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Where English migrants came from

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Where English migrants came from

Particular localities in England sent unusually large numbers of migrants, partly because under the process of chain migration, people would follow families and friends across the seas. One area from which many migrants came in the 1870s was the Wychwood Forest area of Oxford. Rural labourers there had organised in a union, and when their strikes failed, the union encouraged labourers and their families to emigrate to New Zealand.

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Terry Hearn, English – The flow from England’s south, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/1917/where-english-migrants-came-from (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Terry Hearn, published 4 March 2009, updated 1 August 2024.