A master mariner living in Liverpool, John Coveny had died at sea off the coast of Pernambuco, Brazil in 1873 [1]. The cause of death was recorded as ‘suffocation’ and with no other information available to me at the time, I had assumed that he had drowned. It wasn’t an immediate assumption though, more a case of me pondering the question, ‘well how else do you suffocate if you’re at sea?’ I even had visions of him somehow getting tangled up in a hammock or rope! I had checked whether the word ‘suffocate’ could also be used to describe drowning (it can) and had a brief discussion about it with my medical husband. Here’s a quote from this section with the unanswered questions that I had:

“What were they doing in Brazil? What sort of cargo were they carrying, or collecting? Did he land in South America, or was he just sailing past? And how did he end up falling in the sea?”

It was a piece of research that was firmly parked in my ‘to do’ pile. The name of the ship, the Roderick Dhu and the name of the location, Pernambuco, were both very memorable though, which is why they both leapt off the page at me when I was trawling through Ancestry images last week. It was a screenshot of the National Library of New Zealand catalogue entry for a piece published in the New Zealand Genealogist. The title was ‘Death at Pernambuco’ and in the abstract were the words Rhoderick Dhu.

Of course, I found and downloaded the article immediately. Lo and behold, my second cousin once removed, Sue Dinsdale, had already researched and answered all of the questions that I had. I was floored by the answers she had found and emailed her about our connection. Sue is the granddaughter of Nita Thomson (Florence Juanita Jessie Tavendale), the second youngest of Maria and William’s 11 children and closest in age to my great-grandmother Marjorie. Nita and Marjorie lived next door to one another for many years so this was a really special connection to find.

What has followed in the week since has been a wonderful exchange of research, memories, photographs, and ideas. We have compared notes quite successfully I might add, with both of us having the same corrections and additions to some earlier errors in the family tree. Sue also had some details that I have been able to correct in the article I wrote about Maria, and there were things I had written about the Coveny family that she hadn’t known too. A great reinforcer to me of the value of reaching out to these cousin connections: we cannot possibly research all of our family stories, so to share information like this is a worthwhile and often enjoyable process.

And now, on to the answers to my questions, with full credit to Sue Dinsdale’s fantastic research, sourced below [2]:

What were they doing in Brazil? What sort of cargo were they carrying, or collecting? Did he land in South America, or was he just sailing past?

The Roderick Dhu was a cargo ship that was carrying a load of sugar from South America back to England. Pernambuco was the name of the port in Brazil. They had anchored there to collect the sugar and were about to head to another port for further loading. The incident below occurred before they left Pernambuco, so although John died ‘at sea’ he was not far from land at all.

On this particular journey John was in the position of first mate. The captain was Robert Spiers, and it was through a newspaper article reporting his death, that Sue found some of her answers. It turned out that John Coveny was not the only man to die on the Roderick Dhu on the 21st of March 1873: William Clifford and Lewis Jennings had also suffocated, along with their captain.

How did he end up falling in the sea? John did not suffocate from drowning, nor did any of the other three men listed above.

But how else do you suffocate if you’re at sea? It turns out that when raw or wet sugar ferments it releases carbon dioxide. In an enclosed space such as a cargo hold, exposure to large amounts of carbon dioxide gas can be fatal. Before weighing anchor, one of the two men above had been sent down to check on the cargo. When he didn’t return, they sent a second man down to check on him. First Mate John Coveny was the third man to go and investigate, and finally, Captain Robert Spiers. All four of them were killed by carbon dioxide poisoning.

By this point either the gas had dissipated enough or the fifth person to go down realised what was happening and avoided an even bigger tragedy.

Fascinating!

As usual, the more that you know, the more new questions arise. Were John and his colleagues buried at sea, or given they were still at Pernambuco, were they buried there in Brazil? With the Captain and First Mate deceased, who sailed the Roderick Dhu home? Did they carry on collecting further cargo? Did this dangerous sugar eventually make it back to England, and what was it used for? More research for another day, but for now I’m glad to have this ‘correction and connection’.

Thank you Sue for answering these questions for me, and other Coveny descendants. Now if you need us, we’ll be off investigating the rumour that we’re descended from Portuguese Pirates! Yaaarrrrr!

Sources:

1. Deaths, at sea. Register of Accounts of Wages and Effects of Deceased Seamen, 1873, pp147-148. COVENY, John. The National Archives.

2. Dinsdale, S. “Death at Pernambuco”. New Zealand Genealogist, Sep 2022; v.53 n.394: p.117.

In New Zealand we have good online access to the Police Gazettes: a weekly summary published of who had been arrested or released from prison (including where, what for) and a brief physical description of them. Mugshots were only added to the back pages of the New Zealand Police Gazette in 1911, so finding one taken in 1908 was unlikely. Ever the persistent researcher, I sent an email to the New Zealand Police Museum, and much to my surprise (and theirs too), they found it! There he was in black and white (well sepia really) looking every bit as belligerent as I had imagined him to be.

I may have got a little tear in my eye, but for the most part I could not stop grinning at the immense satisfaction of finding him. To finally see someone – not just their physical features but the overall sense of who they were – is quite an amazing thing. Especially someone who has thus far only existed as a name in the records, and a distant family memory. In all honesty I see a broken man – there is no hint of the ‘good nature’ or ‘bright disposition’ that he apparently had outside the influence of alcohol. Although to be fair, a mugshot is not one’s finest moment, and I’m pleased to see his face regardless. What do you see?

When we last met Charles it was September 1907 and he had just been arrested for stealing a horse in Gisborne and sentenced to 12 months labour. The photograph above was taken on the 29^th of February 1908 at Waipa Valley prison camp.¹ This was a temporary labour camp situated by the shores of Lake Rotokākahi, near Rotorua, from 1904 to 1916.² Rural prison camps had comparatively low security, and only selected prisoners were chosen who had the potential to be reformed by the experience. Far away from the temptations of alcohol and surrounded by fresh air and nature, these prisoners worked out their labour sentences planting pine trees for the booming forestry industry.² Apparently good behaviour was rewarded with better living conditions in the camp and the potential for earlier release.² Lake Rotokākahi is a beautiful part of the country. Members of my family have spent many happy hours mountain biking through the adjacent area, which is now known as Whakarewarewa Forest. It is still planted in pine trees - perhaps some of them were planted by Charles?

When we last met his long-suffering wife Alice Single (nee Taylor), she had gone through the court process to separate from him and gain custody of the eight children that were still living at home (out of the 11 they had together). My great-grandmother Elsie Louisa Single had left home shortly afterwards to help provide for her mother and siblings (she was barely a teenager). I have used another dual timeline below to illustrate the next appearances that Charles and Alice make in the records and newspapers.

Charles must have fared okay at the Waipa Valley prison camp as he was released a few months early in June 1908.³ Sadly, the rehabilitative effects of outdoor labour did not leave a lasting impression, and Charles wasn’t out of prison long before alcohol caught up with him again. He was arrested twice in quick succession for breach of prohibition and alcohol licensing regulations. The newspaper reporting on Alice’s ongoing maintenance case against Charles in the months leading up to these offences offers us some more hints about how Alice was feeling about the situation. The level of tolerance that she displayed amazes me; despite everything he had put her through she did not want him sent to prison again. She was simply trying to provide for her children, using the only means that she had at her disposal at the time.

The suggestion of the two of them trying to reconcile is outlandish really but I must keep reminding myself that this was a different time, and the potential for financial stability that Charles offered to Alice and their children was probably more appealing than the ongoing court battle over maintenance. And I suppose there is also the underlying love! Alice already had so many reasons not to trust Charles and yet he kept on delivering more: rather than reconciling with her, he got caught drinking while prohibited again. This time not in one of the local pubs but in the farmer’s stables! The level of detail in the article below is quite something. It really gives you a sense of how widely known his reputation was in the area.⁶ I’m not sure why they sent him to Napier jail instead of Gisborne on this occasion, but over the years, he really got a tour of all that the North Island prisons had to offer! What a way to travel.

The next big event in the family was the early death of Charles and Alice’s eldest son George Frederick Single at the age of 19.⁹ He was working as a shepherd on a farm near Te Puia (South of Gisborne) when he was struck ill by enteric fever, and did not recover. The local community rallied around Alice once more, and she had a ‘thank you’ noticed published in the Poverty Bay Herald for their support during the family’s ‘recent sad trouble’.¹⁰ A rather euphemistic choice of words to describe the death of her child, I thought.

Alice’s quest for financial maintenance continued in the courts throughout 1910 and 1911, with repeated delays and adjournments either due to Charles being absent or unable to pay the fees he was required to.^11,12,13 Eventually the magistrate ran out of patience and issued a warrant for his arrest. Charles was now on the run! He managed to evade arrest for over a year, eventually getting caught and arrested in Featherston on the 2nd of September 1912.¹⁶ For those who might not be familiar with the geography of Aotearoa New Zealand, I’ve included a map below. Featherston is a 6 ½ hour drive from Gisborne even today, and Charles was unlikely to have been traveling by car. I wish I could ask him how he got by during that time! Six months later he was released, this time from Wellington prison (like I said, quite the way to tour the country).

When you focus only on these public records it is easy to feel disheartened and wonder if there were any happy times for this family. Newspaper reports were the opposite of today’s social media, where we only tend to share the good stuff that happens! I have to trust that there were a lot of everyday moments, happiness, and mundane life in between these challenges, and I enjoyed spotting my great-grandmother Elsie’s name mentioned positively a few times. Winning a prize for sewing at the Te Karaka School picnic and then a notice about her kitchen tea event, in the lead up to marrying my great-grandfather.^8,19 By all accounts Elsie at least was a very well adjusted, kind, resourceful and pleasant person, despite the difficult start she had. I’ll tell Elsie’s story another day.

Elsie and her nine living siblings all went on to marry and most had children of their own. Whether Charles had anything to do with them as adults I do not know, but I suspect the contact was minimal. In 1914 his son Harold Single listed Alice as his next of kin when enlisting for the army in World War One, rather than his father Charles, which would have been the norm at the time.¹⁸ On the 1928 electoral roll Charles was listed as a labourer living at the Ferry Hotel in Wairoa, which was run by his brother Frederick J. Single, sister-in-law Emma and their daughter Dorothy.²⁰ I’m pleased he was at least living with family, although I can’t imagine a hotel was a very good environment for his drinking habits.

The newspaper article that hit the hardest for me was the one describing Alice taking her own children to court in April 1930 for failing to support her financially. She was not yet eligible for the old age pension and had been ‘forced’ to live with her son-in-law, who had appealed to various family members to contribute financially. After everything that Alice had done to survive her husband’s physical and financial absence, she was left with no option but to take the very children that she had fought for to court for maintenance. Sad on so many different levels. We’ll never know the full picture of what her relationship was like with these adult children behind the scenes (interestingly she didn’t take all of them to court, my great-grandparents included). According to the magistrate the situation was ‘regrettable and pointed to something sapping the manhood of the men concerned’.²¹ Oh dear! He ruled that the single Single sons had to pay 10 shillings a month towards Alice’s maintenance, and the married ones pay less.

Charles Henry Single had a stroke at the age of 63 and was admitted to Wairoa hospital, where he died on the 28^th of March 1930.²³ The chase was finally over. I was surprised to find an obituary, but he was obviously a local character whose passing was worthy of a mention. He was laid to rest at Wairoa cemetery and one day I will visit him there and pay my respects. It feels like the least I could do after all this chasing!

Alice lived on in Hastings, Hawke’s Bay until the age of 76, passing away on the 4^th of September 1946. Her funeral notice reads ‘beloved wife of the late Charles Single.’ ²⁵

I genuinely hope that both Charles and Alice found the peace that had escaped them for so many years. Rest in love you two, you will be remembered: Charles, as a man who lost his way to alcohol, and Alice, as a resilient woman who fought for her children, and eventually for herself.

