AMONG the founding fathers of the Otago colony of Free Church pioneers in the middle years of last century was captain William Cargill - a puritanical character who might have stepped straight from the pages of the Old Testament.

This year, the people of Otago are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the pioneers, seeing it as a defining moment in the establishment of the province, despite claims of a few Welsh, Indians, and even Scots to have settled there first.

Soldier, prophet, leader of men, William Walter Cargill single-mindedly pursued the goal of making Otago an exclusively Free Church settlement on South Island, even when the received wisdom that the religious, some might say sectarian, barriers would have to be lowered to make a success of this New Zealand venture. Cargill, whose figure looms large in all the endeavours of those settlers left for Otago from London in charge of 97 emigrants on the John Wickliffe late in 1847.

This little craft reached Port Chalmers (named after the first leader of the Free Church of Scotland) a few weeks before the bulk of the emigrants with the Rev Thomas Burns onboard the Philip Laing. Their adventures on the voyage out we've already traced.

Born in Edinburgh in 1784 Cargill came from a serious Presbyterian background. He was descended from the Covenanter, Donald Cargill, who was beheaded in 1681 and the young Cargill was tutored by the aforementioned Dr Chalmers.

He was destined for a career in the army and served in India where heavy casualties resulted in his rapid promotion. In the Peninsular war he was severely injured at Busaco but returned to action to serve through to the concluding victory at Toulouse.

On retiring from military service he worked in banking and in the wine business but never appeared to settle and always spoke of his wish to go abroad. When he read of George Rennie's scheme for a settlement in New Zealand he was hooked, but delays meant that by the time the John Wickliffe set out he was already 64 years of age. However, biographers argue that ''this venerable patriarch'' had ''the ripe, shrewd sagacity which a body of Scots wanted in their leader''.

Despite a hard first winter in Otago, the settlers soon had their church and school - always first priorities for Scots emigrant groups - erected. Cargill and his cohort the Rev Burns had a three-point agenda on which they were quite inflexible: their colony should be self-governing, Free Church dominated, and based on agriculture. However, within a few months it was clear that the fortress was falling.

It had been necessary to welcome English settlers, Anglicans and Methodists into the community just to make it viable and Cargill's unwillingness to accept any criticism saw, for example, the forced closure of a newspaper which had questioned his tough, inflexible line.

Cargill was Resident Agent for the New Zealand Company in Otago and as such recognised as the settlement leader. He was also appointed Commissioner for Crown Lands in the colony and then Superintendent but was soon scrapping with the Governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey, over what he and Burns saw as scheming against their Free Church utopia.

Historian, SL Pearce, said that Grey, originally impressed by Cargill, made up his mind he was dealing with a bigoted, quarrelsome old man. Latterly Cargill was accused of nepotism, promoting his influential and brainy sons-in-law, but defiant to the end, the dour Scotsman argued that he had simply appointed the right men to the right jobs. Within a few months of handing over the Superintendency of Otago to Aberdonian, James Macandrew, and resigning his seat in parliament, Cargill was dead.