Portrait of E.B. Gleeson from Inchiquin from the S.A. Northern Pioneers' composite, 1850-1859 (shown in position on B 6912/4).

Edward Burton Gleeson was born in County Clare, Ireland in 1803. With his wife Harriet and family he arrived in South Australia from India in July 1838 on the Emerald Isle.

By 1840 Gleeson was reported as owning 7,300 sheep, 55 cattle and 24 horses. He initially had land in what is now Beaumont a suburb of Adelaide, a property he named Gleeville. He reported very favourably on the climate of Adelaide to friends back in India, praising the purity of the air. Gleeson was adversely affected during the colony's financial crisis in the late 1830s, but remained in South Australia and prospered in the mid-north, where he established his property Inchiquin and laid out the town of Clare, named after his birthplace. He also held land in the far north, west of Mount Eyre but concentrated upon his property at Clare. He became the first mayor of Clare when it was proclaimed a corporation in 1868. When he died two years later the shops and hotels on the main street closed in his honour.

He was a friend of John Horrocks, a fellow pastoralist in the Clare region and an explorer: Gleeson undertook to shoot Horrocks' camel which had been involved in the unlucky explorer's death, but was so distressed by his friend's death that he only injured the animal which was then despatched by another man.

Known as Paddy Gleeson, he was the unofficial 'King of Clare' and a popular identity. He was also a stipendiary magistrate and a keen sportsman, interested in horse racing.

Cockburn, R Pastoral pioneers of South Australia 2 v. Adelaide: Publishers Limited, 1925-1927 ("Reprinted from the Adelaide Stock and Station Journal.") vol. 1 pp.86-87

Obituary [Edward Gleeson] South Australian register, 1 March 1870, p. 8, col. d (supplement)

The first hundred years: a history of Burnside in South Australia, commemorating the Centenary of Burnside and its transition from village to city during the passage of one hundred years / [edited by Dudley Coleman.] Adelaide: Corporation of the City of Burnside, 1956. p.23-27

Milburn, Elizabeth From conflict to co-operation in Clare in the nineteenth century Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, no. 6 (1979), p. 27-45

Wikipedia: Edward Burton Gleeson

Clare, the old gum tree B 3209