Fraser brothers’ later property transactions
The National Library’s catalogue for a set of conveyances lists a 1865 document between Thomas and Alexander Fraser and William Bowler. Alongside the brothers’ Kāpiti whaling accounts, this creates a possible paper trail from the 1840s trading economy into later Porirua and Wellington property transactions. The legal instrument itself must be read before identifying the property, consideration or relationship to earlier land dealings.
Understanding the earlier whaling economy
The Fraser name belongs to a period when Kāpiti whaling combined maritime enterprise with onshore supply, employment and credit. The Long Point station returns give a sense of that changing economy: forty-four tuns of oil in 1840, 172 in 1841, and seven in 1842. Later property transactions should be understood as a separate phase in the documentary record; the station’s production figures do not by themselves establish the terms or motives of those later dealings.
Further reading: Nigel Prickett, The Archaeology of New Zealand Shore Whaling (2002), Kāpiti–Mana section, pp. 83–97.
Explore connected books
Explore connected history
- Fraser brothers remembered in Wellington street-name history
- Alexander Fraser 1840 station accounts
- Alexander Fraser testifies about Kāpiti whaling contracts
- Fraser’s Long Point accounts reveal workforce turnover
- Fraser’s Long Point station: an account book opens a lost world
- Owen Mapp’s Ocean Balance and its Kāpiti provenance question
- John Webber’s Queen Charlotte Sound print as a maritime comparison
Follow this history into other books
Continue with these connected accounts. Each opens a separate book with its own evidence and perspective.