Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(N.Z.) an early settler in Canterbury, New Zealand, from anywhere except Britain, esp. one from Australia.

1851		Lyttleton Times (Canterbury) 31 May 5/1: We quoted ‘the Dream of a Shagroon,’ because [...] it gives us the opportunity of deprecating in the strongest terms anything like a spirit of rivalry or jealousy between the land purchasers and squatters in our settlement.
1852		Lyttleton Times (Canterbury) 12 June 4/2: Notice to Correspondents [...] ‘The Shagroon's Consolation’ is hardly up to the mark. The lines do not efficiently reply to the amusing earnestness of the ‘Shagroon's Lament,’ which is, in its way, a gem of the first water.
1860		Taranaki Herald (NZ) 18 June 4/3: He too [...] could tell us something about the whistle of a bullet and the shriek of round shot sent upon a serious miss'on. I am, yours, &c, AN OLD SHAGROON.
1877		W. Pratt Colonial Experiences of Incidents of Thirty-four Years in N.Z. 234: In the ‘Dream of a Shagroon,’ which bore the date Ko Matinau, April 1851, and which first appeared in the ‘Wellington Spectator’ of May 7, the term ‘Pilgrim’ was first applied to the settlers; it was also predicted in it that the ‘Pilgrims’ would be ‘smashed’ and the Shagroons left in undisputed possession of the country for their flocks and herds.
1880		Star (Canterbury) 27 Oct. 3/6: I hope the person who styles himself ‘Shagroon’ will [...] not endeavour to stigmatise unfortunates by hap-hazard claptrap.
1898		E.E. Morris Austral Eng. 410/1: Shagroon, n. When the province of Canterbury, in New Zealand, was first settled, the men who came from England were called Pilgrims, all others Shagroons, probably a modification of the Irish word Shaughraun.
1930		(ref. to 1850s) L.G.D. Acland Early Canterbury Runs (1951) 13: The Australians were nicknamed ‘Prophets’ or ‘Shagroons’.
1937		Honolulu Star-Bulletin (HI) 19 June 32/1: A shagroon is an original settler.
1988		(ref. to 1850s) McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 98/2: shagroons Australian squatters in Canterbury, 1851–52.
1998		Guardian 5 Sept. 35/2: Whalers were followed by the settlers, shagroons, and squattocracy with their gummies and cowspanking.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].