Gilbert Mair (23 May 1799 – 16 July 1857) was a sailor and a merchant trader who visited New Zealand for the first time when he was twenty, and lived there from 1824 till his death. He married Elizabeth Gilbert Puckey – who had the first piano brought to New Zealand in 1827. They had twelve children. Among them were "famous New Zealanders" like Captain Gilbert Mair and Major William Gilbert Mair. Mair is a direct-line ancestor of Māori politician and activist Ken Mair. In 1835 Gilbert Mair senior signed the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand as a witness (together with James Clendon) when a number of northern Māori rangatira (chiefs) established themselves as representing a confederation under the title of the "United Tribes of New Zealand". Gilbert Mair senior was "present at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and he and his family were acquainted with many of the noted men who visited the Bay of Islands".
Biography Mair, born in Peterhead, Scotland, in 1799, had sailed on the whaling vessel New Zealander in 1820. At this occasion he visited New Zealand for the first time. When it returned to England on 2 March 1820, the missionary Thomas Kendall was among the passengers, together with Hongi Hika and Waikato, the two rangatira of Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe) that were the first Māori to come to England. In 1823 he made his second trip to New Zealand. This time he bought two preserved heads. In 1824 he made his third visit. He would never sail back to England again.
Sailing master of the Herald Herald was a 55-ton mission schooner, built at the beach of Paihia in the Bay of Islands. Missionary Henry Williams laid the keel for the vessel in 1824. He needed a ship to provision the mission stations and to visit the more remote areas of New Zealand to bring the Gospel. When Gilbert Mair visited New Zealand for the third time, Williams asked him to assist in building the ship. When the Herald was finished in 1826, Mair became the sailing master. He made a lot of trips. He went to Australia three times. He visited the Bay of Plenty 4 times, and sailed up and down the east coast of the North Island from the East Cape to the North Cape, and on the west coast south to Kawhia. In May 1828 the Herald foundered, while trying to enter Hokianga Harbour. After the Herald was wrecked, Gilbert Mair purchased land from the natives, built his home at Wahapu and carried on the business of merchant and trader.
Marriage On his first visit to New Zealand, Gilbert Mair had been in contact with the Puckey family: William Puckey and his wife Margery, their son William Gilbert Puckey (1805–1878) and daughter Elizabeth Gilbert (1809–1870). When he had first met Elizabeth she was only 11 or 12, but when he returned in 1824 "she had grown into a 15-year-old woman". They married on 12 September 1827 in Sydney, during one of trips of the Herald there. They would raise twelve children:
Caroline Elizabeth, the first born in 1828; she died in 1917 Robert (1830–1920). His name "is held in high regard at Whangārei, his life-long home town, to whose people he gave a beautiful park" William Gilbert Mair (1832–1912), soldier, later a major in the army Marianne (1834–1893) Henry Abbott (1836–1881) Charlotte (1838–1891) Jessie Eliza (1840–1899) Gilbert (1843–1923): Gilbert Mair junior, or "Te Kooti's Nemesis" Matilda Helen (1845–1927). Married Dr Richard Sissons. Emily Francis (1848–1902) Sophia Marella (1850–1884) Lavinia Laura, the last born in 1852; she died in 1936
Death Mair died at "Deveron", Whangārei, in 1857. He was buried on his own property. Many years later his sons removed his remains to the graveyard round the Church, where now only members of the Mair family are laid to rest".
Witness of the Musket Wars During his trips around NZ Gilbert Mair witnessed "the savagery" of the Musket Wars, the wars between Māori iwi (tribes) in the years between 1818 and 1830. He saw for instance the results of a clash at Ohiwa Harbour in 1828, with fifty dead bodies on the shore. And in that same year, he saw the remains of a fight at Te Papa pa at Tauranga Harbour, with "hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, dead animals and human bones, the remnants of a cannibal feast". He later told his son Gilbert of a visit he had made to the Te Totara Pa site in 1826. Five years before, in 1821, a Ngāpuhi taua (war party), led by Hongi Hika, had slaughtered the Ngāti Maru, living there. But when Gilbert Mair senior walked there in 1826, he had still found it "... strewn with human bones – a veritable Golgotha". Shortly after Elizabeth and Gilbert married, in 1828, the famous Ngāpuhi rangatira Hongi Hika died. He had provided protection to the missionary community, and the time following his death was of considerable anxiety for the settlers.
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