This web site will initially be hosted by Kath Hansen who, together with husband Stan was co-organiser of the 175th anniversary celebrations 1989-90. The web site will be updated from time to time and we welcome your comments on the content. If any errors occur, it will probably be my fault in which case I will hasten to make amends if I'm made aware of them. Please use the E-MAIL US form on the last page.
The first image shows a 1969 view of the Marsden Cross, Oihi, erected 1907.
This second image shows the King Memorial, Oihi, erected 1971, by the descendants of John and Hannah King.
It is positioned, more or less, on the hillside where the first mission houses were built and where the first European cemetery was located.
Three days after arriving in the Bay, Rev Samuel Marsden held the first Christmas Day service on New Zealand soil and preached to European and Maori alike who had assembled on the slopes of Oihi under the shadow of Chief Ruatara's pa at Rangihoua.
The Hansen Memorial, erected in 1991 at Oihi by descendants of Thomas and Elizabeth Hansen and unveiled by Governor General Dame Catherine Tizard.
The three original missionary families, Hall, Kendall and King, together with Thomas Hansen and his mother, Hannah, lived in a temporary, native style 'long house' until more permanent houses could be built. Here, in February 1815, Hannah King (nee Hansen) gave birth to Thomas Holloway King, the first European child to be born in New Zealand.
Thomas also died here, less than four years later and was the first European child to be buried in New Zealand's first European cemetery.
The first CMS settlement of Rangihoua, (pictured at top of this page) was the venue for a remarkable number of 'firsts' in New Zealand's history. Prior to the arrival of Marsden's mission group in 1814, modern day Russell, or Kororareka as it was known in olden days, was considered to be the first place settled by the Europeans. But the itinerant sealers and whalers who visited that port had no wives or children with them.
In 1806, the Venus dropped off two female escaped convicts from New South Wales plus a child but one woman died in the Bay of Islands and the other one was said to have left on another ship.