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James Wright was born at Fenton, Staffordshire, England, on 11 April 1819, the son of Eleanor Bennet and her husband, William Wright, an engraver. On 9 March 1841, at Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, he married Mary Ann Tams.…

Willis Thomas Goodwin (Bill) Airey was born in Auckland on 7 January 1897. His father, Walter Henry Airey, an inspector of schools, had died three months earlier, leaving a widow, Margaret Avon McDonald, and seven…

Thomas Bannatyne Gillies was born at Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, on 17 January 1828. He was the eldest of nine children of John Gillies, local lawyer and town clerk, and his wife, Isabella Lillie, daughter…

Maurice Noel Duggan ranks with Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson as one of New Zealand’s greatest short-story writers and literary stylists. He was born in Auckland on 25 November 1922 and grew up on the North…

John Lundon was a not atypical 'public man' in mid nineteenth century New Zealand, a society where political forms and commercial relationships could be worked to personal advantage by those with a sharp eye for the…

Years before the establishment of major hand-loom weaving guilds in New Zealand, two sisters, Sybil Mary and Josephine Mulvany, were operating a successful weaving business in Auckland. They helped revitalise the craft…

John Alexander Wilson was born probably on 21 April 1829 at Condé-sur-Noireau, Calvados, France, the eldest son of John Alexander Wilson, a naval officer, and his first wife, Anne Catherine Hawker. In 1832 his father…

Henry Douglas Morpeth Haszard was born on 16 January 1862 at Mangonui, Northland, New Zealand, the eldest surviving son of Moore Hunter Morpeth and her husband, Robert Haszard, a farmer and former goldminer. His parents…

Nelson Isaac designed and made some of the most important publicly commissioned silver in New Zealand during the mid twentieth century. He was born Wilfrid Nelson Isaac in Kyneton, Victoria, Australia, on 30 March 1893…

Linden Charles Mansell Saunders was born in Christchurch on 5 December 1908, the son of Violet Mary Georgina March and her husband, Charles Mansell Saunders, a cordial manufacturer. As music critic of the New Zealand…

Tom Ah Chee was the driving force behind the Foodtown supermarket empire, which accelerated the societal shift from the era of local grocery stores to one of large-scale supermarket chains. The son of a successful…

William Alfred Bayly, the son of Constance Ivy Walker and her husband, Frank Bayly, a farmer, was born in Auckland on 15 July 1906. The family subsequently lived on farms in Waikato and to the south and east of Auckland…

David Gallagher (later Gallaher) was born at Ramelton, County Donegal, Ireland, on 30 October 1873, the son of James Gallagher, a shopkeeper, and his wife, Maria McCloskie, a teacher. In May 1878 the Gallaghers sailed…

Keith Wilson Hay was born in Hastings on 13 December 1917, the third child in a family of five. His father, William Cattley Hay, a farm labourer, had emigrated to Invercargill in 1903 and married Elsie May Major (née…

Neil Lloyd Macky was born in Auckland on 20 February 1891, the son of Thomas Lindsay Macky, a clerk, and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart Lloyd. Polly Macky (as he was called from boyhood) was educated at Prince Albert…

Lloyd Mandeno was born on 3 October 1888 at Rangiaowhia, near Te Awamutu, the son of farmer William Henry Mandeno and his wife, Mary Graham Snodgrass. After boarding at St John’s Collegiate School, Auckland, he enrolled…

Anna Lois White was born in Auckland on 2 November 1903, the daughter of Annie Phillipps and her husband, Arthur Herbert White, an architect. Both the White and the Phillipps families had helped establish Methodism in…

Victor George Wilcox was born at Willesden, London, on 6 November 1912, the son of Kathleen Sage and her husband, William Wilcox, a railway shunter. In 1923 or 1924 the family emigrated to New Zealand, where William…

Alan Edward Mulgan was born on 18 May 1881 at George Vesey Stewart's Irish Protestant settlement in Katikati, in the Bay of Plenty. He was the son of Frances Maria Johnston and her husband, Edward Ker Mulgan, a farmer…

Sophia Ann Bates, the daughter of Elizabeth Hix Brown and her husband, John Bates, was born at Westminster, London, England, on 6 March 1817. She emigrated to New Zealand with her mother and her father, a corporal in…