The portraits on this wall are of people who arrived in Otago between January 1858 and December 1859. 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 Robert Henderson, a ship arranged by the Otago Provincial Government and including many assisted migrants. These were important years in the peopling of Otago. The subsidised fares provided through assisted passages proved attractive to the type of Scottish and English working families that Otago was looking for. Large numbers began to arrive with a steady flow of migrant ships heading for Otago for the first time since the earliest days of the settlement scheme.

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.