Obituaries Australia

William Armstrong, n.d.

from Pastoral Review, 16 November 1918

In the course of an appreciative sketch of the life and character of the late William Harvey Armstrong, his friend, Mr. Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh, says:—

When William Harvey Armstrong passed quietly and peacefully away in his seventy-ninth year, on the 4th of October last, I lost a friend of half a century. We met first in 1868. He was the son of Dean Armstrong, of Kilfenova, County Clare, Ireland. His father died when he was quite young, and the family came out to Melbourne in 1853. At the early age of fourteen he was doing the heavy work of an ordinary miner on the goldfields.

Later on he and his brother John bought Yarara Station, on the Upper Murray. In 1873 he bought into a business in Urana, and I, being then the resident Church of England clergyman, met him again. He had just married Miss Williams, the sister of Mr. O. Morrice Williams, the well-known Melbourne banker, and had brought his charming and clever bride to live at Urana.

Afterwards having sold out at Urana he and his brother Charles purchased Callubri Station, on the Boyne, while he himself started business in Sydney, having joined the firm of Andrew Rowan and Co., of Melbourne, my friend taking the management of the Sydney branch. Later on he started in business on his own acount. A big, patient, self-contained man, who "ganged his ain gait," and was hard to turn, one who took an independent view of things and an independent stand. A man who did not go out of his way to make friends, but to those he did make he was staunch and true. A shrewd and able man of business, yet straight and honourable. That is my friend as the world knew him. In private life he was the kindest and most loving of husbands, the kindest and most loving of fathers.