People Australia

The James brothers—William Rhodes (1817–1898, known as Rhodes), John Vidal (1820–1897), and Richard Boucher (1822–1908, known as Boucher)—all pastoralists, were the sons of Herbert Jarrett James (1789–1840), master in the Jamaican Court of Chancery and coffee plantation owner, and his wife Caroline Jane Vidal (1796–1880), the daughter of a wealthy Jamaican plantation owner.[1] They had three other siblings: Elizabeth (1816–1873), Herbert (1818–1833), and Julia (1823–1824).[2] Around 1823 the children left Jamaica with their mother for England, where the four eldest remained to attend school. The three boys were educated at Hyde Abbey School in Winchester; Boucher also attended Mt Radford School, Exeter.[3]  

The James children were descended from at least six generations of wealthy Jamaican plantation owners.[4] In 1835 and 1836, their father received £581/8/8 compensation for eight enslaved people in St Catherine, Jamaica and seventeen enslaved people on the Fruit Hill coffee plantation, Jamaica.[5] The brothers’ grandfather, William Rhodes James (1755–1795) and great-grandfather, William Rhodes James (1734–1807), had owned the Southfield and Fontebelle sugar plantations in Jamaica and had also owned enslaved people.[6]

In July 1837 their father Herbert, in failing health, accompanied by Rhodes and a black servant, Joseph Brown, sailed for New York and then on to England, returning to the family home in Dawlish, Devon.[7] In 1838 he set about providing for his sons Rhodes, John, and Boucher. The brothers had heard about the advantages of emigrating to South Australia from their friends and acquaintances, so their father bought 480 acres of land in the colony. He organised for his sons to stay with a farmer near Salisbury to learn agricultural skills, engaging John Brealey, a farmer, carpenter, and wheelwright from Dawlish, as a servant for his sons and paid for Brealey’s passage, and that of his wife, to the colony. The Brealeys travelled out ahead of the brothers, arriving in Adelaide on 25 September 1839 per Prince Regent.[8] The brothers arrived in South Australia on the Dumfries in October 1839 bringing with them various goods and supplies for their new life, including furniture and a prefabricated house.[9] When Herbert Jarrett James died the following year his estate was valued at £32,820.[10] It included annuities to his wife and mother, but the remainder was divided equally among his four surviving children: Rhodes, John, Boucher, and Elizabeth.[11]

The next year the brothers selected land on Kaurna Country in the Inman Valley near Yankalilla, on the Fleurieu Peninsula south of Adelaide. They set about developing the property, but their inexperience resulted in several poor decisions including the loss of some stock and purchase of diseased stock. In 1841 the partnership was dissolved, Rhodes selling out his share of the property to his two brothers and departing South Australia for London in July 1841.[12]

In 1848 Boucher married Mary Le Brun née Helmore at his home in the Inman Valley.[13] By 1851 he was beginning to prosper, his property comprising:

a good stone residence of four rooms, with barn and out-offices, and a good garden of a promising description. Mr. James is the owner of a considerable number of sections, and has some good crops of wheat and potatoes; he is also a large sheepfarmer, and occupies the whole of his valley as a run beyond his enclosures.[14]

In 1853 Boucher and John sold the land at Inman and bought land containing a steam flour mill in Noarlunga, thirty kilometres south of Adelaide, also on Kaurna Country.[15] Around 1857 Boucher bought Canowie station, named after the Ngadjuri word for ‘rock waterhole’, in the mid-north region of South Australia on Ngadjuri  Country, with partners Abraham Scott, Martinus Peter Hayward, and his brother Johnson Frederick Hayward. Boucher became resident manager of the station, which was stocked with over 28,000 sheep. He and his family returned to England in 1863, but he continued to run Canowie as an absentee landholder.[16] He imported prize-winning pedigree stock, and for fifty years the station was one of the most prosperous merino sheep studs in Australia.[17] By the time the partnership with Scott and Hayward was dissolved in 1869 the station carried 63,000 sheep. Boucher retained ownership with new partners Fred Hayward and William Sanders, and in 1894 the Canowie Pastoral Company was formed with Boucher as its largest shareholder.[18] By 1905 the Canowie Pastoral Company was the largest private freehold landowner in South Australia.[19]

In Britain, Boucher’s family settled first at Spring Street, Godalming, Surrey, before moving to Canowie House, Bristol, and then to the Georgian manor Hallsannery House, Littleford, near Bideford, Devon. In Devon he bred pedigree shorthorn cattle and thoroughbred horses, which he exhibited at various agricultural shows, and hunted with Blackmore Vale Hounds.[20] He was a member of the Royal Colonial Institute and the Royal North Devon Golf Club, and a fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society, the Royal Horticultural Society, and the Devonshire Association.[21] He died a wealthy man in 1908 with an estate valued at £39,978. [22] His obituary referred to him as ‘one of the largest flockmasters in South Australia, [who] for many years exhibited pedigree stock all over England.’[23]

