Boys, John Cowell

Born in Sussex and educated in England he came to New Zealand at the age of seventeen as a survey cadet on the staff of the New Zealand Company which was responsible for laying out the Nelson Settlement. For three years he assisted In the exploring, surveying and roading and acquired proficiency in surveying. When theCompany’s survey operations were suspended after the Wairau massacre, Boys and several other cadets returned to England.

There Boys completed his training as a civil engineer and in 1849 returned to New Zealand to become a member of the Company’s survey staff under Captain Joseph Thomas who was laying out the Canterbury settlement. He assisted in the Lyttelton-Sumner Road project and then in partnership with Charles Torlesse he made a triangulation and topographical survey of the district between the Waikari and Waimakariri Rivers, and subsequently assisted Thomas Cass on road surveys.

At the conclusion of the preliminary surveys Boys and Torlesse went into partnership as contract surveyors laying out the rural sections for the Canterbury Association. They had married sisters, the daughters of James Townsend, an early Canterbury settler, and they also had purchased land at what was then the Rangiora Bush. There they built their homesteads which became the nucleus of the town of Rangiora.

Boys maintained his contact with the surveying profession and became a member of the Canterbury Provincial survey staff. In 1853 he was associated with Colonel Campbell in an attempt to unravel the conflicting claims to ownership of the Banks Peninsula land. Later he became Inspector of Surveys, a position he retained until the abolition of Provincial Government in 1876. He then returned to his grazing interests and became a leading breeder of Romney sheep.