Thomas Ellison was the progenitor of a large branch of the ELLISON family in New Zealand . He probably came to
New Zealand as a crew member of the whaling barque,"Caroline", and even though he died at a young age, he left behind a legacy which
remains .
Thomas Ellison was born about 1812 in England, possibly Kent.
Family tradition says that he ran away from home as a young man and joined a ship bound for Australia , enlisting as a cabin boy.
This ship was probably the whaling barque "Caroline" which left the Port of London on 20 November,1828 arriving in Sydney,Australia
on 14 March,1829. The "Caroline" was a sperm whale fishery, where the whales were hunted and processed on board the boat
over a period of several months before returning to port for provisions and to offload the whale bone and whale oil for export back
to England. From 1829 to 1833 the Caroline and crew were involved in whaling in the "South Seas" but from June 1833 to
1837 the focus of whaling shifted to the waters of New Zealand with frequent visits to the Marlborough Sounds and the Cook Strait.
On some of the numerous visits to Queen Charlotte Sounds (QCS) over this time,
Tom met and later married Ikairaua, the daughter of a Te Atiawa chief named Whati . The Marlborough Sounds were occupied
at that time by numerous Taranaki tribes who had fled south in the "great heke" of 1831 to escape the Waikato tribes who
had acquired muskets and were seeking utu or revenge on their old enemies. Tom and Ika probably married around August
or September 1835. They established their home on the shore of one of the bays on the southern side of Queen Charlotte Sound,
between the Tory Channel and Waikawa, near Picton. Tom , who was now a mate on board the Caroline, would often be away but when the
weather through the Cook Strait was too rough, the ship would seek refuge in the sheltered QCS until the storm passed, and this
allowed the whalers to spend time with their Maori wives and families. Their first child was a son, Thomas, who was born on 9 July
1836 .
Over the next few years, Te Rauparaha's Ngati Toa tribe and
his allies, the Taranaki tribes started to lose some of their ascendancy and Ngai Tahu began to wage a series of raids into the northern
part of the South Island. On one of these excursions, a Ngai Tahu chief named Tuhawaiki ,or Bloody Jack as the whalers called
him, attacked a whaling station at Cloudy Bay, just over the hills from where Tom and a few of his whaling crew had established a
shore whaling station. The whalers who had all married Te Atiawa wives, fearing for the lives of their families, made a hasty
decision and packed up their meagre posssessions and rowed across the Cook Strait .
They established a new home at Korohiwa ,called "Coal Heavers" by the whalers, which is located just south of Titahi Bay . Here
Ellison established twin shore whaling stations; one at Korohiwa, and the other diametrically opposite the
narrow stretch of water,on Mana Island. This narrow strait was on the migratory path of the Southern Right whale , as they
headed down the coast of New Zealand to feed in the great Southern ocean. Here they continued their whaling operations, using the
Mana Island station if the whale was killed closest to the island, or the Korohiwa station ,if the whale was killed closer to the
mainland. Ellison was the manager of the stations and they appeared to have had some success as Thomas was able to purchase a
large piece of land , approx. one square mile, where Porirua now stands (Recorded in NZ Gazeteer).
On 9th February 1838, Ika gave birth to their second child, a daughter named Catherine in the family bible , but who was known as
Hariata.