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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75

Foundation and Settlement

page 63

Foundation and Settlement.

The district was occupied, in the first instance, by settlers sent out by the Canterbury Association, which was formed in 1848, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1849, under the auspices of prominent men in England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Lyttelton. The step was not taken until after due inquiry as to the most suitable part in which to establish a settlement. Captain (now Sir George) Grey, at that time Governor, recommended the Wairarapa, but it was finally decided to take over from the New Zealand Company a tract of the Canterbury Plains, in the neighbourhood of Port Cooper. Captain Thomas, the agent of the association, who had advised the selection, superintended the surveys and the preparations for receiving intending settlers. The original intention of the founders was that the settlement should be independent and complete in itself, and should embrace only such persons as were members of the Church of England and were approved of by the association. This was frustrated by the influx of numbers of persons of all classes and beliefs. The first body of emigrants arrived at Port Cooper on the 16th December, 1850, and the settlement remained under the control of the association, as directed by a committee of management in England, and under the active personal supervision of Mr. John Robert Godley, until 1853, when the whole of Canterbury became a province of New Zealand by the provisions of "The Constitution Act, 1852."

Thenceforward the control of the settlement was vested in the Superintendent and the Provincial Council. The first Superintendent was Mr. James Edward FitzGerald, who held office till 1857; he was followed in succession by Mr. William Sefton Moorhouse, 1857-1863; Mr. Samuel Bealey, 1863-1866; Mr. Moorhouse again till 1868; and Mr. William Rolleston till the abolition of the provinces in 1876, when the district came directly under the control of the General Government.