Robert Hobart May

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Robert Hobart May (c.1801 – ?) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian from the Mouheneener clan. He survived the 1804 Risdon Cove massacre as a very young child and became the first Indigenous Tasmanian to be baptized and raised in colonial British society.

May was born around 1801 in the area around the lower Derwent River in Tasmania. In 1803 the British founded a settlement at Risdon Cove, which in 1804 moved across the river to become Hobart. On 3 May 1804, about 300 Indigenous people gathered nearby for a kangaroo hunt. The garrison at Risdon Cove fired on them with guns and cannon, an event known as the Risdon Cove massacre. A surgeon, Jacob Mountgarret, helped lead the operation and took a young Indigenous boy from the scene. The boy’s parents had been killed in the attack. Mountgarret brought the boy to Hobart, where he was christened by Reverend Robert Knopwood and given the name Robert Hobart May. His traditional Indigenous name is not recorded. Governor David Collins ordered May to be sent back to his clan, but this did not happen.

May lived in Mountgarret’s Hobart household, learned English, and lived much like a European. He would tell guests how his parents were killed, and contemporaries admired his bravery, noting his calmness and ability to defend himself with a stick and his skill with a spear. A newspaper described him as active, tractable, and unafraid, able to handle danger and even defend himself against a dog.

The records after 1806 about Robert Hobart May are unclear. In 1829 a Tasmanian Aboriginal man known simply as “Black Robert,” who was said to have been raised and baptized by colonists, joined George Augustus Robinson’s “friendly mission” to manage remaining Indigenous Tasmanians. He died on 23 March 1832 in Launceston from a chest infection. It is possible that this “Black Robert” was a different person from May, or that he was the infant taken in 1810 near Cross Marsh and raised by the McCauley family, leaving the exact identity of May unresolved.