1889 New Zealand Survey Department Map of the South Island, New Zealand

The Department of Lands and Survey (1876 - 1987) was a department of the Government of New Zealand. Formed in 1876, the Department of Lands and Survey originally had a wide range of responsibilities, such as surveying, Crown lands, roads, health and tourist resorts, and immigration. In 1886, the department was made responsible for forests and agriculture as well. Over the ensuing century, many of the departments responsibilities were tasked to other departments. By the 1980s, this distribution of activities left Lands and Survey with the core responsibilities of surveying, mapping, land development, Crown lands, and lands and deeds. The entire department was restructured in 1987 and formed the Department of Survey and Land Information, which was tasked with providing civil, government, and military survey, mapping, and land information services. A state-owned company became responsible for land development and other new departments were tasked with conservation management. Further restructuring in July 1996 led to the creation of Land Information New Zealand, a department in charge of government land-related regulatory and purchase functions. A government-owned company, Terraling NZ Ltd, was given the former department's commercial activities. That company has since gone private and been renamed Terralink International. More by this mapmaker...

Stephenson Percy Smith (June 11, 1840 - April 19, 1922) was a British surveyor and ethnologist who spent nearly his entire life in New Zealand. Born in Beccles, Suffolk, England. Known as Percy all his life, Smith's parents, John Stephenson Smith and Hannah Hursthouse, moved the family to New Plymouth, New Zealand, in the fall of 1849. Smith attended school in New Plymouth and Omata before ending his studies in 1854 to help on the family farm. He joined the provincial survey department in February 1855, spending his spare time going out of surveying excursions. He and four others set out on a two-month expedition into the interior of the North Island in January 1858 covering over 600 miles on foot, by canoe, and on horseback. Smith moved to Auckland in 1862, where he married Mary Anne Crompton on April 23, 1863, and stayed there until he was given a position in New Plymouth as district surveyor. Smith spent the years from 1864 tunic 1874 working on numerous different surveying projects around New Zealand, and his hard work was rewarded with several promotions. Smith was named assistant surveyor general in 1881, and commissioner of Crown lands for the Auckland district in 1888. He became surveyor general and secretary for lands and mines in January 1889 and held these positions until his retirement on October 30, 1900. Smith was also a founding member of the Polynesian Society. Today, Smith's work is remembered for its groundbreaking achievements, but also recognized for its faults. Most of his research concerning the Maori is generally accepted as unreliable today, but it is important to remember that his studies laid the groundwork for ethnology in New Zealand. Smith died on April 19, 1922, eleven years after his wife. Percy and Mary had four children together. Learn More...

Thomas Cook and Son (1841 - 2002), originally known as Thomas Cook, was a celebrated and innovative British tourism company founded by Thomas Cook (November 22, 1808 - July 18, 1892). Established in 1841 when Thomas Cook organized his first excursion: a trip from Leicester to Loughborough by rail at the cost of one shilling per person to attend a temperance meeting. On the morning of Monday, July 5, 500 people boarded a special train for the twelve mile journey, the participants unknowingly taking part in the first trip organized by what would become an international tourism giant. Cook, a cabinet-maker and former Baptist preacher, believed that most Victorian-era social problems could be solved by people drinking less alcohol and being better educated, and it was this set of beliefs that drew Cook to the temperance movement. It would be another four years before Cook organized a tour that actually turned a profit, a tour taking customers from Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby to Liverpool. Thomas published his first guidebook in conjunction with this endeavor (the first of many), as he was not content to simply offer low priced train tickets. The first excursion outside England happened the following year, in 1846, when Thomas took 350 travelers to Scotland. In 1851, during the Great Exhibition in London, over 150,000 people from Yorkshire and the Midlands traveled to see the exhibition using his arrangements. The first Thomas Cook tour of continental Europe happened n 1855, for which he offered for the first time the complete holiday 'package', comprising travel, accommodations, and food. The firm also offered foreign exchange services for the first time during this trip. In the coming years Cook also helped establish Switzerland as a popular summer vacation destination. In 1864, Thomas Cook's son, John Mason Cook (1834 - 1899) joins the family business and participates in the opening of the first Thomas Cook shop in London on Fleet Street the following year. Thomas Cook personally escorts his first tour of Egypt and Palestine in 1869, and by doing so establishes a tour for which the firm would become famous. The firm's name officially changed from Thomas Cook to Thomas Cook and Son in 1871 and the following year Thomas Cook organizes the first round-the-world tour, which lasts for 222 days and covers over 29,000 miles. Thomas Cook is also one of the first tour companies to aid clients with the exchange of funds into foreign currency, and goes to far as to establish a Foreign Banking and Money Exchange Department in 1878. John Mason Cook officially takes over the family business in 1879, and in so doing starts the firm's transformation from a barely profitable venture into a successful global enterprise. In 1884, John Mason Cook is approached by the British Government to oversee a relief mission to General Gordon, whose forces were besieged in Khartoum. A massive force of 18,000 troops and all the necessary supplies was organized and transported by Cook, although the effort proved unsuccessful as Khartoum fell in January 1885 and Gordon was killed. Following the unsuccessful mission to relieve Gordon, John Mason Cook launched a new fleet of luxurious Nile steamers, allowing his wealthy clients to tour Egypt with ease, almost completely removed from all interaction with the locals. The firm was named the Official Passenger Agent for the first modern Olympic Games, which took place in Athens in 1896. Tragically, John Mason Cook died unexpectedly in 1899 and left the firm to his three sons: Frank, Ernest, and Thomas ('Bert'), who continue to grow the business, including becoming the first travel firm to offer tours view air. Thomas Cook and Sons organized the first personally-conducted air tour in 1927, taking a group of six people from New York to Chicago to witness the Dempsey-Tunney heavyweight boxing bout, with the package including flights, hotel accommodations, and ringside seats. Frank and Ernest (Bert died in 1914) sell the company to the Compagnie International des Wagons-List et des Grands Express Européens in 1928, which operates the firm until 1948, when it becomes state-owned under the British Transportation Holding Company. The firm remained under state control until 1972, when it was purchased by a consortium of Midland Bank, Trust House Forte and the Automobile Associations. Continuing the firm's reputation for innovation, the firm launched a system in 1981 that allowed other travel agents to access the Thomas Cook Holidays' reservation system, and in 1997 Thomas Cook became the first UK retail travel agency to offer customers to buy vacations, foreign currency, travelers checks, and guidebooks over the internet. The Thomas Cook firm ends its existence as an independent agency in 2002 when it is acquired by the German travel company Condor and Neckermann. Learn More...