William Bell Poppelwell – His Life and Times, Background and Descendants
PREFACE
These are my people and I have the good fortune to be glad of it. Belonging to them has not limited individuality, and floating free while being still warmly attached is most satisfying.
A pleasant discovery during this project has been a not infrequent sense of recognition and a feeling that even those least emotionally kin are part of the important whole.
Therefore I dedicate this to MY FAMILY: first to my four immediate offspring, then to the extended clan, many of whom have contributed much happiness and interest to my life.
Why, out of my several lines of ancestry, is the history based on the POPPELWELLS? Well, initially there seemed to be more information about them. Also, like a nut, they have a sweet kernel of wholesomeness at their core which, along with their humour, attracts strongly.
The story is my own personal interpretation based on research, information and experience. I have made, and rectified, so many errors that there must be many more undiscovered. So I hope readers will feel free to agree or otherwise, to add, delete, reinterpret and/or amend. If practicable the writer would be glad to hear of any such alterations plus the information upon which they are based i.e. oral tradition, certificates or other written material.
June Marie (Poppelwell-Barry) Foster
Jane Foster Nom de plume
MAINLINE: POPPELWELL White
Distaff Insets (4) (McLachlan, McCormick, Barry, Foster) Yellow
Sibling Insets (4) (William, John, & Ellinore P., and June (Barry) Blue
Outline Family Tree
WILLIAM POPLEWELL i m MARTHA ? Whitby, N. Yorkshire, UK
?/1720 ?/1732
issue: William Poppelwell ii & two daughters
WILLIAM POPLEWELL ii m ISABEL BROWN
1687/1737 1712 ?/?
issue: Brown Poppelwell & seven others
BROWN POPLEWELL m ?
1720/? ?
issue: William Poppelwell iii & one other
WILLIAM POPELWELL iii m ELIZABETH BELL North Shields, Northumberland, UK
1750/1798 1779 1760/1827
issue: George Bell Poppelwell & ten others
GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL m (1) ELIZABETH ENGLISH Whitsome/Hilton, then Sunwick near Hutton both in Berwickshire, Scotland
1788/1864 1812 1785/1833
issue: William Bell Poppelwell iv & four others
m (2) CATHERINE EWING
1787/1867
no issue.
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL iv m CATHERINE ROBERTSON McLACHLAN Wgton. then Otago both in NZ
1819/1883 1843 1825/1900
issue: John Poppelwell & ten others
JOHN POPPELWELL m MARGARET McCORMICK Otago, then Hawkes Bay, NZ
1852/1933 1879 1861/1933
issue: Ellinore Clare Poppelwell & ten others
ELLINORE CLARE POPPELWELL m EDWARD JAMES VINCENT BARRY Hawkes Bay, NZ
1887/1963 1918 1890/1969
issue: June Marie Barry & seven others
JUNE MARIE BARRY m RODNEY GODWIN FOSTER Northland, NZ
1922/ 1947 1923/
issue: Four : Anne Margaret Foster, Catherine Mary Foster
Ian Godwin Foster Douglas Hugh Foster
ANNE MARGARET FOSTER m DAVID LUCAS UK
1948/
issue: Jonathan David (1982) & Eleanor Sara (1986)
CATHERINE MARY FOSTER m (1) Gregory Cook: no issue: dissolved
1950/ (2) JOSEPH DIXON UK
issue: Daniel Joseph (1984) & William Luke) twins (1987)
Corrina Rachel)
IAN GODWIN FOSTER (unmarried 1990) Auck. NZ
1953/
DOUGLAS HUGH FOSTER m CAROLYN JEANNETTE SEWELL N.S.W. Aus.
1957/ 1958/
issue: Katie Elizabeth (1982), Amelia Clare (1985) & Joseph Henry (1988)
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL
1819-1883
His Life & Times,
Background & Descendants.
by Jane Foster
(copyright)
William Bell Poppelwell’s forbears have been traced in shadowy outline back to Whitby, Yorkshire, north east England in the second half of the 1600s during the sixty year period when Charles II, James II, William & Mary of Orange, Queen Anne, and George I successively ruled the United Kingdom. Prior to that there is a fruitful field awaiting further research.
