Thomas Allard Pettit was born at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and educated at the Manor School Academy. He conducted several newspapers in the United Kingdom before migrating to Australia and settling in Victoria. Pettit was proprietor of a range of Victorian newspapers including the Shepparton Courier, the Portland Guardian (which he later re-purchased for his youngest son O. G. Pettit) and the Gippsland Farmers' Journal and Traralgon, Heyfield and Rosedale News. Pettit’s other Gippsland newspapers included the Warragul Guardian, later owned by his son, also T. A. Pettit. Pettit’s obituary in the Traralgon Herald states that, altogether, Pettit ‘conducted 27 newspapers in Victoria, and as a journalist had few equals’.
Pettit was heavily involved in community activities; he was a justice of the peace, a member of the Methodist Church, a local government Councillor, chairman of the local School Committee and a Commissioner of the Water Trust.
Source: 'Death of a Prominent Public Man.' Traralgon Herald 21 September 1920: 3
Sighted: 29/09/2013
