Stamps

Lot 3915    Session 12 (11.30am Thursday)    Stamps

Estimate $1,500
Bid at live.noble.com.au

NEW ZEALAND, postal history, Russell cover and letter, with a charge of 6d, fixed with crowned postmark, dated Aug 17, 1835 to addressee Gilbert Mair at Whangarei, from Charles Baker of Tolaga Bay, New Zealand. Very fine.

Gilbert Mair (Peterhead, Scotland, 23 May 1799 - Whangarei, 16 July 1857) was a sailor and a merchant trader who visited New Zealand for the first time when he was twenty, and lived there from 1824 till his death. He married Elizabeth Gilbert Puckey. They had twelve children. Among them were ’famous New Zealanders’ like Captain Gilbert Mair and Major William Gilbert Mair. Gilbert Mair senior was ’present at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and he and his family were acquainted with many of the noted men who visited the Bay of Islands’. Reverend Charles Baker (1803 - 1875) was a lay minister and member of the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.) in New Zealand in the early and middle 19th century, and one the first Europeans to be fluent in the Maori language. He was born in Yorkshire, Great Britain, and was trained in agricultural and industrial pursuits. Upon the death of his first wife, he entered the C.M.S. College at Islington. With the second Mrs. Baker, and the daughter of the first marriage, he landed at the Bay of Islands on 9 June, 1828. He was stationed first at Kerikeri and then at Russell (Kororarika). The building of the historic church in Russell was due to the efforts of Charles Baker, and was probably completed in late 1834, or early 1835. On Christmas Day, 1835, Charles Darwin (the eminent naturalist) and Captain Fitzroy (of H.M.S. Beagle and, later, successor to Governor Hobson) attended a service conducted by Mr. Baker and made donations towards the cost of the church. Later, Mr Baker had built the first printing press in New Zealand. In the temporary absence of the Rev. H. Williams, Charles Baker played a not unimportant part in making the arrangements ashore for the proclamation of British sovereignty over New Zealand. Lieutenant-Governor Hobson requested him to have copies printed of an invitation to the chiefs to meet him, and arranged with him to send messengers to deliver them. He also sought permission to use the church on the occasion of the reading of the official documents relating to his appointment. Archdeacon Williams, who initially was in sole charge of missionary work on the East Coast of the North Island, wrote on May 15th, 1843, that in August, 1842, it had been decided that Mr. C. Baker, who had been at Waikare, Bay of Islands, should be placed at Tolaga Bay. Whilst he was at Tolaga Bay his family of nine was increased on 11 April, 1843, by the birth of a son, Henry Williams, who might have been the first Caucasian boy born at Uawa, and on 3 September, 1844, by the arrival of another daughter, Charlotte Elizabeth, who might have been the first Caucasian girl born there. In the 1860s he returned to Auckland; Mr. Baker paid regular visits to the stockades, the gaol, and the hospital and to the hulks on which rebel prisoners were being detained. He died on 15 February, 1875.