Family Stories I’ve been told.
May 2010- June 2017
Names
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. Jack Paar
So, let me tell you a little from my mother’s side. The Leovs.
It’s the story of many Antipodeans, migrants of the nineteenth century. These families made the longest sea journey ever taken by immigrants who risked everything to make a new life . My impressions have been sketched by Nana Jane Leov, Pearl Neal, my mother, Alice Leov- Thomson and more recently by Nola Leov , Kath Hadfield , Beryl Moleta and now cousin Rick Cragg who is making a determined effort to discover our roots in Prussia.
From far north Scotland, via Greenock, from Dublin, Ireland, and Cheshire via Liverpool, and from Treptow on the Rega in Prussia, his departure point unknown ,they took to the sea in sturdy sailing barques to make a better life. My main characters in this little book are;
The Thomas Sullivans from Dublin, Ireland. Hyde Cheshire. To Nelson.
The McKenzie’s from Cawdor North Scotland, via Greenock. To Auckland.
The Turners from Whitechapel, London To Wellington.
Charles Augustus Leo von Fritzo. Treptow on Rega, Prussia. To Victoria, then Nelson.
Rutlands Ireland, (though Essex bred.) To Auckland.
1. The Sullivans,
from Dublin/Cheshire were passengers on the barque Martha Ridgeway which left Liverpool in 1842 to settle in Nelson. Our future great-grandmother, Phoebe was a three-month baby at the start of the voyage, and later married Charles Augustus Leov , gave birth to three children, Fred, Emilie ( Millie ) and Charles Sullivan Leov, our grandfather.
The sailing ship they came on was the “MARTHA RIDGWAY, a 621 ton barque, http://web.archive.org/web/20040929132943/http://www.geocities.com/wlorac/mart1842.txt
(Co-incidentally checked before the voyage by Jim’s ancestors, the John Bibby’s who ran the Bibby Shipping line from Liverpool .) They sailed from Liverpool . 6 Nov 1841, and arrived in Nelson with 219 souls on 7th April and landed 10th April 1842 ( 100 years before my birth on that very day) with Captain Henry W Webb, and Surgeon John Henry Cooper.”
“Arrived at Port Nicholson (Wellington NZ) after having struck Barrett’s Reef and had 7 feet of water in her hold, but all and all the voyage was without incident. There were 21 deaths, 11 caused by dysentery, and 7 births.”
The Martha Ridgeway was later wrecked off Great Barrier Reef sometime around 11 August 1842. Ship’s Log. National Archives, Wellington.
In 1977, Aunty Pearl Neal, had a letter from the Parish priest at St Mary’s Presbytery, Collingwood, Nelson. He gives some details from their records of our great grandparents, Thomas Sullivan of Dublin b. 1798-.( I had his address in St John’s St. ) died 1865 ) a bricklayer-slater and social activist, and his wife, Margaret Lequire Ogden, a milliner, from Cheshire ( b. 1807 and d. 1862). Both had been married before.
A relative, Allan Kenning ( we shared great- grand parents, Phoebe and C.A. Leov, and he was descended from the only daughter, Emilie,) told me that;
“Thomas was the only son in a large Catholic family, destined for the priesthood. The early death of his father saw him apprenticed as a Slater and plasterer. In 1822 he moved to Hyde, Cheshire and after four years joined the Loyal Benevolent Lodge of Cheshire, then the Star of Bethlehem Lodge. In all he started 13 lodges there and met his future wife, a milliner Margaret Ogden . He was a popular generous spirited publican and became very well known in early Nelson. “
We should be proud of Thomas, for he was a good man . I think the fact he was a publican damned him in some eyes.
The Freemasons’ Arms, on the north-east corner of Trafalgar and Bridge Streets, became a centre for members of the Oddfellows Lodge, who held their meetings there. Thomas Sullivan, a central figure in the Lodge, held the licence from 1846 to 1854 and, in 1847, the name was changed to the Oddfellows’ Arms. It was the venue for Lodge dinners and for their charity occasions for widows and orphans. In 1856, the Oddfellows built their own hall and transferred their activities to it.
The Nelson Oddfellows Lodge, which helped women like the widow of the man killed in the Maugatpau murders, built a large memorial stone for him.
Note 1 at end.
In the log of the Martha Ridgeway, it is recorded that Thomas was 40 and Margaret 34, on embarkation at Liverpool and they were accompanied by 6 children. William, 2 was one of the eleven infants who died of dysentery before they arrived in Halifax.
Note 2 at end of book.
Phoebe, was 13 months old upon arrival and was twenty-three when she married Charles Augustus, forty-one, on 23rd August 1865 at St Mary’s Catholic church, Nelson.
At the marriage service, Charles (Lutheran) signed a statement that his children would be brought up Catholic. Phoebe’s sister Susan and father signed the register.
(Another Sullivan daughter, Catherine, is mentioned, at age twenty, married Inn Keeper, Horatio Nelson Firth who had owned land in the Pelorus.)
The delicate Phoebe died at 36, Dalton’s Bridge, Canvas Town near Havelock, leaving three children, Charles, Fred and Emily ( Millie, later Kenning.) The Firths and the Kennings figured largely helping the younger children as they grew up.
Most widowers remarried for practical reasons, but he mourned his Phoebe all his long life. Do you wonder?
The James Mann Mckenzies from Far North Scotland.
Note 3. At end.
The McKenzies , James and Elizabeth, (nee Mclean ) had sailed twelve months earlier, in 1841, from Greenock , near Glasgow, bound for Auckland aboard the famous 558 ton barque Jane Gifford. There is an active group of fellow Jane Gifford founders in Auckland. It involves the sister ship, The Duchess of Argyle.
This excerpt is from the Doran Family website who travelled with the Mckenzies.
The Jane Gifford arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on October 9 1842. This was the first planned shipment of free UK migrants to Auckland. In Scotland, high unemployment reigned. The Commissioner of Emigration was sent to Scotland to recruit two shiploads of families (the other was the Duchess of Argyle). He chose family groups and people with trades who might benefit the new colony. The colonists arrived in Auckland harbour, disembarking via ships boats on Mechanics Bay at low tide. The boats could not reach the shore. Passengers had to unload their boxes and bundles and carry them through mud and water to land. They were then crowded into 30 raupo huts along with passengers off the Duchess which arrived the same day. Domestic servants acquired jobs almost immediately. Auckland was in the middle of a depression and the men had to work at heavy manual labour levelling Auckland roads (Shortland St) at 1 pound for married men and 18 shillings for bachelors. Not surprisingly, Auckland did not capture their hearts. During the long arduous journey there had been 33 others deaths between the two ships, many of them small children and babies in arms. There were 16 new births recorded in the log.”
Robert Paul was (Master), Edward Atkinson (Chief Mate), William Bond (2nd Mate) and James McBeath (3rd Mate.) Dr P. Shipton, Surgeon Superintendent, wrote that “nothing particular occurred during the passage which was short and as agreeable as it could be.”
Britain’s history is brutal, and the “clearances” suffered by the Scots is a story that illustrates the continual brutality.
In Nola’s words,
“these Scottish tradesmen were brought out by Hobson to erect the first buildings in Auckland.” It was social engineering similar to Jim’s hardy ancestors, the Hutchinson’s and Andersen’s who came from Yorkshire and Jutland to cope with the harsh Norsewood bush conditions.
2. Rutland.
On my land grew a green tree
that gave shade to the weary,
peace to my children, rest to the travel-stained;
and the waters ran beneath, the river of life. A R D Fairburn.
Some of the more puzzling stories I’ve been told, have been of the Rutlands. They were landholders and educated people who took risks and many went into the wider world to seek their futures.
