The Writer’s Note

This book is a memorandum of the life and work of Alexander & Sarah Williamson and their five sons, Francis, James, Henry, William and Alexander, and one daughter, Annie Maria, who survived and came to New Zealand.

While living in Warwickshire, England, Alexander bought five hundred acres of New Zealand land from the New Zealand Land Company in 1848, and sent his oldest son, Francis, then aged 18, out to New Zealand to take possession of it. The rest of the family followed three years later. They had been through much hardship and sadness while living in England, so perhaps it was not so much of a ‘gamble’ for them to decide on immigration to an almost unknown country.

In this book I have attempted to recall details of their life as clearly and as accurately as possible. I am a fourth-generation Williamson and my six grandchildren would thus be sixth-generation New Zealanders.

In my research for this book I have hunted for actual facts in order to make it a living memory, and in doing so have decided to use direct copies of diaries.

The diary of Alexander Watt Williamson, the youngest member of the family, began as entries as soon as he left school, and although it is in a very scrappy form, the facts are true in every detail. What you will read here is a direct copy from his own personal diary.

The eldest son, Francis, had diary-form notes that were meant originally to be letters to his family in England, but eventually more personal letters were sent, and most of the diary lay with his documents and personal papers.