By Roselyn Fauth
Monument to Jeanie Collier. Located in a paddock on the south side of Horseshoe Bend road, Otaio. Jeanie was the first recorded woman runholder in New Zealand. She took up land in Otaio to provide her orphaned nephews with occupations. Aoraki Heritage Collection. https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/3880
My dad sent me a link the other day and asked if I had heard of Jeanie Collier. Her name rang a bell, but I had to admit it had been a while since I had thought about her. I knew she was an early farmer, one of those names that lingers in the background of South Canterbury’s story, but gosh, what a fascinating woman she was. You can even find her monument tucked away in a reserve of gum trees. She was a pioneering runholder, recognised as New Zealand’s first recorded woman to be granted her own pastoral land. And she was born around 1791!
So this is what I have learned about Jeanie. A woman ahead of her time...
Jeanie Collier was born in Monimail, Fife, Scotland, probably in 1791 or 1792. Her father, Robert Collier, had been a soldier in the 94th Regiment of Foot, serving in Holland, and her mother, Antonia Ewing, came from Yorkshire. She was one of seven children.
As a young woman, Jeanie lived with her family at Ardock Cottage in Cardross, a village on the west coast of Scotland, situated on the northern shore of the River Clyde. Later, she had her own household at Baile Bruiche in Dunoon, on the Cowal Peninsula. These are places of rugged beauty—green hills dropping into wide estuaries and sea lochs, with a sense of distance from the bustle of Edinburgh or Glasgow. It feels fitting somehow that Jeanie grew up in landscapes defined by their remoteness and sea connections, before she embarked on her extraordinary journey to New Zealand.
She remained unmarried, which in her time would have been unusual, but it may have given her a kind of independence that would shape her life.
In 1854, after her widowed sister Leslie Thomson died, Jeanie, then in her early 60s, gathered three of her sister’s orphaned teenage sons and decided to start over in New Zealand. Their names were Leslie, James Elliot, and Andrew. Her younger brother James, described unkindly in the records of the time as “backward”, came too. Jeanie not only managed her own affairs but also his, even arranging an annuity for him later in life. The eldest nephew, Robert James, was deliberately left behind because of what Jeanie described as his “dissolute habits”. That must have been a difficult choice, and I wonder how she felt making it.
New Zealand in Jeanie’s time
When Jeanie arrived in New Zealand in 1854, the country was still in its infancy as a British colony. The Treaty of Waitangi had been signed just 14 years earlier, in 1840. There were only about 30,000 Europeans and roughly 60,000 Māori, most of them living in North Island settlements.
The Canterbury settlement had only been established in 1850, centred around Christchurch. South Canterbury was sparsely populated: there was no Timaru township yet, just a coastal landing serviced by surfboats, rough tracks, and scattered sheep stations. George Rhodes’s station at The Levels was one of the nearest established properties, and it was on his bullock dray that Jeanie was transported south to her runs.
The Provincial government had only just begun in 1853, and New Zealand held its first parliamentary session in 1854, the same year Jeanie arrived. Queen Victoria was on the throne, and it was very much the Victorian era, defined by ideas of self-reliance, industriousness, and empire.
This was also a time of contested land in the South Island. Ōtaia, where Jeanie settled, sat within NgāiTahu territory. Large land purchases like Kemp’s Deed (1848) were reshaping the region, often controversially. In 1879, decades after Jeanie’s death, the Smith-Nairn Commission of Inquiry documented Ōtaia as a kāingamahinga kai—a traditional food-gathering place where aruhe (fernroot), kāuru (cabbage tree root), and tuna (eels) were collected.
Everyday colonial life was harsh. There were no railways (Christchurch and Timaru wouldn’t be connected by rail until 1876), roads were rutted tracks, and goods came by sea or bullock dray. Early settlers lived in slab huts or tents and relied on open fires, homegrown food, and their own labour. It is in this world—remote, raw, and challenging—that Jeanie began again.
Crossing the world for a fresh start
I keep picturing Jeanie setting out on that voyage, already in her sixties, responsible for three boys and her brother, sailing into the unknown. What must it have felt like to leave behind everything familiar for the raw beginnings of colonial New Zealand?
When she arrived in Timaru, she travelled south on George Rhodes’s bullock dray, bumping along rough coastal tracks, before turning inland guided only by prominent landmarks in the west. Rhodes is a familiar figure from my other research—he and his brothers established The Levels sheep run in 1851, building a simple cottage near the shoreline where the Timaru Landing Services Building stands today. Later, when they shifted inland near Pleasant Point, Samuel and Ann Williams moved into that cottage. Ann became the first recorded mother of a European child born in Timaru.
It is striking to see how these pioneering families overlapped: Elizabeth Rhodes (George’s wife) gave birth at The Levels, Margaret Hornbrook at Arowhenua, and Ann Williams in Timaru, each within just a few years of each other. I find myself wondering: did these women know each other? Did they share visits, advice, or help, or were their lives so isolated that such companionship was rare? The distances were small by today’s standards, but in those early years, before proper roads or bridges, they may as well have been worlds apart.