When I lived in Wellington between 1992 and 1996, I found a Rutland relative, Kay Stafford, living in Rimu Street, Eastbourne.
Kay Stafford- Lovegrove, was the grand daughter of Julia and Hiram Harris and daughter of Bertha Harris,) Her memoirs are in the hands of Kath Hadfield.
We connect with Rutlands through tall and austere W.H. Turner, who married plump Emma Rutland, mother of Charles ( Charlie) Turner
Kay Stafford told me what she knew of our Rutland ancestors. Outside her flowery cottage was a slender kowhai tree and each time I visited, several tuis were drinking nectar from the golden flowers. Kay had traveled a lot, married a South African named Cjiffers. At the time Kay was involved in Law studies at Victoria University and was a keen member of Zonta. She later died of breast cancer. At her funeral, which I attended tuis almost drowned out the service with their song.
Many Rutlands were Army Officers who had been landowners in Essex. Their coat of arms is dated 1679 and Joshua Rutland writing in 1912 suggests that the family had been in Saffron Walden at least 200 years prior to that. Parish records support this. They were Anglicans and an enterprising lot. In her book
Pearl Neal ringed in her book London to Lonely Rai , a map in Essex, of Bendysh Hall, The White House and Church Farm as Rutland homes.
Many Rutland children were given the names, “Dudley”and “Newman” down the generations. John Henry Newman, their relative and hence ours was once an Anglican clergyman, has finally become a Catholic Saint.
One of the earlier Joshua Rutland sons, also named Joshua, went to sea and became Captain Rutland trading in the West Indies.
He died in the Isle of Wight and I was told that his widow opened a boy’s boarding school in Woodford, Essex and said to have made, “a comfortable fortune.”
Her son, also named Joshua, was the father of the George, born in 1793, who concerns us. I will call him George 1 for simplicity, even though he was not the first by a long way. (See my Geni family tree site for dates. ) http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index
George 1 was adopted by his Uncle George, Church Farm, because his only son had died. George 1 didn’t like farming, choosing instead to become a sailor, and going to Rio de Janeiro as super cargo, ( in charge of all commercial operations) and later accompanied Arthur, Marquis of Wellesley ( Later Duke of Wellington) to Ireland and as Colonel George Rutland was appointed Constable of County Clare in Ireland. He might even have been fighting with the British against the French with CAL’s father at Waterloo.
Kay, who researched with her cousin Robin Hodgson, Lower Hutt ,told me that Col.G.R. was given land as a reward for services in the Battle of Waterloo, 18th June 1815. I will insert a piece Nola Leov wrote about George Rutland.
“George transferred to the Irish Constabulary in 1820 On the 25th January 1823 he became 1st Sub Inspector then 3rd and 2nd County Inspector: served at Diff County and moved and finally died in county Clare. Going by dates he was 37 when he married Maria who was 16. She was 39 when she arrived in NZ. They had stayed with Rutland relations in London prior to emigrating.”
George’s wife was Maria Ann Gibbons, daughter of John Gibbons, a quartermaster in the 17th Lancers. Maria was born in County Clare on 31st August 1814. Her grandfather Colonel John Gibbons had been born in the West Indies of English parents and his father was killed in the Siege of New Orleans. Maria and her five children were left destitute when an Irishman beat her husband, George 1, to death on 8th May 1852. I have her offspring listed as ; Joshua b. 1.1.1836, George 23.4.38, Harriet 17.9.39, Dudley 1842, Harry 29.11.1844 and daughter Julia, who married Hiram Harris,( the well known walking – teaching missionary ) at Nelson Cathedral in 1863.
(Hiram had arrived in Auckland in 1827 on the Duke of Portland and later walked to Picton. He ran an Anglican Maori Mission School in Motueka .)
Hiram was with his brother- in- law, George 2, and John Wilson, when they found gold near Canvas town at Easter, 1864.
As a British War widow, Maria did not inherit any property, ( a wrong righted by suffragettes ) so she emigrated to New Zealand and arrived in Auckland with her two daughters and three sons (including George 2, born 1838,) on the Royal Albert, in March 1853) to join the Edwards and Turner families in Marlborough, to whom she was related through Eliza Edward, sister to Emma, wife of W.H Turner. Joshua Rutland of English House, Essex , (father of Emma.) was born in 1761 and died in 1820 and he married Ann Lush (b 1766- d 1821)
There were two other brothers, George at Church Farm, Hampstead and James at Bendysh Hall near Hampstead. Plenty of material in local church records there for anyone keen. I have a copy of a document, from the 5th edition of the Book of Heraldry, dated 1679 written in Latin and another from the reign of Charles 2nd granting Joshua’s ancestor, William Rutland of Saffron Walden and London, thefamily coat of arms.
Ann (Lush) Rutland of Whittle was the mother of Emma Rutland-Turner. There’s much information, as well as family items, in the Picton Museum. All you need is an interest, time and energy.
Frank Foster’s extensive Rutland book is in a Marlborough museum in Blenheim. In 2010 I deposited all my Rutland material there.
The only Rutland I recall visiting us in Pahiatua was (George) Arthur. Uncle Arthur seemed very old to me, he never married, but travelled and played the piano beautifully. He would walk to Havelock to play for a dance., old Joshua said,
“Arthur could put it on a bit and talked about how when waiting upon the Prince of Wales in Napier, he was complimented on his manners as the Prince left the table.”
Joshua was the father of Emma, who became the second wife (m. 22.4.1834 d.1892) of William Henry Turner, our great grandfather, the London solicitor who described his occupation in the N. Z. electoral rolls of the day as, “Gentleman.”
William H. Turner’s father, George Greetham Turner, had the Black Boy Inn in Whitechapel. His father, Anthony, lived at 16 Church Lane Whitechapel. W.H. Turner was born at 5 Osporn St, Whitechapel and moved about England a lot after he became a lawyer. Nola Leov and Margaret Turner have written extensively on the Turner family, so these are merely tid bits for you.
To emphasize the toll childbirth took on women in the Victorian era I will mention that William married first, Ann Loman, who died in London aged 34 in August 1833 after ten years of marriage. They had sons, William and George, who both died in infancy, then William, Alfred, Edwin, Eliza, Emma, George and finally, Ann died after the birth of Henry, who lived only three months. Imagine !
He married Emma Rutland a year later, on 24th April 1834 and they had Jane, Emily, and Charles. (Our ancestor, born 7t h September 1839,) Mary, Eleanor, Peter, Arthur, who died in infancy, John and Joe. There were eighteen live births in all. Stillbirths were not recorded, let alone miscarriages. To add to our confusion, this generation was rather inclined to use the name of a lost child for the replacement one.
Charles Turner, W.H’s son, our great-grandfather, married Matilda , Tilly, McKenzie, Nana Jane’s mother, on 18th March 1870).
The Turners with a contingent of ten young people, came from London, November 2nd 1860 on the Zealandia, arriving upon St Valentines Day, 1861.
So much has been written about Charles and Matilda (Tilly) Turner, that I will just tell you that one of Joshua Rutland’s other daughters, with the fascinating name of Dudley, married a Robert Newman.
I was told by Pearl Neal that is where our connection to the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, now beatified fits in. He is now St. John because he brought Anglican England closer to the Catholic church after the celebrated, and ‘notorious’ cleric, converted from Church of England to Catholic.
He was a man who would be comfortable in the Vatican today and he did in fact, spent time there.
3. Rutland. The Gold Find at Wakamarina.
In the first days, in the forgotten calendars, came the seeds of the race, the forerunners:
offshoots, outcasts, entrepreneurs, architects of Empire, romantic adventurers;
and the famished, the multitude of the poor; crossed parallels of boredom, tropics
of hope and fear, losing the pole-star, suffering world of water, chaos of wind and sunlight,
and the formless image in the mind; sailed under Capricorn to see for ever
the arc of the sun to northward. A R D Fairburn.
