This memorial was ordered in 1850, two years after William Wakefield, the younger brother of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, died. William had assisted Edward Gibbon in the abduction of Ellen Turner, for which both were imprisoned, and had supported his brother's vision for colonies in the New World by becoming the principal agent of the New Zealand Company. He was a leader of the company settlement in Wellington. The memorial to William Wakefield languished in a yard for some years until it was finally erected at Wellington's Basin Reserve in 1882. The ideas of the Wakefield family had a strong impact upon the early European community of New Zealand, especially in the Wakefield settlements of Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, Whanganui, Dunedin and Christchurch.