Charles Byrnes
Politician and manufacturer in New South Wales Australia

Charles Joseph Byrnes (1835 – 22 October 1917) was an Australian politician.
He was born in Parramatta, the youngest son of Ruth Barber and James Byrnes, a storekeeper and early New South Wales politician. His uncle William was also a member of the Legislative Council.
The younger Byrnes was articled to a solicitor, but chose business over law and took over the family wool mill at Parramatta. He also owned a tweed mill at Granville, and was a long-serving alderman and mayor of Parramatta. In 1874 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Parramatta. He retired in 1877, was re-elected in 1880, and retired again in 1882. Byrnes died at Parramatta in 1917.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Charles Byrnes” is politician and manufacturer in New South Wales Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Charles, Byrnes and Politician, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q20810577. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1835, 1917, 1874 and 1877.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Byrnes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.