Sources for Part II

1. Police photograph and prisoner profile [photographer unknown]. Auckland District, New Zealand. Waipa Prison, 29 Feb 1908. SINGLE, Charles. New Zealand Police Museum archives, received by email 23 Jul 2026.

2. McCarthy, C. The “last thought is to escape”: New Zealand’s tree-planting prison camps. AHA: Architectural History Aotearoa (2017), vol 14: 54-64.

3. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Waipa Prison, 27 Jun 1908. SINGLE, Charles. P. 309. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

4. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXXV, Issue 11436, 18 Nov 1908, Page 4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19081118.2.29

5. Gisborne Times. Untitled. Volume XXVI, Issue 2352, 19 Nov 1908, Page 4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GIST19081119.2.24

6. Poverty Bay Herald. “Licensing Cases: Procuring Liquor, Supplying Liquor”. Volume XXXV, Issue 11465, 22 Dec 1908, Page 5. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19081222.2.33

7. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Napier, 19 Jun 1909. SINGLE, Charles. P. 276. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

8. Gisborne Times. “Te Karaka School Picnic”. Volume XXVIII, Issue 2752, 05 Mar 1910, Page 7. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GIST19100305.2.45

9. Death registration (CR) New Zealand. 08 Mar 1910. SINGLE, George Frederick. Reg 1910/2705. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index] http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 23 Jul 2026.

10. Poverty Bay Herald. Advertisements. “Thanks”. Volume XXXVII, Issue 12095, 12 Mar 1910, Page 1. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19100312.2.2.5

11. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXXVII, Issue 12296, 04 Nov 1910, Page 4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19101104.2.24

12. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXXVIII, Issue 12347, 06 Jan 1911, Page 4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19110106.2.18

13. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXXVII, Issue 12355, 16 Jan 1911, Page 4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19110116.2.20

14. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 28 Jun 1911. SINGLE, Charles. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

15. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 30 Sep 1911. SINGLE, Charles. P. 551. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

16. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 18 Sep 1912. SINGLE, Charles. P. 512. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

17. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Wellington, 08 Feb 1913. SINGLE, Charles. P. 133. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

18. New Zealand World War I Army Nominal Rolls. 1914-1918. Alphabetical list of New Zealand Expeditionary Force 1914. SINGLE, Harold. P. 666 [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 07 Jul 2026.

19. Hawke’s Bay Tribune. “Local and General”. Volume XII, Issue 126, 11 May 1922, Page 6. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBTRIB19220511.2.83

20. Daily Telegraph (Napier). “Police Court”. Volume 59, Issue 57, 08 Apr 1930, Page 6. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DTN19300408.2.35

21. Electoral Rolls. New Zealand 1853-1981. Gisborne, 1928. SINGLE, Charles. p. 169. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 07 Jul 2026.

22. Death registration (CR) New Zealand. 28 May 1930. SINGLE, Charles Henry. Reg 1930/3246. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index] http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 18 Jan 2026)

23. Poverty Bay Herald. “Wairoa News”. Volume LV, Issue 17273, 31 May 1930, Page 16. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19300531.2.168

24. Death registration (CR) New Zealand. 04 Sep 1946. SINGLE, Alice. Reg 1946/26231. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index] http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 18 Jan 2026)

25. Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune. “Deaths”. Volume 89, Issue 292, 5 September 1946, Page 4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBHETR19460905.2.22

26. Image of Alice Single’s headstone, Hastings Cemetery. Hastings District Council. https://hastingsdc.discovereverafter.com/profile/33707926 : retrieved 28 Jul 2026.

27. Image of Charles Henry Single’s headstone. Taken by Terri Williamson-Lee, Wairoa Cemetery, courtesy of FindAGrave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/178924596/charles-henry-single : retrieved 28 Jul 2026.

My 2x great-grandparents, Charles Henry Single and Alice Taylor were first cousins. Although it seems unusual to us now, at the tail end of the 1800s in rural Aotearoa New Zealand, it was not. Plus there is a silver lining: at the 3x great-grandparent level, I will have two less ancestors to research (how efficient)! Charles and Alice went on to have eleven children together, but their relationship was marred by poverty, abandonment, and – at the heart of the matter – alcoholism.

Alice spent most of her married life chasing Charles, and I have spent the past few months chasing Charles through the records. It is a difficult story to unpick and understand, not least because it doesn’t make for pleasant reading, particularly as one of their many descendants. I have even asked myself whether it is better to let sleeping dogs lie. Ultimately my desire to see Alice’s side of the story told is what led me here. I need people to know that she fought tirelessly for her children in the face of the relentless absence of Charles. She must have been a resilient woman. I also want to believe that maybe, in another place and time, Charles would have had the help he needed to release the grip that alcohol had on him.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Charles Henry Single was born on the 14th of December 1867 to Julia Ann McKain and Samuel Henry Single.¹ The McKain family were early pioneers who had emigrated from Staffordshire, England to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1840s, with their formidable, widowed matriarch Douglas Mary McKain at the helm. They settled in rural Hawke’s Bay, where one of her sons Frederick Dunmore McKain met Louisa Matilda Alleway of Oxfordshire, England. Louisa had come out to the Southern Hemisphere as an 18-year-old assisted immigrant via Australia, and then on to New Zealand. The couple had seven children, including Charles’ mother Julia, and her younger sister Eliza, who we will meet again shortly.^2,3

Samuel Henry Single was born in Plymouth, Devonshire and emigrated from there to New Zealand shortly before he met Julia.⁴ The couple were married on the 20^th of October 1864 at Petane, Hawke’s Bay and went on to have six children together.⁵ Son Charles was born in Mohaka, the family then moved to Whakakī near Wairoa. Sadly, Samuel died in Hawke’s Bay at 38-years-old and is buried in Napier cemetery.⁶ Charles’ mother Julia Ann McKain went on to remarry to William Wilmot Law in Ōpōtiki and have further children.⁷ Losing his father at the age of eight and being one of a very big blended family must have had an impact on young Charles.

Alice Taylor was born on the 26^th of October 1872 to Julia’s younger sister Eliza McKain and her husband John Stuart Taylor.⁸ The couple were married on the 24^th of January 1870 in Clyde, Mohaka (which happens to be the same date I got married, and my parents too).⁹ The McKain family we have already met (see – efficient!), and the Taylor family were from Auchterless in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

We know very little about the early lives of Charles and Alice, nor how they came to be a couple. If my math is correct (you start to develop an eye for these things), 18-year-old Alice was likely already pregnant when she married 23-year-old Charles on the 28^th of May 1890 in Ormond, Poverty Bay.¹⁰ At the time of their wedding his occupation is listed as a butcher. In the 17 years that followed, Alice fell pregnant with 11 children, while Charles fell in and out of work, and in and out of prison. To analyse the records that tell this complex story I have used a dual timeline, tracking how Alice’s life unraveled alongside Charles’ challenges with alcohol.

This timeline covers the 17 years between Alice and Charles’ marriage in 1890 through to the birth of their eleventh child Bernard in 1907. Analysing the contents of the records helped me gain a greater understanding of what was happening for them both.

One of the joys, if you can call it that, of having a wayward ancestor is that they tend to leave a consistent paper trail. Charles was no exception, appearing frequently in both New Zealand Police Gazette’s and newspaper reports of court proceedings. I have never seen a photograph of Charles, but I do know that he had a mugshot taken at Waipa in February 1908, which I am still trying to track down. In the meantime, physical descriptions from the New Zealand Police Gazette will have to do. Charles was described in his 1894 police record as 5 foot 9 ½ inches, with a fresh complexion, brown hair, dark eyes, and a ‘short’ nose.¹⁵

In this record he was charged with both drunkenness and assault (I don’t know who he assaulted), with the option of nine days in prison or a fine. With no money to spare for fines, throughout his police records Charles takes the option of the prison sentence. Meanwhile, Alice is holding down the fort in rural Ormond, Poverty Bay, with a 4, 3 and 1-year-old to take care of. In 1895 Charles spends another five days in prison in Gisborne for drunkenness,¹⁶ and by August the following year he had been issued with a prohibition order.¹⁸

Prohibition of alcohol in Aotearoa New Zealand was a divisive issue, led by the temperance movement, and opposed strongly by those who believed it was their democratic right to make their own decisions about drinking alcohol (backed of course by publicans and the liquor industry).³⁸ The temperance movement at its core fought for was the rights of women, who were the worst affected by alcohol, in an era where women relied on their husbands economically. I found it interesting to read that The Women’s Christian Temperance Union had a significant roll in helping women win the right to vote in 1893 (a world first). Each electoral district held their own licensing poll, between 1894 and 1914, with the threshold for local prohibition a 3/5 majority. In 1896, incidentally the year that Charles was first prohibited, the issue was particularly hot as the licensing poll was held on the same day as the general election. You can see in the below newspaper article that features Charles just how contentious it was.²⁰

Across the prohibition years only 12 districts out of 76 in New Zealand voted to ‘go dry’, and Hawke’s Bay wasn’t one of them. In the areas that hadn’t voted for full prohibition, The Licensing Act of 1881 still allowed for individual people to be prohibited from drinking.³⁹ Issued by the local magistrate (often at the request of desperate family members), the prohibition orders lasted for one year, in cases where families were impacted by neglect, poverty or physical harm created by alcohol abuse. As well as individuals being fined for breaching these orders, the pubs that served them could be too. This meant that publicans had to learn fast who was ‘blacklisted’, or risk being fined or losing their license. Prohibited people would skirt around the rules by traveling to pubs further away that wouldn’t recognise them! This certainly appears to be what Charles did too, getting caught at the Matawhero Hotel, Waerenga-a-hika Hotel and the British Empire Hotel in short succession (each one to two hours walk apart).^20,21

Alice had clearly had enough. With five children under the age of eight to take care of, and heavily pregnant with their sixth, she filed for separation from Charles in August 1899, claiming he had failed to maintain her and his children.²³ The magistrate granted the request and gave Alice custody of the children, stating in his summary that Charles despite being ‘good-natured’ was ‘unable to resist the temptation to drink.’ A few weeks later, 16 of Alice’s neighbours in Ormond wrote to the Charitable Aid Board imploring them to support her and her young family, who were ‘entirely destitute’ and now with a newborn in the house. They had obviously been doing their best to be helpful in Charles’ absence. Thankfully the board agreed to giving Alice a small weekly allowance. ²⁴ The allowance was 5 shillings per week for a month, to add to the 15 shillings per week maintenance Charles had been ordered to pay (but rarely did). A pound per week was not much to get by on with all those mouths to feed. In my mind I picture her making the basics stretch, growing what she could in the garden, and most likely going without herself.

Between this point and September 1906 Charles goes quiet in the records. Perhaps he managed to escape the clutches of alcohol, or perhaps he got better at avoiding the authorities, but either way Alice let him back into her life. Four more children arrived in this time, with Charles listed as the father for all of them. As tempting as it is to wonder why on earth she took him back (and trust me, I have), we have no right to judge her, nor him for that matter. I hope that there was love between them, and that his ‘good-natured’ temperament shone through, at least some of the time. Perhaps I am being too romantic (I am a ‘glass half full’ type).

Alice does make one appearance in the records in 1902 (thanks to FamilySearch full-text search!) which tells me more about the type of person she was. At the request of her mother-in-law/Aunt Julia Annie Law, Alice took in a young, unmarried woman who was heavily pregnant, and cared for her for eight weeks until she gave birth. Sadly, the baby was stillborn, which meant that Alice was required to give evidence in court at the inquest. The young woman had been working for Julia Law at a local hotel until she could no longer hide the fact that she was pregnant, at which point Alice agreed to look after her. Having supported her in labour all through the night, Alice had called for the doctor at 8am on the 7^th of December 1902, but the baby was stillborn at 9am. The doctor did not arrive until 2pm that afternoon.⁴² Her signature was captured on the witness statement, below. Alice went through all of that to help a stranger.

