The portraits on this wall are of people who arrived in Otago between January 1850 and October 1857. The top row features oil paintings of wealthy settlers who arrived in this period. The photographic portraits, from the second row onwards, are arranged from left to right in a chronological sequence by their date of arrival. Husbands and wives have been kept together in this arrangement even where they arrived on different ships. In these cases the couples are positioned according to the earlier date of arrival.

The sequence starts with passengers on the Lady Nugent, a ship arranged by the Otago Association in Scotland for the New Zealand Company in 1850. The Company was a private enterprise, which had organised the Otago settlement scheme. When it collapsed in July 1850 the Otago Association carried on for a further three years before it too faded away in 1853. With little promotion of immigration in Britain, the early 1850s were years of relative stagnation for Otago. Immigrant ships were few and far between. Those who did make the journey paid their own way, as there was no assisted passage scheme.

Things began to pick up with the establishment of the Provincial Government system in 1854. In 1855 the Otago Provincial Council sent an agent to recruit migrants in Victoria, Australia. They arrived on the Gil Blas later that year. In 1856 the Council voted for an immigration fund to subsidise migration from Britain for selected immigrants. Immigrant numbers then began to climb significantly.

This is only a small sample of the Museum’s collection of settler portraits. Thousands of other portraits are kept in a special storage area. Digital access to any of these portraits is available in the Museum’s Research Centre.