The Hon Sir Saul Samuel Bart KCMG CB (1820-1900), merchant, politician, company director and landowner, was the first Jewish legislator in New South Wales and the first Jew to become a minister of the Crown. Born in London, he came to the colony as a twelve-year-old in 1832. Within nine years he had 190 000 acres of grazing land on the Macquarie River; but in the 1850s, he left the land to became a company director in the booming Bathurst. His political career began in 1854, when he became an elective member of the Legislative Council for New South Wales, representing Roxburgh and Wellington. With the introduction of responsible government, in the late 1850s and through the 1860s to 1872 he represented Wellington, then Orange and briefly East Sydney in the Legislative Assembly. In 1872 he was appointed a life member of the Legislative Council, where he sat until his retirement in 1880. He had three stints as treasurer, attending the Intercolonial Conference in 1870 in that capacity; in 1872-1875 and 1878-1880 he was postmaster-general and Henry Parkes’s government representative in the Legislative Council. Meanwhile he maintained his business interests, which at various times included coal, gold, copper and silver mining enterprises and the Sydney Exchange Co, of which he was chairman in 1876-1880. He was active in Jewish affairs, laying the foundation stone for the Great Synagogue in Elizabeth Street and becoming its president, and was a member of the Royal Society and the New South Wales Academy of Art. From 1880 to 1897 he was the energetic agent-general for New South Wales in London. He was created a baronet in 1898.
