Thomas Bunbury (British Army officer, born 1791)
Commandant of Norfolk Island and officer in the British Army (1791–1862)
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bunbury (19 May 1791 – 25 December 1861) was an officer in the British Army during the early Victorian period. He was commandant of the convict settlement at Norfolk Island for a period in 1839. He later served in New Zealand and British India.
Biography
Born on 19 May 1791 in Gibraltar, the son of Benjamin Bunbury, an officer of the 32nd Regiment, Bunbury was later placed in a school at the village of Catterick, North Yorkshire upon his father's marriage to Ann Cowling, daughter of Henry Cowling of Richmond, North Yorkshire, in 1797. He was later educated at Staindrop, County Durham, until his father moved to Hyde End and Cope Hall, near Newbury, Berkshire, then to tuition under the Rev. J Meredith at Walsh Common. Later he was sent on to Bicheno's Newbury seminary, where in 1807 he learned that an ensigncy in the 90th Regiment of Foot (Perthshire Volunteers) had been conferred upon him from 12 March that year. Following an incident at a family dinner with his uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton Welch Bunbury, 3rd Regiment of Foot, he was transferred to the 3rd Regiment on 19 or 22 August 1807, and joined the 2nd Battalion under Colonel Bingham at Cirencester.
Having arrived at Fort St. Julien, Lisbon, on HMS Plover in November 1808, Bunbury fought in the Peninsular War.
“Thomas Bunbury (British Army officer, born 1791)” enters the record as commandant of Norfolk Island and officer in the British Army (1791–1862). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Bunbury and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7788031. VIAF identifies the subject as 58354932. The Library of Congress control number is n96117756. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1791, 1861, 1839 and 1797.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Bunbury (British Army officer, born 1791)” 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.