George Hyde, pastoralist, insolvent, man of colour, who died at the Keilor Inn, 1844

         Keilor Inn, by George Alexander Gilbert, 1845.

    Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria Collection. 

Even in death, George Hyde, pastoralist, found himself embroiled in controversy.  He was one of the Port Phillip Pioneers who was dis-interred from his grave at the Old Melbourne Cemetery and re-interred at the Fawkner Pioneer Cemetery, to make way for the Queen Victoria Market in 1922.  It was another indignity for a man who had suffered many indignities in life owing the circumstances of his birth.

George Hyde was born in British Honduras, the illegitimate son of a Scottish timber merchant and the daughter of a West African Mandigo slave women.  Educated in Britain, and like his father one of the largest slave owners in Honduras, the colour of his skin precluded him from many of the civil rights and privileges afforded his father.  In 1827 George Hyde petitioned the British Parliament for the extension of civil rights to the free coloured population, as were enjoyed by their counterparts in the West Indian colonies.

Hyde returned to Scotland in 1836 where he married Margaret Collier, and together with their only son, George Robert Hyde,  born in 1840, boarded the Ariadne for Port Phillip.

Christine Laskowski has taken a detailed look at the fortunes and misfortunes of the Hyde family, outlining their life in British Honduras, the pioneering colony of Port Phillip, and his unfortunate demise in the Keilor Inn while travelling from his holding at Green Hills (now Toolern Vale) and Melbourne.   For the full story, see her excellent article on the Time Travellers website.