Pioneers' 10,000 relatives meet

Special reunion guests included another Samuel Marsden - the great-great-great grandson of Reverend Samuel Marsden. Photo / NZME.

In the Christmas celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Reverend Samuel Marsden's missionary settlement of New Zealand, the pioneer role of Thomas and Elizabeth Hansen - New Zealand's first European non-missionary permanent settlers - barely got a mention.

With now more than 10,000 descendants, the first Hansens' place in history was acknowledged at a major reunion of about 1200 family and friends in Manukau on Friday and Saturday.

Descendants attended church at Waimate North on December 28 and planted a lemon tree at the Waimate North Mission House.

Special reunion guests included another Samuel Marsden - the great-great-great grandson of the missionary and Sydney magistrate known as the Flogging Parson because of the severe punishments he inflicted - and descendants of William Hansen, the fourth child of Thomas and Elizabeth.

Born in 1820, William Marsden moved to Australia in the 1840s and raised a large family near Rockhampton.

Thomas Hansen's father, Captain Thomas Hansen, skippered the ship Active, which brought the Rev Marsden's missionary contingent of European settlers from New South Wales to the Bay of Islands in 1814.

Young Thomas remained with the new settlement and, after returning briefly to Sydney to find a wife, was married by Marsden to Elizabeth Tollis, 17, on Christmas Day 1815.

Captain Thomas Hansen's daughter Hannah married missionary John King. They were the only missionary family to live the rest of their lives in New Zealand.

Descendants of Thomas and Elizabeth Hansen's 11 children include some well-known identities such as former Miss Universe 1983 Lorraine Downes.

Family historian Kath Hansen has published considerable information about the beginnings of the family in a series of small booklets.