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Hi everyone

Does anyone know about people from Forest of Dean leaving through immigration schemes that ultimately sought to populate New Zealand in the 1860's? There is a family story that my family left the Forest under an immigration scheme led by the Church of England to populate an area in the Northland region of New Zealand. The scheme is known as the Albertland Scheme in New Zealand, named after Queen Victoria's husband, and started in 1861 with the last ship arriving in 1865. Almost half of the 3000 people intended to go to Northland never made it the entire way, choosing to settle elsewhere.

Because my family wasn't on one of the official 'Albertland ships' and instead on a ship that, while carried a majority of 'Albertlanders', also carried other settlers. I would like to prove or disprove the family story and am struggling on this end as I no longer live in New Zealand myself!

Thanks,
Kylie.
(Researching: Dufty, Lewis, Golding, Lister and Grusning/Gruszning)

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In August 1861 an advertisement of a somewhat unusual nature appeared in a Birmingham newspaper. It invited inquiries from persons interested in the establishment of a nonconformist settlement in New Zealand.

http://www.albertland.co.nz/albertlandstory.htm

On 29 May 1862 1,000 emigrants left London on two ships, "Matilda Wattenbach" and "Hanover" bound for New Zealand. Two members of the newly formed Settlement Committee travelled to New Zealand to inspect the various blocks of land being proposed, and subsequently reported back. They recommended a 30,000 acre block on the Oruawharo River, on the upper reaches of the Kaipara Harbour.

Given the leaning to Non Conformity in the Forest and the relative closeness of Birmingham I would not be surprised to find FoD folk amongst the Albertlanders or later followers

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

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Once again thanks for your help Slowhands! I've contacted the Albertland and Districts Museum previously but they did not have my family listed as settling in Northland and not on the official ships (both of which I knew).

The family story goes that upon arriving in Auckland the family travelled to the Kaipara Harbour in Northland only to find the land that they were supposed to farm was largely under water at high tide, so they returned to Auckland.

It seems that it still could be a possibility that they left the Forest under the immigration scheme given the info you've provided, so I won't give the story up as complete baloney yet :-)

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I have supplied images of adverts for "settlers" placed by Agents in the FoD newspapers in the late 1800's - from memory these were for the States and Australia.

There is of course the Aylburton / Lydney Bathurst connection to New Zealand via Lord Bledisloe ( a little later)...
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/DNZB/alt_essayBody.asp?essayID=4B39
http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=3755

and the ELSMORE / MORSE / DORRINGTON families
http://www.forest-of-dean.net/downloads/Stories_Articles/Elsmore_Morse_and_Dorrington_F...

and many examples such as :-
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc03Cycl-t1-body1-d4-d36-d2.html

MILES, Henry William, Farmer, Caverhill Village Settlement, Cheviot. Mr. Miles
was born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England, in 1851, and brought up
to farming by his father. He landed in Lyttelton by the ship “Hereford,” and for seven
years had a small farm near Longbeach, whence he removed to Tinwald, where
he was farming for six years and a half. In 1894 he became a settler in the Cheviot
district. Mr. Miles holds fifty acres of freehold, and 150 acres under lease in perpetuity.
He was married, in January, 1873, to a daughter of page 564 Mr T. Kear, of the
Forest of Dean, and has four sons and five daughters.

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

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Hi from NZ

I guess you have seen these two references?
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/history-of-immigration/6/1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertland

Also if you do a Google search for Albertland, you may find a reference to timelines for Albertland, which will take you to a lot of useful sources. Two of the sources I have used with great success to find information about my earliest NZ ancestors are referenced on that page -
1. http://www.nzetc.org (contains lots of electronic texts from NZ history)

Here is an example, which includes my great grandfather William Hopkins, who with my ggm Sarah Hopkins nee Joseph migrated from the FoD in 1860 and settled in Saltwater Creek:
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc03Cycl-t1-body1-d4-d26.html

2. http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast

This resource can be very useful when looking for info on the early days of settlement - as far as my families are concerned, there are lots of snippets there in the early days, but as time goes on (i.e. into the 20th century) the information dries up - in the early days NZ was so small in terms of Pakeha population, the newspapers covered all sorts of things they no longer give space to - e.g. sports results in tiny towns, accidents, school board election results, court pages, shipping movements etc. A search there for your families of interest may help trace their movements. Use the advanced search options to cut out things like advertisements, unless your ancestors were traders/storekeepers etc and you want to follow their ads.

