Finding an Irish Ancestor Using New Zealand Records

In 1845 the Dublin University Magazine described New Zealand as 'the most recent, remotest, and least civilised of our colonies'. It was the most expensive to reach - over four times the cost of crossing the Atlantic to America. The majority of Irish emigrants went to North America; Australasia t ook no more than about one in 13. For the first half-century of European settlement in New Zealand the number of migrants from Ireland was small. Almost none came direct from the potato famine. Until 1852 they comprised less than 15% of immigrants from the United Kingdom.

The New Zealand Company offered assisted passages to organised settlements in New Zealand. However, the company did not consider illiterate Irish peasants to be 'desirable emigrants'. Under 2% of the company's settlers were born in Ireland, despite the fact that a few of the early New Zealand Company settlement leaders such as John Robert Godley in Canterbury and Edward Stafford in Nelson, were of Anglo-Irish background. This group were members of the Anglican elite who saw their situation weakened at home by Catholic emancipation and the emergence of Irish nationalism. Few of the Irish joined them. In 1848 the province of New Munster (Wellington and the South Island) had a mere 175 Irish inhabitants.

Some websites can be useful in locating Irish immigrants to New Zealand are: http://www.genealogylinks.net/newzealand/ http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/irish/2 http://www.genealogy.about.com/cs/ireland/a/irish_genealogy_2.htm