Frederick Forth

Frederick Henry Alexander Forth (11 February 1808 – 7 April 1876) was a British colonial administrator. He was Lieutenant-Governor in the British West Indies, Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong and magistrate of Tasmania.

Early life Forth was born on 11 February 1808 to diplomat Nathaniel Parker Forth (1744–1809) and Eliza Petrie (1784–1864). His father was King George III's private envoy to the courts of Versailles and Madrid. From his parents' marriage, he had several siblings, including Alexandre de Forth-Rouen and Eliza Parker Forth (wife of the Hon. Jabez Henry). After his father's death in April 1809, shortly before his youngest brother's birth, his mother married Baron Alexandre-Jean-Denis Rouen des Mallets, the Mayor of Taverny, with whom she had another daughter, Louise Rouen des Mallets (who married Charles Louis, Viscount Terray de Morel-Vindé in 1839), Frederick's half-sister.

Career He was an army officer and lieutenant-governor in the British West Indies for some six years, where he was sent to initiate a government on the separation of those islands from the Bahamas. He was the Council President of the Turks and Caicos from 1848 to 1854. He was also the Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong and ex officio member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. He was a captain in the Scots Fusiliers and was appointed by Governor Sir George Arthur in the first visiting magistracy created in Tasmania. He prepared the first code of standing regulations for the management of some thousands of European convicts employed upon the public works and roads of the colony. Together, they were the parents of:

Catherine Georgiana Forth, who married lord of the manor of Little Cawthorpe, John Bartholomew Parker, the eldest son of Lysimachus Parker and Sarah Green of Dowsby Hall, in 1862. Robert de Lancey Forth (1835–1890), who married Anne Thomson Ware, a daughter of Jeremiah George Ware, in 1877.

He died in Tasmania in 1876.

Descendants Through his son Robert de Lancey Forth, Forth's great-great-grandson is Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, through Murdoch's mother, Elisabeth Joy Greene, a daughter of Marie Grace de Lancey Forth.