Richard Clement Moody, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Richard Clement Moody

Lieutenant-Governor, and later Governor, of the Falkland Islands

Date of Birth: 13-Feb-1813

Place of Birth: Barbados

Date of Death: 31-Mar-1887

Profession: engineer, explorer

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius


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About Richard Clement Moody

  • His Excellency, Major-General The Honourable Richard Clement Moody (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British Imperialist, Colonial Governor, Royal Engineer, musician, and architect.
  • He is best known for being the founder and first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, and for being the first British Governor of the Falkland Islands.
  • He has been described by 20th-century British diplomat David Tatham CMG, as an 'Empire builder'. Richard Clement Moody was the founder of British Columbia as Colony of British Columbia (1858–66), having been hand picked to "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific".
  • The Colonial Office under Lord Lytton desired to send to the nascent Colony 'representatives of the best of British culture' who possessed ‘courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world’ and decided to send Moody, whom the British Government considered to be the archetype of the 'English gentleman and British Officer’, as Commander of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia, and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia.
  • Moody is considered to be the founding father of British Columbia.
  • He selected the site for and founded the new capital of British Columbia, New Westminster, and has been described as ‘the real father of New Westminster’.
  • In British Columbia, he also established the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park, and named Burnaby Lake after his private secretary Robert Burnaby and Port Coquitlam's 400-foot "Mary Hill" after his wife, Mary.
  • He also designed the first Coat of arms of British Columbia.
  • Port Moody in British Columbia, and Moody Park and Moody square in New Westminster, are named after him. He was also the first British Governor of the Falkland Islands, whose settlements he planned and built whose and infrastructure he established.
  • He selected the site for and founded Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, and Moody Brook in the Falkland Islands is named after him.
  • Moody Point in Antarctica is also named after him.
  • During the Crimean War, Moody was Commanding Executive Officer of Malta. A member of the prominent British Moody family, which made an important contribution to the administration and expansion of the British Empire during the 19th century, Richard Clement was the eldest son of Colonel Thomas Moody, Knight of the Order of Military Merit; the brother of Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody CB, Commander of the Royal Engineers in China and agent of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada; and the father of Colonel Richard Stanley Hawks Moody CB. Like his brother Hampden Clement, Richard Clement was a polymath who displayed prodigious abilities in mathematics, music, and architectural draughtsmanship from an early age, and who enjoyed both science and the fine arts.
  • He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich as a Gentleman Cadet at the age of 14, became Head of School the following year, and left school having completed his examinations one year later. He planned the restoration of Edinburgh Castle on the basis of musical chords, for which he was summoned to Windsor Castle to present his plans to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, both of whom were delighted.
  • He has been described as 'a visionary in a plain land' and ‘a man who could conceive of Edinburgh Castle in terms of a musical score'.

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