Thomas Cheeseman

Cheeseman was born at Hull, in Yorkshire on 8 June 1845, the eldest of five children. He came to New Zealand at the age of eight with his parents on the Artemesia, arriving in Auckland on 4 April 1854. He was educated at Parnell Grammar School and then at St John's College, Auckland. His father, the Rev. Thomas Cheeseman, had been a member of the old Auckland Provincial Council. His two other sisters, Ellen, a watercolour painter and botanist, and Clara, a novelist, also accompanied him on field trips. Cheeseman married Rosetta Keesing, of a notable Jewish family of Auckland city, in November 1889. Together, they had two children: Dorothy (later Dorothy Grant-Taylor) and Guy. Cheeseman died on 15 October 1923. Cheeseman's archives are held at the Auckland Museum. == Bibliography ==

Cheeseman was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London (FLS), and the Zoological Society (FZS). He was made a Corresponding Membership of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and awarded the Gold Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society, the botanical equivalent to a Nobel Medal, in 1923. He served as the President of the New Zealand Institute from 1911 to 1913. In 1918, he was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal and Prize, and in 1919 he was made an original Fellow of the New Zealand Institute (). ==References==