Herbert Valentine Tarte Explained

Herbert Valentine Tarte
Office1:Member of the Legislative Council
Term1:1920–1922
Predecessor1:John Francis Dyer
Successor1:William Edmund Willoughby-Tottenham
Constituency1:Vanua Levu & Taveuni
Birth Date:1876
Birth Place:Vatu Wiri, Fiji
Death Date:1936
Death Place:Melbourne, Australia

Herbert Valentine Tarte (1876–1936) was a Fijian planter and politician. He served in the Legislative Council in the early 1920s.

Biography

Tarte was born in 1876 in the Taveuni village of Vatu Wiri, the oldest son of Clarissa and James Valentine Tarte,[1] who had settled in Taveuni in 1868.[2] He was educated at Brighton Grammar School in Melbourne and then worked for the Imperial Insurance Company for a year.[1] He subsequently worked for Swan Hill and a stock and station business,[1] before joining the family business. This became Tarte Brothers of Taveuni, and held 10% of the copra market in the mid-1920s.[3] He married the daughter of senior civil servant James Thomas.[1]

In 1920 he was elected to the Legislative Council from the Vanua Levu & Taveuni constituency. After being elected, he introduced a motion for Chinese labour to be recruited, which failed.[4] He did not complete a full term, with William Edmund Willoughby-Tottenham elected to replace him in October 1922.

He died in Melbourne in 1936.[5]

Notes and References

  1. R. McMillan, (1907) The Cyclopedia of Fiji: a complete historical and commercial review of Fiji, p291
  2. https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-342060542/view?partId=nla.obj-342094254#page/n73/mode/1up James Valentine Tarte
  3. Bessie Ng Kumlin Ali (2002) Chinese in Fiji, p119
  4. Ng Kumlin Ali, p57
  5. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19361217.2.15 Mrs Clara Tarte