New Zealand
From the farming communities of Southland and Otago to Greymouth and Christchurch, the heritage remains in Kiwi soil.
KNIGHTBORN
The living legacy & global archive of the Knight family.
Every family is a story.
Ours is an odyssey.
Scroll down. Then the line turns right.
Down through the crest. Then right along the line. Then down into the house.
Wapping · 1817
Copper kettles of the works
John Knight opened a soap and candle works on the Thames. Primrose, Castile and Family Health — a London house that later took a royal warrant. No New Zealand descendant stayed in the business. The smell of the kettles is still the start of the story.
Port Chalmers · 1883
The Marlborough under sail
Sidney Herbert, Jeanie and two small boys crossed for a new country. The Black Sheep did not stay. The boys did — one of them, or a man the family holds as the same, became the Gore house. That join is still open.
Caversham · 1886
The school we will not skip
The Evening Star of 18 December 1886 sent Sidney Alfred and Alfred Cyril to Caversham Industrial School. That paper is why the English sons exist as people here, apart from the Gore stone. Hardship is not a footnote.
Gore · 1922
Nine children of a drover’s house
A drover died at Waverley Street aged 42. Elizabeth Templeton Rogerson raised what remained. Rachel, Agnes, Isabella, SAYK, Jessie, Mavis, Margaret, Ivan and Cuth — born after his father had died. Their names are on the tree.
Dunedin
Cuth and mates
A colourised photograph of four young men in street coats started this house. Rugby, boxing, Taieri Road. Tony married Rosie. Simon keeps the archive in Perth. The picture still will not date itself.
The living house
Then the light
The odyssey turns from black water to paper. Walk the full tree. Send a name. Share the brochure. Living dates stay off. Children under 18 stay off. Konduct will not sell this.
Open the family treeWelcome
KNIGHTBORN on paper
From the streets of England to the frontiers of New Zealand and across the living diaspora — the people, the fights we will not flatten and the next generation still knowing who they come from.
Sidney and Elizabeth
Nine children
In Southland, Sidney Albert Knight and Elizabeth Templeton Rogerson raised nine children. These are their lives.
- 01Rachel Knight1901–1975They called her Aunty Tate. She made a home on Glasgow Street in South Dunedin, first with Peter Lowe and later with Richard McCormack and raised a family there.
- 02Agnes Jean Knight1908–1953Agnes married Bernard Cleveland. Their sons carried the name on — Les later wrote a book of promises kept.
- 03Isabella Jean Knight1909–1975Isabella married George Richard Bell. Through her the family kept moving, quietly, into the next generation.
- 04Sydney Alfred Ysker Knight1911–1990Born in Pukerau on the eleventh of November. He married Martha Jane Murphy in Ranfurly in 1938, worked the railways and rests at Andersons Bay.
- 05Jessie Elizabeth Knight1913–1990Jessie married Leslie Elsey and lived in Kaikorai. From that house the family reaches Perth.
- 06Mavis Annie Knight1915–1937Mavis married Dick McCormack. She died at twenty-two. The family still says her name.
- 07Margaret Joyce Knightb. 1919Margaret married Leslie Laing. They made a home on Nelson Street.
- 08Ivan Samuel Knight1922–1981Ivan stood witness at his brother’s wedding in Ranfurly. Later the line ran to the West Coast, to Perth and to Queensland.
- 09Henry Cuthbert Knight1923–2005They called him Cuth. Born after his father had died, he married Gladys Arthur, played rugby, boxed — and a photograph of four mates in Dunedin coats is how many of us first met him.
A global diaspora
From local pioneers to a connected global family
What began as a single family in Southland has expanded into a global network. Today the descendants of the Knight family live, work and thrive across continents.
Australia
A major branch has flourished in Western Australia (Perth) and Queensland, bridging the Tasman with new generations.
The Philippines
Family have named Catarman as a place this line now lives.
United States
Through collaborative research we remain linked with family in Seattle, Washington — Tim Knight’s English work, credited, not copied.
Story concept
Share KNIGHTBORN
Download the brochure. Send it to a cousin, a researcher or a company that should hear who we come from. Konduct is copied so we know who asked us to write. We do not sell that record.
Join the journey
Help complete the puzzle
Write with a name, a correction or a photograph. Nothing is published until it is accepted.
The KNIGHTBORN archive
Preserving our past, building our future
Family history shouldn’t live in dusty cardboard boxes or forgotten emails. KNIGHTBORN is a family-owned living home for the Knight story — part archive, part gathering place — so the next generation inherits more than a list of names.
Initiated by the dedication of family historians like Barry T. Knight, the project is now kept by Simon Knight in Perth. We map letters and registers, bridge records from England, New Zealand, Australia, the US and the Philippines and let cousins send a name or a photograph without putting a living date on the internet.