 for £300, to 3 local Hahndorf German farmers.