William Knox D'Arcy

He was born in Newton Abbot, Devon, England and was the son of a solicitor, William Francis D'Arcy. He attended Westminster School until 1866, when the family emigrated to Australia following his father's bankruptcy, settling in Rockhampton, Queensland. D'Arcy continued his studies and chose to follow law, later joining his father's business. He did well and began to speculate, initially in land.

He married Elena Birkbeck of Rockhampton at St Patrick's Cathedral, Parramatta, on 23 October 1872. Elena was born in Mexico in 1840, the only daughter of Damiana de Barre Valdez and Samuel Birkbeck, a mining engineer from Illinois in the United States, who was in Mexico managing a silver mine. She was descended from the English Birkbecks, a Quaker family with an interest in education.