James and Martha McKerrow (née Dunlop)

James McKerrow had a huge impact on the nomenclature of the southern landscape. As a surveyor and explorer he was responsible for bestowing over 225 of the names that appear on modern maps of Otago and Southland. He was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, in 1834, the eldest child in a family of 10. His father was a blacksmith and after an education that included time at Glasgow University, James joined him in the trade. In 1859 he married Martha Dunlop and just three weeks later the couple set off on the Cheviot for Otago.

The Otago survey office was in desperate need of surveyors in 1859. James had excelled at mathematics at university and had no trouble passing a written examination to qualify for an assistant surveyor’s post there. He quickly proved a highly competent surveyor and earned a reputation for meticulous fieldwork on his surveys around the Dunedin district. He worked with John Turnbull Thomson on the triangulation of Otago and Southland, a landmark survey exercise that made Otago’s survey system the best in the New Zealand and the model for a national system. He also undertook long expeditions inland and around the southern lakes. This was arduous pioneering work but gave McKerrow the privilege of naming many features of the landscapes he explored.

McKerrow rose through the ranks, becoming the Chief Surveyor of Otago in 1873 and then Assistant Surveyor-General in Wellington under his old Otago boss, J. T. Thomson. In 1879 he succeeded Thomson to become Surveyor-General and served 10 years as the country’s senior surveying bureaucrat. He also served in senior civil service roles as Chief Commissioner of Railways and Chairman of the Board of Land Purchase Commissioners. Like many 19th-century Scots, McKerrow was a keen amateur scientist. He observed the transit of Venus from the Wellington Observatory in 1882 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society the following year.

McKerrow was a devout Presbyterian who took an active part in church affairs. He was also a great companion, happy to share stories from his detailed knowledge of the New Zealand landscape. He was an excellent example of the stock Scottish figure – the ‘lad o’ pairts’ – who built on a solid education to develop a successful career that saw him scale the heights of the colonial civil service.

Martha McKerrow died in Wellington in1910 and James in 1919. They were survived by two daughters.