On the 19^th of September 1906, Alice appears before the magistrate in Gisborne again, requesting separation and maintenance from Charles.³⁰ Alice is at this point pregnant with their eleventh, and final child. The court case is adjourned – why? Because he is currently in prison, serving a two-week sentence for using offensive language.³¹ In that police record he is listed as a ‘cattle dealer’. With Charles released on the 6^th of October, the trial resumes on the 9^th of October, and goes in Alice’s favour. On the 8^th of November 1906 she takes out an advertisement in the Poverty Bay Herald, warning people against dealing with the sale of a house with a man named Charles Single, that is also owned by herself.³³ My interpretation of this event is that he was trying to sell the house out from underneath her, and/or planning to use the money from the sale to pay the court fees, fines and maintenance money that he owed (and perhaps, a drink or two).

By this point the family had moved ‘up the road’ to Te Karaka, another small rural settlement, where Alice remained raising her eleven children. Charles is also listed in the 1907 directory as a labourer resident in Te Karaka,³⁵ but I don’t believe they lived together thereafter. According to newspaper reports from the magistrate’s court in July of 1907, he had left the area with the intention of seeking work and was well and truly behind on his child maintenance payments.³⁶ He had paid a mere £1 since the order was made the prior October, and was thus £42, 8 shillings behind. Again, the Charitable Aid Board had stepped in to support Alice and her eight youngest children (the eldest three had left to find work). My great-grandmother Elsie left school later that year at the age of 11 to support her mother and siblings. In passing his sentence of three months in prison, I was interested to read the judges remarks: that Charles was, “an able-bodied man and ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. He understood that drink was at the bottom of the trouble and strongly advised the accused to shun liquor.”³⁶ If only it were that easy; we know better now, that where addiction is concerned, it is not.

How Charles got away with serving less than his three-month sentence I am not sure, but by the middle of September 1907 he was out of prison, and obviously desperate enough to turn to theft. This time Charles was sentenced to 12 months labour for stealing a horse.³⁷

Speaking of horses, one of the stories that has been passed on through the generations is that the Single children had one horse between them to get to school, an otherwise long walk in bare feet, especially during Winter frosts (shoes were a luxury not always afforded). The siblings would take turns riding bareback, with a maximum of four on at a time, while the others walked. Apparently, they tried five on the horse once, only for one of them to end up with concussion and needing a splash of water from a muddy puddle to wake up again!

On that slightly lighter note, I don’t know about you as the reader, but I am about ready for a break as the writer! Part 2 of the ‘Chasing Charles’ story will be with you in due course (that’s right, I’m giving myself a very vague deadline)….

Sources

1. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 14 Dec 1867. SINGLE, Charles Henry. Reg. 1868/1996. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 18 Jan 2026.

2. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. MCKAIN, Julia Ann. Reg. 1849/1449, “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 30 Jan 2026.

3. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 23 Oct 1854. MCKAIN, Eliza. Reg. 1854/4466, “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 30 Jan 2026.

4. Census records. England. Plymouth, Devon. 30 Mar 1851. Single, Samuel Henry [son]. PN HO107/1879; FL: 413; ED 1o, p. 40; GSU roll: 221027-221028. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed14 Jul 2026.

5. Marriage registration (CR) New Zealand. 20 Oct 1864. MCKAIN, Julia Ann to SINGLE, Samuel Henry. Reg. 1863/3369, “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 8 Jul 2026.

6. Death registration (CR) New Zealand. 15 May 1876. SINGLE, Samuel Henry. Reg. 1876/1764. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index] http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 8 Jul 2026.

7. Marriage registration (CR) New Zealand. 4 Sep 1885. SINGLE, Julia Annie to LAW, William Willmott. Reg. 1885/2085. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 8 Jul 2026.

8. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 26 Oct 1872. TAYLOR, Alice. Reg. 1872/23168. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 30 Jan 2026.

9. Marriage registration (CR) New Zealand. 24 Jan 1870. MCKAIN, Eliza to TAYLOR, John Stuart. Reg. 1870/2691. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 18 Jan 2026.

10. Marriage registration (CR) New Zealand. 28 May 1890. TAYLOR, Alice to SINGLE, Charles Henry. Reg. 1890/1025. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 18 Jan 2026.

11. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 24 Jan1891. SINGLE, George Frederick. Reg. 1891/4234. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 30 Jan 2026.

12. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 29 Dec 1892. SINGLE, Muriel Frances. Reg. 1893/5999. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 30 Jan 2026.

13. Electoral Rolls. New Zealand. Waiapu, 1893. SINGLE, Charles, and SINGLE, Alice. p. 57. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

14. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 19 Jun 1894. SINGLE, Charles Harold. 1894/7812. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

15. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 1894. SINGLE, Charles. Archives New Zealand [online database]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

16. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 1895. SINGLE, Charles. Archives New Zealand [online database]. P. 119. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

17. Directories. New Zealand (1866-1954). Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory. SINGLE, Charles, 1896, Ormond. Collection: New Zealand, City & Area Directories, 1866-1954 [microfilm]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

18. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXIII, Issue 7703, 15 August 1896, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH18960815.2.8

19. Monumental inscription. New Zealand. Hastings, Mangaroa Cemetery. DOREE, Elsie Louisa. http://www.findagrave.com : retrieved 26 Jan 2026.

20. Poverty Bay Herald. “Police Court.” Volume XXIII, Issue 7850, 18 December 1896, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH18961218.2.15

21. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXIV, Issue 7908, 11 May 1897, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH18970511.2.6

22. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 20 Jan 1898. SINGLE, Edward James. Reg. 1898/1558. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

23. Poverty Bay Herald. “Tomorrow’s Meeting.” Volume XXVI, Issue 8589, 8 August 1899, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH18990808.2.9

24. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 19 Aug 1899. SINGLE, Francis. Reg. 1899/8852. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

25. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXVI, Issue 8605, 26 August 1899, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH18990826.2.13

26. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 22 Jan 1901. SINGLE, Elizabeth Mary Single. Reg. 1901/2840. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

27. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 01 Apr 1902. SINGLE, Julia Maud. Reg. 1902/5669. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

28. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 14 Nov 1903. SINGLE, William John. Reg. 1904/5453. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

29. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 21 Jan 1905. SINGLE, Oscar Albert Reg. 1905/8030. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

30. Gisborne Times. “Police Court.” Volume XXIII, Issue 1864, 19 September 1906, Page 3. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GIST19060919.2.241906 –

31. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 1906. SINGLE, Charles. Archives New Zealand [online database]. P. 370. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

32. Poverty Bay Herald. Untitled. Volume XXXIII, Issue 10790, 9 October 1906, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19061009.2.13

33. Poverty Bay Herald. “Advertisements.” Volume XXXIII, Issue 10817, 8 November 1906, Page 3. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19061108.2.32.1

34. Birth registration (CR) New Zealand. 17 Jan 1907. SINGLE, Bernard Alfred. Reg. 1907/2086. “Births, Deaths & Marriages Online” [digital index]. http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : retrieved 28 Jun 2026.

35. Directories. New Zealand (1866-1954). Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory. SINGLE, Charles, Te Karaka, 1907, p. 734. Collection: New Zealand, City & Area Directories, 1866-1954 [microfilm]. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

36. Gisborne Times. “Magisterial.” Volume XXV, Issue 2150, 5 August 1907, Page 2. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GIST19070805.2.14

37. Police Gazettes. New Zealand. 1878-1945. Gisborne, 1907. SINGLE, Charles. Archives New Zealand [online database]. P. 502. http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Jun 2026.

38. NZ History. “Prohibition.” Accessed July 14, 2026. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/prohibition.

39. New Zealand Legislation. “Licensing Act 1881.” Accessed July 14, 2026. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1881/21/en/latest/#LMS1405824.

40. Gisborne Photo News. 20 Oct 1955. Issue GPN16. P.37. [photograph]. The Royal Oak Hotel, Matawhero, Gisborne. https://photonews.org.nz/gisborne/issue/GPN16_19551020/t1-body-d22.html : accessed 13 Jul 2026.

41. Tairawhiti Museum. Object 47658 [photograph]. British Empire Hotel. https://collection.tairawhitimuseum.org.nz/objects/47658/british-empire-hotel : accessed 13 Jul 2026.

42. New Zealand Court Records. 10 Dec 1902. Coroner’s Inquest, Reg. 1902/1021, images 1660-1668. http://www.FamilySearch.org : Retrieved 14 Jul 2026.

One of the tales I heard was that my 6th great-grandfather had died in a fencing match at the French Embassy in London in the early 1800s! I immediately had visions of every movie I’d ever seen about grand people having duels to the death to avenge someone’s honour – ‘The Three Musketeers’, ‘The Princess Bride’, ‘The Mask of Zorro’ etcetera. Surely though, such duels were not still occurring in London in the early 19th century?

My 6th great-grandfather was a Frenchman by the name of Louis Antoine Simôn who settled in England in approximately 1776. According to written accounts that survive within the family, he was born in 1740 in Montargis, near Loiret in France. What brought him to England I do not know, but he had one child with his wife Elizabeth (maiden name unconfirmed, perhaps Marshall¹), Louis Michael Simôn, born on 7th April 1782.^2,3

Louis Antoine worked as a hatter, first on the West Side of South Molton Street and later the West side of Vere Street in Oxford Road^2,3,4. I would love to understand more about what type of family background he had back in France (there is always more research to do) but whatever it was, he was renowned across London for his skills in fencing and swordsmanship.

How do I know this detail? Well, in a box of genealogy research that I was given from my relative Graham N Smith, were hand-written notes. They referred to a magazine report of Louis Antoine’s death in a fencing match in London in 1803. In addition, extracts from the recollections of one of his grandchildren, Sir John Simon KCB written in 1898 are available online and also mention this tale⁴. Ever the careful researcher, I decided to look for the original magazine copy, to see if I could (a) confirm the story and (b) find out any further details. Low and behold, the brilliance of the Hathi Trust collection delivered and I found the 1803 article, in a publication rather delightfully called The Gentleman’s Magazine⁵.

Here is their account. Word of Louis Antoine Simôn’s skill with the sword had reached some of the domestic staff who served Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, Duc de Berry of France⁶, who was residing in George Street, Manchester Square between the years of 1801 and 1814 (no doubt hiding out from the French Revolution). The staff invited Louis Antoine there to give a lesson in the use of the small sword on the 10th of November 1803, at which point he was approximately 63 years old. When asked to give the demonstration, he replied:

“I am now very stiff, and have had no exercise in the small sword for several months, but to gratify your curiosity, I’ll take a trial with you’. He stripped off his coat, took the foil, and, after a very grand introductory salute, for which Mr Simôn was counted one of the first in England, pointed his guard, but on the first parry he clapped his hand to his breast and exclaimed ‘My God! I am no more!’ Instantly the foil fell from his hand, and before he could fall backwards, he was caught in the arms of the gentleman with him, and placed in a chair, where he expired in a few minutes.”³ [emphasis added by me]

Although he didn’t say anything particularly profound or extraordinary, this tangible connection to a long-deceased ancestor was an incredibly poignant and powerful thing to find. He wasn’t defending someone’s honour in swashbuckling fashion as I had first imagined, but I do love that he was sharing his passion and skill with others. I take comfort in knowing that he died doing something that he loved and was obviously respected and cared for by the men he was with on that fateful day.

His grandson Sir John Simôn KCB recalls his own father Louis Michael Simôn referring to Louis Antoine’s “gifts of intellect and character.”² He had kept several books that had belonged to him, which according to John,

“at the time he possessed them, were certainly unusual English books for a young Frenchman of his class, if even of any class, to study, viz: a copy (edition 1764) of David Hume’s Essays, and a copy (edition 1793) of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Also I retain as his, dated from September 1798 to January 1799, a bound manuscript copy of Rousseau’s Contract Social, a copy, which at his desire, had been made by my father, then under seventeen years of age, as an exercise in handwriting.”

