New Zealand links

‘In external appearance New Zealand resembles the island of Arran, being surrounded with lofty mountains, with the difference that these are covered to the top with beautiful brushwood and lofty trees that remain green all year round,’ wrote Alex Marjoribanks in a letter from New Zealand to The Scotsman newspaper in 1840. Others had a different view: ‘The islands of New Zealand are uncultivated wastes either of mountains covered with dense forest, of plains and lowlands covered with high ferns, or of swamps and marshes covered with rush and flax without any open spots for pasturage, or of verdant downs and hills for sheep.’

In 1837, The New Zealand Company was formed to encourage British people to emigrate and farm land in the country. The company offered emigrants 100 acres of farmland and one town acre, and to combat negative notions about New Zealand, published books, pamphlets and broadsheets to promote the country as ‘a Britain of the South’, a fertile land with a benign climate, free of starvation, class war and teeming cities.' Agents spread the good news around the rural areas of southern England and Scotland. As added inducement the company offered free passages to ‘mechanics, gardeners and agricultural labourers’.

As Campbell later recalled: 'We had one fixed determination, and that was to become purchasers of town lots in the new capital [Auckland] and settle down there, acting as very small landsharks.' In Auckland, the firm of Brown and Campbell flourished, but although the pioneer life was quickly making Campbell wealthy, he was unsatisfied. He felt: 'banished from everything that can be called society.' Pioneering was a life of 'eternal slavery': it was 'only for clodhoppers…not for civilised beings.' So in 1848 he toured through the Middle East, Greece, Italy and Western Europe, culminating in a visit back to Scotland. Although he returned to New Zealand after two years, he longed to return to Europe and live on the earnings of his colonial firm. In 1856, with the company in the hands of a manager, he was about to travel again but was persuaded into politics for a year, serving as a member of the House of Representatives for Auckland. However, the following year he did set sail for Europe, planning never to return. While travelling he met and married Emma Wilson, who was returning to India, and the couple spent the next ten years in 'wandering vagabondism' at the resorts and spas of Europe. However, growing concerns about the company’s profitability, and thus his income, took Campbell and his family back to Auckland. Two years later he bought out Brown became the sole proprietor of Brown Campbell and Company.

Campbell became a considerable figure in the Auckland community. While he was not tempted back into politics – something which added to his reputation for integrity and high-mindedness - he was active in a wide range of business and public bodies, and a key member of Auckland’s financial élite. He served on more than 40 committees, boards, trusts or directorates; published Poenamo, a book recounting his pioneer days to great acclaim; and founded Auckland's first school of art in 1878. At the age of 80, Campbell was acclaimed Father of Auckland. When it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and of York would visit Auckland in May 1901 he was encouraged as 'the most esteemed citizen of New Zealand', to be the mayor to welcome them. Campbell agreed, but only for the three months of the royal tour. On the coronation day of Edward VII Campbell was knighted. Late in life he gifted a large part of his One Tree Hill estate to the people of Auckland as Cornwall Park and, at its gates, by public subscription, a bronze statue of Campbell was erected. (photo) When he died in June 1912, The Auckland Star announced 'The Passing of a Patriarch', and the funeral cortège was the largest in Auckland's history.

Campbell was already a successful merchant in Auckland when William Cargill (Number 9) set sail for New Zealand. Cargill had served in the British Army, but due to the beginnings of a large family was forced to sell his army commission. He and his wife, Mary, moved to Edinburgh where he became a wine merchant. They had seventeen children, ten of whom survived infancy. William was influenced by his mother’s conservative social and religious views, although he was never enthusiastically evangelical, but rather took inspiration from the Puritans of the seventeenth century. It may have been thoughts of the Puritans journey to America on The Mayflower that gave Cargill the idea of emigration, or perhaps it was a result of financial pressures due to having such a large family to maintain. In 1841, Cargill joined the Oriental Bank Corporation in London, and there approached George Rennie, the Scottish sculptor who had become an MP to support the arts in Britain and help achieve free access to public art and museums. Rennie was the MP for Ipswich, at this time and interested in proposals for 'systematic colonisation' that looked to address overcrowding and overpopulation in Britain through emigration to the colonies, by sending carefully selected combinations of labourers and artisans. Rennie promised him a leading role in any Scots settlement planted in New Zealand.The Disruption of 1843 – when the supporters of the Free Church split from the established Church of Scotland – identified a body of prospective Free Church colonists, and Rennie and Cargill approached the Free Church leaders. The idea was welcomed and Thomas Burns appointed to be the minister to the proposed settlement. In spite of many setbacks during the next two years including the Colonial Office tried to obstruct the scheme, the New Zealand Company refused to produce adequate financial backing, and difficulty in finding sufficient Scots willing to migrate so far from home, Cargill battled against the barriers and was successful in being offered a site at Otago Harbour. Cargill wished to name the settlement New Edinburgh but this was changed to Dunedin after a letter appeared in the New Zealand Journal in which the publisher William Chambers wrote that the prefix ‘New’ had been used in a number of American place names and that the ancient Gaelic title for Edinburgh - Dùn Èideann - be considered as an alternative.

Thus, on 24 November 1847, two ships set sail for New Zealand. Cargill, his wife and their many children, and about 90 others sailed on the ship, John Wickliffe. They had a more peaceful voyage than the emigrants on the other ship on which the Minister, Thomas Burns, oversaw a virtual floating theocracy. The settlers arrived in Otago on 23 March 1848 and the work of colonising began in earnest. Numerous problems beset the new settlement, as little had been done to prepare the way, and the fledgling settlement was almost crippled by the absence of a wharf and adequate roads. A harsh, wet winter compounded their problems. Progress was not helped by constant bickering between the various religious factions. Progress was helped by the arrival of the younger and more adventurous James Macandrew in 1851. Still, Cargill's tenacity and patriarchal style of leadership proved vital in helping the struggling settlement to survive problems of chronic isolation, the unsuitability of the land for arable farming and the withdrawal of New Zealand Company support in 1850. His election as foundation superintendent of the province in 1853 reflected the respect in which the majority of settlers held the crusty old soldier. His anti-Anglican views brought him into dispute with many of the small number of English settlers, and his very Scottishness - he cultivated a traditional Scottish manner and appearance, wearing a blue bonnet and tartan plaid – that infuriated government officials only added to his appeal among the Scots settlers.