George Rutland was 15 when he arrived in Wellington, NZ on the Royal Albert, 30th March 1853, then onward to Nelson, with his widowed mother Maria from County Clare, Ireland. Like many boys at that time he had to help support his mother.
Much of what I know comes from the 1923 writings of F H Rutland, the son of George’s brother Joshua, as well as stories told to me over the years. He writes of going to school when he could be spared from the farm and how they harvested flax to tie the sheaves as the oats fell behind the reaping machine.
His sister Julia worked for Dr Monroe and also schooled her siblings at home. Young George started work pit sawing in Waimea West then worked for a Mr. Redwood killing meat for the town of Nelson. He would cart the carcass in a bullock dray. It sold for sixpence a pound at Mrs. Beard’s Butchery. His mother was anxious to secure land so in 1859, having saved some money, he walked over the Maungatapu to the Pelorus Valley to search for land. He reached Tahora, (a Maori pa meaning Stronghold.)
Standing on top of Bald Hill looking across the Pelorus River, he saw flat fertile land below that had been cultivated by the Maoris until abandoned after a flood. He went over the river in a Maori canoe and rented the farm from Andrew Salmond.
His brother Joshua Rutland wrote in 1912, (This is all in the Blenheim Settlers Museum now. )
“His (George’s) luck was in, for Mrs. Salmond was about to be laid up. Mr Salmond had hired a nurse and procured a bottle of brandy for the job but the nurse had drunk the whole lot and was tite. (sic) Salmond was in such a state that he rented the 251 acre Te Patoa farm to George that very night.” He does not say for whom the brandy was bought.
It was another year before George, his mother, Maria and brother Henry, set off on the three day journey through dense bush to take up the land. He carried his mother over the big streams on the thirty five mile walk. Their belongings were transported the ninety miles from Nelson at a cost of £10. The small sailing ship went as far up the Pelorous river as the tide would allow, and then three miles by bullock dray which capsized enroute ; Imagine ? George carried out milling and hauling logs out with bullocks and floating them down river to a saw mill in Havelock.
Some years later at Easter in 1864, Hiram Harris, who’d married Julie on 12th of January 1863 (they had a son, Joshua born 31st of October 1863) came over from Motueka to catch up with his wife Julia’s family and he, Joshua and George decided to go gold prospecting in the Wakamarina River. En route they called into John Wilson’s Boarding House and John joined them. At first they were unsuccessful but after they returned home and made a Long John, (a sluice box,) they went five miles up stream, crossed Mountain Camp Creek and at the wide Wilson’s Beach they found two and a half ounces of gold at 4pm on April 4th 1864.
Within three days they had eighteen and a half ounces, so they pegged one 40 ft square claim between them, and went home for supplies, not knowing that each was entitled to a claim. They worked it out in six weeks. Nola Leov says it was later decided a claim would be 30’ x 30’ “The one’s who knew made money”.
Hiram went back to teaching while Joshua with his brother Henry ran the farm, Wilson had to run his halfway house and George paid a man ₤1 a week to help with the claim.During that time they went to Picton and were awarded ₤1275, the Government bonus for finding a payable gold field. The original prize was ₤1000 for finding 10,000 oz. It increased if the yield was greater Two men, Clime and Co, claimed that the find was theirs, but it was settled with a court case.
Within a few weeks diggers swarmed north from the Otago fields by land and sea. A calico city arose beside the mudflats, housing nearly six thousand men and it was named Canvas town. In the first rush over 25,000 ounces were won but the gold was gone by 1866.
George was given the job of Gold Receiver at the Wakarmarina Bank and appointed Second Magistrate with a salary of £400 a year and with his part of the award he bought a farm in the Wairau Plain on Jackson’s Cross Road; Joshua bought the Te Patoa home farm, which up until then had been leased. The land had to be stumped and ploughed at least four times a year to grow oats and potatoes. Unbelievably hard manual work.
Te Patoa.
Te Patoa, farm near Canvastown, Marlborough bought with reward for finding gold. George, left of gate, daughter at the gate, Georgina, Joshua to the right.
George married Jane Turner and three daughters were born before the great flood of 1868 ruined them. When Jane died, a stepmother took over the education and care of her children.
On her deathbed, Jane Rutalnd asked to be buried on the bluff overlooking Te Patoa, so she could watch her children growing up. Alfred was a baby and went to Charlie and Matilda for two years. Maria died in 1888 and she and all the rest of her family joined her there.
4. Adrian Leov.
My cousin Adrian pictured with my mother Alice on her wedding Day. January 2nd 1935
As a child, whenever I fingered the head dress of wax orange blossom, my mother Alice wore on her wedding day, she would tell me how she loved her little page boy, Adrian Leov. He was Cyril’s son and the eldest of his generation and seemed to be a lot like Grandfather Leov as my mother described him to me. Tall, fair and good natured. Adrian’s daughter Jane married a fine businessman called Clint Mcinnes. They live at 122b Centaurius Rd Christchurch. (2017) Clint showed me the draft of a finely researched book he wrote about Charles Leo von Fritzo. It back grounded Wars and times. I regret I never saw the finished book.Where is it now I wonder?
Later, when I was fourteen, 1956, I stayed with Uncle Cyril and Aunty Esma near Sunny Heights. ( I had some days with Nell and George Young during which there was a flood where the water rose until it touched the back door step.) I found the C. Leov boys and their younger sister Joan, and with Donnie a spirited bunch. The boys were by now, strong young men. It was clear they needed a large canvas on which to paint their lives.
It was hinted that they smoked and maybe even drank beer at dances in the Rai Valley. This seemed a little daring to me. I loved the way they argued around the breakfast table, Esma would laugh as she worked, their delight when one got the better of another. She cooked huge bacon, egg, sausage and chop, breakfasts they downed after the milking and feeding out. I never forget going to a film in the Rai Hall where the light was turned on to change the reels and we sat on wooden chairs. It was wintertime with frost on the grass and the whiff of silage in the air. It was here I felt the first grip of asthma, the tightness and pain, breathing in the frosty air.
Joan Leov may recall my encounter with a weta, which crawled into my undies overnight. The large bag of raw peanuts, beside Uncle Cyril’s bed. He stretched out eating them while he read his County agendas in bed with the door wide open. Joan told me that when he went away the place fell to pieces. He ruled the roost.
It is Adrian’s smile I remember best , his gravelly smoker’s voice answering the phone when Jim and I, virtual strangers, rang him some years ago. The warm welcome from both Adrian and his wife Anne .It was real old style country hospitality. Driving up the lovely valley to the farm house, nestling amid the roses in their early summer garden .Talking about farming and old C A Leov, our great grandfather. I hope Clint McInnis, his son in law ,(married to Jane ) will write down what he recalls of their long conversations.
Later again, at a family picnic near Carluke, with families scattered under trees, I walked from group to group, then down the quiet road to the Turner Cottage. It was built by our family from pit sawn totara in memory of Charles and Tilly Turner and is now a Pioneer museum.
Returning, it dawned that I did not need to search any further for my ancestors.
They were present. Nana Jane, Cyril, Pearl, Vi, Nell, Hally, Len, my parents, Alice and Gordon, even the mystery parents of CA Leov, picnicking under the trees.
I could hear my great grandmothers, Phoebe and Tilly laughing together. Chatting about grandchildren? More likely it would be politics, equality for women and the state of the world. We all share this terrible lust for life and a fierce desire to better the world A diplomat’s wife and executive ,Anne Scholar, once told me that “Kiwi women are the feistiest in the world.”