Louis Antoine Simôn was buried on the 15th of November 1803 in the St Marylebone churchyard in London. His wife Elizabeth lived on to the age of 84 at the residence of their son Louis Michael Simôn, ‘The Paragon’ in Blackheath. She died in 1837 and was buried on the 28th of January, at St Mary’s churchyard in Lewisham.

I am glad to remember them even in this small way. Do you know the last words of any of your ancestors? If so, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Sources

1. Marriage. Louis Josephe Simon with Elizabeth Marshall, St Pancras parish, June 1787. The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies; Canterbury, England; England, Pallot’s Marriage Index, 1780-1837 [database on-line]. Retrieved 02/07/26 from www.ancestry.co.uk

2. Goose, R. The Family Trees of Goose, Ingham, Ray and Simôn. Website. http://www.abbeyvision.co.uk/gooseweb/index.htm .

3. Baptism (PR). Simon, Lewis Michael. 14 Feb 1782. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers; Reference: STG/PR/2/4. City of Westminster Archives Centre; London, England; Retrieved 02/07/26 from www.ancestry.co.uk

4. “Personal Recollections.” Sir John Simon, K.C.B. 1816 – 1904. Printed 10th October 1894. [Extract]. Retrieved from http://www.abbeyvision.co.uk/gooseweb/families/simon/notes/005.htm

5. ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ LXXIII (1803), p. 1098. Account of Louis dying during a fencing match. Retrieved 02/07/26 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435054260831&seq=524

6 Britannica. ‘Aristocratic Revolt 1787 -89’. Website. Retrieved 02/07/26 https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution/Aristocratic-revolt-1787-89

In Part One of this story I was reflecting on all the things that brought me to where I am now, running my own business and writing about family history. If you haven’t read it yet, you can read it here.

My eldest child was diagnosed with leukaemia just before her seventh birthday and everything just stopped. Travel plans on hold, career plans on hold, and certainly writing a book about a branch of my family history on hold. The months that followed were a blur of days and nights spent in Starship children’s hospital watching her go through chemotherapy treatment and trying to offer her little sister a share of what tiny pieces of energy I had leftover. It was hellish. Anyone who has watched someone go through cancer would know. But there’s something particularly confronting about facing the experience with children.

You can’t plan anything because everything is uncertain. Priorities change in an instant. What were once big things now seem trivial, and the little things seem to carry the most weight of all. The universe shifts on its axis and the center point is no longer where it used to be, leaving you feeling a bit ‘lost’ for lack of a better word. I’ll spare you all the details but the important thing to know is that she is now okay (795 days of treatment later, and yes I absolutely counted).

We got to a point about 8 months in where we started to take her out and about again, carefully choosing outdoor locations where her vulnerable immune system was safer, amongst short visits back to her primary school when she was well enough. Every year in April they learn a little about ANZAC* day at school, and she asked if we could go to the dawn service together. So on the 25^th of April 2024 we wrapped our heads in warm beanies (she had lost her hair, I had shaved mine in solidarity) and drove out into the dark Autumn morning. We walked to the beach where hundreds of people were gathered in the quiet to remember and honour their ancestors who had fought in World War One and in other conflicts since.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them. We will remember them.

Hearing the bugler play ‘The Last Post’ and watching the sunrise glowing on her wee bald head was such a poignant moment – here was a new generation of my whānau willing to remember our ancestors who fought at Gallipoli, despite everything she was going through herself. She wanted to know who it was that we were remembering, and so it was on that day that I sat down and started writing. I haven’t stopped since! Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start on such a big project so it was a real gift to have that focus on WWI soldiers and develop the rest of the story from there.

I found the experience of writing about the past to be hugely therapeutic over the days and months that followed. Research was a wonderful distraction for my busy brain and gave me something else to focus on and think about, beyond leukaemia. Gaining a deeper understanding about who I was and where I came from was also very comforting. I could happily escape to the past and figure out another piece of the ancestral puzzle instead of naval gazing in the hospital waiting room.

In Ngāi Tahu iwi one of the central whakataukī is: Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua, which translates loosely to ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.’ Like many things in te reo Māori there are nuances and layers of meaning that are difficult to translate directly into English, but for me, this speaks to the fact that we can be much clearer about where we are going, when we look back at where we have been. We learn from our ancestors, we learn from the past, it steers us, and it makes the future clearer. Even if we were literally walking backwards, with their guidance, we would still know where to go! This whakataukī held me while I wrote my ancestors stories, held me through the discomfort of my child’s illness, and has become a central pillar of my family history business.

I finished writing my first family history book the same day that she finished her last dose of chemotherapy.

*ANZAC = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

It is literally all of the things that I am good at combined with all of the things that I love. Good at: research, writing, analysis, interviewing, public speaking, understanding people. Love: family, history, biography, travel, telling stories, vintage photographs, making photo albums, organising ‘stuff’, Antiques Roadshow, Missing Pieces/Lost and Found/David Lomas Investigates*, My Family Mystery,** plus reading all of the information on museum displays in full….

I have read and written for pleasure for much of my life. As a child I was heavily influenced by the 1995 publication of Laura’s Poems*** and totally captivated by the idea of becoming a writer. I had several pen pals, wrote poems, and read prolifically. As a tween and teen I wrote a journal almost every day, filling page after page of those little diaries with the lock and keys! This gradually morphed into writing angsty teenage song lyrics with my guitar. I loved English at high-school and had the very best English teacher who influenced me more than she will ever know (although maybe now she will - seriously teachers deserve a pay-rise). From school it was straight off to university with dreams of becoming a psychologist of some sort.

Somewhere amongst the pressure of academic performance and then working life I stopped writing for pleasure (apart from the odd appearance of a rhyming-couplet poem on birthdays or special occasions).

After completing my degree in academic health psychology (MSc) I spent a short time as a policy analyst, and several years working for an NGO in health education, which I loved. What I loved most about it was the people: every single person on this earth has a story to tell. Although it was my job to understand the story of their health, invariably the story of their health was woven into the story of their life. The two strands are inseparable. I met people from all walks of life and all ages and stages but the older folks were my favourites, probably because I loved listening to their stories the most. It was a job that used a lot of my energy however, and although I returned part-time after my first child, I decided I didn’t have the energy to continue after my second.

Many women experience a career and energy shift when they have their children. I went from maternity leave, to part-time work, back to maternity leave, stay-at-home-motherhood, and back to part-time work, this time in academia. As time went on the yearning to do ‘something else’ grew. If I was going to divide my energy and attention between family and work, it had to be divided by something I was passionate about. I had the same conversation with so many women who were at a similar age and/or stage to me. Having children shifts your focus and your priorities. This is not a midlife crisis, but a reckoning: faced with all of the different parts that make you who you are, which ones do you want to carry forward? What is still missing from your life, and how are you going to find it?

Founder of Motherhood Untitled Neha Ruch terms this time The Power Pause and wrote a book by the same title (which I highly recommend). She defines it as: “A phase of life in which a mother deliberately shifts her time, focus, and energy away from her career and toward her children and household. Through this process, she builds a robust community, develops a deeper understanding of her values, discovers new passions, and finds clarity on what she wants in the future. She comes out stronger - more herself - on the other side.”

I found this clarity through a series of events that I had little to no control over. In fact sometimes it feels like the clarity found me, rather than the other way around.

The first of these was a lunch with one side of my whānau attended by our unofficial whānau historian Graham Smith. Following a family reunion he had edited a much-treasured book in the 80s about our history including a vast family tree (as a small child I recall being really miffed that I wasn’t in the tree and writing myself in with a pencil). He and my Poppa regaled us with the most amazing stories of our family history as we sat on the floor around them like a gaggle of eager school children. Graham finished with a tono: in his 80s at that point, he was hoping there might be someone in the whānau who would be interested enough to write an updated version of the book. Honestly it took everything in my power not to shoot my hand straight up in the air! But with a preschooler and a baby in tow I had to give it some thought.

I thought and I thought. Time went by. My Poppa died suddenly later that year and many of his stories went with him (although thankfully he had the foresight to write some of them down in his memoirs). Years passed and another whānau reunion was planned at our marae in Wairewa. My children were older this time and I was ready. This time when Graham gave the tono for someone to write an updated book about our family history I said “yes”. I love this photograph of me in that moment - my face says it all - “Me?! Are you sure?!” I definitely didn’t know what I was getting myself in for, and in the background Graham is smiling, because he definitely did!

Our family were about to move to England for a year and I was about to leave my job. The plan was to work on the book while I was over there. A few weeks before we were due to depart the universe spun off its axis in an entirely unpredictable way: my eldest child was diagnosed with leukemia. If stay-at-home-motherhood is a career ‘power pause’, then facing child cancer is a ‘full stop’.

Stay tuned for part two of How I came to be ‘here’.

*New Zealanders will get the reference, but this is an equivalent show to Long Lost Family in the UK, Relative Race USA, etc. Every single episode invariably leads to me sobbing, and my husband sighing, “Oh no, you’ve been watching David again haven’t you.”

**Similar vibe to Who Do You Think You Are

***Another New Zealand specific reference. Laura Ranger had a book of her poems published in 1995 when she was 8-years-old.

Whānau = family

Tono = invitation/request

Marae = ancestral meeting place

For those who might not know, I have just moved my family to the other side of the world, from Auckland, New Zealand to Leeds, England. It is beautiful – leafy and ‘bricky’ – and we have been made to feel very welcome so far. It has also been a lot of hard work! A perfect time to say, “Here’s something I prepared earlier…”

I recently did some family history interview work with a wonderful group of siblings. It was such an enjoyable day, and I definitely had a ‘pinch me’ moment, reflecting on the fact that this is my job now! As I was working on their transcript, it brought back a memory for me from decades ago, of interviewing my dear Nana for a school English assignment. Being the diligent digital archivist that I am (ha!) I went digging through my files, and sure enough I had saved a copy. It wasn’t even too bad! So in tribute to my Nana, and to the teenage family historian that I was, I’m going to share it with you below. I haven’t edited a single word or dot of punctuation, so please accept it in all its glory, early 2000s Word Art included. 

It is a story I have heard many times – of how my grandmother dreaded filling out the registration forms on the first day back at school. “Betty Shedden” she would write, and every year the woman would look down her nose and say, “That cannot be your full name, Betty must be short for Elizabeth.” And so she would sigh and answer, “No, it is just Betty.” But my grandmother was not ‘just’ anybody, she has lead a very interesting life, and this is just a part of it.

Born on the 13^th of January 1922 in Westport, Betty was the only child of Marjorie Isabel Shedden and Samuel Campbell Shedden. Her father was a teacher, so the family moved around quite a lot. In 1928 they moved to Lyall Bay in Wellington, where Betty spent her school and college years. She lived with her Aunty and Uncle when she was fourteen and fifteen, and formed good relationships with many of her cousins.

Betty enjoyed her school days. “They were busy years,” she said, “and girls never stepped out of line.” She was expected to obey her parents at all times, and being an only child was rather over protected. Her father was always patient and her mother had a very fiery personality, but she got along well with them both.

 Betty had four years of secondary education. For the first three, she attended Wellington East Girls College, and she had her fourth year in Palmerston North, because her family moved there. In her fourth year, Betty had to change to the Commercial course, which involved typing and shorthand. She did not enjoy that, as she was ahead in some subjects but behind in others.

Betty has always had a passion for theatre and music. Being a girl, she was expected to sing in choirs and play the piano, but she enjoyed doing so. Her parents were always involved in the theatre. Betty herself joined a theatre company, and loved acting in plays. Her other interests were playing tennis and she also attended Bible classes.

Betty finished school in 1938. She turned seventeen in January of 1939. Shortly afterwards her family moved to Greytown in the Wairarapa, where her father was headmaster of the local Primary school. There were no jobs available for Betty in Greytown, so she took a correspondence course in art and design. She found this rather difficult as there was no real tuition, and it only lasted about six months. Betty then attended Red Cross lectures in First Aid, Home Nursing and Sanitation. It was embarrassing for her at times, because she did not have any brothers and had lead quite a protected life. She also became a V.A.D (Voluntary Aid Detachment): “A high sounding name for doing all the undesirable jobs in hospital,” Betty said. She worked in hospitals in Greytown, Featherston and Masterton. Over four years Betty passed her senior exams in all three Red Cross subjects. It was work that she mostly enjoyed, but her passions still lay elsewhere.

