PIONEER LEADER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23463, 30 March 1938, Page 3

PIONEER LEADER

CAPTAIN WILLIAM CARGILL AN ADVENTUROUS LIFE OTAGO’S FIRST SUPERINTENDENT Interesting details of the career of Captain William Cargill, first superintendent of the province of Otago, are contained in a history of Captain Cargill’s family which was written by his son, Edward Bowes Cargill, in 1897. Soldier, banker, wine merchant, and colonist, Captain Cargill lived a full and adventurous life, and it was characteristic of him that at an age when most men who had lived as actively as he had would have been thinking of retirement he should sever the ties that bound him to the Homeland and set out to build a new home in a new country. This family history, which has now been in existence for more than 40 years, was made available to the Daily Times by Miss A. F. Cutten, of Dunedin, a great-grand-daughter of Captain Cargill. A Martyr’s Descendant Bom in the old town of Edinburgh on August 27, 1784, Captain Cargill was the son of Mr William Cargill, writer to the Signet, and came of a family which claimed as its ancestor the Scottish martyr, Donald Cargill, a leader of the Covenanters, who was put to death in Edinburgh in 1688. Apparently, after that event, the family, who were small landowners in Perthshire, broke up and scattered, for one branch reappeared in Jamaica as sugar planters, one member eventually attaining the position of Chief Justice of Jamaica, and the other branch, of which Captain Cargill was a member, became bankers at Dunkeld. . In their youth in Edinburgh, William Cargill and his brother Robert had' as a tutor a young student named Thomas Chalmers, who afterwards became the great Presbyterian divine and achieved fame as the leader of the Free Church. Although Captain Cargill was the grandson of a banker, it does not ever appear to have been suggested that he should enter on that business as his life’s work, for when he left school some discussion took place as to what should be made of him. On the advice of friends, his parents decided that he should learn the business of weaving so that he could follow the manufacture of textiles, then in the beginning of its development, but apparently young Cargill decided otherwise. Although he was actually placed under a weaver to learn how to drive the shuttle and work the loom, he soon gave it up and entered on a very much different type of career by obtaining an ensigncy in the 84th Regiment, then stationed in Bengal. Cargill went out to India and joined the regiment in Calcutta as a protege of a maternal great uncle, Colonel Sir William Nicholson, who held a staff appointment. A Soldier’s Life The first friend Cargill made on his arrival in India was a Captain Grant, into whose life there was shortly to come a tragedy arising directly from the custom prevailing in those days by which the only method of avenging an insult was to fight. A remark lightly made by Captain Grant was interpreted as an insult by a Captain Dawson, of the same regiment, and the latter made it perfectly plain that there was nothing for it but a duel. How rigid the system actually was is shown by the fact that as the regiment was then under orders to embark for Madras, those two men were in each other’s company at meals and on other occasions for several weeks before sufficient liberty was found to arrange the duel. Eventually they went out one morning, and Captain Grant, accidentally it is believed, shot his adversary dead, but his life became insupportable owing to remorse, and on the first engagement with the enemy he rushed headlong into the fight in a manner that could leave no doubt of his intention to throw away his life. Snuff Before Battle In the battle of Assaye, which was fought about that time, the 74th Highlanders were cut to pieces, and Captain Cargill received his first promotion into one of the death vacancies, becoming a lieutenant of the 74th, in which regiment he served for the rest of his military career. Returning to Europe about 1805, the regiment was sent to the Peninsula, where it joined Wellington’s army immediately after the battle of Talavera, and remained there until the end of the war, being present at all the principal engagements. A musket ball in the leg kept Cargill invalided for two years, but he later rejoined the regiment, and after the peace he served for several years in Ireland and Scotland before retiring from the army at Edinburgh about 1820. It is recalled of him that during the final battle of Toulouse in 1814, when he was captain of a light company, he received orders to carry out a desperate attack on an exposed position. He first took a large pinch of snuff, then raised his sword, gave the order to charge and rushed on at the head of his men. By this time Captain Cargill had an increasing young family—he was married during the campaign at Oporto in 1813 to Mary Ann Yates, step daughter of Captain Ansell, of the 74ths and daughter of a naval lieutenant—and to support his children, who eventually numbered 17, 12 sons and five daughters, he entered business as a wine merchant in Edinburgh. After 14 years of this occupation he determined to emigrate to Canada, but changed his mind at the last moment, and after several years in the service of banking institutions, he was attracted by the schemes proposed for the settlement of New Zealand under the "auspices of the New Zealand Company. Arrival In New Zealand It was a committee of members of the Free Church of Scotland which evolved the particular scheme that resulted in the settlement of Otago, and the proposal was to found a colony of families representing a complete section of the Scottish people who should carry with them to the new country the religious and educational privileges among which they had been reared at Home. Captain Cargill and his family were passengers in the John Wickliffe, which anchored in Otago Harbour in March, 1848. For a time he held the position of Resident Agent of the New Zealand Company, and upon the granting of the Constitution he was elected first Superintendent of the Province of Otago, which post he retained until

his retirement shortly before his death, which took place on August 6, 1860. As one of the representatives of Otago, Captain Cargill served in the first General Assembly of the New Zealand Parliament, for as a man of striking character and more than ordinary ability he held the confidence and respect of all the early settlers. He was interred in the Southern Cemetery, and the monument erected by the Provincial Government in what is now Customhouse square bears testimony to the value placed on the leadership he gave the young province at a time when it was particularly needed.