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Allan Charles O’Neil was one of the early European colonialists, an Irish immigrant who arrived in New Zealand in 1842, and surveyed the North Shore on behalf of the government.
He was a member of the Auckland Provincial Council and settled in Devonport peninsula.
The eldest son of Allan, John Henry O’Neil was also a surveyor who settled in Waitakere in 1878, after a stint in the Thames goldfields. He was on the Waitakerei Road Board for five years, a member of the Waitemata Licensing Committee and twice chairman of the Waitemata Country Council.
Samuel Taylor was born in July 1829 in the parish of Sakenham in Hertford, a rural area where Sam’s future would have been as a farm labourer or in the army. When he was 18, Samuel enlisted for the 58th Rutlandshire Regiment of Foot on 24 June 1848, stationed at Chatham in Kent. In May 1849 Samuel left for New Read more...
The Teirney family was another pioneer family who came to Swanson in the mid 1880s under the homestead settlement scheme. The family left Ireland as O’ Tierney, arriving in Auckland on the Waitangi in 1874. Laurence Teirney went to work as a groom on the Dilworth Estate, living in Wakefield Street in the city. When he and wife Bridget moved Read more...
On 25 October 1907 John Guy bought a property of 26 acres 3 perches on the east corner of Great North Road and Cemetery Road, Swanson (now Swanson Road and O’Neill’s Road). The previous owner, James Smith, had been a gardener at Mansion House, Kawau Island. When John Guy took over the property, established shelter belts of pinus maritina and Read more...
Swanson still feels like an unique place within Auckland and has a strong sense of community. Read more...
Mr Church ran a dinkum store, which was also known as Church’s Cash Store. There is reference to this store in the Women’s Institute minutes of 16 October 1930 when the following supplies were noted for the Mad Hatters Ball: Leg of mutton, Calverts; Tomatoes & Lettuce, Mrs Winters; 1lb of tea, Miss Guy; large loaves/4lbs butter, Corey & Thompson; Read more...
‘Honest Willie Swanson’ tried his hand at many things and perhaps his proudest achievement, although now largely forgotten, was his contribution to writing the revolutionary Education Act of 1877. In the name of that far-sighted Act of Parliament, New Zealand led the world with education that was “free, secular and compulsory”. It even paved the way for women and Maori Read more...