Mr and Mrs John Anderson (née Isabella Allan)

The Andersons gave their name to Andersons Bay in Dunedin, being the first Europeans to settle there. John and Isabella were Scots who had met and married in Nelson in 1844.  When they heard about the Scottish settlement being planned for Otago, they chartered the Ann and Sarah and set sail for the south with John’s father and Isabella’s sister and her husband.  After circumnavigating Otago harbour, they selected a site by the Andersons Bay inlet and pitched their tents on the shore.  Primitive whare from timber and rushes were then built and life began as pioneers waiting for the Scottish settlers to arrive.

It was to be a long wait.  Delays in Britain meant that the first ships did not set out for Otago until 1847.  John Anderson meanwhile secured work with Charles Kettle’s survey party preparing the ground in Dunedin.  Isabella became adept at shooting birds and fishing, grew vegetables, and eked out the half ton of flour she had brought down from Nelson.  She found the natural beauty of the area a delight, made friends with local Māori, visited her sister at Koputai (later Port Chalmers), and had babies.  Eventually there were to be eleven Anderson children, the first-born son later honoured as the first European child born in the district.

The Andersons moved to Port Chalmers in 1849 and then secured land at East Taieri.  They moved to Tapanui in 1857 and then purchased 630 acres at Waiwera, calling their farm ‘Kelvingrove’.  John died there in 1873 but Isabella continued farming, extending the family’s holdings into the nearby hill country. Described as ‘small and wiry’, Isabella remained active, hale and hearty until she died at ‘Kelvingrove’ in 1905 aged 79.