In 1844 the Auckland firm of Henderson & Macfarlane swapped a ship for some 18,000 acres of land in the Whau in West Auckland. Thomas Maxwell Henderson, the senior partner and a hard-nosed Scotsmen, then proceeded to tear out the tall kauri timber from the Waitakere ranges and mill it at Henderson's Mill on Henderson Creek. After the mill closed in 1868, many came and left, but some stayed behind to build a life and eventually even a town. And that town became known as Henderson. These are their stories.
Exploring the period 1840 to 1939, in this book you will meet Thomas Henderson himself; the Macfarlanes; William Swanson; John and Helen McLeod who founded Helensville; George Thomas the blacksmith; Robert Gibbons the Whatipu mill owner; the Corban family of winegrowers; the colourful Portugese Don Buck; the strange recluse Henry Swan; Claude Brookes and his Tui Glen playground; the Henderson Mill Turf Club; the Henderson Football Club; The Henderson School; the Henderson Library; the Henderson Fire Brigade; the Falls Hotel; the Waitemata Electric Power Board; and many of the people, families and institutions of the west.
Henderson's Mill is a must-have reference work of both the history and the family names that contributed to the early district out West and the town of Henderson and its surrounding area, out as far as Helensville. It should be on every bookshelf in West Auckland.
NOTES
NOTE. p. 78. List of Trustees of the Henderson Mill Library filed in accordance with the 1875 Public Library Powers Act.
We have been advised that this list came from the MA Thesis of Glenda Northey: Northey, Glenda. Libraries in the Auckland Provincial Area, 1842 - 1919. MA theis, 1998. University of Auckland. p. 155. This attribution has been missed from the book.
The original documents themselves are held at the National Library in Auckland: Justice Department. Libraries registered under the Public Libraries Powers Act 1875, 307/64, National Archives, Auckland.
