Aston, George Peter

ASTON, George Peter (1847–1898) was born in Birmingham, England, third son of John Cyrus Aston, an ironmonger, and Mary Maria Spicer. By 1861 his father had retired but George was still at school in Birmingham where he probably also received his architectural education. A decade later he was a boarder with an accountant at Handsworth, Staffordshire, a suburb of Birmingham, but his occupation was not stated. In 1873 he departed from London for Australia. Claiming experience in Victoria and New South Wales he was at Maryborough, Queensland by 1878 when he was arrested for an outstanding debt. After three months in gaol. Aston petitioned to be declared insolvent “in forma pauperis” – having neither funds nor property amounting to £5. Thereafter he returned to Maryborough where in 1879, after a brief partnership as CROCKER & ASTON, auctioneers, architects and surveyors, he was appointed Town Surveyor and Foreman of Works with the right of private practice. He married Janet Fulton Higgins in June 1880. Aston undertook his work for the Municipal Council with “professional ability and good management” and his private work included Dalhousie, a two-storey villa residence for Percy Ramsay. When it was determined by the start of 1881, that his services could no longer be afforded, Aston entered into short-lived partnership with JV WILLIAMS as WILLIAMS & ASTON, architects and surveyors of Maryborough and Bundaberg. Williams whose residence Aston had designed had been his predecessor at the Council. In September 1881 he entered yet another partnership in Maryborough, this time with the engineer TC OLDHAM, as ASTON & OLDHAM, but this was also short-lived, ending the following year. By March 1881 Aston was successfully practising alone when his under-priced offer of 19 guineas to draw a plan of Maryborough was accepted by the Council. Soon afterwards in June 1881 his young wife and their child died in childbirth, this tragedy delaying completion of the plan within the agreed time and he may have left Maryborough without finishing it. By 1885 he was practising as an architect and surveyor in California where at Oakland he married Emily Catherine Pratt, widow of a Sydney photographer. After undertaking military service from 1887 until 1889, he was naturalised in 1890. He was then living at Sonoma and listed as a surveyor. Prior to his death in 1898, at Sonoma, California, he had been in partnership with the US-born architect, Louis Stanworth Stone (1865-1935).