The Jennings: Early Settlers of Nelson and Motueka

Why would a London lawyer, a gentleman apparently without means, bring his attractive young wife and two children to a remote settlement at Motueka, New Zealand to take up farming, face near starvation and become embroiled in controversies of colonisation over roading, personal debts, education and the church?

David and Maria Jennings came from middleclass English families, owning property in London and Kent. David was a solicitor and a member of the ancient Draper’s Company, unfortunately, he got into debt and to evade the English insolvency laws, with the assistance of his family escaped to France then to emigrate secretly from Gravesend aboard the New Zealand Company barque, the Mary, landing in Nelson, New Zealand in February 1849, with his family but with no capital.

They initially lived in the Moutere House on Grove Farm, then moved to Motueka into the Rev. H.F. Butt’s house before obtaining their own land in the remote area of Pangatotara and moving into a canvas roofed house that they called Fernhurst.

Historians have not been kind to David, labelling him one of Nelson’s early eccentrics, however he was one of few educated early settlers, contributing significantly to the early colonisation of the Nelson Province.