William Shirley
From Wikipedia Mirror
- For the English cricketer of the same name, see William Shirley (cricketer)
William Shirley (2 December 1694Template:Ndash 24 March 1771) was a British colonial administrator who served as Governor of Massachusetts from 1741 to 1759 and Governor of the Bahamas between 1761 and 1766. He also gained experience as a military commander serving as Commander-in-Chief, North America.
Contents |
Early life
William Shirley was the son of William and Elizabeth Godman Shirley, and was born on 2 December 1694, at Preston Manor in Sussex, England. He was educated at Cambridge then studied law in London before moving to Boston in 1731.
His early government jobs included that of surveyor and King's Advocate for New England. He was appointed the royal Governor in 1741. In 1745, he led a successful siege of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia.
Shirley strongly supported the Crown, and on Aug. 15, 1755, he secretly wrote to his superior in London that it would be relatively easy to forestall any threat that the American colonies would declare independence.
- "At all Events, they could not maintain such an Independency, without a Strong Naval Force, which it must forever be in the Power of Great Britain to hinder them from having: And whilst His Majesty hath 7000 Troops kept up within them, & in the Great Lakes upon the back of six of them, with the Indians at Command, it seems very easy, provided the Governors & principal Civil Officers are Independent of the Assemblies for their Subsistence, & commonly Vigilant, to prevent any Steps of that kind from being taken."[1]
Seven Years War
Template:Main He was commander-in-chief of North American forces, and with Charles Lawrence, was the architect of the Great Expulsion, the forcible removal of more than 12,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755. Some historians consider this incident to be an example of ethnic cleansing from the colonial period. On 31 March 1756, the Secretary of War replaced him as commander-in-chief and told him to return to England as soon as possible.[1] He was later exonerated, and served as Governor of the Bahamas from 1761-1769.
He retired to live with his daughter and her husband (Eliakin Hutchinson) at the Roxbury house. He died there on 24 March 1771.
The Shirley House
He built a family home in Roxbury between 1744 and 1750. The Shirley-Eustis House still stands at 33 Shirley Street. It has largely been restored and is open to the public.[1].
Memorials
- The town of Shirley, Massachusetts, founded during his term as Massachusetts governor.
- The Winthrop, Massachusetts geographical feature Shirley Point and the former feature Shirley Gut. William Shirley helped to establish a cod fishery in Winthrop in 1753.[1]
Footnotes
References
- O'Toole, Fintan, White Savage, William Johnson and the Invention of America, 2005, ISBN 0-374-28128-9
- Rawlyk, George A. "New England Origins of the Louisbourg Expedition of 1745." Dalhousie Review 1964 44(4): 469-493, focuses on Shirley's role
- Schutz, John A. William Shirley, King's Governor of Massachusetts (1961)
External links
- Mass.gov has an official biography (visited January 16, 2009).
- Template:Wikisource1911Enc Citation
Template:Start box Template:S-gov Template:Succession box Template:Succession box Template:Succession box Template:S-mil Template:Succession box Template:End box
Template:Governors of Massachusettsde:William Shirley fr:William Shirley