A NZ author, Dick Scott, wrote a book about settlement around the Kaipara Harbour, called Seven Lives on Salt River. It is an outside shot, but you may find something there - here is a profile on the author:
http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/Writers/Profiles/Scott,%20Dick

Let me know if you want me to follow up anything for you. I live in North Canterbury where there seem to be quite a lot of FoD descendants.

John

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Here is an example from PapersPast of relevance to your enquiry:

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=NENZC18620906.2.24

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Kia ora John! Firstly thanks for posting the info. How cool that your ggf is in that book with a photo and all! The NZETC library seems to be pretty awesome.

I had seen the Te Ara website but not the Wikipedia nor that article you found in Papers Past. I am also trying to see if I can hold of the book by Dick Scott on the Kaipara Harbour, I may be able to get an interloan if my local library doesn't have it. It may be a good read about some history of NZ if anything...I must admit to being shamefaced by Slowhands who introduced me to Lord Bledisloe (you know there is that cup named after him that is regularly fought over by those 2 countries across the Tasman from each other, well I didn't know that).

Thanks for the offer of assistance too, much appreciated! I may take you up on it at some stage :-) I will have to go away and digest the information, look at the info provided and then plan my next move!

Hei konei ra!

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Kia ora ano, Kylie!

Glad to know that was useful for you. Seven Lives on Salt River is available in our local library (Rangiora), so if you get stuck, let me know and I will get it out and see if there is any coverage of your family in it. I checked availability at Whitcoulls (out of stock) and on abebooks, where there are several copies but the prices are horrendous.

I note on the Albertland and Districts Museum website that they have lists of other ships on which the settlers arrived (not the official ships). I wonder if they checked those lists for you? If you know which ship they came on, it may be possible to locate them on the freely available shipping lists - even if you know the year they arrived and the port they entered we may be able to confirm that part of their journey. Let me know if I can help on that (so often us Antipodeans rely on people like Slowhands and can't do much to help others because we are so far away - this may be an opportunity to pay back FoD Family History favours I have received!).

Bledisloe seems to have been one of the few useful Gov Gen's we have inherited from Britain. At least he understood that he wasn't in some "Little England in the South Pacific", and worked accordingly. In addition to what is covered in the NZDB (thanks Slowhands), he seems to have been very interested in sailing. I haven't been to it for a long time, but I seem to recall that the NZ Maritime Museum in Auckland contains references to a yachting competition he sponsored, and one of his sailing dinghies is (or was) on display.

And as for the Bledisloe Cup, that seems to have been a truly enduring rivalry, though sadly one leg was played in Japan this year - the respective Oz and NZ rugby unions have been prostituting the cup in order to drum up dollars overseas.

Incidentally, my ggf William Hopkins, came from Bream (though the Hopkins family seems to have come from Brockweir and Llandogo), and my ggm Sarah Ann Joseph came from Coalway Lane in Coleford - we were lucky enough to see the Joseph house in 2004. They were married in St James Church in Bream in 1858, and came here in 1860. Oddly we have ended up living a few hundred metres from the last house he lived in (he died in 1918).

Noho ora mai
John

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Just in case anyone would be interested my gg aunt went to New Zealand with Lord Bledisloe as a servant in 1930 and I have the passenger list for the HMS Corinthic and photos etc from the journey.
She died there in 1933.
Rosemarie

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Kia ora Kylie

I have just found this resource that may or may not be of assistance to you in narrowing down your search:

http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/passengers/passenger.html

The Auckland City libraries has a database of passenger arrivals 1838-1889, 1909-1921. You may be able to locate your Albertlanders on that database.

Noho ora mai
John

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Some more resources:

From the Te Ara Encyclopaedia of NZ:
"Albertlanders

"The foundation of Albertland, on the Kaipara Harbour, was intended to mark the bicentenary of the expulsion of the dissenting clergy from the Church of England, which followed the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Between 1862 and 1865, 3,000 people arrived in New Zealand under this scheme, although less than half made it to Albertland. Most were English nonconformist farm labourers (who were members of a Protestant Church that disagreed with the Church of England), many from the Midlands, Yorkshire and Lancashire."

Also:
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=HBH18621108.2.5&l=mi&...