The families on my mother’s side are kind hospitable, some were opinioned people who love to argue and have a loud . We have our share of eccentrics and obsessive’s, talkers and doers, carrying forward parts of the great human gene pool, Corpus Mundi.
I stood looking at them from a distance. Glad to be part of a family which has respect for hard work, honest dealings; which enjoys wit, is able to think, talk and make the best of life.
Cousin Adrian Leov died in 2000 and Eileen Neal-Roper in 2008. Donnie Leov and Errol Neal in 2017.
5 From Nola Leov.
“I wasn’t a particularly analytical child and saw our grandparents rarely. I have many kinds of bonds with people, but can use the word ”love” wholeheartedly about the members of the Rai family. Nana and Grandfather Uncle Cyril ,Aunt Esma, Auntie Pearl, Uncle Max, Aunty Nell, Uncle George. As a child I found Uncle Len’s teasing, alarming.
Your family, (Thomson’s) had more of Nana than the rest of us. Alice was her baby and Nana felt responsible for her poor health. She told me about finding the cot mattress mildewed and thought that was the cause.” (So many of our family has respiratory disease that I think it is genetic and locked into our nervous systems. V )
“ I have a clear recollection of the house and farm , the smell of the barns and the horses. The sounds of hens and turkeys. Nana churning butter in the wet dairy, her stocking wrinkled on her slender legs.”
.
6. Eileen Neal -Roper’s Memories of the Leovs in Rai Valley, Marlborough
When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad, All that was theirs dies and is buried with them. Euripides (484 BC – 406 BC),
(Some years ago I wooed some of my cousins to write what they could recall of our old people using a tailored aide memoire. In their own words- but edited by me.
From Eileen Roper.
Nana Jane Turner Leov; January 15th 1995 is the Anniversary of our Nana Jane Leov’s birthday. You could describe her as a sort of Mother Teresa. Practical, hardworking and cultured, though she had little education she was always consulting the Encyclopedia Britannica and she gained her School Certificate later in life.
She liked challenging every moral issue she met. She went that extra mile and was supportive of everything progressive. Nana was a tremendous debater, politics being an ever present topic in a household full of powerful men. She had friends by the score and was always producing mountains of food. Friends shared the care of children in those days and being midwife was one of Nanas specialties.
Nana milked the house cows and made butter and bread three times a week. I can still smell it, the most beautiful bread in the world. There was little time for tea parties and gossiping, there was far too much real work to be done.
The washing and ironing for the large farming family took days. She adored our grandfather Charles and was a loving mother to her seven children, Len, Harold, Cyril, Nell, Vi, Pearl and Alice. There was always time for a bedtime story. It might be from Cole’s Funny Picture Books, Grimm’s and Hans Anderson’s Fairy Tales and there were always lots of laughs.
At times people took advantage of her generosity for she had the gift of giving. She sewed pinafores, dresses and aprons on an old-fashioned Singer sewing machine with the handle on the wheel and the only thing she didn’t do was knit.
No one knows when Nana began her interest in women’s rights and temperance work. She became an acknowledged leader in church, mission work and the community.
She grew weary and sad in the later stages of her life and suffered with neuritis which gave her constant pain in her neck, shoulders and back most of her adult life and had several nervous collapses due to stress and overwork.
Nana cared for her own mother Tilly Turner for many years after her stroke and for Charles Augustus Leov for even longer. Nana Jane called him Mr Leov. He lived in a wooden whare at the back of the garden. Charles, his own son, wasn’t very patient with him but Nana spent an hour chatting with him each evening, keeping him company, cutting his nails and hair and cared for him until his dying day in 1918.
I was six when Nana’s mother Matilda Turner died. I clearly remember her sitting in her rocking chair on the wide verandah at Sunny Heights. Her sense of humour was delightful and after her stroke she said things back to front. She would laugh until tears ran down her face. She was as Irish as could be; except that she was Scottish, a McKenzie, of course.
Charming and feminine, she had many a tale to tell about her youth. Her husband Charles was a respected stern and dignified Londoner. He was good looking but could be self-righteous. It must have been hard for him living the rough bush life in Rai Valley. He could be irrational and stubborn, but somehow Grannie managed to laugh her way through the trials of living in those pioneering times.Here endeth Eileen’s memoir.
7.
Faithfulness and Fortitude.
Now we move to the elusive C A Leov who has tantalized generations with his mysterious past. According to cousin Kath Leov Hadfield, Great grandfather Charles Augustus was born 24th May 1824 in Treptow on Rega in Pomerania ,a military base, about 45 Km from Stettin.(Szczecin.) .
In the 1917 List of Aliens he is listed as having been in NZ, 54 years, making his arrival in NZ 1863. (I have a 1993 letter written to Allan Kenning by Alexander Fulling, a German researcher who had found nothing about the family the surviving seven church records in Stettin. As an aside he mentions that Treptow belonged, since 1666, to a noble family named von Pritz. ‘Von, ‘means, ‘of the house of’.‘Leo,’ in Old Germanic means, ‘Brave amongst the peoples.’ Charles spoke French, German and knew Latin and English,(but not very well) and the only person I met, Merle Kenning, who had known him while alive, described his as a ‘Gentleman.’
NB. It may have been earlier than the generally accepted age of thirty that he left East Prussia and the Army and traveled with a friend through the USA, to the Victorian Gold fields. Family mythology has it that he had observed bullying by a senior officer and challenged the man to a duel and was injured. CA ,as his sons would later call him, was aided by his mother to escape with several friends. She gave him gold in a leather pouch. He may have gone AWOL.
It’s said that he spent some time in Wisconsin, where there were many Germans at that time, and still, teaching music, possibly the violin, then went on to the gold fields near Sacramento in 1849 with a musical friend named August Elbeck, then disillusioned, they left for the Victorian goldfields and CA ran a store in Creswick Creek near Ballarat before he moved to New Zealand with £1400, a goodly sum in those days. I believe he arrived in NZ in 1863. He was naturalized in August 1865.
The marriage certificate in the same year gives his occupation as merchant and age as 39. It has been suggested he adjusted his age down two years because his bride,Phoebe Maria Lequire Sullivan Leov so mch younger.
Phoebe Maria Lequire Sullivan, was twenty-four. She was a graceful, lighthearted woman who died at thirty-eight leaving three children Millie, (Emilie) Charles and Fred.
On rare occasions in later life he would talk to Nana about his mother and sisters, Joanne and Amelia whom he said rode to church in a carriage the family christened the’ Ark.’ He told Nana that they dressed well and carried stylish parasols. He said he had one brother named Augustus. People find it odd that brothers could have the same name so maybe Charles took his brother’s and his father’s names Leopold and Augustus for himself. We may never know. The reason I tend to believe him is that through our family runs a strong regard for truth.
He mentioned that his family had owned a large house and had land holding and horses. The family rode to hounds English style and they had servants. His father had been an Army Officer and had later been killed in a fox-hunting accident.
One story says that my Aunty Nell (or maybe another grandchild) when small ,said to CAL, “Grandfather, can I have your dressing gown girdle for a rope when you die?”
Once when he was minding the children while Nana was out he said
“Now, My little dears, your mudder is not here, so I will whack you all with my walking stick.”
Nana said that one evening he had eaten some of her home baked bread and he grabbed his stomach and said “ Jane, dis damn dough stick to my stomach like lead.” He also would tear up his bills and stuff them in a drawer. Beryl Moleta , my cousin, told me that the Leov grandchildren would stuff flies in Great grandfather’s pipe while he slept.
Great Grandfather had a hard life during World War 1 when he felt that New Zealanders were fighting his cousins. He was put under a sort of house arrest as an Alien.
CA Leov was very sociable and had a cheerful, outspoken manner. He liked to play cards with friends and to dress in a pin-stripe suit with white gloves. He often wore a rose in his lapel and enjoyed his smokes and his nips of gin.
