Thursday, March 5, 2009

Street Stories 9: The Governor's Private Secretary

Image from Wikipedia.

Back to Layard Street. As I mentioned in a previous Street Stories post, one suspect for the position of namesake to the street was archaelogist Henry Layard, short of finding anyone else to fit the general Land Wars pattern of the other names in Thomas Russell's Greytown subdivision.

Well, I found another: Edgar Leopold Layard, born 1824 in Florence Italy, and he died at Budleigh, Silverton in England in March 1900. He served as private secretary to Sir George Grey from 1854, when Grey served in the Cape Colony, and accompanied Grey to New Zealand. His main claim to fame was as an ornithologist.

Still a bit dodgy, but at least E. L. Layard had an NZ connection.

2 comments:

  1. Eddie Layard sounds a bit away with the birds :P
    Good digging!

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  2. Heh. There's always a punster in the mob ... ;-)

    ReplyDelete