This document was offered for sale at an Antiquarian Bookseller based in Adelaide.
Town Section No. 131 to Christ’r Rawson Esq [docketed title of a printed document, with manuscript insertions]
Adelaide, 23 December 1837.
The grant is for ‘All that One Acre Section of Town Land numbered “131” in the Provincial Survey’, purchased by one Christopher Rawson. This particular grant was issued before the colony had been established a year.
The first page is signed by James Hurtle Fisher as Resident Commissioner of Public Lands for the Province of South Australia.
Christopher Rawson, from Halifax, Yorkshire, was an absentee investor, not a colonist; as well as the “town” section”, he is identified as the proprietor of ten 134-acre sections.
As well as being an investor, Christopher Rawson was a director of the South Australian Company, whose main objective was to purchase a quantity of land from the Colonization Commisioners for South Australia.
He was also on the committee of the “South Australian School Society”, the objects of which were
“to establish and conduct Infant British and Labour Schools in the colony of South Australia and to render their influence subservient to the advancement of true religion the promotion of civilization and the general welfare of the inhabitants of that colony”