 What Betty really wanted to be was a florist, which is not surprising to me as my grandparents home has always been full of beautiful floral arrangements. Unfortunately her parents would not allow it, as it would have meant living away from home. This is interesting as teenagers these days move out of home as young as sixteen and seventeen; Betty continued to live with her parents until she was married, at the age of twenty-six.

 Life for a teenager was clearly very different in the 1930s to what it is like today. Betty feels that there is a lot more freedom in understanding the human body and sexual awareness today; back then these were subjects never talked about. Youth of today grow up very fast in comparison. Today there are many problems with alcohol and young people; in Betty’s youth it was not excepted to have alcohol at home – her family only had a bottle of sherry in the house at Christmas time. If her father wanted to drink he would go down to the Men’s Club. Betty herself did not drink alcohol until she was in her twenties.

Growing up during the Second World War was such a contrast to today’s life. “There is no comparison. It was a different life all together,” Betty said strongly, “there is a lot more freedom for teenagers today.” Each generation has to adjust their lives to what’s going on in the world around them. Young women were faced with the fact that their fiances might never return home from the war. They would usually wait until the men had returned safely before they got married or had children. Women were sometimes left to raise children on their own, and sadly many of these children never got to meet their fathers.

There were three army camps in the Greytown area, so the town was always bustling with young soldiers. Every Sunday they would march through town on the way to church, and Betty’s family would often invite young men back to their house for cups of tea afterwards,

One of the highlights of Betty’s younger days was the dance held in Greytown every Friday night. She loved to dance and the soldiers were always such gentlemen – there was always plenty of choice as far as dancing partners went! The girls wore beautiful long taffeta dresses that were always modest, as was the fashion at the time. Betty remembers a pair of silver shoes that she wore which had a broken strap. That did not stop her from wearing them though. She would chew chewing gum and use it to stick the strap down. One night a young American soldier commented on her shoes, saying that back in America the girls all wore black velvet slippers. To Betty’s great delight he kindly bought her a pair, making her very fashionable indeed.

In 1941 Betty met a handsome young soldier by the name of John Doree, who was to become her companion for the next sixty years of her life. Betty and John were married in 1946, in the same church in Wellington where Betty’s parents had married exactly twenty-five years earlier. They made their home in Hawke’s Bay. It was hard for Betty to settle in at first because she did not know anyone in the area, having only been once before. “At the end of the war things were topsy turvy everywhere you went,” Betty said. “Girls didn’t travel during the war years unless they had wealthy parents.” But she made friends soon enough, friends that she still has now, all these years on.

I have always enjoyed listening to the stories that my grandmother has had to tell me.

Each time I visit her it is like an interview – I learn something new about her life every time.

And a final thought from the current family historian: I think Betty the florist would be pretty happy that I have found a way to do something that I love.

I have had the above photograph for several years now, tucked away in the military folder of my 2x great-granduncle Alfred Rupert Nonnet Simôn (1883-1962), from my paternal great-grandfather’s side. He is pictured top left with three of his ‘unknown’ military colleagues, with the photograph labelled just so.

Alfred, known to all as Attie, fought in WWI  in the Otago Mounted Rifles regiment. He was born in 1883 to Emma, his Ngāi Tahu/Pākehā mother and John, his English/French father and raised in a big family on their farm in Myross Bush, a small settlement outside of Invercargill, Southland Aotearoa New Zealand. Attie was working as a drover for Dalgety & Co. when he enlisted on 14^th August 1914. Two of his younger brothers, Roy and Max, also fought in in WWI. Attie and Roy were both part of the early action at Gallipoli and we know they crossed paths on the journey. Sadly, Roy was killed in action in the Dardanelles, April 1915 at the age of 23. 

Attie was wounded in action on the 22^nd of August 1915 in the same location, and I can’t imagine what he must have been feeling on that day. He spent some time recovering in hospital in England, and was able to connect with his father’s English/French Simôn siblings. We have letters exchanged between him and them during the war, along with letters from ‘back home’ in New Zealand. Attie returned to Aotearoa in March 1916, declared unfit for service due to his injuries.  

Last week I opened a folder of photographs pertaining to the Mackintosh branch of my family (paternal great-grandmother’s side) that I have only recently started exploring. As I scrolled through the folder on my computer, a familiar face jumped out at me. Familiar in every sense of the word. “I know that face!” I thought to myself, then “I know that photo too!” It was the exact same photograph but this time labelled with ‘Joseph Murdoch Mackintosh, top right, and three of his ‘unknown’ military colleagues’.

Two 2x great grand-uncles, from two different branches of my family, standing side by side. The more I thought about it, the more I saw the parallels between them.

Joseph Murdoch Mackintosh (1884 – 1954), known to all by his middle name ‘Murdoch’, also fought with the Otago Mounted Rifles regiment. He was born in 1884 to Caroline, his Ngāi Tahu/Pākehā mother and William, his Scottish father and raised in a big family on their farm at Greenlea, Drummond, a small settlement outside of Invercargill, Southland Aotearoa New Zealand. Murdoch was working as a farmer when he enlisted in the military on the 17^th of August 1914 in Invercargill, three days after Attie.

On the 26th of August 1915 (four days after Attie was wounded) Murdoch was struck down with enteric fever and medically evacuated from Gallipoli. Murdoch spent some time recovering in hospital in England, eventually returned to Aotearoa, and was declared unfit for service in 1920, due to the effects of his illness. 

Both Attie and Murdoch were awarded the 1914-1915 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal. Both went on to marry, have children, and live long and fruitful lives.

A few years later in 1925, Murdoch’s niece Mary Mackintosh married Attie’s nephew George McGavock. I don’t know how the two of them met, but the romantic in me likes to think that their two ex-servicemen Uncles had something to do with it. Perhaps they introduced them at a party? I’ll never know, and the people I could ask have long since passed away. But there is a poignancy for me this ANZAC day, knowing that the whakapapa of these two branches of my whānau, and of these two men, overlapped in WWI. 

Ka maumahara tātou i a rātou.

*And before you ask… yes! I have every intention of finding out who the other two soldiers are! Please contact me if they happen to be ‘familiar faces’ to you!

This International Women’s Day, I wanted to mark the occasion by reflecting on the life of one my 2x great-grandmothers, Maria Elizbeth Tavendale (née Coveny).  Although she lived and died long before I was born, I feel connected to her story, and admire her strength and courage. She left her familiar life behind at the age of 19 and boarded a ship bound for the rugged West Coast of Southern Aotearoa New  Zealand. A mother to eleven children, she was widowed when her youngest daughter was only one, and worked hard to provide a good life for them. From her childhood in Liverpool marred with poverty and loss, to the living legacy that grew from her 40 grandchildren, let us hear her story.

Maria’s parents and grandparents

Maria’s father John was born in 1827, the second child born to Thomas Coveny, a shipwright, and Catherine Coveny (née Pratt). Thomas and Catherine were both born in Kinsale, Ireland and had immigrated to England in the 1820s, no doubt to escape the famine rife in Ireland at the time. The first two children of this couple, including John, were born in Bridgwater Somerset, and the following nine were born in the parish of Clifton, in Bristol, Gloucestershire.

Maria’s mother Eliza was born in 1826 in Bristol, Gloucestershire, the first of two daughters born to Samuel Thomas, a sailor, and Ellen Thomas (née Greenman)⁴. When Samuel Thomas died, their mother Ellen remarried to Thomas Larkom in 1835 and had two more children with him: Robert Joseph Larkom born in 1836⁵, and Susan Larkom born in 1838⁶. Tragedy struck Ellen’s young family again when her daughter Susan died at the age of two⁷. The theme of loss weighs heavily on the stories of Maria’s early life, and had a significant impact on her generation, along with her parents’ and grandparents’.

The infant and child mortality rate was extremely high in Bristol at this time, with 20-25% of infants dying before their first birthday, and 45-50% of children dying before their fifth birthday⁸. In fact, in the poorest parishes, such as St Philip and Jacob where Maria’s parents were married, the average age of death was 18-20 years, so heavily skewed it was by the sheer volume of infant and child mortality. The underlying causes were poor sanitation and overcrowding, with outbreaks of cholera, respiratory and infectious diseases spreading like wildfire. It was not uncommon to find the deaths of several members of the same household in short succession.

I digress, but it is a necessary digression, for it forms the context for what lies ahead for Maria. Her parents John Coveny, a mariner, and Eliza Thomas married on the 3^rd of March 1850 at St Philip and Jacob in Bristol, Gloucestershire². Eliza may have been pregnant at the time, or if not fell pregnant very quickly, as the first of their seven children was born in December that year: Eliza Ellen Coveny⁹. The following year the 1851 census has Eliza Coveny (age 25) living in the parish of St Augustine the Less, Bristol with baby Eliza, in the household of her mother Ellen and stepfather Thomas Larkom. Also in the household was Eliza’s half-brother Robert Larkom (age 14) and Sarah Ann Butt (age 6), the orphaned daughter of Ellen’s sister Mary Ann Butt (née Greenman)¹⁰. Please remember the name of Eliza’s cousin (I guess Butt is a memorable name!) as she will feature again later in this story. Eliza’s husband John Coveny is not to be found, but I suspect he may have been at sea, doing his job.

Three further children were born to Eliza and John in Bristol: Catherine Amelia Coveny (who didn’t live to see her first birthday), Amelia Jane Coveny (another name to remember please!), and John Thomas Coveny^{11, 12, 13}. The family then moved from Bristol to Liverpool, perhaps following John’s profession as a mariner, as the Liverpool docks were expanding at the time. Our Maria is the first of their children to be born there.

Maria’s beginnings in Liverpool

Maria Elizabeth Coveny was born in July 1859 and baptised at the local St Thomas’ church on 13 Nov 1859¹⁵. The family lived at 199 Grafton Street, Toxteth Park, Liverpool just two blocks back from the Brunswick Dock on the river Mersey, which flows out to the ocean. The Toxteth area of Liverpool would have been a hive of industry at the time, filled with warehouses and shipping yards, the smell of coal smoke in the air, and a rapidly growing population¹⁶. Housing was therefore built cheaply and quickly, with multiple small units densely packed around a shared central courtyard, little ventilation and of course the shared outdoor loo¹⁷. In short, it was a public health nightmare, and illness and death spread rapidly in these suburbs, just as it had in the poorer areas of Bristol. Essentially the Coveny family went from out of the frying pan and into the fire; Maria’s eldest sister Eliza Ellen Coveny died shortly after they moved to Liverpool, at the age of eleven.

In the 1861 census we find one-year-old Maria living with her parents John and Eliza, surviving elder siblings Amelia (age 6) and John (age 4), baby brother Fredrick (age 0), and Eliza’s cousin Sarah Ann Butt (now age 16, and defined as a ‘general servant’). Evidently Maria’s grandmother Ellen had followed them to Liverpool, remarrying for a third time to Robert Coxey on the 5^th of February 1861 at St John the Baptist church, Liverpool. They were both living in the Coveny household, listed as ‘coal dealer’ and ‘coal dealer’s wife’¹⁸.

Although I’m loath to use the words ‘tragedy struck’ yet again, there is no other way to put it really. In 1865 when Maria was just six years old, both her mother Eliza (aged 39) and baby brother William Henry Coveny (aged 1) died within a few months of each other and were buried at Toxteth Park cemetery. John Coveny, often away at sea, found himself a widower with four young children to take care of. In what can only be described as a matter of convenience, John decided to marry the cousin of his late wife, Sarah Ann Butt, who you will recall was already living with the family.  They were married on the 9^th of January 1868 in St Nicholas’ church, Liverpool. John and Sarah Ann had one son together, Robert Joseph Coveny, born in Liverpool in 1871.