Her new home was Ōtaia, a farming locality on the coastal plain between the Ōtaia and Makikihi Rivers, about 24 kilometres south-west of Timaru. The river takes its name from Ōtaia, a passenger on the Ārai-te-uru waka which capsized off Matakaea (Shag Point) on the Otago coast. After the capsize, Ōtaia came ashore to explore but did not return to the waka before daylight and was transformed into a feature of the landscape.
During the 1879 Smith-Nairn Commission of Inquiry into NgāiTahu claims, local kaumātuaRāwiriTe Maire and TeMaiharoa described Ōtaia as a kāingamahinga kai—a place for gathering aruhe (bracken fernroot), kāuru (tīkouka/cabbage tree root), and tuna (eels). Learning this adds such depth: it reminds me that Jeanie’s story sits within a landscape rich in much older histories and traditions.
At first she slept in a tent, and only later moved into a slab hut thatched with tussock. One morning she woke to find her nightcap frozen to her pillow, a detail that made me shiver just thinking about it. The nearest neighbours were ten miles away.
Waimate. NZ Heritage Maps Platform, accessed 02/08/2025, https://maps.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/1046
A practical woman with vision
In November 1854, Jeanie applied for two pastoral runs covering 57,000 acres between the Ōtaia and Hook Rivers. Her pastoral licences, issued in February 1855, charged £7 2s. 6d. annually and were calculated to support over 7,000 sheep each. This was no small enterprise. She later purchased nearby sections that became known collectively as Otaio Station and transferred one run to her nephew Leslie in 1856 to establish him on the land.
Despite her age, she managed the station capably. She later went blind, but even then she continued to oversee finances and advise her nephews. In time, her widowed sister Margaret Hyde and nephew George Hyde came to live at Otaio, offering companionship in that lonely place. I picture her sitting in that little hut, listening to the wind in the tussock and the sound of stock outside, guiding her family with calm practicality.
1913 Otaio Station homestead Waimate Museum and Archives P7367. You can’t visit her house, but you can visit the historic reserve marking her burial site on Horse Shoe Bend Road, Otaio—her grave is marked by a headstone and gum trees in a paddock reserve to the south of the road. The location of Otaio Station homestead around 1913 is recorded in photography collections, but that house was built decades after Jeanie’s passing and is no longer standing.
Why I find her fascinating
The more I read about Jeanie, the more I see why she stands out. She was a groundbreaker: New Zealand’s first recorded female runholder, running thousands of acres in her own name when women rarely held property. She uprooted her life in her sixties and started fresh in a place most would have considered harsh and inhospitable.
I find myself thinking about those little details—her nightcap frozen to her pillow, her stick marking her chosen grave. These are such ordinary images, but they hold extraordinary strength. She lived with grit and practicality, the kind of determination that feels timeless.
What also fascinates me is how her story shines a light on women’s hidden contributions. So many women of her time worked alongside men but never had their names recorded. Jeanie’s name survived because she legally held land, but I wonder how many other women were just as capable but have been forgotten.
Her courage inspires me. She took three teenagers and a dependent brother across the world, secured their future through sheer will, and carved out a home in the wilderness. Even when blindness set in and her world must have felt so small, she kept going. She was steady and determined in a way that feels incredibly modern, and I think that is what makes her so remarkable.
Her chosen resting place
One story I love is how she picked her own grave. One day she walked out to a gentle slope near a creek, stuck her walking stick into the ground and said, “When I die, this is where I wish to be buried.” When she passed away on 16 September 1861, her family honoured her wish. Nearly a century later, in 1955, a headstone was erected there in a grove of gum trees on Horse Shoe Bend Road, Otaio.
Standing there now must feel like stepping back into her world. I wonder who visited her grave in those first years. Did her nephews come to remember her? Did Margaret stand there, reflecting on her sister’s grit? And decades later, who was it that cared enough to see that her grave was marked properly?
Legacy and layered history
In her last years, Jeanie had, in spite of her age, capably managed both money and land. Yet, within a few years of her death, her nephews had sold all the land she had worked so hard to secure for them. Leslie and Andrew failed financially in the 1860s and left New Zealand, while James Elliot remained.
I find this bittersweet. Her sacrifices built opportunities that did not last beyond a generation, but her story continues to ripple forward. She inspires me because she reminds us how history is not only about grand figures, but about ordinary people who acted decisively and left lasting marks.
Jeanie Collier may not have been famous, but her life shows what it means to be resilient, practical, and bold—and it also reminds me that settler stories sit within a landscape already rich with Māori history and meaning. Acknowledging both stories together makes her place in history feel even more human and connected.
Next time I am near Otaio, I will go to her grave, stand beneath those gum trees, and think about her courage and quiet determination, and about all the histories woven through that whenua long before her.
A personal side quest: Holland, Scotland, and family threads
Now remember how I like a good side quest… well, Holland perked my ears up because I’m half Dutch, and after my sister recently did a DNA ancestry search, we discovered we have a lot of Scottish blood running through our veins too. That mix of Scottish and Dutch heritage suddenly made sense in a new way. I’d never really connected the waves of Scottish emigrants to New Zealand with my own genealogy until recently. So, here’s a little side quest to explore why Robert Collier – Jeanie’s father – was in Holland.
