13 Facts About Frank Troy

Michael Francis "Frank" Troy was an Australian politician who served in the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia from 1904 to 1939.

Later in his career, Troy spent long periods as a frontbencher, serving as a minister in the first and second Collier governments, and then in the Willcock government.

Frank Troy's parents were Ellen and Patrick Frank Troy, both Irish Catholic immigrants from County Tipperary.

Frank Troy was born at Pimlico, New South Wales, the locality on the Richmond River where his father's farm was located.

Frank Troy's father died when he was very young, and his mother subsequently moved her ten children to the nearby town of Wardell, where she ran a store.

Frank Troy arrived in Western Australia in 1897 with the intention of prospecting for gold in the colony's Murchison region.

Frank Troy quickly rose to become secretary of the Murchison district AWA branch, succeeding John Holman.

At the 1904 state election, Frank Troy contested the seat of Mount Magnet for the Labor Party.

Frank Troy again faced only a single opponent at the early 1905 election, which had been pre-empted by the defeat of Henry Daglish's minority Labor government.

Frank Troy went on to be re-elected unopposed at both the 1908 and 1911 elections.

The first speaker from the Labor Party, Frank Troy was only 34 when he assumed the speakership, making him, according to a later source, "the youngest member of any Australian parliament to hold that office".

Frank Troy died in Mount Lawley, the Perth suburb in which he had long been resident, in January 1953, after a long illness.

Frank Troy had married Flora Brown Mackinnon in April 1913, when he was 35.