James Merriman (politician)

He was born at Parramatta to George and Mary Merriman. His parents died while he was very young and he and his sister Mary were raised by guardians.[1] By 1828 they were lodging with Sydney merchant Joseph Raphael and his wife.[2] He was indentured as a cooper, and later served on whaling vessels for four years. In 1843 he married Anne Thompson, with whom he had five children, one of whom, George Merriman (1845–1893), would later serve as a politician, representing West Sydney in the Legislative Assembly from 1882 to 1889.

He was trading to the Pacific Islands by 1844.[3]

The Whalers Arms, Millers' Point in 1842

In July 1847 he applied for the license of the Whalers' Arms public house, Windmill Street, Miller's Point; one of three pubs with that name in Sydney at the time.[4] He remained the licensee till September 1855.[5] In 1856 he applied for the licence to the Grafton Hotel, 26 Kent Street, Sydney.[6] He had left that hotel by 1862 and moved on to another pub in Millers Point, the Gladstone Hotel. That one he left in January 1863.[7]

As the 1850s went his commercial interests began to shift to maritime activities and shipping.

From about 1850 he was a shipping agent for vessels trading between Sydney, the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. He was also the owner of a number of ships. In 1872 his vessel the barque James Merriman was lost at sea while engaged in the pearl shell fishery in Torres Strait.[8]

He seems to have been a considerable property owner in Sydney. In December 1862 he advertised for tradesmen to repair seven houses in Argyle St, Millers Point.[9]

From 1867 to 1883 he served on Sydney City Council, including periods as mayor in 1873 and from 1877 to 1878. In 1877 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for West Sydney, but he did not re-contest in 1880.[10]

He was made a trustee of the Wentworth Park Trust in July 1878.[11] In December of that year he was appointed as a member of the Sydney International Exhibition Commission.[12]

Merriman died in Sydney on 12 May 1883.[13]

Crown Road in Miller's Point was renamed Merriman Street in 1875.[14]

After his death in 1883 The Bulletin offered this evaluation.

In the whole of the City of Sydney, it is to be questioned if there was any one who had the amount of influence of the deceased ... Mr Merriman was quietly and unobtrusively charitable. He was foolish enough to give away a great deal of money, and to never advertise it ... [he] lived in a large but rather rambling house in Argyle Street. It was always bright and clean .. At Millers Point [he] was King. He seems to have owned it all from the Argyle Cut to the Central Wharf. But with the exception of maintaining a handsome carriage and pair for his family, his unostentatiousness bordered on the primitive.[15]