Benjamin Boscawen Savage

Found on Genealogy.com Benjamin Boscawen Savage was my great-great grandfather, who sailed aboard the ship Eliza Jane out of Boston around the 1840's or 1850's.

Upon reaching Fiji, he jumped ship and ended up in New Zealand, falling in with local Maori in the Bay of Islands. Here he married a woman named Merehana. She had been captured by the Ngapuhi from her home, Hawai, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.

They married in Auckland and had six children. I'm not quite sure what happened after this, but he left her and married another woman, my great great grandmother - Ngatira Tangihia, from Matata in the Bay of Plenty. They had fourteen children, and there he settled, running a store and trading with locals.

His descendants today are numerous, mostly living around the Bay of Plenty, but there are also branches of the family in Hawke's Bay, the Thames region, Auckland and Christchurch.

There is also a branch of the family in the Cook Islands. We believe he came from somewhere in the State of Maine USA, but don't know exactly where, but I do know his ancestors were from either England or Ireland, as his middle name is Boscawen or Cornish.

whaler of Wiscasset, Maine USA?

Ben Savage was born in the State of Maine, hr came from America aboard the whaling ship Eliza Jane in the 1830s and deserted in Suva, arriving at Kororareka on the Adeline in the Bay of Islands

With some other deserters, he built a small ship & started coastal trading he married Merehana Hineato in 1840 to whom he had a son Teina. Two years later he moved to Matata where he became a store owner and married a local woman.

http://archive.org/stream/historicalrecord02mcnauoft#page/608/mode/2up

http://www.archway.archives.govt.nz/ViewFullItem.do?code=16206894

http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Savage

Information on the ship Hannibal http://nmdl.org/aowv/whvoyage.cfm?VesselNumber=1530

see also https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10217218728837332&set=pcb.2...