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Charles Scrivener

Australian surveyor (1855-1923)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ1066040 ↗
Source-derived summary

Charles Robert Scrivener (2 November 1855 – 26 September 1923) was an Australian surveyor, and the person who surveyed numerous sites in New South Wales for the selection of a site for the Australian Capital Territory and Australia's capital city, Canberra.

Scrivener was born in Windsor, New South Wales. In 1876, he was employed by the New South Wales Department of Lands. He was apprenticed as a surveyor between 1877 and 1879. On 9 July 1880, the government gazette announced that he had been licensed as a surveyor by the Surveyor-General. In 1888, Scrivener was appointed Surveyor in Maitland, New South Wales, by 1896 he was appointed as an Acting District Surveyor in Wagga Wagga and District Surveyor for Hay in 1906. He surveyed numerous sites for the construction of Australia's capital, including Buckley's Crossing, the Hay district, and lastly the Yass-Canberra district. Scrivener's contour map of the selected site was used as the basis for entries in the Canberra design competition. He was appointed first director of Commonwealth lands and surveys in 1910 and retired in 1915. He died aged 67 in Killara, New South Wales.

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The public source identifies “Charles Scrivener” as australian surveyor (1855-1923). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Charles, Scrivener and Australian.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1855, 1923, 1876, 1877—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1855-11-02. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Charles, Scrivener and Australian providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Charles Scrivener”, the useful work is to connect “australian surveyor (1855-1923)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1066040. VIAF identifies the subject as 94709231. The Library of Congress control number is nb2013014581. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1855, 1923, 1876 and 1877.

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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Scrivener” 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.