Another tale told me by Kath Hadfield, was from Mrs Wratt, who was daughter of the Leovs’ midwife, was that CA and August Elbeck were guards, who accompanied Royalty in the procession at Queen Victoria’s 1840 wedding to her cousin, German-born, Albert (Sax Coberg,) and went absent without leave. Yet would he have been there at sixteen?
C A’s son, our grandfather, Charles Sullivan Leov was a giant among men according to my mother. He also never came home without chocolate and spoiled her, his youngest daughter.
He was a jovial, intelligent, tall, handsome and loveable man who grew white-haired in old age. He was always reasonable and not inclined to be madly religious but honorable in all things. Nana and he made a gallant team and were an inspiration to their family.
Charlie got along well with his three sons, Len, Harold and Cyril, and they farmed together until one after another, the sons left home to farm other land..
Grandfather was ill for a very long time prior to his death and Beryl, who stayed and helped Nana suggests he had hip problems that would be typical for a farmer and that he had also a thyroid problem.
If you listen you can hear them still, the family gathered around the Lipp piano singing. Alice,the soprano and Grandfather, the baritone, were the real singers. Music played a big part in their lives, as did literature. They sang hymns as well as rousing songs like Keep the Home Fires Burning, It’s a Long way to Tipparary, and Rule Britannia.
Nana passed school certificate in later life and learned to drive after CS’s death I recall driving in our Ford Prefect as she talked furiously, pressing the accelerator to emphasis a point, it was invigorating.
Your Nana may be different, but this Nana is mine. I can recall her laughing when she killed the possum with the poker when it came down the chimney. Chased it around the large room .Blood everywhere.
They all read and could quote from the classics. I can see the big family sitting around the enormous dining table eating Nana’s famous gooseberry pies, black and red currant tarts from the berry garden and her heavenly apple jelly made from the old cooking apple trees, farm sized wholemeal scones and fruit cake.
The boys bellowing about politics or religion, world affairs, you name it.
(They were all larger than life, with what Bev Creswell told me I once had. “All the terrible Leov energy.” Never more Miranda, never more.) VCB
“But with Julia, Instead of wandering around some half-baked heaven, she’s rattling around in the apartments of my brain, having a high old time. There are thousands of her in brains all over the world, but this Julia is mine.”
Julie and Julia. (On Julia Child) by Julie Powell. The book, not the film.
Nana’s Pink Apple Jelly.
6 lbs chopped, cored, and unpeeled cooking apples. Barely cover with water. Boil for half an hour. Cool and strain through a muslin bag over night.
Do not squeeze the bag or you get a cloudy jelly. Measure the liquid by cups and bring to the boil in a preserving pan. Add the juice of 2 lemons, 1 tsp salt and 1 Tbs butter.
Add warmed sugar, cup for cup and boil for 30 minutes or until a drop sets in cold water. When slightly cooled, stir in a bottle of raspberry extract then pour into sterilized jars and seal.
8 Eileen Roper remembers Nana’s Home at Sunny Heights.
A generation of men is like a generation of leaves; the wind scatters some leaves upon the ground, while others the burgeoning wood brings forth – and the season of spring comes on. So of men one generation springs forth and another ceases. Homer (800 BC – 700 BC), The Iliad
I am opening the white wooden gate beside the lemon verbena, which clicks wonderfully, and I’m walking up the wide cement path to Nana and Grandfather Leov’s house, Sunny Heights in Rai Valley.
Alongside the path are lovely hollyhocks, Canterbury bells, roses, gladioli and cosmos. I can small sweet peas, bread baking and apples. There are many native trees and oaks as well as a camellia in the front garden and the vegetable garden out the back. Along the verandah pink and white climbing roses are in bloom.
There is an old washing basin along the back of the house where the men wash before they come indoors. I can see thrushes and fantails and hear tuis in the flax.
The clothesline stretches out beyond the house on a flat area of lawn from which you can see long views up the Rai Valley to the western hills. The berry garden is close by, with black currants, red currants, and gooseberries,( not to be picked before Labour weekend.)
Out in the paddock near the stables I can see three or four draught horses, several drays and Nana’s spick-and-span gig. When not working, the farm dogs, Prince and Rob,are tied up at their kennels beside the stables and there are storage sheds out beyond the back gate. There is an old netting safe hanging in the cool under the trees. There is a pigsty not far away and Mother (Pearl) used to tell us about the day when the boys made apple cider and gave it to the pigs and then invited the girls to hang over the fence and watch their drunken antics. They nearly died laughing until Nana found out and then did they catch it?
The washhouse is as big as a modern living room with large wooden tubs, corrugated scrubbing boards and a tin copper. The kitchen is small, with pots and pans hanging from the ceiling.
There is an old dresser in the kitchen with lots of willow pattern crockery and cups hang from the shelves. There are big cupboards and a shiny black wood range being constantly stoked.
Nana made the best toffee in the world. It was the creamy sort with butter*, rather than the brittle glassy variety used for toffee apples. When we were small we would walk with Mother along the tram line, which ran between our adjoining properties and Nana would give us toffee to take home in clean golden syrup tins. Sometimes my father ( Max) would let us ride standing in the empty milk cans on the dray and we would call into Aunty Ella’s store opposite the Post Office and buy sweets.
The dining room is big and airy with sash windows at each end, a big open fireplace and a gorgeous old wooden dresser with a fine Victorian dinner service in the cupboards underneath. The china is of a delicate figured brown on white design with a somewhat squarish fluted shape.
A silver teapot holds centre stage in front of a large mirror on the dresser and there are always bowls of fresh flowers. The long polished dining table has a large stained glass kerosene table lamp. The chairs with their upholstered high backs seem quite grand to a small child.
On Christmas day everyone goes to church at St Marks near where Nana lived early in her marriage and also near the Flat Creek School where “Mrs. Crabby Old Thorpe” was the teacher.
After Nana serves turkey with roast vegetables and for dessert, plum pudding, trifle and jellies. All the family would be seated at midday to say Grace. The drinks are fruit drink and home-made ginger beer.
Opposite the kitchen is the bathroom with mock tile linoleum, brown squares on a cream background, and there’s a huge claw-foot bath and a big china jug and basin on a stand.
There are beautiful rural scenes on the patterned wallpaper in the dining room and in the passage a long carpet runner and an ornate white plaster ceiling and is papered in green and white regency striped wallpaper. It has high skirting boards like the rest of the house. Along the verandah that wraps around two side of the house are five glass doors opening to views of shrubs and greenery.
Each bedroom has black iron beds, with immaculate starched white counterpanes and lovely soft eider-downs on each bed, for winters in that low-lying valley could be cold. The bedroom wallpapers are a pretty floral and the rooms sweet with the smell of polishing wax and the timber floors are covered with woolen rugs. The sash and cord windows have canvas blinds. There are long mirrors, jugs, basins, and candles in pretty holders, and chamber pots inside bedside cabinets.
The sitting room is small and elegant. It’s a hallowed place with French doors opening onto the verandah where you can see climbing roses which run around two sides of the house.
There is a carpet square, a Victorian lounge suite with chaise lounge, framed copies of paintings of the old masters, the German Lipp piano and a fireplace with decorative tiles inlaid. I can smell kerosene and also wood ash from last night’s fire.
The sounds I remember are the tuis in the kowhai beside the homestead, the whirring of the old-fashioned wind-up telephone.
Granny (Matilda, “Tilly”) is in her room, She is small like Nana, but softer somehow and smiles as Nana seldom did. She is fine-featured and she wears a long dark skirt and a cream blouse. She has lived with Nana for fourteen years. There is always someone staying, for Nana runs open house for missionaries, teachers, lonely, or any down-and- out or needy people. She was a good woman , but I never remember Nana smiling.
