James Dalton (1834 in County Limerick, Ireland – 17 March 1919 in Duntryleague, Orange, New South Wales) was a wealthy Australian merchant and pastoralist who promoted Roman Catholicism and the development of food distribution throughout the Colony of New South Wales. He was the patriarch of the wealthy Irish Australian Dalton family. Life Ireland James Dalton was born in 1834 in Duntryleague, County Limerick, Ireland as the second son of James Dalton and his first wife Eleanor Dalton (née Ryan); he had an elder brother, Thomas, and an elder sister, Margaret. He lived in Duntryleague for the first 13 years of his life. His father was shipped to the Colony of New South Wales for aiding and assisting in kidnapping a widow, Catherine Sheehan, in November 1833 and imprisoning her for a week in the north of Ireland with several other men, one being his brother-in-law, Daniel Ryan. James Dalton senior was tried on 14 March 1835, and was at first sentenced to death on 8 April; the sentence was shortly afterward commuted to transportation. He was transported to New South Wales in 1835 on the convict ship the Hive, on its second voyage to Australia, when James Dalton junior was less than a year old. When James senior reached Australia, the Hive was wrecked near Jervis Bay with one fatality whilst it sailed along the coast. He arrived in Sydney on Christmas Eve 1835 after the New South Wales Government sent a ship to help salvage the prisoners, soldiers and money the ship was carrying. James's mother died at some point when his father was in New South Wales, and he was left alone whilst Thomas and Margaret Dalton were in North America. In 1842–43, his father had been released from Bathurst Jail in New South Wales with a ticket of freedom to do as he pleased, including to move back to Ireland, but he chose to stay in Australia and moved to Fredericks Valley, a small mining settlement near Lucknow. In 1847 James' father petitioned for his family to be shipped to New South Wales; James, being the only one in Ireland, was shipped aboard the Panama, accompanied by no-one, to the Colony. Both Thomas and Margaret Dalton eventually moved to Australia. Australia When James arrived in Australia in 1847, his father was in a small mining settlement known as Fredericks Valley just out of the settlement of