Coxen Family Papers

Henry William Coxen (1823-1915), pastoralist, was born on 3 March 1823 at Croydon, Surrey, England, the eldest son of Henry Cunningham Coxen, a captain in the 14th Regiment, and his wife Eliza, née Adams. A gunshot accident in schooldays rendered his right hand virtually useless. He was sent to Australia in the care of several relatives, and eventually went north to a property managed by his uncle, Charles Coxen, where he acquired a fair knowledge of pastoral work by 1842 when he undertook an arduous trek farther north again and established himself as one of the youngest of the early settlers on the Darling Downs and was an associate was Patrick Leslie. Coxen later became one of the best-known and most prosperous of Queensland pastoralists. He first formed Jondaryan Station and afterwards became owner or part-owner of at least seventeen other large grazing leases. His career was varied from time to time by clashes with Aboriginal people, by depressions, by a six-month journey overlanding 3000 sheep from southern New South Wales. He returned to Queensland in 1880 and spent his last years in retirement at Oxley, near Brisbane, his chief interests then being detached attention to the growth of the pastoral industry and the practice of Freemasonry. He died at Oxley on 21 August 1915, survived by his wife Margaret and by two sons and two daughters. One son, Henry Charles (b.1869), was chief of staff of the Public Works Department, Queensland, and the other, Walter Adams (b.1870), achieved distinction as a military commander. (see: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/coxen-henry-william-3282)