- Thomas Elwyn
Thomas Elwyn, (c. 1837 –
September 11 1888 ), was a Britishsoldier ,police officer and gold commissioner in colonial British Columbia.Elwyn, born into a family with a long military tradition, served as a lieutenant in the
30th Foot during theCrimean war . He arrived in Victoria on Christmas Day, 1858 and was appointed, on the strength of his references from England, to the police force under InspectorChartres Brew . After serving for five months as the Chief Constable of Yale, Governor James Douglas made him Assistant Gold Commissioner ofLillooet . In 1861, he was put in charge of theGold Escort from the Cariboo and Fraser Canyon goldfields. That venture was discontinued for 1862 when miners protested the government inability to guarantee the safety of the gold being transported, and though revived again in 1863, again under Elwyn and despite his personal guarantee to the miners, its failure to generate revnues to offset costs resulted in its discontinuation. [ [http://www.nosracines.ca/e/page.aspx?id=3724523 "British Columbia: From the earliest times ot the present, Vol II", E.O.S. Scholefield & F.W. Howay, p.. 134-138] ]Elwyn was appointed gold commissioner of the Cariboo on
April 21 ,1862 . In October, he resigned, citing his interest in a valuable gold claim in the area. In 1864 he was part of the party sent by Brew to capture the Chilcotin Indians who killed a road crew onBute Inlet in an incident known as theChilcotin War . He spend the next year mining at Wild Horse Creek in theKootenay , before setting off to represent the government on the expedition to extend the Western Union Telegraph line north from Quesnel. In 1868 he joined the Legislative Council, where he served for a single term. He took a short turn at driving cattle then signed aboard theHBC steamship "Otter" aspurser . He was appointed deputyprovincial secretary in 1877, a position he held until his death.ources
*Dorothy Blakey Smith “ [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5504 Elwyn, Thomas] ” at
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, 2000References
External links
* [http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/exhibits/timemach/galler04/frames/elwyn.htm People of the Cariboo Gold Rush- Thomas Elwyn] at BC Archives
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