This newspaper article outlines some of the difficulties your ancestors may have faced... In other areas, settlers arrived in the back of beyond to take up the land they had purchased (whilst they were in Britain), only to find this was news to the rightful Maori owners. Apparently this was not one of the issues in Albertland.

http://www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz/scripts/reports/reports/674/6843CD78-3021-4F27-A3B...

This is a section of the Waitangi Tribunal report on the Kaipara claim. There is far more detail in it than you probably want, but pages 37 - 39 give you some information you may not have at this stage about the settlement, and the maps may be useful.

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Kia ora Hone :-P Sorry I haven't gotten back to you, computer has been on the fritz. You're right about the Dick Scott book being expensive! It doesn't appear to be in any of the Australian libraries that I can loan from. I humbly request your help to see if the Dufty's are mentioned in it. I know they came out to NZ (Auckland) on the Eagle Speed in 1864 and were listed as Thomas (miner), Hannah and Samual Doughty on the shipping manifest. If there's anything else you need just let me know.
On the Papers Past website I've found a Thomas Dufty that was named in an article from 1864 as being in Kaipara and losing some of his gear in an accidental fire. It is said he is a boatman who was at the Bay of Islands (BOI) coal mines at the time of the fire. Not sure if this is the same Thomas but it's a hell of a coincidence regardless. Also BOI coal mines? Well I'm learning a lot about my own country on this website and I don't even live there anymore lol! I'll have to check that out. And further have found out there is a 'Highway Assessment Roll 1865-70' for Auckland/Northland and that land owners are mentioned on that I've been put onto. So a few things I can chase up.
I apologise as my Maori is a little rusty but here goes: tena rawa atu koe!!
Ka kite,
Kylie.

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Kia ora e hoa!

I have ordered the book from the local library so I can search it for your Dufty tipuna. It will be available early next week. I should have read it years ago because Dick Scott is a great historian and author, so this is going to be a double pleasure. If you have any tipuna from the Cook Is, Niue, or Parihaka, Dick Scott has written great books on all those places and their politics in relation to Pākehā colonialism.

That sounds really good info you have found on Papers Past. I have never come across the Dufty name before so I suspect there can't have been many here either then or now.

Coal mines in the Bay? Seriously? I have not heard of any up there, but I will see what I can find out.

Hey now, don't ever apologise for your reo Māori, to me in particular, but neither to anyone else. It is only through practice that we learn (oh well, I have found I have little ability in languages, so perhaps that isn't true in my case!).

I will get back to you when I have had a squizz at the book.

Noho ora mai, na John

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Kia ora ano Kylie

Well blow me down! Kawakawa had a coal mining industry.
http://www.fndc.govt.nz/about-the-district/visitor-information/kawakawa--towai
You learn something about this country every day!

Maybe you could contact the Kawakawa Museum to see if they have records of the miners there.

Kawakawa is best known now for its public toilets, designed by Hundertwasser:
http://www.fndc.govt.nz/services/community-facilities/toilets/hundertwasser-toilets

This is Ngati Hine country - any whakapapa connections to them?

Heoi ano, na John

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Ano:

The Kawakawa Museum does not have a webpage apparently. Here are the contact details.
http://www.nzmuseums.co.nz/index.php?option=com_nstp&task=showAccountDetail&acc...

I note that the Museum is in Wynyard Street. Wynyard was one of those early colonists who came out here, took an informal Māori wife, and had children. He became Lieutenant-Governor of NZ, and Superintendent of the Auckland Province. He eventually shot the gap back to England as so many of them did, leaving his wife and children behind (as did others like him - Princess Te Puia Herangi was descended from another one, called Searancke - hence Herangi).

There is a well known Ngati Hine whānau that has Wynyard's name. I note that they did not figure in his biography in the Te Ara Encyclopaedia - surprise surprise. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/wynyard-robert-henry/1

I used to work with a couple of his descendants. His great house in Auckland is now the University Club on the grounds of the University of Auckland. My daughter got married there... I didn't tell my friends about this, you understand...

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We seem to have drifted away from the original query at the start of this thread which was

Does anyone know about people from Forest of Dean leaving through immigration schemes that ultimately sought to populate New Zealand in the 1860's?

Some latitude is always given for going off topic, even I am guilty of going off topic sometimes, but I think we will close this subject now, unless someone has something to add that relates to the original query.

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