John Styles (1826-1895), son of an English farming family, arrived in Dunedin in January 1850, after responding to a newspaper advertisement calling for ‘agricultural mechanics, farm labourers and domestic servants’. His first jobs were varied, including as a farm labourer, and even on a ‘lighter’, ferrying goods from ship to shore at Port Chalmers. Rachel Bentley had arrived in Port Chalmers in July, 1850. They met while she was working at the Sawyer’s Bay accommodation house John sometimes used. They married in September, 1852. William was born in 1853, Sarah in 1856, when they bought 65 ‘steep’ acres running from the water’s edge up through ‘Styles Creek’ to Garrett Clearwater’s farm (below what would be Larnach Castle), and over to James Gwyn’s farm, which ran up from Yellow Head. These three frequently worked together, including on the Clearwater sawmill in Company Bay, and going to the Goldfields in 1862. He and Rachel were deeply religious, and so John gave a property to the Methodists in the community to build a church on (finished in 1868). The couple had 11 children in the Bay. In 1875 William was killed when he went down a well on Gwyn’s property to save a calf. He was asphyxiated by the gases which had built up in it. The disheartened parents decided to leave the Bay. The property was sub-divided into sections, called the ‘Township of Oban’ (Rachel’s birthplace); many sold, which gave them sufficient money to buy property in Southland, where they went in 1878. The remaining sections were sold off (as the ‘Township of Merivale’) after John’s death.