| 1859 | Archibald and Margaret McColl and their family arrive as immigrants at Port Chalmers, Dunedin, on 12 September. Soon afterwards they move to Brighton. |
| 1861 | John and Mary Baxter and their family arrive on 28 January. They move to Brighton. |
| 1874 | John Macmillan Brown is appointed to the Chair of Classics and English at Canterbury University College. |
| 1876 | Helen Connon (born 1860?) becomes one of his students, the first woman student of the University of New Zealand. |
| 1879 | Mary McColl marries John Baxter at Winton on 16 August. Helen Connon and John Macmillan Brown become engaged. |
| 1880 | Helen Connon becomes the second woman in the British Empire to graduate BA. |
| 1881 | Helen Connon graduates MA with first-class honours in English and Latin, the first woman to graduate with Honours from a British university. On 13 December Archibald (Archie) McColl Learmond Baxter, the second child of Mary and John Baxter, is born in the family’s sod cottage at Brighton. |
| 1882 | Helen Connon becomes second Principal of Christchurch Girls’ High School. |
| 1886 | John Macmillan Brown and Helen Connon marry on 9 December. They have been engaged for seven years. |
| 1888 | Millicent Amiel Brown is born on 8 January. |
| 1897 | Viola Lockhart Brown is born on 16 November. |
| 1903 | Helen Brown dies on 27 February. |
| 1905 | Millicent Brown begins studies at Presbyterian Ladies College in Croyden, Sydney. |
| 1908 | She completes a BA at Sydney University. James Keir Hardie, Scottish socialist and Labour leader, gives a public address in Dunedin. Archie Baxter is greatly impressed and decides that if he ever has a son he will name him James Keir Baxter. |
| 1909 | Millicent Brown enrols at Newnham College, Cambridge.page 159 |
| 1911 | Millicent passes Part I of the Tripos. |
| 1913 | Millicent begins a PhD at Halle University, in Germany. |
| 1914 | First World War begins. Millicent returns to New Zealand. |
| 1917 | Archie Baxter, a conscientious objector, is arrested, gaoled, then forced aboard a ship which sails for England on 14 July. From there he is forcibly deported into the war zone. |
| 1918 | Archie is brutally tortured (No. 1 Field Punishment) by military authorities in Belgium. He survives and returns to New Zealand in September. |
| 1920 | John Macmillan Brown becomes acting professor of English at Otago University College. Millicent accompanies him to Dunedin. Deeply impressed by a letter Archie Baxter wrote to his parents she attempts, ultimately successfully, to meet him. |
| 1921 | Archie Baxter and Millicent Brown marry on 2 February. Archie buys a small farm at Kuri Bush, south of Brighton. |
| 1922 | Terence John Baxter is born on 23 May. He is named after the Irish republican patriot Terence Joseph MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, who died on 25 October 1920 while on a hunger strike. |
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