Joseph Carey

Joseph Westrop Carey ( – 28 April 1910) was an Anglo-Irish Canadian land surveyor and pioneer, who served as mayor of Victoria, British Columbia in 1883 and 1884.

Biography

Carey was born into a Protestant family in Aghabullogue, County Cork in 1829 or 1830, the son of British Army officer William Westrop Carey (also spelled Westrope or Westropp) and Honora van Stone Carey (née Collins). His father was an officer in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and served in Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars. Joseph Carey arrived at Fort Victoria.

Carey was educated in Aghabullogue, learning land surveying. In April 1849, at age 15, he left Ireland without his family, a few months before the onset of the Great Famine. He travelled first to England before arriving in Boston in July. He went to the Pacific Coast where for 18 months he worked surveying the California-Arizona border. As a contractor, he conducted field work for Robert C. Matthewson, deputy surveyor for the U.S. federal government, and worked in Mexico and Baja California. After the onset of the 1849 Gold Rush, he went north to San Francisco to pan for gold in the mountains. He met some success but continued to work as a surveyor up and down the West Coast. He arrived at Fort Victoria on 11 May 1859, just over a decade after leaving Ireland. While employed as a police officer in Victoria, Carey was tried for the attempted rape of an Indigenous woman, but was acquitted by an all-white jury. The seized furnishings and equipment were placed for public auction, which ended when Daily Colonist editor David Higgins and private citizen Joseph Spratt paid the outstanding bill.

Family and children

In 1852 in Boston, he married Englishwoman Caroline Louise Slater, the daughter of Methodist minister Rev. Thomas Slater. Caroline, who had emigrated from Derbyshire, stayed in Boston while Carey returned to the Pacific Coast. She eventually joined him in 1859 and became a well-known pioneer woman.