sketcher and surveyor, was born in England; the family genealogist Sandra Florance convincingly suggests that he was the fourth of the six sons of Richard and Sarah Florance of East Grinstead, Sussex, and had various siblings in New Zealand. Thomas Florance spent his youth in Canada and worked there as a surveyor and engineer in 1803-6. He served as an assistant engineer in the American war of 1812 and, as he stated to Governor Macquarie when applying for a land grant and a job as surveyor in New South Wales, 'at the conclusion of the War I was employed in reconstructing bridges which had been destroyed in the District of Niagra [ sic ] near the Falls’. This undermined his health and he returned to England, but left for Sydney in 1817 on board the Duke of Wellington . Macquarie granted him land near Hobart Town and a job as surveyor in Van Diemen’s Land. On completion of this work in 1825 he returned to Sydney and set up in private practice until appointed assistant surveyor to John Oxley. Then he worked in the Kiama/Shoalhaven area in 1827, followed by AA Company boundary work, a Jervis Bay coastal survey and marking out farms in the Hunter River district, until he resigned ahead of dismissal in March 1829. He again set up a brief private practice in Sydney. On 14 May 1829, in St James’s Church, Sydney, he married Elizabeth Kendall, a daughter of settlers in the Ulladulla district of New South Wales, and they moved into the district.
Florance practiced (with little success) as both a government and private surveyor in New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand and most of his drawings would have been maps and plans. In fact, no extant pictorial work is known, but when he was at Hobart Town in 1818 and his 'Mahogany desk’ was stolen, the Hobart Town Gazette of 20 June reported that it contained 'Water colours with apparatus for drawing’, paper, wax and pencils, four framed landscapes by 'Holland’ and 'a pencil View in perspective of the Public Buildings in Sydney for the reception of Crown Servants’.
Florance had moved to New Zealand with his family in 1834, but Governor Gipps did not allow him to practice as a surveyor and he lived in poverty for some years. Despite constant ill health, he lived to 82, dying in Auckland on 28 March 1867. He and Elizabeth (who died in 1870) had 12 children, eight of whom survived their parents.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
