James Brown was a Scottish-born mass murderer and pastoralist of the South East of South Australia responsible for the Avenue Range Station massacre of between nine and eleven Aboriginal Australians. He was never convicted, despite the magistrate who committed him for trial observing that there was "little question of the butchery or the butcher". The Aboriginal Witnesses Act specified that a court could not base a conviction of a white man on the testimony of an Aboriginal witness alone. After his death, his widow Jessie Brown pursued several philanthropic ventures in his name. Two charitable institutions — the Kalyra Consumption Sanitorium at Belair and Estcourt House, near Grange were founded in his memory, and out of the proceeds of his estate.

Frederick Estcourt Bucknall was an English-born publican, brewer and politician in the early days of the colony of South Australia.