Boucher’s sons William Herbert (1857–1940) and Richard (1851–1923) returned to Australia, where Richard carried on a business as a wine merchant and William became a successful pastoralist on the Erudina Station, on Adnyamathanha Country, leaving a legacy of over £33,000 on his death in 1941.[24] Boucher’s daughter, Mary Vidal, married her cousin, Herbert Lister James, the son of William Rhodes James, in Bideford in 1880.[25]

In 1851 John Vidal married Frances Lucy Fisher, the daughter of James Hurtle Fisher, lawyer and politician, in Adelaide.[26] He became justice of the peace in Willunga, and by 1855 he had obtained a position as colonial storekeeper and superintendent of the public cemetery.[27] By October 1857 John was considering a return to England and applied for the position of sub-emigration agent with the South Australia Agency in Britain.[28] By 1861 John, Frances, and their three children were living in Stroud.[29] He listed his occupation as ‘fundholder’ on the 1861 census. When he died in 1897 his estate was valued at £9,699.[30]

In 1847 Rhodes married Mary Lister in Ilfracombe, Devon, describing himself as a civil engineer.[31] The family first lived in York before moving to Guernsey in 1861 and, by 1873, Stockland, Devon, where he became a flax manufacturer.[32] By 1886 he had moved to Whitstone House in Devon.[33] Rhodes and Mary had a large family of at least twelve children.[34] When he died in 1898 he left property worth £1,138/12/8.[35]

Today James Track in the Inman Valley is believed to be named after Richard Boucher James, while many traces of their former pastoral stations remain across the South Australian landscape.[36] William Rhodes James, John Vidal James, and Richard Boucher James were funded by the wealth generated from Jamaican plantations, which were worked by enslaved people, over six generations of the James family. Their prosperity as early colonisers of South Australia was in turn grounded upon the acquisition of First Nations Country. In particular, Boucher’s pastoral success in South Australia supported a privileged absentee lifestyle in Britain, following Caribbean precedents. He founded a pastoral dynasty, demonstrating the intergenerational transmission of wealth from the Caribbean slave economy to Australia.

[1] Herbert Jarrett James, The Peerage, accessed 2 July 2025, https://www.thepeerage.com/p68273.htm#i682723; Baptism, William Rhodes James, 1817, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, via Ancestry;  William Rhodes James, National Probate Calendar, 1898, Principal Probate Registry, via Ancestry; Baptism, John Vidal James, 1820, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, via Ancestry; John Vidal James, National Probate Calendar, 1897, Principal Probate Registry, via Ancestry; Richard Boucher James, Find a Grave, https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2015/81/144075610_1427147532.jpg; Sarah Harrison, ed., A Jamaican Master in Chancery: The Letter-Books of Herbert Jarrett James, 1821-1840 (Apollo Research Repository, University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology, Working Papers, History and Anthropology, 2016), 1, https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/254050; Herbert Jarrett James, Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 2 July 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/18540; John James Vidal, Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 2 July 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146635584; Baptism, Caroline Jane Vidal, 1796, Fulham Parish Register, London Metropolitan Archives, via Ancestry; ‘Deaths,’ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 5 November 1880, 5.

[2] Baptism, Elizabeth James, 1816, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, via Ancestry;  Elizabeth Goss, 1873, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry London, via Ancestry; Baptism, Herbert Jarrett James, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, via Ancestry; Baptism, Julia James, 1823, Clifton parish register, P/Sta/R/3/A, Bristol Archives, via Ancestry; Burial, Julia James, 4 May 1824, Clifton Parish Register, P/Sta/R/5/A, Bristol Archives, via Ancestry; Descendants of Richard James, Jamaican Family Search, https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/JamesRichard2.htm.

[3] ‘Death of Mr R.B. James,’ North Devon Journal (Barnstaple), 10 September 1908, 6; Harrison, A Jamaican Master in Chancery, 4.

[4] Descendants of Richard James, Jamaican Family Search, https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/JamesRichard2.htm.

[5] Herbert Jarrett James, Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 25 July 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/18540.

[6] William Rhodes James III, Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 25 July 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146650327; William Rhodes James II, Legacies of British Slavery,  accessed 25 July 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146650331.

