My Taranaki Anniversary Day 4

The first Europeans to settle in New Plymouth were two whalers, Love and Barrett. They set up their whaling station at Ngamotu ("The Islands") where the port is now, and married local Maori women.

They were able to help with the negotiations over the New Plymouth settlement once the advance party led by Carrington arrived.

Fred Carrington

In the early nineteenth century surveying, like whaling and many other occupations, was done in teams usually called "crews". With Fred Carrington, when he arrived in 1841, or soon after, were two of his brothers, Wellington and Octavius Carrington, plus assistants Harcourt Aubrey, and Logan, and others as well.

Carrington's family had been Cathedral officials in Exeter for several generations. So he, and many of the other leaders of the settlement, were Devon men. Carrington's name is attached to roads and other features in Taranaki, and his descendants still live here. He became a respected political and administrative leader later in the century.

The deal that Carrington was expected to build into his land survey was that each settler who had purchased a land area was entitled to three "sections"; a town section, a suburban section, and a country section. The town section was for the house, the suburban section was for growing vegetables, and the country section was for farming.

Carriongton and his crew planned for the town sections to be in what is now central New Plymouth, the suburban sections to be in what is now the suburbs and immediately rural areas, and most of the country sections in North Taranaki and up the Waitara Valley.  This was the genesis of the fierce feelings that arose among the settlers over Maori reluctance to sell land.

The plan that Carrington and his team drew up for the centre of New Plymouth is virtually unchanged in the 175 years since. Most of the names given to the streets running east and west (parallel to the coast) were of leaders of the Plymouth Company in the UK. Many of the names given to the streets running north and south were of people who were leaders here in New Zealand.

Street names starting at the coast begin with Woolcombe and Octavius. Tom Woolcombe was Secretary of the Company, and secretary of the Plymouth Institution, an educational, library and philosophical organisation in Plymouth.  Woolcombe was a leader of radical thought. Octavius Place was named after Carrington's brother.

William Molesworth

The next street is Buller Street. Charles Buller was the MP who accompanied his friend Lambton to Canada in 1837 as his secretary, and who wrote the "Durham Report". Lambton Quay in Wellington is named after his friend, who was Chair of the New Zealand Company which founded that city.

Then comes Molesworth Street, which is now part of State Highway 44. William Molesworth was another MP who was a company director. Like Woolcombe, he was a radical thinker; so much so no man in his right mind would allow him to court a daughter.

The next street is Gill Street.  Tom Gill is the man who was mayor of Plymouth in 1836, and the owner of the wharf installations at the harbour there. If you wanted to embark on a ship leaving Plymouth you had to use Gill's facilities and pay a fee for them, so he was a key man to have on the Board!