Herbert Valentine Tarte
Herbert Valentine Tarte (1876–1936) was a Fijian planter and politician. He served in the Legislative Council in the early 1920s.
Herbert Valentine Tarte | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Legislative Council | |
| In office 1920–1922 | |
| Preceded by | John Francis Dyer |
| Succeeded by | William Edmund Willoughby-Tottenham |
| Constituency | Vanua Levu & Taveuni |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1876 Vatu Wiri, Fiji |
| Died | 1936 Melbourne, Australia |
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] He later fell in love with the daughter of an Indo-Fijian copra cutter. As a result, he was banished from the plantation and disinherited. The couple married and had several children, with Tarte also changing his name.[4]
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.[5] 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.[6]
References
- R. McMillan, (1907) The Cyclopedia of Fiji: a complete historical and commercial review of Fiji, p291
- James Valentine Tarte Pacific Islands Monthly, August 1981, pp73–74
- Bessie Ng Kumlin Ali (2002) Chinese in Fiji, p119
- Daryl Tarte (2014) Fiji: A Place Called Home, p6
- Ng Kumlin Ali, p57
- Mrs Clara Tarte Auckland Star, 17 December 1936, p3