Robert had served in the 94th Regiment of Foot during a turbulent time in Europe, when Britain was sending troops to support the Dutch and their allies against French control. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Holland was strategically vital, with its ports and proximity to Britain making it a focal point of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Early on, British soldiers like Robert fought alongside the Dutch against France, but when the French invaded and established the Batavian Republic in 1795, Britain’s campaigns shifted to trying to liberate the Netherlands and restore the Dutch royal House of Orange.
The Napoleonic Wars reshaped Britain profoundly. They lasted over two decades, placing immense strain on the economy, fuelling taxes, and forcing the nation to mobilise on an unprecedented scale. Nearly every British family was touched by war, whether through military service, the loss of loved ones, or the rising cost of food caused by blockades and trade disruption. Scotland, in particular, contributed disproportionately to the army and navy, with Highland regiments gaining fame in battles across Europe. These wars also spurred industrial growth and innovations at home, as the demands of warfare accelerated shipbuilding, iron production, and textiles – industries that would later underpin Britain’s colonial expansion.
Did the UK win? Yes... well, ultimately, Britain and its allies defeated Napoleon. Britain’s naval power prevented invasion, most notably at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), and its funding of European coalitions kept resistance alive. British troops, led by the Duke of Wellington, played a crucial role in the Peninsular War (1808–1814), weakening Napoleon’s forces. After his failed invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon’s army crumbled, and in 1815 at Waterloo, Wellington’s army – with Prussian support – delivered the final blow. Napoleon was exiled to St Helena, and Britain emerged victorious, cementing its status as the world’s leading power and setting the stage for its 19th-century global dominance.
This period is fascinating for its deep Scottish connections, too. Many regiments, including the 94th, were heavily Scottish in composition. Scots had longstanding ties to the Netherlands dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when Scottish soldiers served as mercenaries in Dutch armies, merchants traded through Dutch ports, and religious refugees found sanctuary there. These cross-cultural links meant that by Robert’s time, Scottish soldiers marching through Dutch towns were retracing paths forged by earlier generations.
It’s a reminder of how intertwined these histories were and how those entanglements later echoed all the way to colonial New Zealand, carried in the lives of emigrants like Robert’s descendants. Knowing this deepens my connection to Jeanie’s story: her journey from Scotland to New Zealand was part of a much larger tapestry, woven across continents, wars, and migrations that ultimately shaped both her world and my own ancestry.
This is me, Roselyn Fauth, with my Uncle Gerd Jan Roos, on the island of Texel, Netherlands—famous for its sheep and port. Abel Tasman once moored his ships here. Behind their house is a fort built for Napoleon, part of the coastal defences intended to guard against a potential British invasion.
Fort de Schans, located in Oudeschild on Texel, was originally built in 1574 by William of Orange to control ships entering the Marsdiep channel. During the Dutch Golden Age, it also served as a prison and court for mutiny cases, with executions carried out within its walls. In 1811, Napoleon Bonaparte visited the fort and ordered it to be expanded and reinforced, adding two flanking forts: Fort Lunette (700m east) and Fort Redoute (400m west). He returned later that year to inspect their progress. Over time, the fort declined, its stones repurposed for houses in Oudeschild, and in the 1930s parts were even excavated to strengthen local dikes.
After Napoleon’s defeat and the collapse of his empire in 1813–1815, aided by British forces that included Scottish regiments, French troops withdrew from the Netherlands. Texel and its fortifications returned to Dutch control under the newly established United Kingdom of the Netherlands. With Napoleon gone and Britain no longer an enemy, the strategic importance of Texel diminished.
References
Graham, Philippa. (1990). Jeanie Collier – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1c24/collier-jeanie
Jeanie Collier – Infinite Women. Licensed by Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage (CC BY-NC 3.0 NZ): https://www.infinite-women.com/women/jeanie-collier/
Jeanie Collier – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanie_Collier
Kā Huru Manu – NgāiTahu Cultural Mapping Project: https://kahurumanu.co.nz/atlas
Waimate District Heritage Map – Recollect: https://maps.recollect.co.nz/
Two Women of the Victorian Era: Worlds Apart
A portrait of Queen Victoria from a photograph album featuring assorted historical scenes related to British history, circa 1890. South Canterbury Museum: 2019/002.11
Although Jeanie Collier and Queen Victoria lived in the same century, their worlds could not have been more different. When Jeanie was carving out a home in the wild tussock plains of Ōtaia, Victoria sat on the throne of an empire that stretched across the globe. Yet they were both women navigating a time when societal expectations for women were rigid and opportunities limited.
Victoria wielded power through her role as monarch, symbolising stability and authority in an age of industrial progress and imperial expansion. Jeanie, by contrast, embodied a quieter kind of strength: practical, resilient, and rooted in the daily realities of survival and hard work.
One lived in palaces, surrounded by ceremony, while the other slept in a slab hut, woke with her nightcap frozen to her pillow, and personally managed sheep runs in one of the most isolated corners of the world. Their lives were separated by class and circumstance, yet both demonstrated determination in a period where women were rarely celebrated for independence or leadership.