page_title: Mathew Richmond
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Mathew Richmond / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Shows a large house, possibly the house of Major Mathew Richmond, surrounded by trees at the top of a cliff in Nelson.
context_page_description: Major Mathew Richmond CB was a New Zealand colonial administrator and a politician. He was the first Chairman of Committees of the Legislative Council. Born in England to Scottish parents, he had a military career spanning 23 years before arriving in New Zealand.
context_section_description: Richmond was born in 1801 in Salisbury, England. His father was Major Richmond from Kilmarnock, Scotland, and he served with the Royal Scots Greys.  He was educated at the Royal Military College from 1814 and had a total of 23 years of active army service. He joined the Cape Corps in South Africa in 1817. From the following year, he served with the 11th Regiment of Foot, where he gained the rank of a Captain in 1826. He served in Portugal in 1828–1829 before he went to the Ionian Islands as an administrator from 1829 to 1838, where he lived on Paxos. In 1838 or 1839, he was Deputy Judge Advocate in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, for the 96th Regiment of Foot.  He went with the regiment to New South Wales in 1839.
  Richmond married Mary Smith in 1830. They had one daughter and one son, Andrew Richmond.
caption: The Cliffs in Nelson, 1878 watercolour, possibly showing Richmond's house
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