John Dennis Geary(pākehā)son of William Snr and Charlotte Dovey
John Dennis Geary was born in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham, England in 1830.
His father and grandfather (William and Thomas, respectively) were sentenced in 1831 for stealing grain, and were transported to Tasmania (arrived 1833), and then later went to New Zealand (arrived 1836) then Otago in 1843.
John Dennis Geary was a stocking weaver by trade. He was 29 years old (1859) when he immigrated to New Zealand (on the "Alpine") to join his father, William Senior, and brother, William Junior.
John and William Junior were the first settlers in the area of Wickliffe Bay, Otago.
On 8th March 1865 John married Mary Duguid, a Scottish immigrant from Aberdeenshire, at Anderson's Bay, Dunedin. They had eleven children.
About 1884, John, a dairy farmer, successfully exported cheese to Australia and England before any factories were erected. It is also claimed that he was the first dairyman in NZ to own a cream separator.
John moved up from the South Island (Dunedin) to Taranaki. He bought 650 acres at Meremere in the 1890's and then 1100 acres at Manutahi in 1907. The road through the Manutahi farm is still called Geary Rd. Most of Manutahi was sold after his death to satisfy the daughters' inheritances and then Meremere went to Thomas, and the remnant of Manutahi went to James (eventually farmed by Robert).
