William Cargill

William Walter Cargill with daughter Christina

William Walter Cargill (born August 27, 1784 in Edinburgh , Scotland , † August 6, 1860 in Dunedin , New Zealand ) was a Scottish wine merchant, bank manager, captain in the British army , colonialist in Otago and co-founder of Dunedin.

Life

William Cargill was born into a strict Calvinist family, the eldest son of William Cargill and Marion Jameson . He had four siblings, three brothers and a sister. His father was an attorney and notary public notary for signatures, but later condoned alcohol and died of alcoholism when William was 15 years old. His mother was the daughter of a stonemason from Edinburgh.

Even before his father's death, the family was living in difficult financial circumstances. Even so, his mother managed to give everyone a good education. So it was possible for William to attend the renowned Royal High School in Edinburgh from 1794 to 1797 . After that he received private lessons. His tutor was Thomas Chalmers , mathematician and founder of the Free Church of Scotland . Chalmers, who was only four years older than William, was a friend of the family and became a role model and protégé for William .

military service

At the age of 18, on May 21, 1802, William joined the 84th Regiment of the British Army as an ensign with the support of his great-uncle Sir William Nicholson , and came under the care of Captain Grant, who made the transition from civilian life to tough everyday military life a bit relieved.

After deployments in Bengal and in the Second Marath War , he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Busaco , 200 km north of Lisbon in Portugal ; it took him a two year recovery to return to his regiment in December 1812. It was probably thanks to his good constitution that he survived, because medical knowledge and care were more than inadequate during this time.

After his return to his regiment in Sarzedas, Castelo Branco county , he was quickly promoted to captain in the absence of officers . During his stationing time on the Iberian Peninsula , he married his wife Mary Ann Yates (1790–1871), daughter of a naval officer and London actor, in Porto on April 18, 1813 . After further war missions, he was about to be assigned to the battle of Waterloo in June 1815 . But the defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte and the peace treaty of the Second Peace of Paris spared him from further war missions .

As a soldier, now already 37 years old, with five children and not exactly lavish wages , he was unable to provide his family with a regular family life. On June 1, 1820, he received a severance payment of £ 1,500 and left the British Army, but continued his acquired title of captain.

In Great Britain

After leaving the army, Cargill worked as a wine merchant in Edinburgh , gave up the business in 1834 after difficult years and switched to banking. It was still organized in a rather chaotic way, and becoming a banker was comparatively easy. In 1836 he was appointed director general of the East of England Bank (1836–1864) in Norwich .

In 1841 he went to London to take a seat on the board of directors of the Oriental Bank Corporation (1845-1892), in which his eldest son had become director general. A little frustrated with this position, he looked for something a little more challenging. About an article on the topic of colonization of New Zealand in the Colonial Gazette , he became aware of George Rennie (1802-1860), sculptor and politician, in 1842 . He had already toyed with the idea of emigrating to another country in the 1830s . At the time, Canada was on his wish list.

New Zealand

Now, almost 60 years old, the opportunity suddenly arose to go to New Zealand. In 1843 the Free Church of Scotland split off from the Church of Scotland in the so-called "disruption" and he came into contact with George Rennie. This promised him to get a leading role in the Scottish settlement project in New Zealand.

Under the leadership of Thomas Chalmers , leader of the Free Church of Scotland, and inspired by Edward Gibbon Wakefield's ideas of systematic colonization, William Cargill, alongside Pastor Thomas Burns, became head of the Free Church of Scotland's settlement project in Otago , which was responsible for the Establish New Edinburgh, later Dunedin.

Cargill set sail on November 24, 1847 with 96 settlers aboard the John Wickliffe, promising £ 500 a year for his services to the New Zealand Company . Thomas Burns followed with Philip Laing . On March 23, 1848, Cargill reached Otago Harbor , after the planning preparations by Frederick Tuckett and Charles Henry Kettle, founded the port of Port Chalmers and then Dunedin, which later became the capital of Otago. Cargill was Superintendent of Otago from 1853 to 1860 and a member of the Dunedin Country District from 1855 to 1860.

William Cargill was arguably the most prominent, dominant and power-obsessed politician of his time in New Zealand. His stubborn Scottish character and style mostly amused the English-born observers, disgruntled government officials, but met with approval from the Scottish settlers. He had his problems with democratic structures. He countered criticism from the local press by founding a print medium that was more sympathetic to him. He was said to be autocratic , inflexible and nepotistic .

William Walter Cargill died of a stroke in Dunedin on August 6, 1860. In his honor, the highest point in Dunedin with 676 meters, 8 km northeast of the city center, was named Mount Cargill. Governor Thomas Gore Browne honored him by naming Invercargill for founding the city on the southernmost end of the South Island of New Zealand .

literature

• Alexander Hare McLintock : Cargill, William . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed December 15, 2015]).
• Tom Brooking : And Captain Of Their Souls, Cargill & The Otago Colonists . Otago Heritage Books , Dunedin 1984 (English).
• Cargill, William . In: New Zealand Encyclopedia . 5th edition. David Bateman Ltd , Auckland 2000, ISBN 0-908610-21-1 (English).

Web links

Commons : William Cargill  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Tom Brooking : Cargill, William . In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , September 1, 2010, accessed August 19, 2012 .