Eliza Wohlers

Eliza Wohlers (6 September 1812 – 14 December 1891) was an English emigrant to New Zealand who married a German missionary and joined him in his mission work.

Early life Wohlers was born in 1812 in Bridport, England, to Hannah and William Hanham. She became a dressmaker and married Richard Palmer, a carpenter, in 1838. The couple emigrated to New Zealand in 1839. Little is known of their first years in the colony, other than that Palmer died sometime between 1839 and 1849.

Missionary work In 1849, Wohlers was living in Wellington when a Lutheran missionary from Germany, Johan Wohlers, began asking for recommendations for a suitable woman to marry. Eliza and Johan met in July 1849 and were married two months later. Johan had already spent five years on Ruapuke Island in Foveaux Strait, and he took Eliza there to work with him on his non-denominational mission work for the North German Mission Society. During the years of the Wohlers's mission, the settlement grew to have wheatfields, a flour mill, cows and sheep, where previously there had been only the uncertain and dangerous income of whaling.

The writer and naturalist Sheila Natusch was Wohlers's great-granddaughter.