John Edie (1856 – 7 June 1928) was a

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Member of Parliament in the

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region of New Zealand. He was a surveyor and an engineer, and also spent time as a farmer. He was Mayor of

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Early life

Edie was born in

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in 1856. He came to New Zealand as a child and attended school in

Waitahuna Waitahuna is a small rural hamlet in the Otago region of New Zealand's South Island. It is from Lawrence. In the 19th century, the town thrived after the discovery of gold. The Waitahuna Gully Miner's Monument commemorates this discovery and t ...

near

. He joined the survey department in 1873 and surveyed the

Catlins River Branch The Catlins River Branch was a branch line railway that formed part of New Zealand's Rail transport in New Zealand, national rail network. It ran through the Catlins region in southwestern Otago and was built in sections between 1879 and 1915. ...

railway line, but construction did not start until 1879. In 1876, at age 20, he became assistant surveyor to the Government. He joined the Tuapeka County Council in 1885 as an engineer and remained in that position until 1919, when he resigned to stand in the .

Political career

In the , Edie contested the electorate. Before the election, he was criticised for standing for the Liberal Party, thus claiming to represent the working man, yet underpaying staff at his mine. He was soundly beaten by the conservative incumbent, James Thomson. Edie contested the electorate in the 1919 election as a Liberal against the incumbent,

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's James Allen. Edie was beaten by the small margin of 126 votes (2.15%). After Allen's resignation in March 1920, Edie won the Bruce electorate in a . At the time of the election, he was Mayor of Lawrence. In the 1922 general election he won the Clutha electorate, but lost Clutha in

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to the

candidate

Fred Waite Frederick Tecumseh "Dash" Waite, occasionally spelled Fred WayteOtero, Miguel Antonio (1936). ''The Real Billy the Kid with new light on the Lincoln County War,'' Rufus Rockwell Wilson, New York, p.46 (born September 23, 1853 – September 2 ...

Later life and death

Edie was for a time captain of the Tuapeka Rifles. He was into mining, especially gold mining, and had an interest in a mine at Island Block (a locality on State Highway 8 between

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and Ettrick). He shared an interest in a farm of in Tuapeka West with two sons. Edie died on 7 June 1928 at Lawrence after having been bed-ridden with heart problems for six months. His son, Herbert Kerr Edie, unsuccessfully contested the and s in the Clutha electorate as a Labour Party candidate against James Roy.

Notes

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Edie, John 1856 births 1928 deaths New Zealand Liberal Party MPs New Zealand surveyors New Zealand civil engineers Mayors of places in Otago Unsuccessful candidates in the 1896 New Zealand general election Unsuccessful candidates in the 1919 New Zealand general election Unsuccessful candidates in the 1925 New Zealand general election Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives New Zealand MPs for South Island electorates 19th-century New Zealand politicians 19th-century New Zealand engineers