Edwin Mitchelson

Sir Edwin Mitchelson was a New Zealand politician and timber merchant.

Member of Parliament

Mitchelson was born in Auckland in a cottage on Queen Street in the mid 1840s. He developed business interests in timber and kauri gum, shipbuilding, and horse racing and breeding. He was a cabinet minister from 1883 to 1884 and 1887 to 1880 as Minister of Public Works. From 1887 to 1891 he was Minister of Māori Affairs, and from 1889 to 1891 he was Minister of Telegraphs and Postmaster-General.
He represented the Marsden electorate from to 1887, then Eden from to 1896, when he was defeated.

Later years

Mitchelson was the Mayor of Auckland City from 1903 to 1905, chairman of the Remuera Road Board, and a member of the Legislative Council from 1920 until his death on 11 April 1934. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1921 King's Birthday Honours. He was buried at Purewa Cemetery in the Auckland suburb of Meadowbank.

Personal life

Mitchelson had a wooden mansion built at Muriwai around the year 1902, which he named Oaia, named after Oaia Island. In 1935, Arthur William Baden Powell named the fossil species Bathytoma mitchelsoni in honour of Mitchelson, as the holotype of the species had been found in deposits on Mitchelson's Muriwai property.