Arrival in New Zealand

Hello! Welcome to this site for the Williamsons of New Zealand. I haven't written a blog since I was a teenager, however I have been really enjoying writing this family history book and want to share some of what I have found in the meantime before I get to the finishing line of writing this book. It also means I can share a bit more detail around it and how I have come across it. This blog may or may not last for long but I'll give it a good shot. You are also welcome to comment on this blog post below, you don't need an account and you can let me know what you think or even just let me know that you've given it a read.

Today, I want to show you one of the first pieces of information that helped spark a lot of research for me a few years back; a newspaper snippet announcing the arrival of the Melbourne, the ship that brought John Williamson and his family from Scotland to New Zealand. It felt especially relevant after spending a day walking around Leith this week, imaging what life would have been like in 1860.

This newspaper snippet is from a copy of the Otago Witness, which I am grateful has been entirely digitised and made available for free online on Papers Past, thanks to the National Library of New Zealand. 

This copy is dated 23rd March 1861, and contains the arrival information for the Melbourne, the ship that brought the Williamsons to New Zealand. See below for the actual snippets:

So, from this we learn a bit more about when the Melbourne arrived in New Zealand, the conditions they faced along the journey, and the news of births, deaths, and other details about the trip. I won't post the full list of passengers as there is really only one set of names we have interest in.

There is John Williamson. We now know that his first wife, Janet Grigor, passed away after the birth of their third child, and the wife in reference here is Isabella Morrison. The four sons and one daughter are Kenneth, Donald and Flora from John's first marriage, as well as Roderick and Charles, whom he had shared with Isabella. The location Kirkwall aligns with their time in the Orkney Islands, however the only records I currently have show their residence on nearby Sanday, not in Kirkwall. We are left to wonder whether they listed their closest major town, or whether they had a very brief stint in Kirkwall before moving to New Zealand.

As to not overwhelm, I will post my next snippet in a few days detailing a bit more about the voyage, including a storm that convinced Scottish locals that the Melbourne had shipwrecked! In the meantime, I will sign off some photos of Leith and how it looks in 2025. I will try to get a photo looking out at the port's mouth another time. For now, I hope you enjoyed this snippet and I look forward to sharing more in the coming days and weeks.