sketcher, lithographer, draughtsman and surveyor, was born in England. He came to Western Australia on board HMS Sterling , arriving on 14 March 1841 in the company of one of his two Western Australian uncles, Lionel Samson, a well-known Fremantle wine and spirits’ merchant. From about 1844 to 1854 he worked as a draughtsman and lithographer with the Lands and Surveys Department in Perth, visiting South Australia in 1845 46. He married Ann Butler on 10 March 1849 and they had three children.
When the government decided to sell Henry Reveley 's former house and mill in December 1851, Samson was employed to sketch the mill’s layout. Surviving views, more personal in character and motivation, include View of the Tunnel under the Round House and Whaling Jetty at Fremantle (1840s, pen, ink and wash, p.c.) and View of Fremantle from South Jetty (1840s, pencil, p.c.), the jetty being that rented by Lionel Samson from 1840 after the Fremantle Whaling Company had ceased operations. Samson also drew Sketch from Nature, the Swan River Colony (c.1842, pencil and wash, Robert Holmes รก Court), Perth in 1847 (pen, ink, watercolour and gouache, AGWA) and made a pair of lithographs: Perth. Western Australia. From Mount Eliza (1852, AGWA, ML) and Fremantle, South Bay (c.1852, AGWA).
Later he moved to Melbourne and was appointed a draughtsman in the Victorian civil service on 30 October 1854. In January 1866 he was licensed as a surveyor in New South Wales. Returning to Victoria, he became chief draughtsman and surveyor at the Land Titles Office. In 1881 he was appointed Registrar of Titles at the Victorian Crown Law Office and eventually Deputy Registrar-General. Samson went back to England after he retired, where he died at the age of eighty-nine. No drawings made outside Western Australia have been identified.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
