People Australia

Joseph Wilbur, 1906

Western Mail (Perth), 17 March 1906, p 29

Joseph Henry Wilbur (1850-1914) journalist, clerk, political activist and lecturer

Birth: 1850 at New York, United States of America, son of John James Wilbur, farmer, and Mary Jane, née Burnett or Bonnean. Marriages: (1) details unknown. (2) 8 October 1896 with Congregationalist forms, at Trinity Church, Perth, Western Australia, describing his marital status as widowed, to Charlotte Rebecca Algar (1871-1917). They had four sons, one of whom died in infancy. Death: 23 August 1914 at the Old Men’s Home, Claremont, WA. Religion: buried with Wesleyan forms. 

• Followed mining, agricultural and engineering pursuits in the United States of America. Claimed to have “a vivid recollection of the civil war of 1861-65”. Aged 17, he went to the far west of the USA, travelling by bullock teams. Searched for gold in the White Pine district of Nevada. In the early 1870s he resided for five years in Salt Lake City, Utah. Having travelled to Hawaii, he started a sugar plantation before returning in 1880 to USA, where he spent over twelve years lecturing and in journalism.
• Arrived in Australia in 1891 and spent his early years as an agricultural expert at Mildura, Victoria.
• Had moved to Western Australia by 1895 when he obtained employment as an inspector under the Insect Pests Act. In 1898 he was transferred to the Statistical Department as an assistant compiler. Worked as a clerk in the WA Registrar-General's Department.
• He was initially anti-socialist, but converted after debating the issue with Monty Miller and other members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) of WA 1901. Was vice-president of the SDF in 1902.
• Resigned SDF position and his clerical employment when he lost his sight “as a result of a nervous affection” in mid-1902.
• Was engaged as a travelling lecturer for the WA Lands Department, in which capacity he carried out a successful thirteen-month tour of the eastern States of the Commonwealth in 1904-1905 to attract immigration. In 1906 he was the victim of a fraudulent real estate agent.
• In the 1910 electoral roll his occupation was given as journalist. He was reputedly “a gifted writer and lecturer, and was widely informed on many subjects, especially on matters of agriculture and mining, and in social questions in respect of which he was a progressive thinker”.
• Active in the affairs of WA Blind, Deaf & Dumb Asylum. “Finding it difficult to make a livelihood out of literary work, he severed his connection with the government and became an inmate of the Blind Institute until about 1912 when a stroke of paralysis brought him to the Perth Public Hospital, when he was removed to the Home at Claremont.”
• Cause of death: spinal sclerosis and exhaustion.
• Following his death, his widow seems to have worked as a cook at the Cunderdin Hotel, Northam, Dampier. When she died on 6 September 1917 their three surviving sons were adopted by a local family. The sons were John Keith Burnett, né Wilbur (1898-1938), who served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I, Stanley Wilbur (1904-1972), who served in the 2nd AIF in World War II, and Geoffrey Vernon Burnett, né Wilbur (1905-1968). Their adoptive parents were John Talbot Burnett (1859-1932) a surveyor, and his wife Jessie Juanita, née Graham (1883-1977).

Sources
Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905, (Sydney, 1985).