Taranaki Stories
Showing stories tagged as land.
by Sorrel Hoskin on 11 December 2009
It was Wellington who visited New Zealand first, travelling from Plymouth for a brief stay in 1835. He returned full of enthusiasm for the new country and, when the opportunity arose, encouraged his brothers to shift there.
In 1840, Wellington was appointed chief assistant surveyor to the New Zealand Company. After working in Wellington (where work was washed out) and Wanganui he joined his...
by Rhonda Bartle on 11 December 2009
Born in 1822, Francis Dillon Bell was a slightly chubby man with thick side whiskers who, by all accounts, was a complete paradox. Quick, clever and hard-working, he was also vain, superficial and unreliable.
A tall, good-looking man, his face was apparently flawed by drooping eyelids. And after several liaisons with both Pakeha and Maori women, he did seem to settle down once he married....
by Rhonda Bartle on 11 December 2009
Sitting across the table from John Honeyfield, I think he must wear the same kind of twinkle in his eye that Dicky Barrett did. John is a direct descendant of the Barrett family - his great-great-grandmother Caroline was Dicky Barrett's daughter.
It's interesting to meet John Honeyfield. We have a few things in common. My great-great-great-grandfather, George Ashdown, sailed with Dicky...
by Rhonda Bartle on 11 December 2009
In 1839, the Tory pulled into the Sugar Loaves with Barrett and family aboard. For six years Barrett had been whaling at Te Awaiti at Queen Charlotte Sounds. Now he was employed by Edward Jerningham Wakefield of The New Zealand Company as interpreter to help negotiate the purchase of Maori land.
Together they had already bought land at Wellington - though not without sweat and tears - and...
by Rhonda Bartle on 11 December 2009
It's not known for certain, but it's thought Dicky Barrett was born in 1807, in either Durham or Bermondsey, both places of dirt and poverty, slums and alleyways.
An amiable, respected, simple fellow, he had already been a seaman for six years when he sailed from England for Sydney in 1828, at the age of twenty-one. He signed on as first mate on the small Australian ship Adventure...
by Rhonda Bartle on 02 December 2009
The Whiteley land has always been in dispute, from the earliest times when it was bought from Maori without full iwi permission, right through to a tricky Crown grant that has been questioned at least four times.
It's been cut up, leased and the boundaries changed until the original purpose for acquiring it seems lost in the paperwork.
Asking the questions
Trying to grasp the...