Sir Herbert Horace Olney

(1875 – 1957)

Sir Herbert Olney was born in Ballarat in 1875, the eighth child of Charles Olney and Annie Elizabeth nee Capp. During the 1890s he moved to Melbourne and worked as a clerk for several companies. In 1898 he married Annie Lizzette Trudgeon at the Weslyan Church in Preston. In 1911 Olney helped found J. P. Howe’s tannery in Preston. He was an active member of the Preston community and joined the Preston Library Committee and the Preston Advance Association. In 1919 Olney left Preston and moved to nearby Ivanhoe where he devoted himself to philanthropy and was active in community areas such as hospitals, child day care centres and the Zoological Board of Victoria. Olney was knighted in 1942.

Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1851 – 1890. (1981). Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press.

Victorian Pioneers Index: 1837 – 1888 [CD-ROM]. (1991). Melbourne, Australia: R.M.I.T.