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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District]

Mr. Theophilus Heale

Mr. Theophilus Heale was elected to the House of Representatives for the Suburbs of Auckland in 1860. He arrived in the Colony in the forties in a schooner owned by himself and others; and had previously been in command of an East Indiaman. He and Sir Frederick Whitaker were in partnership in the purchase of lands at the Great Barrier Island and in the Piako district. They were amongst the first to work the copper lodes on Kawau Island; and Mr. Heale erected the first sawmill in the Manukau Harbour, near the Heads. In 1855 he went to Southland, and was chief surveyor in that province, when Dr. Menzies was superintendent, and he took an active part in the construction of the Invercargill-Bluff railway. In 1865, on the passing of the first Native Lands Act, drafted by Mr. F. D. Fenton, Mr. Heale was appointed Inspector of Surveys, under the general Government, to supervise all native land surveys. He initiated the first extensive system of triangulation, which was afterwards carried through by Mr. Percy Smith, from Auckland to Wellington. On the abolition of the Provinces, in 1876, Mr. Heale resigned the position of Inspector of Surveys, and, being a good Maori linguist, was appointed a Judge of the Native Lands Court, in which he served until his retirement on a pension in 1880. Mr. Heale was a remarkably well-informed man, and a Greek, Latin, French, and Italian scholar of repute. He took the observations of the first transit of Venus, and also the observations for the determination of the latitude of Mount Eden.

Mr. T. Heale.

Mr. T. Heale.