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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Wellington Provincial District]

Mr. William Moxham

Mr. William Moxham, who has been identified with the Empire City for over thirty-eight years, was born in London page 770 [unclear: in] 1823. At the age of eleven, his father having died early, Mr. Moxham went to work, but subsequently he had about two and a-half years schooling at the Tower Hamlets free school. Afterwards he served his time as a mechanical engineer. Mr. Moxham married in 1843, and took the management of a sawmill in Stratford, Essex. In 1858 he came to New Zealand in the ship “Montmorency,” landing at Wellington with his wife and family. At that time very little work was obtainable, but Mr. Moxham was undaunted by the gloomy outlook, and resolved to settle in the country, where he soon got employment from the Government at road and drain making. The invariable kindness of the people in the settlement endeared them and the place to him, and made his struggle very much easier than it otherwise would have been. An opportunity was offered to enter upon the business he had learned, but through an affliction of the eyes Mr. Moxham had to decline. This affliction has remained, though not in such a severe degree, for he is able to see and read with a little difficulty. About 1860 Mr. Moxham started in the dairy business, having some time previously leased a few acres of the educational reserve—now the site of the Botanical Gardens. He acquired the Upland Farm—113 acres—and at a later period, another farm at North Makara. For many years he carried on a very extensive dairy business, with the assistance of his sons. This business, with the farm, was sold early in 1896, and Mr. Moxham now lives in retirement in McDonald Crescent, Wellington. A member of the Wesleyan Church in England, he immediately joined Wesley Church in Manners Street on arriving in the Colony, and became choirmaster, the first organ having just arrived for that church. Mr. Moxham soon became prominently associated with every department of church work, as superintendent of the Sunday School, church trustee, and in various other positions of responsibility. As representative to the district meetings of the church, and as one of the first representatives to the New Zealand Conference, to which body he was regularly elected, Mr. Moxham has been as earnest as he was regular in his attendance. He has also filled the office of New Zealand representative at most of the general conferences of the Australasian Wesleyan Church. In August, 1894, Mrs. Moxham, who was born in Epping, Essex, died, leaving four sons and three daughters, who are married and reside in Wellington. The subject of this sketch has for so long been a familiar figure in Wesleyan Church courts and gatherings, and he has so endeared himself to clergy and laity by his unvarying cheerfulness and warm enthusiasm in all that tends to the welfare of the great church he loves, that among the names revered in New Zealand Methodism one that will ever shine out brightly will be that of “Father Moxham.”