Gilbert Mair (trader) - Trader

Trader

In February 1830 Gilbert Mair purchased 159 hectares (1.59 km2) of land at Te Wahapu Point, some four km south of Kororareka (nowadays Russell). This was the first of a long chain of trading ventures. He purchased the land with goods, including six muskets, many casks of gunpowder and hundreds of musket balls and flints. Here he built up a flourishing trading station. He built his home on an elevated site above the trading station. He was "one of the first to exploit the kauri gum industry, he exported gum to the United States and timber and flax to Sydney.

In that same year of settling at Te Wahapu, the so-called Girls' War broke out in Kororareka. Henry Williams tried to bring peace to the region, but an intervention by Samuel Marsden was necessary to bring peace for a short time. Seven years later the enmities re-erupted in the area. In 1840 the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi finally brought a period of peace to the country.

In 1842 Mair sold his business and property at Wahapu. In the beginning of the 1840s he had purchased 728 hectares (7.28 km2) at Whangarei. The family moved there in 1842, and lived in a house, he called "Deveron". From this base, Mair continued "active trading in a number of fields – kauri timber, kauri gum, whaling, as well as general trading and his own farming venture". In 1845 the situation again became so difficult, that Gilbert Mair asked the governor to send a vessel to take all settlers to Auckland. Mair "only had three peaceful years in his new home in Whangarei, when he and his family were driven out by hostile natives, going to Auckland for some months, then back to the Bay in 1846, finally returning to Whangarei in 1847".