‘No Means Favourites Here’ – Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Henry Sewell

“You will see that E.G. [Edward Gibbon]Wakefield (pictured) and Mr. [Henry] Sewell are no means favourites  here, and that they will find more difficulty than they anticipated in saddling the colony with the [Canterbury] Association’s debt, or selling certain lands and buildings which are either reserved for the public purposes or built with the money …

The Deans

William Deans (1817 – 1851)                               Drowned               Place of Death: Wellington Memorial at Barbadoes Street Cemetery * Christchurch’s First Justice of Peace. John Deans (1820 – 1854)                                   Died of T.B.            Place of Death: Riccarton Buried at Barbadoes Street Cemetery Jane Deans (1823 – 1911)                                   Died of old …

TEDDINGTON – William Flower Blatchford (1827 – 1897)

William Flower Blatchford (pictured on the right)arrived in Canterbury on the 1st March 1851 aboard the ‘Isabella Hercus’, the Canterbury Association’s 6th emigrant ship. From all accounts and from where he put down his roots, he seemed very fond of Lyttelton Harbour. The bay of Te Rapu – named after a stream that flows through …

Henry Sewell (1807 – 1879)

Henry Sewell could do amazing things with money and numbers – which made him more than a little unpopular! Henry’s father died when he was teenager and left a £3000 debt over the family from a collapsed banking project. Maybe this was when Henry’s number skills became prominent as he tackled the debt full on. …