Dunedin’s first cabinetmaker, John Hill, arrived in Otago on the Blundell at the end of 1848. He was born in Ayr in 1817 but had trained as a furniture maker in Edinburgh and lived in Leith before emigrating. He came to Dunedin with his wife, Susan Graham, and three daughters. He began working alongside the other Scottish settlers on public works, building the jetties in Dunedin and Port Chalmers.
It wasn’t long, however, before he began working at his trade in Dunedin. One of the most memorable of his early pieces of furniture is a table and chairs on display in the next gallery. It is reputedly the first table to have been made from the native timber rimu. The wood had been grown, sawn and seasoned at Reverend Thomas Burns’ property at Grants Braes (present day Waverley). Though well made, the table and chairs are of fairly basic construction and typical of the practical furniture required in the pioneer settlement.
Hill also made the judge’s chair for the short-lived Supreme Court in Dunedin in 1850. Again, it is a rather chunky item rather than a finely crafted piece of furniture but it served its purpose and was used at the court house for many years. Hill turned his hand to many other things, proving himself to be a highly useful member of the early settlement by virtue of his versatility. As well as making furniture, for example, he could also repair watches and clocks and even made wedding rings for his fellow settlers from gold coins. This adaptability ensured that his memory was esteemed by the early settlers in after years and many pieces of his work were donated to the Museum collection.
John Hill was an Elder of First Church for much of his time in Otago and was known as a generous and liberal man. He lost his first wife in 1856 and married twice more, to Mary Dickson in 1857 and to Jane Shepherd in 1879. He died at Broad Bay in 1893, survived by his last wife and five daughters.
John Hill