Robert Arthur Lawson, 1833–1902
Trained as an architect in Scotland, Robert Lawson came to Dunedin in 1862 after winning a competition to design Dunedin’s First Church. Both the Greek classicism of 19th-century Scottish architecture and Scottish vernacular elements can be seen in many of his buildings.
Learn more at the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
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Elizabeth Mackay, 1842/1847?–1897
Elizabeth Mackay arrived in Lyttelton in 1863, only to lose her infant son in the immigration barracks. But eight children survived her when she died in 1897, after living on remote sheep stations and then on a family farm in South Canterbury.
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James Mackenzie, 1820?–?
Accused of stealing sheep, but pardoned after being imprisoned, James Mackenzie was a focus of resentment against Canterbury’s powerful landholding élite. He is one of New Zealand’s few folk heroes.
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Norman McLeod, 1778/1779?–1866
Norman McLeod’s life has a legendary quality. He was already in his 70s when he led a party of Scots from Nova Scotia, where he had been living since 1817, on an epic journey that ended at Northland’s Waipū.
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John Cathcart Wason, 1848/1849?–1921
A relative latecomer among the Scots who became large South Island landowners, John Cathcart Wason reached Canterbury in 1868, naming the run he bought ‘Corwar’, after his Ayrshire birthplace.
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