William Sanderson Fitzgerald (12 November 1838 – 27 January 1920) was a New Zealand teacher and educationalist. He was born in

Musselburgh Musselburgh (; sco, Musselburrae; gd, Baile nam Feusgan) is the largest settlement in East Lothian, Scotland, on the coast of the Firth of Forth, east of Edinburgh city centre. It has a population of . History The name Musselburgh is Ol ...

Midlothian Midlothian (; gd, Meadhan Lodainn) is a historic county, registration county, lieutenancy area and one of 32 council areas of Scotland used for local government. Midlothian lies in the east-central Lowlands, bordering the City of Edinburgh, ...

, Scotland on 12 November 1838. In 1861, he was appointed by the Free Church of Scotland to be the principal of a Presbyterian boarding and day school in

Pigeon Bay Pigeon Bay is a body of water that lies between Minnesota, United States and Ontario, Canada and is part of Lake Superior. The international boundary between the two countries lies in the middle of the bay. The name of "Pigeon" Bay was most like ...

Banks Peninsula Banks Peninsula is a peninsula of volcanic origin on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It has an area of approximately and encompasses two large harbours and many smaller bays and coves. The South Island's largest cit ...

in New Zealand's

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

. He and his wife reached Lyttelton in October 1861. At Pigeon Bay, they had twins on 20 March 1862, including the cricketer James Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald moved to

Oamaru Oamaru (; mi, Te Oha-a-Maru) is the largest town in North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand, it is the main town in the Waitaki District. It is south of Timaru and north of Dunedin on the Pacific coast; State Highway 1 and the railway ...

in 1869, and in 1876 was appointed to establish the

Otago Normal School Otago (, ; mi, Ōtākou ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government reg ...

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

References

1838 births 1920 deaths 19th-century New Zealand educators Scottish emigrants to New Zealand {{NewZealand-bio-stub