 It is New Zealand's oldest history museum.Founded in 1898, the 50th anniversary of the Scottish settlement of Otago, by the Otago Early Settlers' Association, by 1908 the museum was located in a building in Queen's Gardens Dunedin, designed by John Burnside.Originally concerned only with the Maori that originally lived and owned the land of new Zealand, initially just those who arrived between 1848 and the first of the Otago gold rushes in 1861, the institution gradually enlarged its scope to include later arrivals.