Aust. Banknotes - Private Bank Issues

Lot 2802    Session 10 (7.30pm Wed 26th March)    Aust. Banknotes - Private Bank Issues

Estimate $2,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au

BANK OF NEW SOUTH WALES, Share Certificate for one hundred pounds, 31 May 1832, printed on vellum by William Moffitt (no imprint), No.712 of folio 317, made out to Samuel Terry, signed by the President, two directors and entered by J.Potts, transferred on the back to John Malcolm 12th May 1838. One of the earliest available Australian share certificates. Very fine and rare.

Samuel Terry was sentenced to transportation for seven years for stealing 400 pairs of stockings. He arrived in Sydney in 1801 and in 1810 he was granted one of the twenty liquor licences awarded. He married Rosetta Marsh or Madden, also an innkeeper, in the same year and thereafter the Terrys prospered. Their rapid rise to riches fuelled a great deal of gossip and Terry had brought at least twenty eight actions in the Supreme Court by 1821.

In 1820 it was estimated that his 19,000 acres were nearly half the total land holdings of former convicts. He was elected to the board of the Bank of New South Wales in 1822 and again in 1828. He was one of the largest shareholders at the time. His land included the area now occupied by Martin Place and the G.P.O. Sydney. He died in 1838 at the age of about sixty, leaving a personal estate of £250,000 and an annual income from his Sydney rentals in excess of £10,000. Rosetta survived him by twenty years.