Rebecca Lenihan - From Alba to Aotearoa

I have accrued many debts of gratitude while researching and writing this volume. Thanks must first and foremost go to my PhD supervisors, Dr Brad Patterson and Dr Rosalind McClean, for their time and comments. Further very special thanks are due to Associate Professor Jim McAloon, not least for reading and commenting on several drafts of the dissertation that is the basis for this book.

I also owe sincere thanks to the following people, in no particular order, for reasons they know and that need not be recited here: Dr Marjory Harper; Elizabeth Angus and everyone else at the Shetland Family History Society; Brian Smith, Angus Johnson, Joanne Wishart and Blair Bruce at the Shetland Archives; Michelle Gait from the reading room of the special library at Aberdeen University; Professor Cairns Craig, Jon Cameron, Dr Rosalyn Trigger, Dr Michael Brown and, especially, the late Professor George Watson at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, Aberdeen University; the Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies; Dr Steve Behrendt; Dr Tanja Bueltmann; Dr Gerard Horn; Dr Lauren Anderson, Alice Glaze, Dr Andrew Hinson, Caitlin Holton, Dr Andrew Ross, Dr Cathryn Spence and Kate Zubczyk; Wendy Horne and Fran Hackshaw at the Upper Hutt Library; my PhD examiners, Professors Charlotte Macdonald, Tom Brooking and Don MacRaild; and Dr Jock Phillips for allowing me to use the Peopling of New Zealand data, and for the very useful discussions early in my own data collection and analysis.

Research such as this relies very heavily on the kindness and enthusiasm of strangers. Thank you to all those who contributed to the New Zealand Society of Genealogists Scottish Interest Groups Register of Immigrants Arriving in New Zealand before 1 January 1921, and to the people who coordinated that register. My gratitude, also, to the many family historians who have published their family trees and other information on such websites as roots.web, their own personal family history pages and, especially, bayanne.co.uk; without the ready availability of such information this study would have been quite different. Special thanks goes to the many kind people too many to name who provided me with their family material and research, took an interest in my research and assured me it was of interest to others apart from me. Especially notable among these kind folk are Bobbie Amyes, Spin and Joan Sutherland, Janette Godfrey and Theodora Wickham.

On a more personal level, thank you to Mum, Dad, Tara and Brooke for supporting me throughout the several years of the research, writing and rewriting stages. Special thanks to Mum, who made sure I was eating properly and generally being taken care of during the final stages of the PhD.

Thanks to Margaret McIver, formerly of Portnaguran, Isle of Lewis, for a roof over my head, for providing me with a family far away from home and for her friendship, her encouragement and her wisdom.

Turning the dissertation into a book has been a lengthy task that moved ahead in leaps and bounds when it reached the hands of the wonderful Otago University Press staff. Rachel Scott and her staff have had so many useful suggestions and have done such a brilliant job of making this all come together so beautifully. A further note of enormous gratitude needs to go to Anna Rogers who edited the text so incredibly elegantly, making every sentence so much more concise and eloquent, all the while keeping it all sounding like me.

And, not least, to Daniel, who has probably learned a lot more about Scottish migration and New Zealand history than he could ever have imagined, my thanks for meals, encouragement, advice and the reading of drafts.