WOODWARD, JONAS (1810-81) was born in England and was employed as a schoolmaster under the British and Foreign Bible Society before entering the office of Sharp Brothers, bullion merchants. There he remained for many years until 1842, when he sailed for Wellington in the Clifton and obtained clerical employment with Bethune and Hunter. In 1855 Woodward was appointed provincial auditor and in the following year he became a member of the Provincial Council. He represented Wellington City from 1855-57 and Wellington Country from 1859-65. In 1856 he was appointed provincial treasurer, and in 1865 he came under the General Government, in whose service he rose to be paymaster and receiver-general, retiring in 1880. He then became manager of the Wellington Trust and Loan Co., the successor of building societies with which he had been associated for 30 years. He was chairman of the committee to promote the East and West Coast railway, and reported to the Government on the Industrial Exhibition of 1881. Woodward was a member of the civil service examination board, was for many years chairman of the Thorndon school committee and was associated from the beginning with the Wellington Athenaeum. Before leaving England he was connected with the Sunday School Union. In Wellington he founded the Congregational Church in 1842 and was its pastor till 1859, and an office-bearer and Sunday school teacher throughout his life. He was a visiting justice of the gaol and the asylum and a leader of the temperance movement and of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Choral Society. Woodward died on 13 Jun 1881.

Wellington P.C. Proc.; Ward; N.Z. Times, 14, 15, 17 Jun 1881.

Reference: Volume 2, page 268

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