The records trail for this family goes temporarily cold at this point, and I was unable to locate all of them in the 1871 census. Again, I suspect John may have been at sea, and I believe his son John Thomas Coveny has also died at this point. I did find his eldest surviving daughter Amelia Coveny working as a nurse in Liverpool, serving the household of one Joseph Foster¹⁹. I cannot locate Maria, Fredrick, nor Sarah Ann Coveny.

Maria’s father John Coveny died at sea on the 21^st  March 1873 off the coast of Pernambuco, Brazil, at the age of 45. His cause of death is listed as ‘suffocation’ in the vernacular of the time (he drowned in other words)²⁰. I have so many questions about this: what were they doing in Brazil? What kind of cargo were they carrying, or collecting? Did he land in South America, or was he just sailing past? And how did he end up falling in the sea? I’ll do more research on his shipping records at some point, but some of these questions may never be answered. John was survived by his second wife Sarah Ann, daughters Amelia (age 18) and Maria (age 14), and sons Fredrick (age 12), and Robert (age 2).

Arriving in Aotearoa

Four years after their father’s death, Maria’s elder sister Amelia Jane Coveny had the gumption to leave her life in Liverpool behind and board the ship Gainsborough from Plymouth, bound for the wild West Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand. She is listed as an assisted immigrant, arriving here in early 1878²². I do wonder if there were other extended family members out here already that attracted Amelia to New Zealand, and the West Coast in particular (if other descendants of the Coveny family know more, please let me know in the comments!). Four months later, Amelia Jane Coveny married Francis Spence at St John’s Church in Westport, with the couple later moving to Wellington. They didn’t have any children (as far as I know). Amelia died on the 3rd of May 1926 and is buried at St John’s Anglican churchyard cemetery in Trentham, Upper Hutt. 

At 19 years old, our Maria bravely followed her sister Amelia, arriving on the well-known ship the Edwin Fox (see https://www.edwinfox.nz/) on the 8th of August 1878, also as an assisted immigrant²⁴. The Edwin Fox landed in Nelson, and Maria then boarded a steamer bound for Westport. As I sit here on my comfortable chair in my comfortable home, I imagine the steamer arriving into the wharf at Westport. The beauty of the rugged West Coast landscape looming ahead of her, I wonder what Maria must have been feeling. Excitement? Nervousness? I try to picture what the experience was like for her, and admittedly find it hard not to imagine the scene from Jane Campion’s movie ‘The Piano’! Was the sea stormy or calm? Was her sister waiting there to greet her at Westport? Was her future husband waiting on the wharf, along with a surplus of other lonely gents, keeping an eye out for a suitable bride? I wish I could go back in time and interview her! But I do feel certain that she must have been a strong, courageous woman. I like to think that the sights and sounds of the Westport wharf, and the familiar smell of coal in the air, must have been comforting to a young woman born and raised in Merseyside.

Maria married William Tavendale of Scotland on the 4th of August 1879²⁶. William had come to the West Coast as a coal miner in the early 1860s, via Tasmania, Australia and was aged 38 when they married. The couple first lived in in Greymouth where eldest daughter Amelia Ellen Tavendale was born in 1880. The young family then moved to the mining settlement of Waimangaroa at the foot of the Denniston Incline in the Paparoa Ranges. Waimangaroa had a timber mill and mine, and served as a transit point for coal, with a steep, gravity-operated railway built from the Denniston Plateau (518 meters above sea level) down to Waimangaroa (at sea level) in 1879. The coal was loaded onto steam trains at Waimangaroa and transported to the Westport wharf²⁷. Anyone familiar with the weather patterns and terrain of West Coast Aotearoa knows that it must have been a challenging existence.

Family life

Maria and William Tavendale went on to have eleven children together, including nine daughters (imagine!) and two sons. They were as follows: Amelia Ellen born on 20 Aug 1880 in Greymouth, Mary Eliza born on 12 Sep 1882, Maria Elizabeth born on 22 Jun 1884, Lilian Jane born on 13 Mar 1886, Julia Spence born on 6 Feb 1888, Elspeth Hilda born on 5 Oct 1889, Frances Henrietta born on 3 Nov 1891, Frederick William born on 7 Oct 1893, David James born on 21 Feb 1895, Juanita Jessie born on 8 Sep 1898, and Marjorie Isabel born on 28 Jul 1900 (all born in Waimangaroa).

The contrast between the staggering infant and child mortality rates that Maria’s family had endured in Bristol and Liverpool, and those in New Zealand, was stark. Infant mortality in New Zealand was 8-10% for under ones, and child mortality was 12.5% for under fives, with rates significantly higher in our urban and indigenous Māori populations²⁸. Maria and William Tavendale’s eleven children all survived into adulthood, and that to me, is truly miraculous.  

Meanwhile back in England, the 1881 census finds her step-mother Sarah Ann Coveny (age 36), a widow and washerwoman, living with her Aunt, Maria’s grandmother Ellen Larkam (age 79, also a widow) in their original hometown of Clifton, Bristol. Along with step-son Fredrick William Coveny (age 21, sailor), and son Robert Joseph Coveny (age 9)²⁹. Robert went on to marry Ada Florence Weedon in 1893, and the couple had three children together in Bristol: Frederick, Florence and Nellie. Sadly Ada died in 1900, and no doubt looking for support to raise his three young children, Robert also emigrated from England to New Zealand. The four of them arrived on 11 Aug 1902 in Wellington³⁰, and as the family story goes, he first went down to Westport to stay with ‘two married female cousins’ (aka his half-sisters Amelia and Maria), hoping that they would help him.

I do hate to burst the recent celebratory bubble, but Robert arrived to find that Maria’s husband William had died of pneumonia on the 28th of August 1901³¹. A widow at the age of 42 with eleven children, Maria was hardly in a position to support Robert, a widower with three! He therefore returned to live in Wellington, where he remarried to Alice Jane Jackson in 1904. Robert and Alice went on to have 10 more children, so there is little wonder that New Zealand is the ‘Coveny’ capital of the world (yes, really). Robert died on the 24th of August 1934, and is buried at Karori Cemetery in Wellington. Robert, Amelia and Maria’s brother Frederick William Coveny also followed his siblings to New Zealand in the 1880s, and his death is recorded here in 1887.

Looking for a new life and ways to support her children, Maria moved from Waimangaroa to Wellington in 1905. She ran a boarding house, and grew and sold flowers to keep the family afloat. A strong and independent woman, she never remarried which was unusual for the era. Memories have been passed down from her youngest daughter Marjorie to my mother Jean, of all the handsome young men that used to live in the boarding house! By this point the eldest children had left home, but we know that the youngest three attended school in Thorndon, Wellington, perhaps interspersed with time back in Waimangaroa.

Maria’s legacy

Gradually all of Maria’s eleven children began to leave home, marry and have children of their own.

• Amelia Ellen TAVENDALE married Camille Carroll HAWTHORNE in 1909.

• Mary Eliza TAVENDALE was first married to Rainsford TOMS in 1907, and later remarried Frederick Edward JENKS in 1928.

• Maria Elizabeth TAVENDALE married Joseph William SCOTT in 1907.

• Lilian Jane TAVENDALE married Sydney James NEIGHBOURS in 1911.

• Julia Spence TAVENDALE married Andrew PATERSON in 1910.

• Elspeth Hilda TAVENDALE first married Frank Marmaduke BRITTAIN in 1917, and after he died at the Somme in WWI, she married his brother Albert John Percival BRITTAIN in 1919.

• Frances Henrietta TAVENDALE married Norman JOHNSTONE in 1914. Sadly she died the same year, at Heatherton Tuberculosis Sanatorium, in Bayside, Victoria, Australia.

• Frederick William TAVENDALE married Selma Amelia Elfrida ENTING in 1922. He served in both WWI and WWII.

• David James TAVENDALE married Julia Ann MCLAREN in 1927, and also served in WWI and WWII.

• ‘Florence’ Juanita Jessie TAVENDALE, known to all as Nita, married Frederick Masterton THOMSON in 1917.

• Marjorie Isabel TAVENDALE married Samuel Campbell SHEDDEN in 1921. Marjorie was my great-grandmother, who lived to the incredible age of 90 in my home town of Hastings, which means I was lucky enough to spend time with and remember her.  Just like her great-grandmother Ellen before her, she outlived three husbands! 

Maria Elizabeth Tavendale developed stomach cancer and died at the age of 68, on the 17th of January 1928³². Her body was returned to Waimangaroa where she was buried alongside her late husband William. She left behind a legacy of 40 grandchildren, many of whom have gone on to have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of their own. It’s amazing to me to think of the number of people in the Coveny family who were loved and lost, or barely lived at all, in Bristol and Liverpool. Compared to the hundreds of descendants who thrive here in Aotearoa and beyond, all because Maria and her siblings were brave enough to leave all of that loss behind, and start a new life on the other side of the world. Tēnā koe Maria – you made the right decision to move here, and it is a testament to your extraordinary strength and character. You will be remembered.

Sources

1. Photograph of Maria Tavendale with her granddaughter Betty Dorée (née Shedden). My Nana Betty was the only child of Maria’s youngest daughter Marjorie.

2. Marriages (NCR) England. St Phillips and Jacob Ecclesiastical Church, Bristol, Gloucestershire. 03 Mar 1850.
   COVENEY, John and THOMAS, Eliza. Collection: Parish Registers, 1538-1900. Reg 469 page 236.
   www.familysearch.org : accessed 05 Sep 2025.

3. Baptisms (PR) England. Clifton, Gloucestershire. 3 Mar 1829.. COVENEY, Joannes. [Transcription]. 1597325. Collection: England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. www.ancestry.com. Accessed: 05 Sep 2025.

4. Baptism (PR) England. St Augustine The Less, Bristol, Gloucestershire. 02 Nov 1828. THOMAS, Maria. Collection: England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. 1596311. [Transcript]. MyHeritage.com accessed : 14 Sep 2025.

5. Baptisms (PR) England. Bristol, Gloucestershire. 14 Aug 1836. LARKHAM, Robert Joseph. [Index]. Collection: England Births and Christenings 1538 – 1975. www.familysearch.org : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

6. Baptism (PR) England. St Augustine the Less, Bristol, Gloucestershire. 09 Sep 1838. LARCOMB, Susan. Collection: England, Bristol Parish Registers, 1538-1900. 4192158. [Transcript]. MyHeritage.com accessed 12 Sep 2025.

7. Deaths (CR) England. Bristol, Gloucestershire. Sep Quarter 1840. LARKOM, Susan. Vol 11 page 115. [Index]. www.gro.govt.uk accessed: 12 Sep 2025.

8. Chadwick, E. (1842). Report from the Poor Law Commissioners on the sanitary conditions of the labouring population of Great Britain. London. pp. 369-372

9. Births (CR) England. Clifton Union, Gloucestershire. Dec quarter 1850. COVENY, Eliza Ellen. Volume 11, page 141. [Index]. www.gro.uk : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

10. Census records. England. St Augustine The Less, Bristol, Gloucestershire. 1841.LARKOM, Thomas [head] Reg H 107, Piece/folio 0371/449, ED 9, page 38, line 10. www.familysearch.org : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

11. Births (CR) England. Bristol, Gloucestershire. Jun quarter 1853. COVENY, Catherine Amelia. Volume 06A page 56. [Index]. www.gro.uk : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

12. Births (CR) England. Bristol, Gloucestershire. March quarter 1855. COVENY, Amelia Jane. Volume 06A page 58. [Index]. www.gro.uk : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

13. Births (CR) England. Bristol, Gloucestershire. Jun quarter 1856. COVENY, John Thomas. Volume 06A page 58. [Index]. www.gro.uk : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

14. Ordinance Survey of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, 1888-1915. National Library of Scotland maps website https://maps.nls.uk.

