At a Glance: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand) New Zealand: (Māori: Aotearoa) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and more than 700 smaller islands, covering a total area of 268,021 square kilometres (103,500 sq mi). New Zealand is about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country’s varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand’s capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.

When the United States won its independence from Great Britain (1776) and immigration to its shores dropped off, Australia and later New Zealand opened up. By the late 1800s, emigration from the UK to its actual and former colonies was extensive. Scots were an integral component of this migration, Crawfords included. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was large scale advertisement in the UK for settlers to emigrate from there to the colonies of Great Britain. Below are notices from the British Office announcing opportunity to settle in British territories, notices which undoubtedly some of our Crawford ancestors in both England, Ireland and Scotland responded to. CCA’s very active members Peter Crawford and Julian Crawford’s families immigrated to New Zealand over a century ago. Peter’s ancestor Archibald Crawford was a master mariner came to New Zealand by ship in 1881 to claim his allotment. Most New Zealand Crawfords descend from just a couple of immigrant families. In Australia are a significantly larger contingent of Crawfords, some arriving with the initial immigrants who came over on the prison ships that provided many of the early British settlers to Australia. After that, and the independence of the American colonies, the focus of immigration from the British Isles had turned to Australia.