Dent family connections
| Rank: Private |
Religion: Protestant |
Eyes, Hair, Complexion: Grey, Brown, Fair |
Birth Place, Trade, Height, Marital Status, Ship to NZ |
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John Atkinson spent much of his youth in Victoria where he served his apprenticeship as a butcher and married Eliza McQuirk. John's town acre grant was in Victoria Street. His 50 acre country block of mostly peat swamp was between Hamilton and Ohaupo and because of the unsatisfactory nature of the land he was granted an additional 12 acres. The country grant was sold during the 1870's but he bought other land in the area and finished with a farm of approximately 300 acres. When the farm was sold in the latter part of the 1890's John and Eliza shifted to Hamilton.
During the 1870's to early 1880's John was a trustee on the Hamilton Highway District Board. He was chairman of the Roads Board in the 1880's. He was, also, Waipa County councillor during the 1880's and 1890's and served as County Chairman for three years. In 1889 he was one of the fifty settlers who planted a tree in Sydney Square, Hamilton East, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the militia's landing at Hamilton.
John and Eliza's only child, Elizabeth Annie, died of tuberculosis 22 September 1885 at the age of 19 and was buried in the Hamilton West Cemetery. Eliza died 30 Oct 1901 and John, who re-married Frances Salmon in 1904, died in 1923.