Timeline: Berthalina NORTON [Bertha]: Chris Korte's New Zealand Genealogy Project

Chris Korte's New Zealand Genealogy Project

1835 - 1860 (24 years)

	Date	Event(s)
1	1840	22 Jan 1840: 1st Wellington Settlers The New Zealand Company’s first settler ship, the Aurora, arrived at Petone to found the settlement that would become Wellington Settlement. Named after the first Duke of Wellington, the victor of the Battle of Waterloo, the new town was part of the New Zealand Company’s systematic model of colonisation developed by Edwin Gibbon Wakefield. Central to his scheme were packages of land comprising a town acre (0.4 ha) and an accompanying 100 country acres (40 ha). There were 1100 one-acre town sections in the plan for Port Nicholson. By the end of 1840, 1200 settlers had arrived in Wellington. 6 Feb 1840: Treaty of Waitangi The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and Maori chiefs (rangatira) from the North Island of New Zealand. It has become a document of central importance to the history, to the political constitution of the state, and to the national mythos of New Zealand, and has played a major role in framing the political relations between New Zealand's government and the Maori population, especially from the late-20th century. 16 Nov 1840: NZ becmes a colony New Zealand officially became a separate colony of the United Kingdom, severing its link to New South Wales. North, South and Stewart islands were to be known respectively as the provinces of New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster. William Hobson had been appointed Britain’s consul to New Zealand in 1839. He was instructed to obtain sovereignty over all or part of New Zealand with the consent of "a sufficient number" of chiefs. New Zealand would then come under the authority of George Gipps, the governor of New South Wales; Hobson would become Gipps’ lieutenant-governor.
2	1842	1 Feb 1842: 1st Settlers arrive Nelson The Fifeshire arrived in Nelson Settlement on 1 Feb 1842 with immigrants for the New Zealand Company’s first settlement in the South Island. Several thousand settlers arrived in Nelson within a few months.
3	1845	1845—1872: New Zealand Wars The New Zealand Wars were a series of armed conflicts that took place in New Zealand from 1845 to 1872 between the Colonial government and allied Maori on one side and Maori and Maori-allied settlers on the other. At the peak of hostilities in the 1860s, 18,000 British troops, supported by artillery, cavalry and local militia, battled about 4,000 Maori warriors. Over the course of the Taranaki and Waikato campaigns, the lives of about 1,800 Maori and 800 Europeans were lost, and total Maori losses over the course of all the wars may have exceeded 2,100.
4	1851	12 Feb 1851: Gold is discovered in New South Wales. On February 12, 1851, a prospector discovered flecks of gold in a waterhole near Bathurst, New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Soon, even more gold was discovered in what would become the neighboring state of Victoria. This began the Australian Gold Rush. 1 Jul 1851: Victoria separated from NSW In 1851 Port Phillip District separated from New South Wales and renamed itself the Colony of Victoria. As a result of this a Legislative Council was formed to govern the new Colony of Victoria. The first Legislative Council consisted of 30 men, 10 appointed directly by the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Charles Latrobe. The remaining 20 men (no women were allowed) were elected to office by wealthy land owners. At this point in time only people who owned a significant amount of land were allowed to vote. In 1855 the Colony of Victoria gained self-governance from Britain
5	1853	17 Jan 1853—1 Jan 1877: NZ Provinces On 17 January 1853, New Zealand was divided into six Provinces (Auckland, Taranaki, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, Otago), though there were soon secessions (Hawkes Bay 1858, Marlborough 1859, Southland 1864-1870, Westland 1868). Each province kept the revenue earned from the sale of their Crown land, and were responsible for encouraging immigration to their area. The provinces formally ceased to exist on the 1 January 1877 and local government was then vested in elected borough and county councils.
6	1854	24 May 1854: 1st NZ Parliment New Zealand Parliament's first sitting in Auckland occurred on 24 May 1854. Auckland was to be the colony’s capital city (and home to Parliament) for the next 10 years. The colony’s first elected parliamentarians, all 37 of them, were sworn in, making their oaths of allegiance to the Crown in the person of the acting governor, Colonel R.H. Wynyard. 3 Dec 1854: Battle of the Eureka Stockade, Ballarat. On 30 November 1854 miners from the Victorian town of Ballarat, disgruntled with the way the colonial government had been administering the goldfields, swore allegiance to the Southern Cross flag at Bakery Hill and built a stockade at the nearby Eureka diggings. Early on the morning of Sunday 3 December 1854, when the Eureka Stockade was only lightly guarded, government troops attacked. At least 22 diggers and six soldiers were killed. The rebellion of miners at Eureka Stockade is a key event in the development of Australia’s representational structures and attitudes towards democracy and egalitarianism.
7	1859	6 Jun 1859: Queensland separated from NSW Queen Victoria granted approval and signed Letters Patent on 6 June 1859 to establish the new Colony of Queensland, separate from New South Wales. On the same day, an Order-in-Council gave Queensland its own constitution. Queensland became a self-governing colony with its own Governor, a nominated Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly.