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Maata Horomona was New Zealand’s first movie star, as the leading lady in films by French filmmaker Gaston Méliès. Méliès claimed to have discovered her, but by 1912, when she appeared in three of his films, Maata was…

According to his monument at Papawai, Hāmuera Tamahau Mahupuku was born on 25 September 1840. Other sources state that he was born in 1837, or in 1842. He was known to Europeans as Sam, and to Māori and in official…

William Mason was a prominent mid-twentieth-century New Zealand artist and designer best known for his riotous, high-style handprinted interior textiles, and for wallpapers that helped  radically reform the way New…

William Arthur Moffatt (Māwhete) was born at Tiakitahuna (Jackeytown), south of Palmerston North, on 4 March 1880, the son of Emiri Mōkena (Emily Morgan) and her husband, William Moffatt. His mother, also known as Ārani…

Alister Donald Miles McIntosh was born at Picton on 29 November 1906, the eldest of four children of Henry Hobson McIntosh, a telegraphist, and his wife, Caroline Margaret Cowles Miles. From 1920 to 1924 he was educated…

Don Merton’s pioneering conservation efforts brought three threatened New Zealand bird species back from the brink of extinction and inspired similar conservation programmes around the world. From the early 1960s ‘the…

John Andrew Millar was born on 8 July 1855 in India, and baptised at Jullundur, Punjab, on 6 August 1855. He was the eldest son of Eliza Sarah Hawthorne and her husband, John Craufurd Millar, a lieutenant and later…

Born in the Ngāti Tama stronghold of Poutama, North Taranaki, early in the nineteenth century, Paremata was the eldest son of Ngāti Tama fighting chief Te Taku, and Kauhoe of Ngāti Hinetuhi, a hapū of Ngāti Mutunga. His…

Tuaiwa Rickard, known in her public life as Eva Rickard, was an influential figure in the Māori land rights movement from the 1970s to the 1990s. She showed courage and determination in negotiating the return of Te…

James Shelley was born on 3 September 1884 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England. His father, also James, was a potter turned policeman; his mother, Ellen Walton, was a weaver's daughter. From this artisan culture – which…

Pineāmine Taiapa was born at Tikitiki on the East Coast on 6 June 1901. His mother, Maraea Te Iritawa, and his father, Tāmati Taiapa, were of Te Whānau-a-Hinerupe, a hapū of Ngāti Porou. His mother was also connected to…

Richard Taylor was born at Letwell, Yorkshire, England, on 21 March 1805, one of four children of Richard Taylor and his wife, Catherine Spencer. He was baptised two days later, in the neighbouring parish of Throapham.…

Te Ua Haumēne was the founder and prophet of the Hauhau church, the first organised expression of an independent Māori Christianity. He was born into the Taranaki tribe at Waiaua, in South Taranaki, in the early 1820s.…

William Leonard Williams, known as Leonard Williams to Pākehā and as Mita Rēnata to Māori, was born at Paihia, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, on 22 July 1829. He was the third child and eldest son of Jane Nelson and her…

Joseph George Ward (registered at birth as Joseph Ward) was born in Hawke Street, North Melbourne, Australia, on 26 April 1856, the son of Irish immigrant parents William Ward, a clerk, and his wife, Hannah Dorney.…

John Ballance was born at Ballypitmave, near Glenavy in County Antrim, Ireland, into a comfortably off but not prosperous family. His date of birth is said to have been 27 March 1839; he was baptised on 7 April that…

Thomas Robert Gore Browne was born on 3 July 1807 at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, the second son of Robert Browne and his wife, Sarah Dorothea Steward. The family, of Anglo-Irish origin, had settled near…

Ralph Hōtere was one of New Zealand’s most important late twentieth-century artists. He began as a painter with a strong drawing practice, later moving into sculpture and installation. His work reflected an abstract…

Lindsay Poole was a forester and senior public servant who guided the New Zealand Forest Service, first as assistant director then as director, during the middle decades of the twentieth century. His career followed an…

Robert Heaton Rhodes was born on 27 February 1861 at Purau, a farming locality on the shore of Lyttelton Harbour, the eldest son of Sophia Circuit Latter and her husband, Robert Heaton Rhodes, a substantial landowner.…