Arrival from Wanganui:

William Gordon Bell arrived in Nelson with his family in 1847, five years after the foundation of the settlement. They had spent the previous six years in Wanganui, endeavouring to establish a home and farm in a climate of Maori hostility to the land buying proceedings of the New Zealand Company agents. They had finally come to a decision that a move to another district was the only viable option. Nelson was a New Zealand Company settlement, and replacement land for the abandoned Wanganui farmland was able to be negotiated.