Henry Levestam
New Zealand politician

Henry Augustus Levestam (1833 – 11 February 1889) was a 19th-century Member of Parliament from Nelson, New Zealand.
Early life
He was born in Böel, Schleswig-Holstein, when it was still part of Denmark in 1833, the son of Doctor Arnold Levestam and Henriette Fraenckel. Levestam's grandfather Matthias Levestam was born Moses Salomon Levi. In 1809 he was baptised in Moscow and took a new name.
Career
Levestam served his time at a Copenhagen engineering business. He then moved to London where he continued his mechanical studies. In about 1855 he sailed on the steam ship Lord Ashley as second engineer. The ship was one of the fleet belonging to New Zealand Steam Shipping Company. He was transferred to the Airedale and sailed on her until he settled in Nelson.
He married Elizabeth Hargreaves, the daughter of one of Nelson's pioneer settlers in January 1861.
The public source identifies “Henry Levestam” as new Zealand politician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Henry, Levestam and Zealand.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16062643. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1833, 1889, 1809 and 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Levestam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.