John George Miles

Who is John George Miles?

John George Miles was a 19th-century Member of Parliament in Nelson, New Zealand.

Miles was born in 1838 in Finsbury, London, the son of John Hamilton Miles and Mary Smith. He arrived in Nelson, New Zealand around 1853 and farmed near the town. He married Alice Harriott Smith on 20 September 1860 at Spring Grove, Waimea, New Zealand. Their son Bramston Hamilton Miles was born on 22 February 1863, but his wife died three weeks later from childbirth complications on 14 March.

He represented the Waimea electorate from 1864 to January 1866, when he retired. The 1865 parliamentary session had already finished on 30 October, and in early December, Miles addressed a public meeting reviewing his term as the electorate's representative, and saying goodbye to his constituents, as he planned to spend the next two years in England. He offered to be their representative again upon his return. He had promised his dying wife to take their son to England, so that he could be brought up by her parents and siblings.

Miles and his son left the country on the Asterope for England on 29 December 1865 from Wellington.