I feel very smart when I ride with her in the gig. Lorna, her horse is dainty and a little temperamental, but Nana who is an able horsewoman manages her with great ability.
Eileen wrote this in 1995 when I asked her to imagine walking into Nana’s house.
Sugar substituted for alcohol in our family and for people like Alice and other asthmatics, sugar was just as damaging.
*Nana’s Toffee.
2 breakfast cups of sugar.
½ cup of full cream milk.
1 Tbs butter ( more for a richer toffee)
2 Tbs Golden Syrup,
Bring to boil in a saucepan until a drop sets in cold water. Pour into a buttered pie dish.
This is not the exact china Nana had, but it gives an impression of the brown pattern on white. Her dinner service, it was more squarish and very fine bone china. We once had a cup and saucer.
9. Beryl Leov-Moleta’s Letter. 5th April ’95. Waitiu RD4. Picton.
Dear Vivienne,
Well, It was a lovely surprise to hear from you and thank you for the photo.(Sunny Heights) I wonder if it was an early photo as I remember a large camellia and other ornamental trees in the front. How we used to love staying there, Such dear people, can’t imagine anyone being more special. Grandfather was so patient, however much he suffered-no hip replacements in those days.I remember him digging their vegetable garden having to use the wrong leg as the other was so bad.
Nana was much more forthright-well ahead of her time maybe but had such a wonderful outlook on life that she could get away with it. She used to debate with Uncle Cyril, no hard feelings but both were able to express their views and sort out their problems. How they did work and were always helping others.
Nana suffered badly with neuritis as it was called then and would like us to rub her poor back. Sometimes she would lie on the floor awhile but then she’d be off to milk the cows or walk up to the Neal’s or catch Lorna the horse and harness up the gig and drive up to the village for the stores or visit Aunty Nell or Uncle Len. Nana was great with animals .The dear old farm dogs would lie about the front door and there were masses of pretty brown chookies out in the yard and turkeys as well..
They had part draft horses which would be stabled and fed on chaff. Once one had a bad foot and Nana nursed him on the lawns, bandaging and seeing to the wound. She must have always had a lot to do with horses as her wrist was out of line quite badly after an accident she had as a girl. Nana always hoped to travel to England.
Always one of my sad regrets that she didn’t manage it and that her death was so painful tho thankfully quick. Poor grandfather was ill a long time with,I presume a thyroid problem.
They, of course, looked after great grandma) Turner, which is how Mum became involved. She used to help look after her. Grandfather used to chuckle about “Tilly” when he talked of her later.
Dad, ( Harold) always spoke fondly of great-grandfather Leov. They must have had him living there at some stage as well. What wonderful people they were. Looking after old folk working boys and grandchildren as we came and went. There were no amenities at all and no such thing talked about as stress. We’ve got it made today really and so many seem to moan and carry on. We’re too interest in pleasures and material things maybe.
I’m trying to remember some of the funny stories. One grandfather loved to tell was of how they rowed to Havelock for a dance, presumably from Tuna Bay and then after it was all over they climbed into the dingy in the dark and began rowing and after a bit realised they were still tied to the wharf.
Another story was about the new road opening Grandfather and Uncle Tim decided to ride through the day before the opening. The Leov children were pretty vigorous youngsters maybe. Mum told the story about great-grandfather having said when nana was away “Now my little dears,your mother is not here.I don’t remember whether or what he administered. ( I believe he said,“I shall beat you with my stick.”- but he didn’t. V.)
Another funny wee story was about how the children would stuff great grandfather’s pipe with flies while he slept.
I would love to hear from you again and any questions might remind me of those early days.
Sincerely, Beryl.
“The spirit of exile, wrote the historian, is strong in the people still.” Allan Curnow.
10.
CAL’s father was a miltary man.
Our Prussian Ancestor. Charles Augustus Leo Von Fritzo.
Was He Really Charles Augustus von Falkenheim ?
Charles Augustus Leov has many of us baffled because on one hand there are rumours of him going AWOL from the Army or possibly being in a sword fight, but this is countered by him being known as a gentleman who spoke several languages, played the violin, had a very good voice. His photos display a dignity that make one feel that stories of sisters named Amelia and Joanne and going to church ( Lutheran) in the large carriage named “The Ark” could well be true.
Nana Jane wrote about “Charles Augustus Leopold Leo von Fritzo,” her father in law, in 1948. Saying he had a long name and lived a long life. he wrote this for the Len Leov children, of Durville Island , four years before Nana died of a heart condition (dropsy) at 73. He was the son of a military officer who had been killed fox-hunting prior to his son’s departure.
He was naturalized a New Zealander on 24thJuly 1865 in Wellington prior to his marriage to Phoebe Sullivan.
Naturalisation document 1865. Note this is in not all in CAL’s hand. Just the signature is his.
The last known photo of Charles Augustus sitting outside his whare behind Sunny heights Rai Valley.
Nana , Jane Leov wrote he’d left Trezbiato, Pomerania, aged about thirty, but we don’t know.
He had sight in only one eye and was of a cheery disposition and enjoyed wearing a suit with a pink or white rosebud in the lapel. Robin is able to repeat a sentence in heavily accented English he recalls Nana, quoting CA.
“We rode through the enemy and cut off zeir heads like corn.” There was a verse like pat a cake C.A . taught the children..
DEUTSCH
Backe, backe Kuchen,
Der Bäcker hat gerufen!
Wer will gute Kuchen backen,
Der muss haben sieben Sachen:
Eier und Schmalz,
Butter und Salz,
Milch und Mehl,
Safran macht den Kuchen gel’! (gelb)
Schieb in den Ofen ‘rein.
(Morgen muss er fertig sein.)
ENGLISH
Bake, bake a cake
The baker has called!
He who wants to bake good cakes
Must have seven things:
Eggs and lard,
Butter and salt,
Milk and flour,
Saffron makes the cake yel(low)!
Shove it into the oven.
(Tomorrow it must be done.)
While he spoke fluent French and German, and knew Latin, like many educated in his generation, his English was not good. This hindered his teaching in later life.
The fact he spoke little of his past suggests taciturnity if not trauma and this is evidenced by the appalling deep scars criss -crossing his back, which deeply shocked Merle Kenning’s mother, (his daughter, Emilie Phoebe Margaret Kenning) and a Mrs. Wratt, the Leov family mid-wife, when they dressed his body after death.
Note. End
Rick Cragg’s contact in Germany says that running the gauntlet was banned after 1801. Based on modern military tactics I believe CAL could have suffered it after being captured. His mother knowing another capture would mean death, gave him a pouch of gold to aid his escape.
His musical companion August Elbeck left from Hamburg ( some think.) I am pretty sure that Charles Augustus left Prussia with his friend, Weisenharven.
The Rhein, Bark ship ID 15471 from Hamburg Germany .Arrive NY USA 21 Nov 1849…Captain H Ehlers ID 294720 No 131 August Albrecht [male] passenger 157 [Musician] no cabin
Leo, C.S age 31, ID. 294627, No 37 born 1818…no cabin – ( birth dates don’t match.)
Another mystery for you to help us solve.
Elbeck ran hotels in Victoria and a store in Blenheim. There is evidence August visited CAL once in Marlborough and there are stories of his brilliant piano virtuosity. He died in NZ in 1891.
We are told CAL taught violin in Wisconsin and then continued west to Sutters Creek, near Sacramento, to find gold, (which was discovered around 1848.)
It’s why I went to a Bed and breakfast in this historic gold town, to look at the bank and old buildings there and dipped my hands in the sparkling cold creek water of what is now a small stream. It felt good.