15. Baptism (PR) England. St Thomas, Toxteth Park, Lancashire. 1859. COVENY, Maria Elizabeth. Reg. 313 page 40. [scan of original]. www.findmypast.co.uk: accessed June 2025.

16. Parkinson, C. N. (1952). The Rise of the Port of Liverpool. Liverpool [Merseyside] : University Press of Liverpool.

17. Hurst, Matt. “Investigating Liverpool’s Court Housing – University of Liverpool News.” News, December 2, 2013. https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2013/12/02/investigating-liverpools-court-housing/.

18. Census records. England. Toxteth Park, West Derby, Lancashire. 1861.CAVENY, John [head] RG09, 2702/84, page 29 (line 23) and page 30 (line 2). www.familysearch.org : accessed 04 Sep 2025.

19. Census records. England. Mt Pleasant, Liverpool, Lancashire. 1871.FOSTER, Joseph [head]. ED 38, HO 104, entry 12. [microfilm] 000841895. www.familysearch.org : accessed 05 Sep 2025.

20. Deaths, at sea. Register of Accounts of Wages and Effects of Deceased Seamen, 1873, pp147-148. COVENY, John. The National Archives.

21. Photograph of the West Coast of South Island New Zealand by Ingolfson. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_Coast_New_Zealand.jpg

22. Immigration record for Amelia Coveney (age 22) departs Plymouth 1877 on ship Gainsborough, arrives Westland New Zealand 1878. Single, general servant, from Gloucestershire. New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1974. FamilySearch.

23. State Library of South Australia. “The ‘Gainsborough’ Moored at Gravesend, U.K.” Accessed March 8, 2026. https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/PRG+1373/1/28.

24. Passenger list for Edwin Fox arriving Westland, New Zealand. COVENEY, Mara [Maria]. 8 Aug 1878. Archives New Zealand. Wellington. Collection: New Zealand, Immigration Passenger Lists, 1839-1974. www.familysearch.org accessed 05 Sep 2025.

25. Auckland Weekly News; Winkelmann, Henry. “A Shipping Scene at Westport, One of the Great Coalmining Centres of the West Coast.” DigitalNZ, December 3, 1903. https://digitalnz.org/records/43302779.

26. Marriages (CR) New Zealand. Westland. 4 Aug 1879. TAVENDALE, William David and COVENEY, Maria Elizabeth. Reg 1879/1969 [Index]. www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : accessed 05 Sep 2025.

27. “Denniston Mine.” Tohu Whenua. Accessed March 6, 2026. https://tohuwhenua.nz/regions/te-tai-poutini-west-coast/denniston-mine/.

28. Woodward, Alistair & Blakely, Tony. (2014). The healthy country? : A history of life & death in New Zealand / Alistair Woodward & Tony Blakely. Auckland, NZ : Auckland University Press.

29. Census records. England. Clifton, Bristol, Gloucestershire. 1881. LARKOM, Ellen [head]. Reg RG11, piece/folio 2480/94, page 5, line 21. http://www.findmypast.co.uk : accessed 07 August 2014.

30. Passenger list for Unknown arriving Wellington, New Zealand. 11 Aug 1902. COVENEY, Robert Joseph, and three children. Archives New Zealand. Wellington. Collection: New Zealand, Immigration Passenger Lists, 1839-1974. www.familysearch.org : accessed 05 Sep 2025.

31. Deaths (CR). New Zealand. Waimangaroa, Buller.28 Aug 1901. TAVENDALE, William David. Reg 1901/4658. [Index]. www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : accessed 05 Sep 2025.

32. Deaths (CR). New Zealand. Waimangaroa, Wellington. 17 Jan 1928. TAVENDALE, Maria Elizabeth. Reg 1928/11713. [Index]. www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz : accessed 05 Sep 2025.

I recently worked with a client who brought along a little pile of family taonga for me to digitise and archive. The first thing that she showed me was the ‘Minute Book’ from her family’s farm. What a wonderful thing to digitise for posterity! It was full of the most incredible insights into the daily running of a farm here in New Zealand; handwritten information from the 1940s right through to the 1960s. The cost of cow feed, lists of chicken breeds, accounting records, the names of farm employees, notes about who was renting the family bach (excellent genealogical information from a FAN perspective – Friends, Associates, Neighbours). And let’s not forget the cool newspaper clipping about a 1200-pound bullock being sold to the butchers!

I started to carefully leaf through it and immediately exclaimed “Wow!” because the first dozen pages were full of a colourful collection of New Zealand Wage stamps from the 1940s. The client chuckled and said, “Yes I thought you might like those!”

In the 1930s post-WWI financial depression era, the New Zealand government introduced a variety of taxation schemes to assist the unemployed, and wage tax stamps was one of them.  It began in 1931, with the introduction of the emergency Unemployment Amendment Act, to collect a proportion of all salaries and wages. The employer would purchase the stamps, and place them in their employee’s wage book, who then signed the stamps when they collected their pay (thus cancelling them, showing that they had been used) (1).

The wage stamp scheme had three different names over the years that followed, first ‘Unemployment Relief’ (1931-1936), then ‘Employment’ (1937-1939), and finally ‘Social Security’ (1939-1958). This was a reflection of the increasingly broad scope of taxation, what taxes were utilised for, and who benefitted from them (1).

Initially, the rate of taxation was set at 1.25%, which equated to 3 pence per pound in the pre-decimal currency of the day (New Zealand changed from pounds to NZ dollars in 1967), and it rose over time, to 12.5% in 1942 (1). The wage stamp system finished on 31 March 1958, and was replaced by the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) taxation scheme, which incorporates social security taxes (1).

The earliest dated wage tax stamp in the Minute Book is 1940, and my understanding is that stamps prior to this year were sometimes dated and sometimes not. For example the 1931-1935 stamps, and the 1939 stamps, are undated but the 1936-1938 stamps had the year printed on them, as did all those from 1940-1958 (1). Due to a shortage of paper stock during WWII, there were also some stamps that were ‘overprinted’ with new dates, i.e., recycled, so in the early 1940s you occasionally see stamps with the initial date blacked out with a line, and a new date printed (3). I found four examples of these, with the dates changed from 1940 and 1941 to 1943! Based on the dates in the Minute Book the wage tax stamps in this collection range from 1939 to 1945.

The stamps are collectable by philatelists (that’s a fancy word for stamp collectors), especially those interested in stamps that were used beyond the usual postage purposes that we think of. Their value varies based on how rare they are, and the condition that they are in. For example, a stamp in ‘mint’ condition, that is, one that is unused (no postmark, or in the case of wage tax stamps, no employee signature) and still has the original adhesive gum intact on the back, is more valuable than one in used condition (2).

All of the stamps in this collection are used in the sense that they have been stuck to the pages of the book, but not all of them have been cancelled with an employee’s signature. There are a total of 269 stamps in the Minute Book, and I have encouraged the client’s family to investigate whether they have any value to a collector. Although I very much doubt they would let them go!  At least now they have a digital copy for posterity.

To me this project was a great reminder that there is beauty in the most ordinary things, and that there is inherent value to families in understanding and knowing the history of their forebears day-to-day lives.

I wonder what beautiful items you have tucked away in your own family records? I would love to see them!

Sources

1. “Wage Tax Stamps Archives.” NZ Revenues, n.d. Accessed November 14, 2025. http://nzrevenues.co.nz/product-category/wage-tax-stamps/

2. “NZ Wage Tax Stamps – New Zealand Stamps – NEW ZEALAND – EASTAMPS.COM.” Accessed November 14, 2025. https://www.eastamps.com/shop/Stamps+By+Country/NEW+ZEALAND/New+Zealand+Stamps/NZ+Wage+Tax+Stamps.html.

3. Shaw, Jim. “New Zealand Wages Tax Ramblings.” Zirinsky Stamps. https://zirinskystamps.com/Publications/web%20publications/Wagestaxramblings_Nov2013.pdf.

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People often ask what I mean by ‘archiving’ family records, so here are some examples. The aim of archiving is essentially to protect and conserve your precious, irreplaceable family records for posterity. By storing them correctly in acid-free, archival quality enclosures you are increasing the lifespan of the items, and also reducing the handling of them, which contributes to wear and tear. 

Things to consider are whether you want to archive them for presentation purposes, or simply for storage. You may wish to protect your family items, but still ensure that they can be looked at and handled, for example, at a family reunion or display. Crystal clear acid-free enclosures are a great option for this, using 300 gsm backing card to support and protect the items. This also allows you to make a ‘double-sided’ display, with a birth record on one side, and baptism on the other, or similar. Family can then ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ over the records or photographs, without getting sticky fingers on them! 

Alternatively, if you have digitised your family records, and are ready to tuck them away for the long term, you can use archival-quality envelopes or boxes. You can’t ‘see’ what’s in them unless you pull them out of the envelope again, but you can label the envelopes and boxes, and create an inventory, so that you know where everything is stored. Make sure you share the inventory with other family members, and have a ‘succession’ plan of sorts as to who will inherit the items, and what is to be done with them after you are gone. Beautiful display albums are also available, where you can select pages with a variety of different sized enclosures, for photographs, birth, death and marriage certificates, and even slides and negatives. 

Acid-free archival boxes can be used to protect documents, photographs and books, and can even be ‘made to measure’. A great example of what to store in these would be a family bible, which historically were used to record important genealogical information for the family, such as births, deaths and marriages. After photographing the pages with these handwritten pieces of genealogy gold, I can then order you a custom-made box so that the bible (or any other special book) is protected, reducing damage to the spine and delicate pages. 

I have added an album below of some of the archiving work I have done, so that you can get an idea of the range of products and options available. Every client is different, so I work closely with you to figure out an archiving plan that suits your needs. 

I live down in the Southern Hemisphere, in Aotearoa New Zealand. About as far away from the hustling, heaving city of London as you can get (both figuratively and literally). So how is it that I can have a connection to an English Heritage blue plaque? 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the blue plaque scheme, it’s a way of memorialising the locations that well-known people once lived in London. Their name, year of birth and death, and their notable contributions to society are listed on the plaque on the outside of the building (and apparently not all of them are blue!). It’s one of the longest-running such schemes in the world, with the earliest plaque installed in 1866, over 1000 plaques up thus far, and still going [1]. We’re talking about the likes of Freddie Mercury, Agatha Christie, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens, so who was the person in my tree that was fit to keep such grand plaque company, and what did they do to deserve it?

It wasn’t until I was researching the origin story of one of my ancestors with the surname “Simôn” that I discovered he was related to Sir John Simôn KCB (Knight Commander of the Bath) aka “the Pioneer of Public Health”. Like all good researchers, I Googled him, and that was when I came across this photograph of his blue plaque, full credit to London Remembers who took it [2].

The sixth-born child of Louis Michael Simôn, and third of his mother Matilda Simôn, John was born in 1816 at their home in George Street, Minories. An up-and-coming area, it was still adjacent to London’s poorer, squalid neighbourhoods, and was not exempt from the tragedy of high infant mortality rates at the time. By 1817, three of Louis Michael’s six children had died (as well as his first wife, who incidentally, was Matilda’s sister), and they made the decision to move away from the city to Blackheath village, eight miles out of London. A significant start to life, for John who grew up to become a leader in English sanitation and infectious medicine [3]!

John grew up in what was no doubt a busy home, which grew to eventually 10 surviving children, along with several staff. The family also grew in wealth and social standing, with Louis Michael joining the Stock Exchange, and later entering the wine trade, a business that passed to eldest son George [3]. John was educated at local schools, before being moved to Dr Charles Parr Burney’s school at Greenwich, and then overseas for a year in Rhenish Prussia. In 1833 he returned to London to begin his study as a consulting surgeon. He was apprenticed to Dr Joseph Henry Green, Professor of Surgery at the new King’s College, with practicums undertaken at St Thomas’s Hospital [4].

