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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Otago & Southland Provincial Districts]
Mr. James Rolland
Mr. James Rolland , sometime Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh, Scotland, and afterwards a New Zealand colonist, settled in Otago, was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1802, at Western Luscor, a country seat of the family. He was the second son of Adam Rolland, (a Privy Councillor for Scotland), of Gask, an estate which came into the family during the sixteenth century. Mr. James Rolland's eldest brother, Adam Rolland, of Gask, was one of the few large landed proprietors, who underwent social ostracism by page 393 taking a prominent part in the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843. His only child eventually became the wife of Principal Rainy, the first Moderator of the United Free Church. John Row, the historian, author of “The History of the Kirk of Scotland,” and who married a daughter of the Rev. David Ferguson, first Presbyterian minister of Dunfermline, and contemporary and co-worker with John Knox, is an ancestor of the family, whose members can claim having had the courage of their convictions at the time of the two most important religious movements in Scotland. Owing to representations of an old friend, Mr. Joseph Maitland, of Otago, New Zealand, and also to a desire to make openings for his sons, Mr. James Rolland embarked in the ship “Alpine” at Greenock, for Otago, on the 8th of June, 1859, with his wife and family. It was the first voyage of that vessel. After his arrival in Otago Mr. Rolland bought land, and his first permanent colonial residence was “Gask Lodge,” on the banks of the Molyneux, near Kaitangata. On the 10th of July, 1865, Sir George Grey, then Governor of New Zealand, appointed him a member of the Legislative Council. He acquired Blackstone Hill station in Central Otago, in the early sixties, but eventually sold it to his sons, and in 1860 returned to Edinburgh, where he died in 1889; aged eighty-seven years. Mr. Rolland has one surviving brother. Vice-Admiral William R. E. Rolland, C.B., M., R.N., who (1904) resides in Edinburgh. His eldest son, Adam, at one time chairman of the Maniototo County Council, also resides in Edinburgh, as well as his second son, Henry. Mr. Rolland's only daughter married, in 1882, the late William Black, son of the late Thomas Black, M D., F.R.G.S.A., J.P., Victoria. Mr. Rolland was married to the only daughter of the late Captain William Stothert, Coldstream Guards, of Cargen, Dumfries-shire, and a Justice of the Peace and Deputy-Lieutenant for the county, lord of the manor of Blaikit, Kirkcudbrightshire, and one of Her Majesty's bodyguard for Scotland. Mrs Rolland did not long survive her arrival in New Zealand, for she died in 1861, and was buried in the bush near “Gask Lodge,” but her grave is now in the cemetery at Kaitangata.