We next place him running a store in Creswick Creek, Victoria, where his life- long friendship with the Nees family began.
The massive gold rush began after James Regan was walking from the goldfields of Clunes to see a mate, John Dunlop in Buninyong in August, 1851. He stopped at a place called “Balla arat” and tried his luck. He discovered what was to become one of the richest alluvial goldfields the world had ever known.
A Victorian Gold Licence allowed a miner to work a 12 foot square claim for 30 shillings a month.
I include this article about camp stores from the Encyclopedia of Gold.
“Stores were typically tents, sometimes with the addition of rough slab walls and a mud chimney. Carcasses awash with flies hung from crude butcher’s set-ups – or ‘shambles’, as S.T. Gill labeled them in one sketch. Other traders, including many butchers, dispensed with the idea of a store and hawked their goods around the diggings. Often one tradesman would fulfill a number of roles – for instance, at Ballarat John Sharkey was a storekeeper, blacksmith, and butcher. Like the diggers, in the early days most merchants were itinerant – following their customers to the next rush. Despite their primitive set-up, general stores could stock an amazing array of goods. Ellen Clacy, in 1852, described shops on the diggings as places where ‘everything required by a digger can be obtained for money, from sugar-candy to potted anchovies; from East India pickles to Bass’s pale ale.’ Antoine Fauchery painted a bleaker picture, suggesting that the difficulties involved in transporting goods to the diggings meant well-stocked stores could not be relied upon: ‘When drays failed to arrive, nothing [was] left in the stores but boots or saucepans.’
Phoebe Mary Lequire Sullivan, of Nelson, CAL’s future wife, I was told had been engaged to Edward Stafford , later Sir Edward ,who went on to become NZ Prime Minister and had jilted her after a trip overseas, she sued him for breach of promise and was granted £300. Now I find that it was Hugh Stafford who dumped her for flirting at the Wakatu Hotel whilst he had a broken leg!
She was half CAL’s age, said Nana. She had the “weak chest” and died in “The Wilderness” aged 36, after bearing four children, one of whom; Augustus didn’t survive the tough conditions and died aged two. Many of us have inherited this lung condition, (now known as Bronchial Obstruction Disease,) in it’s various forms. It was said to be of pleurisy,the death certificate mentions Phthisis, Tuberculosis .
The three surviving children, Fred, Charles and Millie (Emilie) went on to establish families. As Fred had no son to carry on the long name, any N Z Leov is descended from our grandfather Charles Sullivan Leov. The sister, Emilie, (Millie,) became Mrs. Richard Kenning) and bore Charles, Wilfred, Olive, Walter, Eileen, David, Theodore and Merle, whom I knew in her old Vanguard St home in her final years. I had hoped to make a new connection with the Kennings, some of whom I met whilst living in Wellington. ( I have contacted Merle’s son, Spencer who lives near Christchurch)
In the almost illegible faded fax, from Clint McInnes, Adrian’s son in law , I read a story about hens at the Rai Valley farm, Sunny Heights, with their feet stuck in rising dough left out in the sun and the elderly C.A. dropping a bag of sugar while trying to help Nana lift it into a canoe to cross the river. Also the old man on being sent on a small horse, Rowdy, belonging to Nana’s mother, Tilly Turner, to deliver provisions to his grandson’s camp, gets lost and spends a frosty night under the willows, but is none the worse for his adventures.
The stories of copper mining in the Dunn Mountains, working for Mrs Archer at Tuna Bay, droving, working for the Mowat’s and Nana’s rose brought from Tuna Bay. I read once that CA was one of the large Canvas town search party who helped to bring the Burgess gang (the Maugautapu gold murderers ) to justice. Like a detective, I have to test the credibility of “what’s most likely” weighing what I know of these people. It’s often small details like colours, names ,smells, textures and sayings that make a story ring true.
I went to Sunny Heights with my mother, Alice, in 1944, aged two and remember the scent of lemon verbena, a rambling cottage garden, Grandfather sitting on a sunny veranda, lavender, daphne , a heap of detritus under a lawsoniana wind break, gooseberries, farm dogs and hens. Nana’s quick movement in a house which seemed to flow into a tousled herbaceous garden from its front and side and opening back to dairy, orchard, barns and the farm yard.
CAL died June 11th 1918 at age 94.
CA Leov with his signature pink rose lapel.
In Those Days. Vivienne Bibby.
In the Antipodes
there was no guarantee
at Michaelmas a child
would out-live Christmas.
The mitred sheet,
a crafted darn,
Shirts starched cleric stiff
were mastery of sorts.
Women found solace
in the ministries of bread.
Reputations won
with soap and lost
with lazy milking .
And when a daughter’s
hair would stray or
signs of Uncle Tim
appear within a son,
they’d say, “ We know not
if these things are sent
by providence or God.
But surely, tomorrow
will be a better day.”
Vivienne Bibby.
8D. 5 Clifford St, Surfers Paradise .
Gold Coast. QLD 4217. Australia.
Photographs online.
http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=661095186
Geni . Family tree. http://www.geni.com/family-tree?ref=ph#6000000002678425537
Phone 0755384816
0408 195100
Email vivib@iprimus.com.au
Summary
CAL was still in Creswick in 1861. There are three mentions of him in Creswick and Clunes news of an accident on Hard Hill and of him a Mason in 1860. I believe he arrived in NZ in 1865.
The German Charles Nees family saved his life there (He’d been seriously ill with typhoid fever ) they became lifelong friends. CAL was godfather to the young Charles Nees who died in Cook Strait aged about 25.
( On Wednesday, the 13th inst., at Cambridge street, Creswick, Mrs Charles Nees, of a son. 15 Aug 1862 )
The Creswick Gold Fields are now a great pine forest.
August Elbeck, (Albrecht) companion and musician and Charles Adolf and Otto Weisenhavern all ended up in Nelson. Otto , a successful businessman, died young at sea enroute to Germany . Maybe about age 37.
The Weisenhavern brothers travelled on the Goldfinder from Liverpool via Capetown to Melbourne 1853. Few passengers survived due to an epidemic onboard and the ship was quarantined for weeks.
A Carl Weisenhavern was prominent in the Eureka Stockade. Was he related?
A legend that CAL, Weisenhavern and several other soldiers, swam a river when they escaped.
Pomeranians travelled by water in three massive emigrations through Lake Michigan, to Wisconsin.
New Zealand has a unique immigrant culture but has yet to recognise it with a Founder’s Day.
Let’s start one.
.
.
Other Publications.
Queensland. My Part in the Kiwi Invasion. 2007
A Medley of Extemporania. 2008
New Zealand. A Moveable Feast. 2009
Before Our Time. 2010
Notes.
1. Thomas Sullivan.
SULLIVAN .Among those who sailed from England for these shores in 1841, no one was better fitted to carry the olive branch of Odd Fellowship, and plant it in New Zealand, than the veteran Thomas Sullivan, who, during his fifteen years experience in England, had presided at the opening of thirteen new lodges, and who, in addition to having served the various lodge offices, had held all the District offices, and had also represented his District at the Annual Parliament of the Order.
“On the voyage out, in the ‘ Martha Eidgway,’ Bro. Sullivan associated himself with eight other Oddfellows, viz:—Bros. C. P. Kearns, A. M’Gee, E. Nicol, E. Cropper, J. Sigley, J. Hanley, G. Greathead, and A. Patterson, and they held several meetings on shipboard, at which it was decided to establish a lodge on arriving at their destination.
