John Holland Baker was a New Zealand surveyor and public servant.
Background
He was born in Chilcomb, Hampshire, England on 4 December 1841. A son of the Review Thomas Feilding Baker, Rector of Cressingham Parish, Norfolk, he was educated at Yarmouth Grammar School, and in Germany, where he lived with his parents in Königswinter.
Career
He left school at 15 after he punched a master. He arrived in Lyttelton on the Maori during 1857. He bought land in December 1858, and a house during 1860.
On one of his trips to the back-country, he found 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) of unclaimed land suitable for sheep farming.
He was granted a lease in 1860, which he could sell for £300. He became a land speculator but, unlike others, he never got rich from lieutenant
Baker explored the Southern Alps with Samuel Butler for further sheep country. They found what was later known as Whitcombe Pass but no suitable land.
In 1861, Baker was the first European to cross the Haast Pass.
The Otago Gold Rush attracted Baker south, and he spent six months prospecting at the Tuapeka River. This was unsuccessful, and he went to Invercargill in May 1862. There, Theophilus Heale engaged him as a sub-assistant surveyor.
In 1863 he was appointed assistant surveyor to carry out the Southland triangulation.
Baker then became Inspector of Surveys for Southland, and in the following year he assisted James McKerrow in connecting Stewart Island with the geodesical survey of Otago. While in Southland, Baker arranged the exhibits for the Otago and Melbourne exhibitions.
Baker"s daughter was Noeline Baker, suffrage campaigner.
Membership
In 1864 he was promoted to the post of Deputy Chief Surveyor, and later on in the same year when Heale resigned he became Chief Surveyor, and a member of the Southland Waste Lands Board. Her mother, Anne Marie (or Anna Maria), was a daughter of Alexander Powell Member of Parliament, a Tory member of parliament for Downton, Wiltshire.