Monckton Synnot

Categories: Migrants from Ireland to Australia | Australian Farmers | Graziers | Woolbrokers | Merchants | St Kilda Cemetery, St Kilda East, Victoria.

Biography Monckton Synnot was born in 30th November 1826 at Ballymyre (Anglicised to Ballymoyer), County Armagh, Ireland. He was the fifth son of Captain Walter Synnot and his second wife Elizabeth, née Houston, and the grandson of Sir Walter Synnot, of Ballymyre, County Armagh.[1]

Flag of Ireland Monckton Synnot migrated from Ireland to Victoria. Flag of Victoria In 1836 Walter arrived in Van Diemen's Land with his wife and nine of their ten children. A year later two elder sons crossed to Port Phillip, followed in 1838 by the next two, Albert and the 12-year-old Monckton. They brought sheep with them and became pioneer squatters at Little River near Geelong, where they remained in various partnerships for about ten years. By 1852 they had scattered and Monckton, after a brief sortie with Albert to the Californian and Victorian goldfields, was the only one left in the Little River district, as sole owner of the 26,500-acre (10,724 ha) Mowyong, later called Bareacres.

He married Anne Lawrence on 25th February 1853 at St Kilda, Victoria.[2]

Synnot entered Melbourne wool-broking in prosperous and expansive times, when many firms were offering warehouse services, selling wool by auction or privately, or arranging and often financing its shipping for sale overseas. A pioneer of the wool trade with the East, he visited China, sent a consignment of woollen yarns to Hong Kong and arranged for silk and cotton weavers at Ning-Po to produce samples of woollen cloth, which were exhibited throughout Australia and New Zealand and at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.

He passed away on 23rd April 1879 at his home Ballyreen, in Brighton Road, St Kilda, Victoria,[3] and was buried the next day in St Kilda General Cemetery, Church of England Section, Compartment A, Grave 213.[4] The eldest of his seven sons, Monckton Davy Synnot, and three of the younger ones carried on as wool-brokers.

WILL OF MONCKTON SYNNOT: Monckton Synnot, Woolbroker, Melbourne, d. 23 Apr 1879, File: 18/997 VPRS 28/P0, unit 219; VPRS 28/P2, unit 90; VPRS 7591/P2, unit 47: http://prov.vic.gov.au/

PROBATE. The will of the late Mr. Monckton Synnot, woolbroker, was proved to-day for £46,000[5] The will of the late Mr. Monckton Synnot, woolbroker, was proved to-day for d£46,000, and that of the late Mr. George H&rker for £32,000.

Sources ↑ ascertained from death record ↑ The Courier (Hobart, Tas. : 1840 - 1859) 4 Mar 1853, p2 Marriage Notices ↑ The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) 25 Apr 1879, p1 Death Notices ↑ Victoria Death Index #6464/1879; registered at Elsternwick ↑ The Express and Telegraph (Adelaide, SA : 1867 - 1922) 16 May 1879, p3 Probate Notices

Synnot, Monckton (1826–1879) by Mary Turner Shaw

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, (MUP), 1976

Monckton Synnot (1826-1879), pastoralist and businessman, was born in December 1826 in County Armagh, Ireland, fifth son of Captain Walter Synnot and his second wife Elizabeth, née Houston. In 1836 Walter arrived in Van Diemen's Land with his wife and nine of their ten children. A year later two elder sons crossed to Port Phillip, followed in 1838 by the next two, Albert and the 12-year-old Monckton. They brought sheep with them and became pioneer landholders at Little River near Geelong, where they remained in various partnerships for about ten years. By 1852 they had scattered and Monckton, after a brief sortie with Albert to the Californian and Victorian goldfields, was the only one left in the Little River district, as sole owner of the 26,500-acre (10,724 ha) Mowyong, later called Bareacres. On 25 February 1853 at St Kilda, Melbourne, he married Annie Emily Wedge Lawrence. He later bought the South Brighton sheep station in the Wimmera where, in 1862, he was a member of the first Horsham District Roads Board, and a councillor in 1862-63.

The prize-winning superfine merino wools of the Western District had been extolled by the Thomas Shaws, C. H. MacKnight, J. L. Currie and others, but in the mid-1860s Synnot's letters to the papers queried their real value and gave rise to a drawn-out and sometimes bitter battle of words. Selling South Brighton in 1868, he bought the large Terrick Terrick station near the Murray River, and for a few years had some share with his brothers Albert, George and Nugent in Gunbar and Cowl Cowl in the Riverina. In 1873 he moved to Melbourne, bought large central city premises from the merchants and flour-millers, William Degraves & Co., and set up the Flinders Wool Warehouse in Flinders Lane: in this he followed the lead of his elder brother George who, opening in Geelong as a stock and station agent, had held one of the first auction sales of wool there in November 1858.

Synnot entered Melbourne wool-broking in prosperous and expansive times, when many firms were offering warehouse services, selling wool by auction or privately, or arranging and often financing its shipping for sale overseas. A pioneer of the wool trade with the East, he visited China, sent a consignment of woollen yarns to Hong Kong and arranged for silk and cotton weavers at Ning-Po to produce samples of woollen cloth, which were exhibited throughout Australia and New Zealand and at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. His efforts failed at first, but later that year when the first Japanese Trade Commission visited Australia his ideas bore some fruit.

Synnot died on 23 April 1879 at Elsternwick, aged 52, and was buried in St Kilda general cemetery. The eldest of his seven sons, Monckton Davey Synnot, and three of the younger ones carried on as wool-brokers. Both father and his son, Monckton, were tall, handsome, genial and convivial, with the Irish tendency to enjoy a brisk argument, but the senior Monckton was the only one to take any part in public affairs.

Select Bibliography R. V. Billis and A. S. Kenyon, Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip (Melb, 1932) A. Henderson (ed), Australian Families, vol 1 (Melb, 1941) W. R. Brownhill, The History of Geelong and Corio Bay (Melb, 1955) A. Barnard, The Australian Wool Market, 1840-1900 (Melb, 1958) L. J. Blake and K. H. Lovett, Wimmera Shire Centenary (Horsham, 1962) Economist, 1862, 1863, 2 Feb 1866 Argus (Melbourne), 16 Sept 1877, 8 Jan 1878, 8 Sept 1883.