Early years He was born at No. 1 Highbury Terrace,
Highbury, the eleventh child of wealthy London wholesale
cheesemongers Francis Ronalds and Jane née Field. The inventor Sir
Francis Ronalds FRS was his oldest brother and mentor. The family later resided at
Kelmscott House in Hammersmith,
Queen Square in Bloomsbury, and in
Croydon. After a
Unitarian schooling, probably at Rev. John Potticary’s
school in
Blackheath, Ronalds was apprenticed at age 14 to learn the ways of business. He was unsuited to the commercial world, however, and instead spent his time developing his scientific, practical, and artistic skills with Sir Francis.
Moving around Britain and to Australia In 1829 he moved to
Staffordshire, renting the Lee Grange farm near
Lichfield, formerly owned by
Francis Perceval Eliot. After his marriage to Margaret Bond of
Tixall in 1831, they settled at the property of Lea Fields near
Gratwich, where he focused on
fly fishing. The family relocated to
Wales in 1843, first living on the shore of
Tal-y-llyn Lake, and then in the parish of
Llanelwedd, where Margaret died after giving birth to their eighth child. Ronalds decided in 1848 to take the children to the
Colony of New South Wales. He established himself initially in
Geelong as an
engraver,
lithographer and
printer, and he married Mary Ann Harlow. They had four further children. After a successful spell
prospecting for gold in the
Victorian gold rush, the family settled in the new goldfields township of
Ballarat in 1852 and established the first
nursery in the district on the shore of
Lake Wendouree. They supplied some of the initial trees and plants for the
Ballarat Botanical Gardens. When he died suddenly his family became quite poor.
Australian legacy Ronalds is the progenitor of 52 grandchildren, 294 great-great-grandchildren and many more of subsequent generations, some of whom have made significant contributions to Australia's development in diverse fields. Examples include: engineer
Albert Francis Ronalds; artist and horticulturalist
Henrietta Maria Gulliver; equestrian
Sam Griffiths; politician
Andrew Ronalds; and cricketer
Janet Ronalds. ==Fly-fishing author==