Sub-item 13 - Letter from architect Edward Rowntree to George Washington Walker

George Washington Walker (1800-1859), Quaker, shopkeeper and humanitarian, was born on 19 March 1800 in London, the twenty-first child of John Walker (1726-1821) by his second wife, Elizabeth, née Ridley. Because of the death of his mother and the absence of his aged father engaged in the saddle trade in Paris, he was brought up by his grandmother in Newcastle. He was educated by a Wesleyan schoolmaster near Barnard Castle, and apprenticed in 1814 to a linen draper. Impressed by the probity and wisdom of his Quaker employers and James Backhouse of York, a leading Quaker minister, he left the Unitarian persuasion of his family in 1827 and became a member of the Society of Friends. The next year he formed the first Temperance Society in Newcastle.
For more information see http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/walker-george-washington-2764

Born in Thorne, Yorkshire, arrived at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, as a convict in the Manlius on 12 August 1830. He spent the rest of his life in Van Diemen’s Land, during which time he worked as a carpenter, builder and architect. He died at Sandy Bay on 8 November 1893. His best-known architectural work is the Hobart Town Savings Bank (now the Murray Street branch of the Savings Bank of Tasmania); he also designed the Congregational Church at Richmond.