Mayor of Thames


The Mayor of Thames officiated over the Thames Borough of New Zealand, which was administered by the Thames Borough Council. The office existed from 1874 until 1975, when Thames Borough and Coromandel County were amalgamated to form Thames-Coromandel District. There were 24 holders of the office.

History

The Thames Gold Rush in the late 1860s and the early 1870s made Thames known as a locality, and the township developed from diggers settling in the area. The area was controlled by the Auckland Provincial Council. In late 1871, a public meeting in Grahamstown resolved:
That in the opinion of the meeting it is desirable that a Municipal Corporation should be established for the Thames.

This resulted in the forming of a Thames Municipality Committee in early 1872. The Borough of Thames was gazetted in November 1873. The first Borough Council was elected in March 1874. As was practice at the time, the councillors voted one of themselves to be the mayor. William Davies was the only person proposed and voted into the role unanimously in April 1874.
After having served as mayor for a year, James McAndrew was re-elected unopposed in 1890.
Henry Greenslade resigned from the mayoralty on 31 May 1900, as he had bought a farm in Ohaupo in the Waipa District. Francis Trembath succeeded him and was elected unopposed.
In total, there were 24 Mayors of Thames Borough. The last mayor was Wallace Brunton, who served from 1959 until 1975. In 1975, Thames Borough amalgamated with Coromandel County, out of which Thames-Coromandel District arose. Hence, the role was succeeded by that of the Mayor of Thames-Coromandel.
Four mayors were also represented in Parliament:
McGowan was later appointed to the New Zealand Legislative Council. William McCullough was also an MLC.

List of mayors of Thames

Mayors of Thames were:
NameTerm
1William Davies1874–1875
2J.E. MacDonald1875–1876
3James Kilgour1877–1878
4William McCullough1878–1879
5Louis Ehrenfried1879–1880
6William Wilkinson1880–1882
7William Fraser1882–1887
8Alexander Brodie1887–1888
9William Carpenter1888–1889
10James McGowan1889
11James McAndrew1889–1891
12James Renshaw1891–1892
James McGowan 1892–1893
13Thomas Radford1893–1897
14William Scott1897–1898
15Henry Greenslade1898–1900
16Francis Trembath1900–1905
17Archibald Burns1905–1909
18Frank Henry Claxton1909–1910
19Henry Lowe1910–1919
20Ernest Napier Miller1919–1923
21Thomas William Rhodes1923–1927
22William Bongard1927–1931
23Sidney Ensor1931–1959
24Wallace Brunton1959–1975