William Stephen Maslin (1850 – 19 December 1929) was a

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Member of Parliament in New Zealand.

Early life and business interests

Maslin was born in Brentford,

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbour ...

, England in 1850. He came to New Zealand with his parents as a boy; they arrived in Lyttelton on 21 July 1858 on the ''Maori''. His father, a builder and timber trader, went to

Timaru Timaru (; mi, Te Tihi-o-Maru) is a port city in the southern Canterbury Region of New Zealand, located southwest of Christchurch and about northeast of Dunedin on the eastern Pacific coast of the South Island. The Timaru urban area is home to ...

later that year and once established, the family followed in early the next year. The family moved to Geraldine in 1861. His father was killed in a construction accident in June 1864 and Maslin, as the eldest boy, took charge of the family and worked as a timber merchant. Once the native trees had all been milled, Maslin's business became a general store; he sold this business in 1883. From then until 1892, he worked as an auctioneer in Timaru and Geraldine. Beyond that, he had a land agency business. Maslin also had farmland for cropping. Since 1868, Maslin was active in the Methodist Church. He was one of the founders of the Good Templary Lodge in Geraldine. He joined the Southern Star Lodge in 1879 and became a Freemason. He also held membership of the Oddfellows lodge.

Political career

In Geraldine, Maslin was on the School Committee from 1872. Maslin was on the licensing committee for many years. He co-founded the Geraldine town district and was on the town board for 12 years. Maslin was the last chairman of the town board. When Geraldine became a borough in early 1905, he was elected as the inaugural mayor. He was elected to the electorate in the 1893 general election, but retired in 1896. He did not stand in the 1896 general election. He stood (unsuccessfully) as a

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for in , for Geraldine in 1902, for in , Ashburton in , , and . He stood for in and contested his last general election in in the

Dunedin Central Dunedin Central was a parliamentary electorate in the city of Dunedin in Otago, New Zealand from 1881 to 1890 and 1905 to 1984. Population centres The previous electoral redistribution was undertaken in 1875 for the 1875–1876 election. In th ...

electorate.

Family and death

Maslin married Hannah Clough of Timaru in 1873. They had four sons and four daughters. Maslin retired to

South Dunedin South Dunedin is a major inner city suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located, as its name suggests, to the south of the city centre, on part of a large plain known locally simply as "The Flat". The suburb is a mix of industrial ...

and died at his home in Bay View Road on 19 December 1929. His wife had died in 1907 and was buried at Geraldine cemetery. He was interred in the same plot.

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