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4 unusual facts about Stephenson Percy Smith


Percy Smith

Stephenson Percy Smith (1840–1922), known as Percy Smith, New Zealand ethnologist and surveyor

Polynesian Society

The society was co-founded in 1892 by Stephenson Percy Smith and Edward Tregear, largely in response to a conviction, widely held at the time, that the Māori and other Polynesian peoples were a dying race.

Stephenson Percy Smith

Percy Smith (as he was known) was born in Beccles, Suffolk, the eldest son of Hannah Hursthouse and John Stephenson Smith, a merchant and later a civil servant.

While still in his teens, he began a series of expeditions in his spare time, joining a party to scale Mount Taranaki in 1857, for example, and undertaking a journey in 1858 up the Mōkau River to Taupo, Lakes Rotomahana and Tarawera, the Tongariro-Ruapehu area, returning via Rangitikei and Wanganui.



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