New Zealand Company
The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 1800s on a business model focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield’s model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
Sarah Higgins
When Sarah was eleven, her father answered an appeal for skilled manual labourers to emigrate to New Zealand in the employ of the New Zealand Company, an independent company revived by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who became Director. The New Zealand Company primarily required young married couples perhaps with a young family, or older couples with grown or near grown children, who had manual skills such as carpentry, farming, labourers, builders, millers and so on, who could contribute to building the new colonies on land purchased by the Company and sold as stakes to the emigrants and to increase the future population. Stephen Higgins was initially turned down on application due to his widower status, however doctors intervened and wrote a letter to the company directors instructing them of the ill-health of Sarah's older sister, and confirming that they could do nothing further for her, but advising that it was in the professional opinion that the fresh air of New Zealand would be of profound benefit to her prognosis. Stephen Sharp was accepted. He sold his belongings and used the money to purchase his stake and assisted passage.