BIOGRAPHY
MR. CHARLES EDWIN NELSON, Manager of the Geyser Hotel, was born in 1829 in Stockholm, Sweden, and is a son of the well-known Swedish naturalist and anthropologist, Mr. Sven Nilsson, who was a professor at Lund University from 1831 to 1856, and wrote, among other works, "The Origin of the Inhabitants of Scandinavia" and "The Fauna of Scandinavia." Professor Nilsson was born in 1807 and died in 1883. Mr. C. E. Nelson went to sea in 1844, and during his twenty-one years' experience sailed under the flags of fifteen countries, namely, Sweden, Denmark, German Confederation, Hamburg, Bremen, England, France, Portugal, Austria, Turkey, Russia, Greece, Arabia, United States of America, and Brazil. At the age of nineteen Mr. Nelson qualified as a mate of a ship, and in the same year passed as master in the extra first class at Malmol, Sweden. He first touched New Zealand in a whaler in 1852, and remained a few months in Auckland. After cruising about the Pacific he again visited Auckland in 1857, and was afterwards on the coast for about three years. Upon settling in Auckland Mr. Nelson worked as a surveyor under the Government. He afterwards entered the Native Land Purchase Department, and held the position of Native Land Purchase Officer in the north of Auckland for about thirteen years. Mr. Nelson settled at Rotorua in 1891 to complete researches into ancient Maori history. He has long been interested in the traditions of the native race, and is a great student of all matters that tend to show its origin. Mr. Nelson is a clever linguist and can speak a number of languages. He claims to have at least 3000 Maori words which do not appear in any extant Maori dictionary. His name has been prominently associated with a very fine Maori house, which he has had erected in the immediate neighbourhood of the hotel, and is said to be the only complete Maori house in existence. Some of the leading pieces date back at least fifty years if not more, to the period when Maori artificers were at their best. It has been completed under his supervision, and one piece in particular - the headpiece - has been reproduced from a photograph of an old doorway from the East Coast district, and now in the Auckland Museum. Mr. Hamilton, registrar of the Otago University, says of the carved house, which is named Raura: "I have seen a very large number of carvings, ancient and modern, but I know of none more perfect or more beautiful, and it is a truly representative work of Maori art." It is understood that this Maori house has been purchased for the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Mr. Nelson was married, in 1863, to a daughter of the late Captain Stanaway, of Kaipara. Mrs Nelson died in 1887 leaving two sons and two daughters, and Mr. Nelson contracted a second marriage, in 1888, with a daughter of the late Mr Heavey, of Galway, Ireland.
Source: The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District], 1902. Whakarewarewa.
Charles died in 1909 and was buried at Pukekohe. His second wife, Mary, died in 1911 and was buried next to him.
Chris Korte's New Zealand Genealogy Project
1829 - 1909 (79 years)
Has no ancestors and no descendants in this family tree.
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