Biography

John Charles Brooke Comber was born in Yorkshire in 1831/32 and died in Dunedin in 1880 at the age of 48. His father, the Rev. Henry George Wandesforde Comber, was a country parson at Oswaldkirk in the North Riding, where he fulfilled also the functions of Justice of the Peace and local squire. The Combers were originally from Sussex and were descended directly from Thomas Comber, Dean of Durham from 1691 to 1699, one time Chaplain to Princess (later Queen) Anne and godfather to the diarist John Evelyn. They intermarried with several leading Yorkshire families, including the Wandesfordes and the Brookes, whose names are borne by various of the Comber descendants. It is not clear what brought John Charles Brooke Comber to New Zealand or in particular to Dunedin. His eldest brother Rear-Admiral Henry Wandesforde Comber, having joined the Royal Navy at the age of 12 and served in many parts of the world, visited the Bay of Islands, and witnessed the preliminary meetings leading to the Treaty of Waitangi.

(Source: Tour of Duty, Midshipman Comber’s Journal Abroad HMS “Herald” On the East Indies Station – Australia, New Zealand & China, 1838-42, ed; W. David McIntyre and Marcia McIntyre, Christchurch: Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, 1999), esp. 185-92)

Perhaps Admiral Comber’s visit encouraged him to recommend Otago to his younger brother. John Comber lived in Cumberland Street. His will is held in the Government archives in George Street. He is described as a gentleman in his death certificate and was fined 40 shillings for disorderly conduct, according to a report in the Otago Daily Times. It is not definitely known why he came to live in Dunedin and he seems not to have married. He left his assets to New Zealand friends and his siblings in England.

(Contributed by Prof. Charles Higham)

According to various reports in the Otago Witness, John Charles Brooke Comber was in a partnership with John Ambrose Douglas running Highfield Station on the Maniatoto Plains, where they were sheep farming and breeding thoroughbred horses. The partnership was dissolved in 1871 (Otago Witness, 8th April 1871, page 23).