Benjamin Corlett

• Emigration: Sep 8 1850 - Plymouth Sound, England
• Immigration: Aboard the Sir George Seymour - Dec 17 1850

Benjamin Corlett arrived in Canterbury when he was six, with his parents Stephan (1805-1880), an agricultural labourer, and Jane (44), and his siblings Mary Ann (20), a servant, John (16), an agricultural labourer, William (13), Thomas (10), Eliza(8), and Alfred (2).

On March 24, 1886, Benjamin and brother Alfred married two sisters from Woodend − Benjamin married Laura Ranby and Alfred married Fanny Harpham Ranby. The two brothers took their wives back to Greta Peaks, which was originally part of the Stoneyhurst Station. There they constructed a cob house. Benjamin and Laura had 11 children, with one dying as an infant.

The Corlett brothers fell on hard times in the 1870s and 1880s as the land boom collapsed. In August 1887, the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Co. was instructed to sell the Greta Peaks property.

Soon after, Thomas, Benjamin and Laura moved to the North Island, where Thomas died in September 1889. Benjamin and his family moved back to Riccarton in 1895 and then returned to the North Island, where he took up farming at Te Mawhai in the Waikato. Benjamin died there on February 9, 1928.

Source: http://www.firstfourships.co.nz/pics/person.php?pos=gs3

• Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees via father Stephen Corlett by SmartCopy: May 26 2015, 21:42:09 UTC