John Johnston (New Zealand politician)
New Zealand politician, born 1809
John Johnston (23 July 1809 – 16 November 1887) was a Scottish-born New Zealand politician and businessman. He was a prominent Member of the New Zealand Legislative Council and the founder of the stock and station agency mercantile house known as Johnston & Co.
Biography
Johnston, whose name was also spelt Johnstone, was born in Ayrshire south-west Scotland in 1809, the son of Robert Johnstone, of the Ayrshire branch of Clan Johnstone of Annandale, and his wife Mary (née Woods). In 1838, he married Henrietta Charlotte Hatton, who was a devout Roman Catholic. He arrived with his family in Wellington from London via Nelson on 3 January 1843 on the Prince of Wales. He travelled with his wife, their two sons Walter Woods and Sydney and their daughter Agnes Mary who was born during the journey. He was of Presbyterian background, but his children were brought up in their mother's Catholic faith.
In the early 1840s, he founded the large mercantile house and stock and station agency known as Johnston and Co. and continued to take an active part until 1878, when he retired from business, leaving the company in the hands of his sons: the Hon. Walter Johnston who, like his father, was an ex-Minister, and the Hon.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Johnston (New Zealand politician)” 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.