Жаңа Зеландиядағы алғашқы Trentham тұрғыны Ричард Бартон

Richard Barton (30 August 1790 – 20 August 1866) was the first European resident of Trentham, Upper Hutt, in New Zealand. He was born in Newport, Isle of Wight, England. He was a Justice of the Peace and Member of Provincial Council in Wellington during the colonial years of New Zealand, serving alongside other pioneers including William B. Rhodes and during the first term of Henry Bunny in 1864.

Barton's earliest profession is documented as a farmer near Newport on the Isle of Wight in Hampshire, England. He was qualified in estate management for some years before progressing to Superintendent of Estates for the Duke of Sutherland in Trentham, Staffordshire. He also leased quarries at Brora from the Duke. Barton had been Supervisor at Trentham Hall, a large Georgian house commissioned by the 2nd Duke, when he was sponsored, along with a party of younger men under his leadership from this estate, by the Duke of Sutherland to emigrate to New Zealand as a means of relieving overpopulation in the region. For his work he secured a gift from the Duke for an allotment of a 100 acre section in the new colony of New Zealand.

In 1839, widowed and with a daughter, Barton joined his friend Dudley Sinclair, son of Sir George Sinclair who was a Director of the New Zealand Company, and family on the "Oriental", the first of the New Zealand Company's emigrant vessels to leave England, though the second of four early settler ships to reach Port Nicholson. An early document from the Morning Chronicle describes the emigrants on board the Oriental in the Departure of the New Zealand Colony:The emigrants on board the Oriental are of a very superior class. They are chiefly young men and women of from twenty to thirty years of age – the women looking healthy and buxom, the men intelligent and resolute. Here too are a number of Highlanders from the estates of the Duke of Sutherland: they are a fine hardy set of fellows, and capable, no doubt of fighting their way in any region of the world in which they may be placed. Great care appears to have been taken to secure their comfort. They are clad in one uniform dress – a blue jacket and cap, and tartan trousers – everything upon their backs appears to be perfectly new. Barton became an agent for the New Zealand Company and was responsible for the Highlanders on board the Oriental. Mr. Dudley Sinclair eventually went on to Australia. He enlisted a considerable number of young Highlanders as recruits for the settlement, persuading more than 40 to emigrate. He arranged dances to be held during the winter in the hope of getting the Highlanders married and was able to employ a number of them when they arrived on the ship Blenheim when it arrived in 1841. He named his estate Trentham in honour of the Duke of Sutherland, one of whose subsidiary titles is Viscount Trentham, of Trentham in the County of Stafford. Much of his former estate is now Trentham Memorial Park, which includes the native bush remnant known as Barton's Bush – the largest remaining area of broadleaf forest in the Hutt Valley.

Exactly when Barton and his family began living on the Trentham estate is unclear from various historical sources. Although he appears to have built a slab hut on his purchase around 1841, the Trentham Parish histories indicate that he and his third wife, Hannah, whom he married about 1843, only settled on the estate in 1846. During the intervening 5 years it seems Barton may have assisted, perhaps supervised, the surveying the surrounding country for the Wellington Company.

Richard Barton died on 20 August 1866 and was survived by his wife Hannah Barton, three sons and daughter. He was buried in Trentham Upper Hutt at St John's Anglican Church cemetery where he was a founding father of the church and memorials to him in the form of brass plaques within the Church building are still kept. The Barton family also holds a plot in St Johns Church for Richard Barton's descendants.