Rev. Joseph Tice Gellibrand

In 1877 a retired minister Joseph Tice Gellibrand, began purchasing land on the peninsula and in Tauranga. He continued to buy blocks of land at Omokoroa until he owned practically the whole peninsula. Gellibrand constructed a large kauri homestead out near the Point and poured money and man power into creating a productive farm. In 1878 Gellibrand's adopted daughter married Captain Arthur Crapp. While returning from their wedding in Auckland, Gellibrand's wife Selina was drowned on Tauranga Harbour within sight of her home. Source: http://omokoroa.org.nz/reserves/gerald-crapp-reserve/european-occup...

THE LATE MR JOSEPH TICE GELLIBRAND. The gentleman who has so lately passed away from our midst after a painful illness of some weeks duration, was the third son of Joseph Tice Gellibrand, of Derwent Park, Newtown, Tasmania, who was appointed Attorney General of that Colony by Lord Liverpool in 1823, and who subsequently lost his life in so melancholy a manner in exploring Port Phillip in 1837. His son, named after him who died on Monday last, was born at Hobart in 1826, and spent his early years in that town where he received his early education, obtaining a scholarship at Queen's school in 1842. Two years later he started for England in the ship Duke of Roxburgh and landing at Penzance after a voyage of nearly five months duration, he immediately matriculated at St. Johns College, Oxford. In 1845 he paid a somewhat lengthy visit to Russia, staying with his uncle William Gellibrand, who was living at St.Petersburgh. During 1847-48 he made a voyage out to Tasmania and back to England taking his B.A. degree at Oxford in October; the following year he was ordained deacon |by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and in December of that year married Selina Hannah Evans, second daughter of Samuel Evans, Esq., of Cambridge. In 1850 he was ordained Priest, and two years later took his MA degree at Oxford, and then returned to Tasmania where he held various appointments in the church until 1871 when he finally retired from the ministry, having declined the Canonry offered to him by Bishop Bromley. In 1875 he left Tasmania for a tour round New Zealand, finally settling at Omokoroa, Tauranga in the following year. In 1878 he lost his wife by the capsizing of a boat off Oponui point, and this melancholy loss of the companion of thirty years of active life cast a shadow over his remaining years. In the same year he occupied a seat in the Tauranga County Council. In 1881 he paid a visit to Tasmania and stood to represent North Hobart in the Assembly, but without success; since then he made several voyages backwards and forwards between Tasmania and New Zealand, and in 1886 acted for some months as editor of the "Tasmanian News" and on resigning that post towards the close of the year he returned to Omokoroa. There he resided until his death on the 10th inst. Apparently with a strange prevision of his approaching end he had made memoranda of all particulars likely to be useful to his successors and jotted down in a note book all the principal events of his life concluding with the following epitaph, "In memory of Joseph Tice Gellibrand, born May 1st 1826. 'To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die." (Bay of Plenty Times, 14 October 1887).