The first European settlement in the early 1830s was a mixture of traders and missionaries.
Early in the 19th Century, European missionaries, traders, sealers and whalers moved into Northland, and by the late 1820s were penetrating coastal regions further south.
James Farrow was the first permanent trader in the Bay of Plenty and came to Tauranga in 1829 to obtain flax fibre for Australian merchants. Soon after, Philip Tapsell arrived in Maketu as a flax trader in the late 1830s.
The Church Missionary Society first visited Tauranga in 1826 on the vessel Herald. By 1835 the society had established a mission station at Te Papa, and a permanent mission presence was established in 1847, when the Te Papa Mission House (known today as The Elms) was completed.
The Te Papa Mission House was the home of Archdeacon Brown and his family, who were the first Europeans to live permanently in the area. Brown purchased an area of 1,300 acres in September 1838, primarily to secure the future of the Church Missionary Society in the area. He also prized the area’s easy access by sea, numerous Maori population and central location to Otumoetai Pa and Maungatapu Pa.
Protestant Irish immigrants from Ulster settled at Katikati and Te Puke in the 1870s and 1880s.
