William Everard was a South Australian businessman and politician. Everard was the son of Dr. Charles George Everard M.P. and his wife Catherine, originally of London. The family, which included his mother and brothers Charles John Everard and James George, arrived in Adelaide on the ship under Captain John Finlay Duff in 1836. His father was one of the first eighteen elected to South Australia's unicameral Legislative Council in 1839. By 1843 William and his brother Charles were farming a jointly-owned property in Myponga, while Dr. C. G. Everard was developing his properties "Ashford" and "Marshfield", to the west and east of the Bay Road respectively, and comprising much of the land between Keswick and Glenelg. Dr. Everard was the first colonist to grow wheat, on one of his City selections on Morphett Street.
Business
For twenty years he was a Director of the National Bank
Director of the Trust and Agency Company
Director and for a time chairman of South Australian Mutual Life Assurance Society
He was one of the original purchasers of town acres, and the family held a large area of city property. The land on which the Bank of New South Wales and the Adelaide Club now stand belonged to Everard at one time, and also the acre now occupied by the Government Offices in Victoria Square.
Board of Management of the Botanic Gardens from 1865
Central Road Board from 1863 to 1868
Unitarian Christian Church. In 1889 he sold to the Church trustees a portion of his city Section 302 on Wakefield Street, valued by the Commissioner of Taxes at £3,000, for the reduced sum of £560 and allowed an additional £150 off this for the Building Fund. He also contributed generously towards the minister's stipend and travelling costs of the first minister. He was a member of several Church charitable committees alongside Mrs. Everard was on a committee with Emily Clark, Mrs. J. C. Woods, Mrs. William Kay, Miss Kate Kay and Catherine Helen Spence.
Politics
Everard was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly for the district of Encounter Bay on 6 March 1865, succeeding John Lindsay, having for his colleague David Sutherland. At the general elections of 1868 Mr. Everard was returned for the same constituency, this time with Neville Blyth Everard did not stand for the sixth Parliament, then was returned to his old seat in December 1871, with the Hon. Thomas Reynolds as his colleague. He was unseated on petition in February 1872 by the Court of Disputed Returns, which ended his connection with the Assembly. Fourteen months later Everard was elected a member of the Legislative Council in company with Sir Henry Ayers, and Messrs. Alexander Hay, T. Hogarth, J. Fisher, R. A. Tarlton, and Walter Duffield, and continued as one of the eighteen members comprising the Upper House, who were then returned by the whole province acting as one electoral district, until he vacated his seat on 1 August 1878. While a member of the Legislature Mr. Everard served in three Ministries:
As Commissioner of Public Works in the Hart Administration, which was formed in September 1868, then in the Ayers Ministry on 13 October following. Besides John Hart, his colleagues in this short-lived Ministry were Neville Blyth, J. T. Bagot and W. Townsend.
From 22 July 1873 to 3 June 1875, Everard was Commissioner of Crown Lands and Immigration in the Arthur Blyth Ministry. His other colleagues in that Ministry at various times were the Crown Solicitor, Mr. Justice Bundey, and the Hons. J. C. Bray, G. C. Hawker, H. E. Bright, and Lavington Glyde.
5 March 1857, at Hanover Square, he married Maria Hughes, sister of William Hughes F.R.G.S., a well known geographer and author. Their property "Ashford" of on Bay Road is now the suburb of Ashford on the Anzac Highway, Adelaide. Everard's sister Eliza married her cousin, Ralf Everard Lucy, son of William Lucy and Elizabeth Everard, who died 31 March 1860 in Hillsley near Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire. Everard's brother Charles John's first wife, also named Eliza, died 18 September 1850 aged 26; he married again, in Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire, to his cousin Charlotte Everard Lucy, on 23 March 1854. Their home was "Marshfield", a property of on the east side of Bay Road. His children William Francis, Eliza Catherine and Rosa Maria inherited Marshfield, progressively selling off sections to support themselves. Part of the original property is now the suburb of Everard Park. By 1908 the two sisters had been declared insolvent; William Francis Everard's widow disposed of what remained of his share, now a large part of the suburb of Keswick.
