Charles Ernest Randolph Mackesy

Colonel Charles Ernest Randolph Mackesy (9 January 1861 – 20 November 1925) was a New Zealand military leader and farmer.

Born in 1861 in Ireland, Mackesy moved to New Zealand in the 1890s and took up farming in Whangārei. A soldier in the Volunteer Force, he volunteered for service with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) on the outbreak of the First World War. He was commander of Auckland Mounted Rifles Regiment, serving briefly at Gallipoli, and more substantially during the campaign in the Sinai and Palestine. From April 1917 he carried out administrative roles for the remainder of the war, apart from periods of leave. Discharged from the NZEF in late 1919 he returned to his farm in New Zealand. He died of heart failure in 1925.

Early life Charles Ernest Randolph Mackesy was born in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland on 9 January 1861 to Fanny Johnston Bell, the widow of Ernest Randolph Mackesy. His father, a former officer in the 97th Regiment of Foot, had sold his commission and bought a property of 268 acres near Whangārei, in the New Ulster Province of New Zealand. He died at Auckland in October 1860, a few months before the birth of his son. When Mackesy was young, his family paid for his education in France, Switzerland, and Germany, turning him into an accomplished linguist and athlete. Before the age of twenty, he moved to the United States, where he met Jessie Adam. They were married in the town of Dalis Peak, Kansas, in November 1880.

New Zealand In the 1890s, Mackesy moved to Whangārei to take up farming on his father's land which had been close to being repossessed due to non-payment of rates. His wife, and their three children, followed shortly afterwards. He soon turned the farm into a profitable enterprise and later set up a land agency.

Mackesy was a supporter of British Israelism, on which he gave lectures in New Zealand and Australia. He believed the United States and the British Empire would join to win a great war which would usher in the Millennium. This led him to join the Marsden Mounted Rifles, a unit of the Volunteer Force, and by 1911 he had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and was commander of the 11th (North Auckland) Mounted Rifles.

Later life In November 1919, aged 58, Mackesy resigned his commission in the NZEF and returned to his farm and civilian life. In 1921, he expanded his land agency business, opening an office in Auckland. His wife died in August 1920, and in January 1925 he remarried, but died before the end of the year of heart failure, survived by his second wife and two sons, a third son having been killed at Gallipoli.

Mackesy Park in Whangārei is named for him.