History

Nathaniel Wilson

Nathaniel Wilson, founder of the Warkworth Cement Works and thus a major employer in the district for some 40 years, was my great-great grandfather. While we have heard much about the cement works, I thought it would be interesting to hear about the man himself.

Nathaniel arrived in New Zealand as a six-year-old, with his Scottish parents, William and Isabella, on the vessel Duchess of Argyle, in 1842. A gruelling voyage of almost four months on which his younger brother William died and brother James was born. The family originally settled in Auckland, with his father working as a blacksmith for the Permanent Forces. Moving within a few years to work at the copper mine on Kawau Island, here brother John was born. Then back to Auckland again, where Nathaniel became apprenticed to a shoemaker.

Between this time, and the time the family moved to Warkworth in 1858, Nathaniel spent two years on the Ballarat gold fields. The family bought 130 acres, just to the south of Warkworth, on what was then the main road north (now Wilson Road), building two houses with businesses attached – William and son, James, with a blacksmith business and Nathaniel with a shoemaker’s business. Nathaniel would tramp the district doing shoe repairs – crossing the Mahurangi River at the bottom of Wilson Road and tramping the 15 miles to the Mahurangi Heads settlement, visiting families on the way. The Snell family at Long Bay (now Snells Beach) was one of these and here he met

Florence Snell, whom he married in 1863 – they had 10 children over the next 20 years, one of whom was my grandmother, Isabella.

Nathaniel was a red head with blue eyes, always a gentleman. He liked things fair and above board. My father remembered him as treating all ages and people as equals. In the 1860s, his health deteriorated, and