Are you planning to join us in Mosgiel? 

Reminder, please get your registrations for the Mosgiel AGM and Gathering in by the 15^th February! That is only 9 days away but essential for some of the booking confirmations required. Payment is not required until 27^th February.

If you are posting your registration, please email us on lindajmac49@gmail.com or txt to 021 816 881 as the mail these days can take around 2 weeks to arrive.

Did any of your ancestors arrive into Otago on the Philip Laing or the John Wickliffe?  

Come with us on Saturday afternoon, 28th March to learn more.

Dunedin and Mosgiel were founded as part of a planned Scottish settlement, but Europeans had been around Otago earlier as sealers and whalers, but these were mostly in temporary or semi-permanent settlements, not towns.

Long before any ‘town’ existed, Ngai Tahu were the tangata whenua of the area.

The first planned European settlers arrived in Dunedin in 1848 as part of the Otago Association, backed by the Free Church of Scotland. Significant early leaders include Captain William Cargill, and the Rev Thomas Burns, nephew of Robbie Burns, and the person who named Mosgiel, after his family farm of Mossgiel in Scotland.

Those early settlers arrived on the ships John Wickliffe and Philip Laing, landing in Otago Harbour. Together they carried about 347 settlers.

Dunedin is the Scots Gaelic name for Edinburgh. Those early settlers were largely Scottish Presbyterian, arriving as families with the intention of permanent settlement.

Soon after Dunedin was settled, Mosgiel followed as part of the settlement of the Taieri Plains, which were ideal for farming. Mosgiel became one of Otago’s earliest farming communities, forming the agricultural backbone of Dunedin, becoming Dunedin’s food basket.

Records of those early settlers are included in the information available in Toitu, the Otago Settlers Museum. Portraits of many of them adorn the walls there, along with a great digital search system.

Most Otago MacKenzies came from the Highlands of Scotland, many were farming families displaced by the Highland Clearances, many were deliberately by the Otago Association.

As part of the Saturday afternoon heritage bus tour, learn more about the contribution those early settlers made to Dunedin, Mosgiel, and the wider Otago region.

We hope you can make it!

Linda and Ian MacKenzie

Organisers