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Nelson Historical Society Journal, Volume 06, Issue 01, 1996
Land Holding Records:
Land Holding Records:
In 1849 a census return records that the family had a wooden dwelling house, with a shingle roof, and an outbuilding. The holding was listed as 100 acres, 42½ cultivated in wheat, oats, barley, grass, potatoes and garden. Livestock numbered 3 horses, 40 cattle and 1 pig.
This same year, William Gordon the Younger married Eliza Morley. She had arrived in Nelson in 1842, aged 18, accompanied by her brother. By 1846, she had had the tragic misfortune to suffer the loss of her fiance, her young son and her first husband, all by drowning.
The New Zealand Company ceased to exist in 1850, and the following year Crown Grants were issued to its land purchasers. William Gordon Bell's grant was for 110 acres which appears to be the original farm, now named Bellevue, Sections 167 and 169 and a smaller piece to the west of Swamp road, part of Section 198. Also recorded is a grant in the name of WG Bell the Younger, of a smallish acreage of land adjacent to the Waimea River, a few kilometres inland from Bellevue (part of Section 200). The year 1851 also marked the death of Alziere, buried at Fairfield. Nelson.
The Crown Grant to William Gordon Bell for two areas totalling 1900 acres in the Upper Motueka valley, now Golden Downs, is dated 1852. The smaller area was river flats page 41
immediately downstream of the Motueka River gorge. This was purchased with the proceeds from the sale of the West Indian estate. James Bell, now married to Mary-Ann Caradus. Who had arrived with the first Dunedin settlers in 1848, sold up in Dunedin and came to Nelson to run the property.
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Bellevue, Richmond, Nelson Provincial Museum