Higgins Family
1849-1987

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• The Higgins Family
• Arrangement of material
• About the Geelong Lawyers' Collection
• Lawyers and law associations in the collection

The Higgins Family by Vivian Hill
Text copyright held by Vivan Hill.  For more information see the Copyright page

It would be interesting to know if any other family has served a local community with the provision of legal services for one hundered and thirty-eight years.  The Higgins family came to Geelong when a Congregational Minister William Higgins (1805-1876) responded to John Dunmore Lang's plea to save Australia from domination by Popery he feared would come from the Irish migration occurrring in the 1840s.  The minister and his family left England on the "Larpent" in March 1849 and soon after arrival in Geelong on 29th June his 16 year old son, also named William, obtained work with the Irish solicitor Joseph Belcher.  After serving Articles and being admitted to legal practice in 1856 he established his own business.  Some records of that business are held by the Geelong Historical Records Centre.  An examination of them shows the wide range of the legal practice he conducted.  In all, 8 members of the family gave good legal service to Geelong citizens for well over a century.

Arrangement of material

The list below describes material held in the Higgins Family archive box, which is located at 340.099452 Higgin Hil/Hfa on the shelves in the Geelong Lawyers' Collection within the Special Collection at the Waterfront campus.  The material has been arranged in date order. 

Date	Title	Item no.
1860's	Photocopy of photograph of Solicitors Row, Yarra St. Geelong	HF1
1862	Photocopy of photograph of Market Square looking east from Moorabool St. Geelong	HF2
1888	Extract from 'Victoria and it's metropolis: past and present' re William J.P. Higgins	HF3
4/5/1892	Photocopy of obituary of W. Higgins from Geelong Advertiser	HF4
1897	Photocopy of photograph of Geelong Law Students	HF5
1898	Photocopy of photograph of Geelong Law Picnic Barwon Heads	HF6
1905-1907	Photocopy of student record from University of Melbourne for Charles William Higgins	HF13
1910-1914	Photocopy of student record from University of Melbourne for Harold Norman Higgins	HF14
1921	Photocopy of photograph of Geelong Law Picnic	HF7
1925	Photocopy of Admission Certificate for Russell James Higgins	HF15
1937	Framed copy of Geoffrey Frank Higgins' admission certificate to practice as a barrister and solicitor in the Supreme Court	HF19
1/3/1937	Copy of Admission Certificate of Russell James Higgins	HF20
1980's	Photograph of Geoffrey & Russell Higgins	HF17
1981	Photograph of Russell Higgins at Cyril Thompson's retirement	HF16
1982	Article from 'Investigator' re. William Higgins' home 'Shoubra'	HF9
1987	Russell James Higgins' retirement invitation	HF10
1993	Geoffrey Higgins obituary and death notices	HF11
10/8/1993	Condolence letter to Mrs Geoffrey Higgins from V. Hill	HF8
1996	Photocopy from 'Geelong Grammarians' of 1901 school photograph of C.W. Higgins	HF12
30/6/1999	Biography by V. Hill on William Higgins 1 and his descendants - Jabez, William 2, Frank Vernon, Charles William, Harold Norman, Geoffrey Frank and Russell James [First page of biography. Click on image to enlarge it.]	HF18

Additional note:

• The Higgins family is also mentioned in the following archive boxes:
      Jabez Higgins
      Frank Vernon Higgins
      G.B. McCurdy
      J. Price
      J. Belcher

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