[7] Sarah Harrison, ed., The Journal of William Rhodes James; Written between 1836 and 1841 in America, Jamaica and Australia (Apollo Research Repository, University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology, Working Papers, History and Anthropology, 2016), 19, accessed 25 July 2025, https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/254143.

[8] Harrison, A Jamaican Master in Chancery, 264, 289.

[9] Ibid.; Dumfries, Passengers in History, accessed 2 July 2025, https://passengers.history.sa.gov.au/node/944759.

[10] Harrison, A Jamaican Master in Chancery.

[11] Will of Herbert James Jarrett of Spanish Town Island of Jamaica, 8 May 1840, PROB 11/1927/309, TNA, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D65510.

[12] Harrison, The Journal of William Rhodes James.

[13] Ibid.

[14] ‘Sketches of the Present State of South Australia,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 16 April 1851, 3.

[15] Harrison ed., The Journal of William Rhodes James.

[16] ‘Cleared Out,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 16 December 1863, 2.

[17] Maxwell Arthur Slee, Canowie Station: A Pastoralism Wonder Revealed (Max Slee: Adelaide, 2020).

[18] S.A. Northern Pioneers: R.B. James, SA Memory, accessed 25 July 2025, https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c=5263; Gilbert Letters Transcript, State Library South Australia, accessed 25 July 2025, https://archival.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/prg/PRG266_59_Gilbert_letters_transcript.pdf.

[19] Slee, Canowie Station.

[20] Baptism, Frances Sarah James, Godalming parish registers, God/4/2, Surrey History Centre, via Ancestry; England Census, 1871, RG10, 2569, 24, 6, National Archives,  Kew (TNA), via Ancestry;  England Census, 1891, RG12, 1787, 22, 13, TNA, via Ancestry; ‘Death of Mr R.B. James,’ North Devon Journal (Barnstaple, England), 10 September 1908, 6; Harrison, A Jamaican Master in Chancery. 4.

[21] ‘Mail News,’ Chronicle (Adelaide), 26 May 1900, 46; ‘Death of Mr R.B. James,’ North Devon Journal (Barnstaple), 10 September 1908, 6.

[22] ‘Anglo-Australian,’ Register (Adelaide), 13 October 1908, 8; Harrison, The Journal of William Rhodes James.

[23] ‘Anglo-Australian.’ 

[24] James, William Herbert, birth, 11/13, Genealogy SA, accessed 13 August 2025, https://www.genealogysa.org.au/resources/online-database-search ‘Advertising,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 22 December 1892, 2; ‘Hawker Hospital Hears of £500 Windfall,’ News (Adelaide), 2 January 1941, 3; James, Richard Boucher, birth, 3/183, Genealogy SA, accessed 13 August 2025, https://www.genealogysa.org.au/resources/online-database-search; Richard Boucher James, 1924, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry London, via Ancestry.

[25] ‘Marriages,’ Western Times (Exeter), 18 May 1880, 5.

[26] ‘Family Notices,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 1 March 1851, 2.

[27] ‘Local Court, Willunga,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 4 December 1850, 3; ‘The Government Gazette,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 19 January 1855, 3.

[28] ‘Parliamentary Papers,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 7 October 1857, 2.

[29] England census, 1861, Rg 9, 1777, 109, 18, TNA, via Ancestry.

[30] England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1897, Principal Probate Registry, via Ancestry.

[31] Harrison, The Journal of William Rhodes James, 59.

[32] England Census, 1851, York,  HO107, 2353, 207, 35, TNA, via Ancestry; ‘York Diocesan Society,’ York Herald, 16 May 1857, 5; England Census, 1871, Chard, G10, 2406, 15, 21, TNA, via Ancestry; England Census, 1851, York, HO107, 2353, 207, 35, TNA, via Ancestry; ‘York Diocesan Society,’ York Herald, 16 May 1857, 5; England Census, 1871, Chard, G10, 2406, 15, 21, TNA, via Ancestry

Harrison, The Journal of William Rhodes James; ‘Advertisements & Notices,’ Derby Mercury, 15 January 1873, 1.

[33] ‘The Earl of Iddesleigh at the Deaconsfield Club,’ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 24 September 1886,

 8.

[34] England Census, 1861, York, Rg 9, 3551, 20, TNA, via Ancestry; England Census, 1871, Chard, RG10 2406 15 21, TNA, via Ancestry.

[35] William Rhodes James, National Probate Calendar, 1898, Principal Probate Registry, via Ancestry.

[36] Bridge Over James Track, Yankalilla and District Historical Society Inc., accessed 23 July 2025, https://www.yankalilladistricthistory.org.au/places-1/bridge-over-james-track.