Acker's Cottage is one of the first stone houses on

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

Stewart Island Stewart Island (, ' glowing skies', officially Stewart Island / Rakiura, formerly New Leinster) is New Zealand's third-largest island, located south of the South Island, across Foveaux Strait. It is a roughly triangular island with a la ...

(officially Stewart Island / Rakiura). The cottage was placed on the

Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust; in ) is a Crown entity that advocates for the protection of Archaeology of New Zealand, ancest ...

list of historic places (category I) and has been restored by Heritage New Zealand and the

Department of Conservation Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

as an example of an early vernacular building. Built by Lewis Acker, it is the oldest whaling cottage in New Zealand and one of the earliest stone buildings on Stewart Island.

Lewis Acker

Lewis Acker ( 1817–11 July 1885) was a

whaler, boatbuilder, trader, farmer and saw miller. He was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, US. Acker married a Kāi Tahu woman, Mary Pui, and together they had nine children. After Acker retired from whaling, he built the cottage on Harrold Bay, Stewart Island. He quarried the stone at

Oreti Beach Oreti Beach is the central bay of three lying on the Foveaux Strait coast of Southland, New Zealand, the others being Te Waewae Bay and Toetoes Bay. Twenty-six kilometres in length, the bay lies between the town of Riverton and the outflow of ...

and carried it across

Foveaux Strait Foveaux Strait ( ; ) is a strait that separates Stewart Island from the South Island of New Zealand. The width of the strait ranges from about , and the depth varies between . The strait was first charted by an American Seal hunting, sealer, O ...

in his boat. He cleared the nearby land for cultivation in an area that is now called Acker's Point. Acker and his wife lived in this cottage until the late 1850s. Since that time it has been used as a smithy, storeroom, brewery and workshop.

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2017 Heritage New Zealand Category 1 historic places in the Southland Region