Mt. Thomas
(Runs 73, 75 and 234)

Mt. Thomas took in the country in the fork of the Okuku and Ashley. The first man to take up a run on what afterwards became Mt. Thomas Station was John Cowell Boys who was one of Captain Thomas's surveyors, and his pasturage license was the first to be issued by the Provincial Government, and the original Run 1. This was early in 1851. But Boys did not fulfil the conditions of his lease, so the Waste Lands Board cancelled it after a year and used the Number 1 again for Pearson's run, Burnt Hill. John Thomas Brown took up another part of the Mt. Thomas country as Run 75 on 3rd September, 1851, and in January, 1852, Captain W. T. Hervey took up Run 73. Hervey page 67transferred Run 73 to Roderick McKay who transferred it to J. T. Brown on 15th May, 1854. Brown took up Run 234, five thousand acres at the back of Mt. Thomas in January, 1858. Brown was born in Norwich in 1816. He was a surveyor in England and came to New Zealand in the Midlothian in 1851.

Brown started Mt. Thomas as a cattle station in 1852, but in 1855 let it on terms to the Maude Brothers for five years.

In the 'seventies the station carried 13,000 sheep, but afterwards Walter Nicholls bought four thousand acres of the run and started the Haylands Estate, and when the Midland Railway Company offered the run for sale in 1890, the Browns would not buy it, so Nicholls did. After this Mt. Thomas carried 9000 sheep on freehold.

Herbert Brown, son of the first occupier, lived at Mt. Thomas until his death in 1928, but in 1910 sold the sheep and let nearly all the land in farms for a term of years and later on sold it. The homestead still belongs to his estate and is one of the few in Canterbury which still belong to the original family. Miss Julia Brown also owns about eight hundred acres of the original homestead block.