“The first meeting in Nelson was held on Thursday, 7th April, 1842, at 4 p.m, in the fern, about 200 yards below the present Saltwater bridge, and adjourned till the following Monday evening, when it was held in a tent lower down the beach, belonging to Mr. A. G. Jenkins. It was then resolved to apply through the Sydney District (as being the nearest) for a dispensation to open a lodge in connection with the Manchester Unity, to be called the ‘Stranger’s Refuge’ Lodge; but as it is a rule of the Order that no two lodges in the District can bear the same name, and as the pioneer lodge of the Sydney District was named the ‘ Stranger’s Refuge,’ they decided to name the lodge the ‘ Nelson’ Lodge.
“Until the arrival of the dispensation, which was the first granted to. a lodge in New Zealand, the meetings were irregular, but with the arrival of the proper books, &c., matters were at once placed on a proper footing, the lodge meetings being held fortnightly. With P.P.G.M. Sullivan acting as first Grand Master, good progress was made in the introduction of members; a great many of those who either then or in after years occupied prominent positions as public men, becoming members of the lodge.
“The Wairau massacre occurring on 17th June, 1843, caused a break in the ranks of the founders, Brother Eli Cropper being one of those who lost their lives on that occasion; and as a result of this sad occurrence, the present District Widow and Orphans Fund was originated. The money received from the Sydney District in aid of the Brothers who suffered at the Wairau massacre was partly devoted to assist the widow and child of Eli Cropper. page 186 The Widow and Orphans Fund was started in 1845, as a voluntary society, and continued as such till 1874, when it was incorporated with the other benefit funds to which all members had to contribute.
“Owing to the absence of any banking institution in the early days, the system was adopted of lending the money to the members in small loans on personal security, and also in the purchase of cattle; but the experience of the Society showed that the plan was not a good one, and, on the introduction of banks, the rules prohibited any more investments of that character.
“Dissatisfaction having been expressed at the lodge meetings being held in a public house, as having a tendency to lead the members into the habit of drinking, it was decided to build a lodge-room. The foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on the 6th June, 1854, by his Honor the Superintendent, Mr. E. W. Stafford (now Sir E. W. Stafford). The first meeting was held in the new Hall on 3rd December, 1855. The cost of the Hall complete amounted to about £640, and from the above date till September, 1891, the lodge meetings were held there; but having served its purpose it has now been removed in order to make room for a new lodge-room in honor of the Jubilee.
“In 1846 it was decided to constitute Nelson a District, it being considered impracticable to continue the connection with the Sydney District. The first District officers chosen being:— Bro. R. Lloyd, Provincial Grand Master; Bro. D. Richardson, Provincial Deputy Grand Master; Bro. T. Sullivan, Provincial Corresponding Secretary. The first meeting recorded, being held at the Freemasons’ Tavern on the 5th January, 1847.
“It having been found from practical experience that Friendly Societies required the assistance of the law in carrying on their operations, it was decided to petition Parliament to bring into force a Friendly Societies Act, and steps were at once taken to get the necessary legal enactment carried; with the result that in a short time the Government succeeded in passing a Friendly Societies Act, under which the members can obtain proper security for their invested funds, besides other important privileges.
“In the Manchester Unity it is considered to be one of the highest honors (next to being elected a Grand Master of the Order) to have a portrait and biography inserted in the Unity Magazine. This honor was accorded to Nelson, in April, 1865; when the portrait and biography of Thomas Sullivan were inserted. Nelson was also represented at the annual Parliament of the Order, held in England, on two occasions, the first being held at Cheltenham, in 1868; and the second at Nottingham, in 1883. The representative on both occasions being P.P.G.M. Acton Adams.
Note 2.
“It must be conceded, on looking at the work done by the lodges of the Nelson District during the period dating from April, 1842, up to the date of the last furnished returns at June, 1891, that the most sanguine expectations of the nine men who started the Society cannot but have been realised to the fullest extent. Starting with only a few shillings cash in hand, the amounts paid for benefits during that period have been—for sick pay, £19,209; funerals, £3,415; widows and orphans, £4,991; making a total of £27,615. A very large amount has also been expended as medical benefits in addition to the above. The capital in hand amounts to £18,212. The adult membership is 783, and the junior membership 118.
“The progress thus depicted, as it is only a portion of the Friendly Society system existing in the Nelson locality, shows that the inhabitants are strongly imbued with habits of thrift, and are providing for the day of adversity.”
Note 3
From Cawdor Parish Records Mackenzie: Duncan Mackenzie in Calder and Elizabeth Mann his spouse had their son named James born upon the 14th day of December 1803 and baptised 17th Currt. Wit. James McKenzie, the child’s uncle, James Mann, shoemaker, Calder, James McArthur of Boath.
| JAMES MANN MCKENZIE Born : 14 December 1803 Place : Calder, Scotland Died : 01 June 1875 Place : Onehunga, New Zealand Father : Duncan McKenzie Mother : Elizabeth Mann | Married : c1826 Place : Unknown | ANNIE MCLEAN Born : c1810 Place : Unknown Died : 21 August 1883 Place : Turanga Creek, New Zealand Father : Unknown Mother : Unknown |
They had children
ELIZABETH MCKENZIE Born : 16 October 1828
Place : Drum of Clunes, Inverness, Scotland Died : 11 December 1907 Place : Taupo, New Zealand
DUNCAN MCKENZIE Born : 01 March 1830 Place : Newtown of Cawdor, Scotland Died : 07 July 1896
Place : Epsom, New Zealand
JULIA MCKENZIE Born : 08 April 1832 Place : Piperhill, Nairnshire, Scotland Died : 20 August 1912 Place : Waiomo, New Zealand
HUGH ROSE MCKENZIE Born : 02 June 1834 Place : Drum of Clunes, Inverness, Scotland Died : 02 May 1912 Place : Auckland, New Zealand
JAMES MCKENZIE Born : 14 June 1836 Place : Little Urchany, Scotland Died : Before 1842
Place :
MARY MCKENZIE Born : c 1841 Place ? : Scotland Died : 28 July 1842 Place : on board the Jane Gifford en route to New Zealand
MARY MCKENZIE Born : c 1844 Place : Auckland, New Zealand Died : 12 June 1918 Place : Auckland, New Zealand
MATILDA EDMONSTONE MCKENZIE. Born : 05 November 1849
Place : Kawau, New Zealand Died : 12 July 1930 Place : Rai Valley, New Zealand
JAMES NORMAN MCKENZIE Born : c 1850 Place : Auckland, New Zealand Died : 07 March 1879
Place : Unknown . ( I weep for these babies, so quickly replaced.)
Note With regard to Charles Leov’s surname, his grandson , Wattie Kenning ( Walter Wentworth Kenning , son of Emilie Leov.) said that his name was really von Falkenheim and that he was of “Royal Blood”. This has as yet not been proved.
A “Falkenhayn” was found in another book entitled “Titled Nobility of Europe”. This von Falkenheim family was pominent in Prussian military history.
Notes. A Charles Leov is mentioned in the Victorian Creswick and Clunes News when he rescued a child from a mine shaft in 1861. He also appears in that same year as a Mason. He doesn’t appear anywhere in the Eureka Rising. His friends, the German Nees family saved his life when he got one of the illnesss that took so many lives in the Gold fields. (A generation later, his son Charles S Leov and Tim Turner went to Coolgardie seeking gold. They trundled wheel barrows over fierce terrain from Perth and both almost perished with Typhoid. My grandfather came close to death.Tim told people when they got back home that men in Perth hospital considered terminal were moved ever closer to the door. ( For discreet removal.) “CS got very very close but in the end they both survived.” The intervention of telegraphed money helped get them back home.They became lifelong friends and he became godfather to Young Charles Nees who died in Cook Strait after his parents migrated to NZ. Nees had a hardware shop in Wellington and quite recently there were Nees living in Cuba Street.
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Penquins find it hard to know who’s who. That is why I wrote this book for you. |
viviennebibby. Before My Time. 
