Chatham Islands, New Zealand 🌍

Chatham Islands (#nz30)

The windmill machinery was built first, before there was a building to house it, as recorded by New Zealand Spectator and Cooks Strait Guardian, Issue 226, 29 Sept 1847:

The natives at the Chatham Island are growing a large quantity of wheat this year, and are desirous of making arrangements to have it sent to Wellington to be ground, and to be returned to them in the shape of flour. The German missionaries residing there have constructed the machinery for a windmill, and are making preparations for the erection of the building, so that in another year the natives will be enabled to have their wheat ground on the spot.

June 2 - GERMAN MISSION. A short walk across a swampy valley, and up a wooded ascent, brought me to Te Wakuru, the village near which the German Mission have fixed their station. ... The station showed many signs of the useful industry which forms part of the plan of this Mission. A good windmill was nearly completed, which, under judicious management, may do much to conciliate the goodwill of a people who have large stores of wheat lying useless for want of power to grind them.

The Gosner Missionary Society of Berlin has had a settlement in the Chatham Islands for the last seven years. ... The Mission in the Chatham Islands consists of the Rev. F. F. A. Schirrmeister, and four lay assistants. The assistants are all mechanics, and they support themselves principally by their own exertions. ... Their mechanical operations have greatly benefitted the natives. They have erected a wind-mill for grinding wheat, and are anxious to have a small vessel built with which to carry on a trade with the different adjoining settlements in New Zealand.

The names of the 4 missionaries included Johann Engst and Johannes Baucke.

Associated people

• Johann Gotfried Engst
• Johann Heinrich Christian Baucke
• Oskar Beyer
• David Muller
• Carl Friedrich Alexander Franz Schermeister