Accidental Immigrants

ACCIDENTAL IMMIGRANTS - They sailed for India and settled in New Zealand.

By John Ewan
Chateau Publishing Ltd. $35.00
 ISBN 978-0-473-39658-9

 

When Thomas Powell and family left Leeds, England, and sailed out to India in the early 1850’s, they little realised that within a few years they would be living in New Zealand and facing different futures. Thomas, now a widower, would remarry and become a prominent businessman and man about town. His daughter Anna Maria would marry surveyor David Porter and raise a large family. Meanwhile, son Wilmot went gold hunting, became a soldier, and then an auctioneer, businessman, newspaper correspondent, poet and borough councillor. The accidental immigrants – along with a growing family of young Powell’s born in their new home town – played major roles in the formation of a New Zealand city.

John Ewan, author of Porters in My Past, is a great great grandson of Thomas Powell.