In between his pursuit of a medical career, it sounds like John kept up varied interests in philosophy, languages and the arts, and socialised with some fairly well-known historical figures, such as Wordsworth, Mendelssohn, Ruskin, Dickens, Darwin, Tennyson and Coleridge. John also travelled throughout Europe and read extensively. It sounds like he had quite an interesting temperament, being described by his own father as impetuous and irritable, but also described by his contemporaries as sensitive, anxious and at times melancholic [3, 4]. Some hints at his dynamic personality can be found in some of the quotes provided by English Heritage in their ‘History’s Heroes of Health’ article! [5].

A keen researcher, his scientific work was published and respected, so much so that he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Surgeons at the young age of 29. Eventually his interest turned to pathology, and he was appointed lecturer in the subject at St Thomas’, where he later was employed as a senior assistant surgeon. In 1848 he was elected Medical Officer of Health for the city of London, and in the same year he was married to Jane O’Meara [3].

In his public health role, he researched, wrote and campaigned for topics such as better sewerage systems, the cholera outbreak in the water supply, vaccination (particularly for smallpox) and sanitation in general [4, 5]. He helped establish public health legislation such as the Sanitary Act 1866 and the Public Health Act 1875 [4].

He was an active member of the Royal College of Surgeons, serving on the council, and as vice-president, and acting president. In 1876 he retired from being a surgeon and instead was made consulting surgeon and governor of St Thomas’ hospital. He was knighted KCB in 1887, and received two medals in sanitary science, the Harben medal of the Royal Institute of Public Health (1896) and the Buchanan medal of the Royal Society (1887) [4].

Returning to John’s personal life, he and Jane were unable to have children of their own, but did adopt their niece Jane Faulkner aka ‘Boo’ after her mother died. Boo had an interesting life too, and definitely made life interesting for them, but that’s a story for another day. John’s wife Jane died in 1901, followed by John, at that stage blind and ill, in 1904. He left a portion of his estate to St Thomas’ Hospital, where he had spent so much of his career [3, 4]. There is a marble bust of him somewhere in the building, which I intend to go and visit one day, as well as making a pilgrimage to the blue plaque in Kensington Square! 

Which brings me back home to Aotearoa New Zealand; a small, unique, and beautiful place that drew two of Sir John Simôn KCBs nephews far, far away from their comfortable life in London. Of all the places in all the world, John Nonnet Simôn found himself in Riverton, the ‘Deep South’ of the South Island of New Zealand, where he met and married my 3x great-grandmother, Emma Mason Thomas. So there you have it! 

Has anyone else uncovered a blue plaque holder in their family tree? Has anyone been to Riverton?! 

Sources

1. Blue Plaques. (n.d.). English Heritage. Retrieved September 2, 2025, from https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/

2. Sir John Simon. (n.d.). London Remembers. Retrieved September 2, 2025, from https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/sir-john-simon/

3. Lambert, R. (1963). Sir John Simon 1816-1904 and English Social Administration. MacGibbon & Kee, London.

4. Clark, E. Biography of John Simon. From The Dictionary of National Biography, Supp. Jan. 1901 – Dec 1911, Vol. III, Neil-Young, Oxford University Press.

5. History’s Heroes of Health | Blue Plaques. (n.d.). English Heritage. Retrieved September 2, 2025, from https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/blue-plaque-stories/heroes-of-health/ 

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A little story about the inspiration behind The Family Archives logo. When I volunteered to help update and record the history of one side of my Dad’s family, I thought I knew what I was getting myself in to…. and then the first box arrived from Graham N. Smith, our unofficial whānau historian. Wow.  It wasn’t even a very big box, classic foolscap size, but boy was it full! I did have some idea about this side of my family, but the depth and breadth of the information contained in this magic box extended far beyond what I knew. Genealogical information stretching back to the 1500s, original photographs and negatives that I’d never laid eyes on before, and screeds of hand-written notes by Graham, and by extended family collected at the Thomas-Tukuwaha reunion held in Invercargill in 1984. 

The challenge was to first break it down into manageable piles, so that I could figure out who was who, and what was what. I started geographically – records from England, Australia, France, Switzerland/Northern Italy, and of course Aotearoa New Zealand. From there I was able to take the information from the genealogical charts that were included, and create family groups: de Paravacini, Nonnet, Tukuwaha, Thomas and Simôn. I knew I needed to narrow in on the descendants of one particular couple, Emma Thomas and John Nonnet Simôn, but then I realised they had thirteen children! So that made for thirteen more piles. I employed our rusty old filing cabinet to hold it all, while I carefully read, researched, took notes, digitised and archived the originals. The finished product is a book, in printed and e-book form that I hope will be treasured for generations to come. But the byproduct – an extensive digital archive of original, significant family photographs and documents, preserved for posterity – feels just as significant. 

This was a huge task, yes, but such an important one as this couple have many descendants who care about their whakapapa and family history (Emma and John had 60 great-grandchildren, and most of them have grandchildren, to give you some idea of the numbers). There are several motivations behind this mahi (work) for me. It only takes a few generations for family stories to be lost to time, if they are not recorded, in some way, shape or form. They also cannot be enjoyed, reflected on, or learnt from if they stay inside the box. So many people do incredible amounts of genealogical research and work, that never sees the light of day. Three, two, or even one generation on from when those people pass away, if the value of their work isn’t recognised and shared within the family, it may well end up in the skip bin or the fire (yes, it happens!). Graham passed away last month, in his 91st year, and it gives me a lot of peace to know that his mahi will never be forgotten. And guess what I came home from his service with….. you guessed it, three more boxes

Our kaumatua, our elders, have so many stories to tell. We just have to make sure we are listening!

I’d like to tell you about my great great grandmother, Caroline Georgina de Paravacini McGavock (nee Simôn). When I started doing research on my family history, I knew very little about her, other than that she was the source of my middle name ‘Caroline’. As a child, I remember our family copy of a book written in 1984, for a reunion of William Thomas and Mary Tukuwaha’s descendants. William Thomas came out to Murihiku (Southland Aotearoa New Zealand) as a whaler in the 1830s, and married a woman from Ngāi Tahu iwi, called Tukuwaha. Tukuwaha was of Ngāti Makō and Ngāti Irakehu descent, and originally from Wairewa. Emma Simôn (nee Thomas) was one of their daughters born on Rakiura (Stewart Island), and Caroline was her eldest daughter. I used to love flicking through the book looking at the photographs. The one shown above was titled ‘Lillie and Roy’ and to be honest, as a child I never once put two-and-two together, that Lillie was in fact short for Caroline. A photograph of my great great grandmother was hiding in plain sight! It also turned out that Roy was short for ‘Faulkner Charles Roy Simôn’, and he was one of Lillie’s youngest brothers. His story is one to tell another day. In fact most of Caroline’s siblings were known either by a nickname or middle-name, which confused me no-end until I got my head around it! During my family history research, I got another great surprise, when a grandchild of Caroline’s youngest brother Max revealed that he held the original copy of the photograph. What an amazing taonga (treasure) – the level of detail is so incredible compared to the cropped and photocopied version I had seen.  

Caroline aka Lillie was born on the 20th of October 1874, to parents Emma and John Simôn, in Riverton, Murihiku. She was their second born, having lost their first child – George – at only 3 months old, the previous year. In the years that followed, Lillie gained 11 younger siblings: Henry Ivan aka Harry, Marianne Schlotel aka Tim, Louis Michael Herman, John Powell aka Jack, Alfred Rupert Nonnet aka Attie, Maria Emma Dora aka Minnie, Leonie Gertrude de Zoete aka Le, Annie Victoria Mervyn aka Girlie, Catharine Edith aka Cathie, Faulkner Charles Roy aka Roy, and Max Augustus Sedgley aka Max. You see what I mean about the names now right! She was raised at the family home in Myross Bush, and later attended Nelson College. Lillie worked as a secretary for Sir Joseph Ward, a prominent Southland businessman, who went on to serve two terms as Prime Minister of New Zealand. Lillie was a talented phonographer, with articles from the Southern Cross newspaper naming her as librarian of the newly formed Invercargill Shorthand Writers’ Association in 1895, and re-elected as librarian in 1896. There are also advertisements for her services with the ‘Shorthand & Typewriters Bureau’ in 1898. Her short-hand skills were put to excellent use when she transcribed the fire-side tales of her grandfather William Thomas, who lived with Emma and John Simôn’s family in his old age. Known as ‘Grandfather’s Yarns’, a total of 40 of these stories were published in the Southern Cross newspaper between 1894 and 1895, depicting the life of a colonial whaler in vivid detail. The significance of these stories has been established over time, with very few written records of this period in Aotearoa’s history surviving to the present day. They have been turned into a book edited by David Dudfield, available here, or the original newspaper articles can still be read online at Papers Past.   

During the 1890s she met Archibald McGavock, a county engineer, and keen jockey. We have two poems that Lillie wrote about Archie’s amateur jockey career, including one that we still have the original handwritten version of from 1894 (pictured below). This was tucked away in an envelope that my Dad pulled out when I said I was doing some research on this side of his family. In the same envelope was a second portrait of Lillie; now I had two pictures of my great great grandmother.  Lillie and Archie married in 1898 and had two children, Sarah Featherstone aka Sally McGavock, born in 1901, and George Simon McGavock born in 1902. Tragedy struck in 1903, when Caroline fell ill and required surgery for a bowel obstruction at Invercargill Hospital. Although the operation was considered a success, she died of surgical complications a short time afterward, at age 28. She was buried at the Eastern cemetery in Invercargill, alongside her grandfather William Thomas, and brother Herman. Her young children were taken in by their grandmother Emma Simôn and raised alongside Lillie’s younger siblings at Myross Bush.   

 Moral for the Jockey by Lillie Simôn

Black and gold, black and gold,

You must know from old,

That racing with dangers is rife.

Yet you will risk your life

For the turf and its strife

And a handful of mere paltry gold.

Is your mother more dear

Than the loud ringing cheer

As winner you gain from the crowd?

Are the drinks that pass round

Amid gay laughter’s sound

More to you than the dear of a shroud?

When e’en sisters tears

And friendship’s sad fears

Have no power your hard heart to soften,

Though you laugh at the warning,

Yet e’en while it scorning,

You may ride you know once too often.

The final treasured photograph only came to light a few weeks ago, when I was nearing the end of my research, and hunting through a box of documents lent to me by another family member. Out fell from the pile, one more photograph of Lillie, pictured with her friend Miss Pratt, who was also a member of the Invercargill Shorthand Writer’s Association. And so I went from having one (unrecognised) photograph of my great great grandmother, to three beautiful clear images, two poems, and a real sense of the woman that she was. 

Lillie is an inspiration to me for many reasons, and I endeavor to follow in her footsteps by treasuring and recording the stories of my own tupuna (ancestors), but also helping other families to do the same.

I wonder what stories and photographs we could unearth in your box of family archives?

Sources:

“Biography: Joseph George Ward.” Te Ara The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2w9/ward-joseph-george.

“General News.” Southern Cross, Volume 3, Issue 14, 6 July 1895, Page 8. Accessed August 23, 2025. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SOCR18950706.2.20.

“Louis Michael Herman Simon (1880-1887) – Find a…” Accessed August 23, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208383699/louis_michael_herman-simon.

“News and Notes.” Southern Cross, Volume 4, Issue 6, 9 May 1896, Page 6. Accessed August 23, 2025. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SOCR18960509.2.14.

“Obituary of Mrs McGavock.” Southern Cross, Volume 11, Issue 28, 10 October 1903, Page 9. Accessed August 23, 2025. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SOCR19031010.2.24.

“Obituary of Mrs McGavock.” Western Star, 6 October 1903, Page 2. Accessed August 23, 2025. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WSTAR19031006.2.11.

“Shorthand & Typewriting Bureau Advertisement.” Southern Cross, Volume 5, Issue 42, 22 January 1898, Page 3. Accessed August 23, 2025. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SOCR18980122.2.5.2.

Smith, G N. Thomas -Tukuwaha: A Record of the Families 1834 – 1984. Unpublished manuscript, 1984.