Edward Gibbon Wakefield Died – 16th May 1862

On 16 May 1862, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the owner of the New Zealand Company (the organisation who purchased land from the Maori for the settlements of Canterbury, Wellington, New Plymouth and Nelson) and the co-founder of the Canterbury Association died of Rheumatic Fever and Neuralgia. By the 1830′s, Wakefield was a politician with a keen …