Deaths on February 16

Thomas Bracken, Irish-New Zealand journalist, poet, and politician (b. 1843)

Thomas Bracken (c. December 1843 – 16 February 1898) was an Irish-born New Zealand poet, journalist and politician. He wrote "God Defend New Zealand", one of the two national anthems of New Zealand, and was the first person to publish the phrase "God's Own Country" as applied to New Zealand. He also won the Otago Caledonian Society's prize for poetry.His mother Margaret died in 1846 and his father Thomas in 1852. He was sent to Australia at the age of 12 to join his uncle, John Kiernan, at Geelong, Victoria.Bracken was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Bendigo, later moved around to work on farms as a shearer and drover, and for a time was a gold fossicker and store keeper. At that time he began writing tales over the activities of the diggers involved in the goldrush, and about stock men and sheep men. He also established Thomas Bracken and Co with Alexander Bathgate to buy and operate the Evening Herald until it was superseded in 1890 by the liberal Globe.