Swanson still feels like an unique place within Auckland and has a strong sense of community. 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...
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...
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 Read more...
Nicholas and Ellen McGrath left their home in Tipperary, Ireland, to migrate to New Zealand aboard the Brodick Castle, a magnificent iron clipper ship of 1775 tons. She was on her maiden voyage when she sailed from London on 7 October 1875 for Auckland. On arrival in Auckland, the McGrath family lived in Parnell for 10 years before moving to Read more...
Thomas and Amy Kay came to their farm in Swanson from Ellerslie in June 1916. Their property was on Main Road, (now known as Waitakere Road). In later years Kay Road was named after them, but in those days was referred to as “the back road”. Weather conditions were far from idyllic when they moved, the horses and wagons were Read more...
William Hooper Hieatt and and his wife Martha left England on 25 July 1883 aboard the Doric and arrived in Auckland on 17 September 1883. William Hooper wrote an account of the journey and this diary was transcribed by his daughter Elsie (born 1893) when she was just nine years old while the family still lived at Swanson. William Hooper 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...
The construction of the Waitakere Dam in the early 1900s was another project that provided work for Swanson settlers. Many families, including the Peglers, Ashs, Taylors, and Foleys, were part of the huge labour force on this and other Waitakere watershed projects. The growing city of Auckland needed a reliable water supply and its council found a suitable site for Read more...