When town left gown: A collective family biography of settler colonists from Oxford, England to Canterbury, New Zealand, 1850 to 1870 : A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master at Lincoln University

Abstract

This ‘collective family biography’, taking the family as the unit of analysis, is a microhistory which contextualises the lives, before and after migration, of a group of at least 100 settler colonists from Oxford, England or its close environs, who arrived in Canterbury between 1850 and 1870. The evidence, using the tools of the historian of the family, reveals that these ‘ordinary’ people were representative of a mobile, urban and consumer-oriented English society embracing a continuum of mainly self-employed artisans and traders through to teachers, servants, domestic workers and labouring wage-earners. They were also significantly affiliated, whether by kinship, marriage, parish, occupation, education, freemasonry or religious denomination. Many retained these connections throughout their lives. In an age before compulsory education was mandated, they were also overwhelmingly literate. The ‘push’ factors that influenced their migration decisions included underemployment during the Oxford University holidays and economic stagnation caused by intensifying competitive trading conditions resulting from the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act (UK) 1835 which relaxed restrictions on who could trade in the city. Other social pressures were public health and housing problems brought about by rapid population growth from 1800 and the ensuing effects of the coming of the railway in 1844. This resulted in the decline of the canal trade, Oxford ceasing to be a national transport hub, and quicker travel time to London. For the first group of thirty-two migrants ‘pull’ attractions, as expressed in the promotional rhetoric of the Canterbury Association, included the perceived absence of a Māori population, the promise of economic advancement either through land ownership or the possibility of eventual ownership, and cultural replication by way of schools and churches. Later ‘pull’ factors for a second group who migrated from the mid-1850s to 1870 were largely chain migration inducements. On their arrival these families engaged in a variety of occupations including teaching, printing, farming, brewing, building, storekeeping, domestic and labouring work. The transition to settler colonial life in this eruptive phase of settlement was not necessarily easy, and the evidence suggests an initial perpetuation of the town and gown social divide. Some families experienced dramatic reversals of fortune and a significant number died well before, and during middle age, either through accident, infection or chronic illness. Two women appear to have had unstable lives marked by social marginalisation. However, the evidence overall suggests these were a socially cohesive people strongly bonded to their families, churches and local communities. Seventy-six people (out of a total of 101 who left England) remained in Canterbury and many were active in civic and church affairs. One was a Member of the House of Representatives from 1878 to 1890 and was known for his liberal sympathies, pious good works and as a booster for South Canterbury’s economic development.