On 23 March 1848 the ship John Wickliffe arrived at Port Chalmers carrying the first Scottish settlers for Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago province was founded.

Two ships left with Scots emigrants for a new life in New Zealand: The John Wickliffe left Gravesend, England, on 24 November 1847 with 97 passengers; the Philip Laing left Greenock, Scotland, with 247 passengers, on 27 November 1847.

Dunedin, taken from the Gaelic for Edinburgh, was to be their new town. The New Zealand Company had purchased the large Otago block from Ngāi Tahu in 1844 for £2,400.

A Scottish settlement in New Zealand had first been mooted in 1842. Scottish architect and politician George Rennie, was concerned at English dominance over the first New Zealand Company settlements.

Divisions within the Church of Scotland transformed Rennie’s original plan. Unhappy with patronage and state control, 400 clergy and about one-third of laypeople quit the established church. Some of these dissenters, including Thomas Burns, William Cargill, and John McGlashan, saw Otago as a home for a new ‘Free Church’. Two-thirds of the original Otago settlers were Free Church Presbyterians.  – New Zealand History

Of the 12,000 immigrants who were to follow in the 1850s about 75% were Scottish.