Obituaries Australia

Deaths - on Friday last, the 6th February, at his residence, at the Royal Oak Inn, Green Ponds, at the advanced age of 86 years, Mr. Thomas Ransom.

The deceased retained every faculty till the last; and even performed the journey to Hobart Town a few days previously to his death, for the express purpose of settling his affairs, having executed his will. The deceased was formerly Superintendent of Shipwrights, at Norfolk Island, and built the first vessel there. When that Settlement was evacuated, he accompanied the other Norfolk Island Settlers to this Colony, in 1814; and for many years afterwards held a similar situation under Government in Hobart Town, performing the duties of which office with diligence and zeal, when old age bringing on infirmity, he was obliged to resign, receiving as an indulgence for his past services a very liberal grant of land from Governor Macquarie, and subsequently another equally extensive one from Lieutenant Governor Arthur, the latter for the improvements he had made at the Green Ponds.

The whole of his valuable property is bequeathed to his family. The great age attained by the deceased, exemplifies the genial salubrity of our climate — the more remarkable, from the circumstance of his being one of the Patriarchs of our Island. The privations endured by these individuals, at its earliest colonization, must have tended, materially to curtail a proved sound, and a strong constitution, and but for which no doubt he would have obtained a more extended life. He was buried, at his own request, in the consecrated ground of the Chapel at the Green Ponds.