Acker’s Cottage, Stewart Island

Lewis Acker arrived on Stewart Island in 1831 on board a whaling ship. The humble stone cottage which he built possibly as early as 1834 and in which he and his wife raised a large family, is one of the oldest surviving buildings in southern New Zealand. It gives a vivid impression of the harsh life the region’s earliest European settlers endured.

Lewis Acker was the harpooner on a whaler and came from Charleston, New York State.