Gilbert Mair

Gilbert Mair (senior) (born May 23, 1799 in Peterhead , Scotland , † July 16, 1857 in Whangarei , New Zealand ) was a Scottish-New Zealand sailor, trader and in 1835 a signatory of the New Zealand Declaration of Independence . He first visited New Zealand at the age of 20 and lived there from 1824 until his death.

Early life

Gilbert Mair was born on May 23, 1799 in Peterhead, Scotland. From 1820 on he was a member of the crew of the whaling ship New Zealander . With this he visited New Zealand for the first time. On his return to England on March 2, 1820, the crew was accompanied on board by the missionary Thomas Kendall , by the Māori Hongi Hika and Waikato and a Rangatira of the Ngā Puhi . The latter were the first Māori to visit England. Mair made a second trip to New Zealand in 1823 and stayed in the country after his third trip in 1824.

Sailing Master of the Herald

When he arrived in New Zealand, he met the missionary Henry Williams , who asked him for help building a ship. Henry Williams needed the ship to supply the mission stations and for mission trips to more distant areas of New Zealand. The Herald was a 55 ton schooner funded by the Church Mission Society (CMS) and built on the coast of Paihia in the Bay of Islands . The keel was laid in 1824 by Henry Williams .

When the Herald was finally completed in 1826, Mair was hired as her Sailing Master , the officer in charge of navigation. He made numerous trips by ship, including three trips to Australia , four to the Bay of Plenty , to the east coast of the North Island from the East Cape to the North Cape and to the west coast south to Kawhia .

In 1828, the Herald ran aground when entering Hokianga Harbor and had to be abandoned.

marriage

On his first trip to New Zealand, Mair met the family of William Puckey and his wife Margery , with William Gilbert Puckey (1805–1878) as their son and Elizabeth Gilbert (1809–1870) as their daughter. The 11 year old daughter had grown into a 15 year old young lady when Mair returned to New Zealand in 1824. Mair they married on September 12, 1827 in Sydney .

The marriage had twelve children:

• Caroline Elizabeth (1828-1917)
• Robert (1830-1920). He donated a public park in Whangarei
• William Gilbert (1832-1912), major
• Marianne (1834-1893)
• Henry Abbott (1836-1881)
• Charlotte (1838-1891)
• Jessie Eliza (1840-1899)
• Gilbert (1843–1923): Gilbert Mair junior, or " Te Kooti 's Nemesis "
• Matilda Helen (1845-1927)
• Emily Francis (1848-1902)
• Sophia Marella (1850-1884)
• Lavinia Laura (1852-1936), she married J. Howard Jackson and wrote the Annals of a New Zealand Family

Contemporary witness of the musket wars

During his travels through New Zealand, Gilbert Mair witnessed “the barbarism” of the Musket Wars , the wars between Māori tribes between 1818 and 1830.

In 1826 he witnessed the sighting of the remains of a Taua (war expedition) carried out in 1821 by the Ngā Puhi under Hongi Hika , who slaughtered the Ngāti Maru living in Te Totara Pā and whose bones were scattered everywhere. He also saw the aftermath of a battle at Ohiwa Harbor in 1828, with fifty dead on the coast and in the same year hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, dead animals and the remains of a cannibal festival at Te Papa Pā on Tauranga Harbor .

Mair as a dealer

In February 1830, Mair bought 159 hectares of land at Te Wahapu Point from the Māori , about four kilometers south of Kororareka (now Russel ), for the equivalent of goods, including six muskets, many barrels of gunpowder, and hundreds of musket balls and flints. He set up a flourishing trading post on his land and built his house on a slightly elevated spot above it. Mair was one of the first to market kauri resin in New Zealand and sell it in the United States . He also traded in New Zealand flax , which he had shipped to Sydney.

In 1842, Mair sold his business and land in Wahapu and acquired 728 acres of land in Whangarei . The family moved there in 1842 and lived in the house he baptized " Deveron ". From here Mair continued his diverse business.

Three years later, after tensions with the Māori had increased, Mair asked the governor to send a ship to bring all the settlers safely to Auckland . But in 1846 Mair returned to the Bay of Islands and in 1847 to Whangarei .

Other fields of activity

Mair was appointed Justice of the Peace by Governor William Hobson and was involved in efforts to declare New Zealand a separate colony. He helped found the Kororareka Association , a controversial attempt at self-government for New Zealand settlers, and was one of the British-born signatories of the New Zealand Declaration of Independence .

Mair came into contact with numerous personalities who visited the Bay of Islands . These included Bishop William Grant Broughton of Sydney who consecrated the Church in Russell in 1842 , Bishop George Selwyn , Charles Darwin , the botanist Allan Cunningham , Admiral James McClintoch, and others.

death

Gilbert Mair died on July 16, 1857 on his estate " Deveron " in Whangarei and was buried on his land. Years later, his son had his remains transferred to the churchyard, where only members of the Mair family were buried.

literature

• Stephenson Percy Smith : Maori Wars of the Nineteenth Century . Whitcombe and Thombs , Christchurch 1910 (English, online [accessed July 20, 2018]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Ron Crosby : Gilbert Mair , Te Kooti's Nemesis . Reed , Auckland 2004, ISBN 0-7900-0969-2 (English).
2. ↑ James Cowan : The Mair Brothers, soldiers and pioneers . In: New Zealand Railways Magazine . Volume 8, Issue 8 , December 1, 1933, pp.  17–21 (English, [1] [accessed July 20, 2018]).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Lavinia Laura Jackson (Mair) : Annals of a New Zealand Family; The Household of Gilbert Mair, Early Pioneer . Reed , Dunedin / Wellington 1935 (English).
4. ^ Paula Savage : Mair, Gilbert . In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Volume I . Wellington 1990 ( online [accessed July 20, 2018]).