This site began life as a tool for an ungrateful daughter who wanted to make sure 
that the information I had in shoe boxes was not destroyed after my passing by our 
equally ungrateful son who intended throwing my precious possessions into the rubbish 
tin. Since that beginning it has sort of grown and in no small part thanks to the 
efforts of cousins,family and fellow travellers on the internet who have built it. 
One just hopes our grand children and great grand children will get to use it and 
expand it.
Since it started we have managed to build a pretty convincing case built on 
compelling circumstantial evidence that those of us with Meredith blood racing around 
our veins are indeed the rightful heirs to the Kingdom of Corsica and further more 
will,if asked,take up our rightful place at the King's side when our great great  
great and lots more greats cousin William Wales takes up the throne of England. Of 
that whole saga the most poignant and tragic story is the life and times of 
 Honora De Burgo(Burke) who was the mother of Jane Sarsfield,wife of our good friend 
the King of Corsica. 
This is also the life and times of a number of pioneer families in New Zealand. Of  
John Guilford who arrived just after the first four ships into Christchurch and his 
son's whose legacy is the settlement of South Canterbury,Inland Taranaki and the 
Wanganui region. You won't find too many multi millionaires here but you will find 
the folk who populated the heartland of New Zealand,built the infrastructure, raised 
their families and gave their sons for the Queen's and King's wars. You will meet the 
descendants of a number of people who came to New Zealand as soldiers to fight in the 
New Zealand wars. Theodore John Meredith to the Waikato, Alexander Golding to 
Taranaki,and William Higginson who came with Meredith and wound up marrying his 
sister.George Lovett Merediths father in law came to Auckland as a fencible,these 
families were the backbone of the Auckland settlement. This is the story of the main 
trunk railway line and Alexander Whisker who drove the first train over the central 
high country viaducts and the Meredith's who built the bridges and tunnels.
You will meet Thomas Blick who is regarded as the father of New Zealand's wool 
weaving industry who came in almost as a refugee from unbelievably difficult times in 
the Gloucestershire wool weaving mills. He brought a significant sized family, his 
sister and her husband Thomas Harman who has outperformed all these supermen 
producing the largest(and brightest)descendants listed here. He arrived in Nelson 
just after the settlement was established and his children married into just about 
every pioneer that arrived there. If you took his descendants out of the Nelson and 
Motueka cemeteries there would be no reason to keep them open.You will meet the 
Schwass family that married into both the Harman and the Guilford families and the 
Cross family who did exactly the same thing. The Bouzaid family from Lebanon went to 
the Wairarapa as the poorest of poor immigrants prospered and married their offspring 
into the local families including the Guilford's.Then there is Kate Lynch who came to 
New Zealand as an indentured servant girl, wound up married to James Guilford a few 
weeks later and died in childbirth with her twelfth child in her early 30's. She had 
been in the old Wanganui cemetery,in an unmarked grave untill she was discovered by 
her grandchildren who gave her the headstone featured on this site.Everything you 
want is here.Drama, pathos, human tragedy, comedy, and perhaps a sprinkling of good 
old fashioned bull's excrement.
That makes us genuine sons of the pioneers and if you,yes you,have an untold story 
to tell or a photograph to contribute, don't hesitate do it now.

Keep Well


Peter Harman  P O Box 79 072 Royal Heights Waitakere 0656 New Zealand 
Phone 09 833 8991 peter@gfb.co.nz