John McGlashan

John McGlashan was the Otago scheme’s chief organiser and promoter. He was born in Edinburgh in 1802 and attended the University of Edinburgh before qualifying as a solicitor in 1824. Three years later he married Isabella McEwen; they were to have four sons and six daughters together.

John was hard of hearing, a handicap that prevented him from undertaking court work. He made up for it by his writing on legal subjects, which established his reputation and brought him work in the Sheriff’s Court as a commissioner of proofs. He was an enthusiastic churchman who embraced the Free Church cause in 1843. He was also keen on the idea of a Free Church colony in New Zealand and became secretary of the Otago Association in 1847.

From then until the Association’s demise in 1852, John McGlashan was the Otago settlement scheme’s chief booster and administrator. As Secretary, he was responsible for all of the machinery of promotion, recruitment, and the organisation of ships to go to Otago. He ran the operation from his law office at 27 South Hanover Street in Edinburgh, working on his own with a couple of clerks. The office was open 10 hours per day (presumably excluding Sunday). All of the Scottish emigrants who travelled to Otago in these years had to arrange their passages via McGlashan’s office. He worked hard to promote the scheme, publishing thousands of pamphlets and delivering hundreds of talks, albeit with limited success.

The viability of the Otago emigration scheme depended on land sales. But the Association consistently failed to meet its sales targets and by 1850 it had only sold some 12,000 acres for £24,000 instead of the projected 60,000 acres for £120,500. It had also overspent the income raised by £27,000. This sounded the death knell for its partnership with the London-based New Zealand Company, which folded at this point, its assets and liabilities being taken over by the British Government. The last migrant ship organised by McGlashan was the Phoebe Dunbar which set sail in early 1850. The Otago Association limped on until 1852 before it too was wound up. McGlashan then took ship himself and joined the settlers in Otago, arriving on the Rajah in 1853.

McGlashan quickly became a key figure in the settlement. By 1854 he had been appointed provincial treasurer and solicitor and a year later he was elected to the Provincial Council. In 1858 he became deputy superintendent of the province. His public reputation was tarnished by the financial scandal that brought down James Macandrew’s superintendency in 1861. McGlashan had been careless in his administration of the provincial accounts and his ineptitude was exposed by Macandrew’s misdeeds. However, he retained various official positions until his death in a riding accident in 1864. John McGlashan College, Dunedin’s Presbyterian boys’ school, is named in his honour, founded in 1918 from a bequest to the Church by McGlashan’s daughters.