At that time there lived at Whitby a WILLIAM POPLEWELL with his wife MARTHA (maiden name unknown) and their two daughters, Susannah and Martha and one son, another WILLIAM (ii). WILLIAM POPLEWELL I was buried at Whitby on 14 March 1720 and his wife MARTHA on the 26 January 1732.
Susannah their eldest child was baptised on 1 February 1682 and Martha the youngest on 18 November 1693. She eventually married a Mark Stonehouse.
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WILLIAM ii their middle child was baptised on 8 January 1687 and lived and died at Whitby. He was a sailmaker and married ISABEL BROWN of the same town on 6 July 1712. Of the eight children born to them between 1713 and 1730 three died young: there is no information other than baptism dates of two others, Isabel 15 August 1725 and William 12 November 1727. However, the other three survived and married. John the eldest baptised 10 May 1713 married Martha Porrit: Susannah the youngest baptised 15 March 1729 married Thomas Trotter in 1758 and BROWN POPLEWELL baptised on 5 March 1720 (and thus a contemporary of Captain James Cook) became a sailor or mariner. He married but his wife’s name and their marriage date is not known. They had two children: Isabel baptised 19 June 1748 and WILLIAM POPLEWELL iii baptised 27 January 1750 both at Whitby where the family still lived.
About this point people in the story begin to take on some shape and substance. Although nothing more is known of Isabel, her brother WILLIAM iii now a master mariner aged 29, on 14 November 1779 married by License ELIZABETH BELL aged 19 at Christ Church (built 1668), North Shields, Tynemouth. Both were described as “of this parish”. E.M. Potter was the officiating Vicar, and Wm Coates and Ann Bell the witnesses. In the Minister’s records the bridal couple were designated “Mr.” and “Mistress” a form of address not often appearing there. This and the License suggests status and prosperity. So does the fact that all parties were literate. The young couple signed their names in strong clear handwriting and WILLIAM’S surname was then, and always thereafter, spelt POPPELWELL. The bride was daughter of George Bell, like his new son-in-law, a master mariner (he died in May 1788), and Mary Crawford Bell of Tynemouth both of whom were literate as far back as their own marriage, also by License in the same church in 1758.
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After their marriage WILLIAM and ELIZABETH BELL POPPELWELL lived in Dockwray Square, North Shields, described as “a handsome Square built 1763”. The Tynemouth area was developing strongly during this period with North Shields expanding into a vigorous maritime centre. Well situated on a high bank above narrow winding River Tyne, which carried much seagoing shipping, it commanded a wide view all ways — of South Shields on the opposite bank, west towards Newcastle-on-Tyne and east to the North Sea. This outlook resulted in a (Harbour) Master’s House being sited on the river bank backed by Dockwray Square. This building, erected in 1808 and rebuilt in 1860, still stands there with a rail-protected viewing platform above the roofline. It is labelled simply “The Master’s House”: a “William Bell” is listed among others as a deputy officer. Many names familiar in the Poppelwell story first appear in North Shields: Bell Street in the oldest part of town, Thos. Bell, Bell & Matthew Poppelwell, Ship Owners, and Tyzack Dobinson & Co., Anchorsmiths and Chain Merchants, among them.
Here in Dockwray Square, North Shields, amid strong salt winds and the keening of gulls, with coal and its sea transport providing continued prosperity, WILLIAM and ELIZABETH BELL POPPELWELL reared their family. They had eleven, losing four as young children = William Brown, Mary, the first George Bell and Elizabeth Ann. There is no information other than baptism dates for two others = Isabella 1781 and Margaret Coates 1791. Of the remaining five William lived for twenty years before being drowned at Archangel, Robert Laing lived to 24 years, John Bell to 35 years. Matthew, baptised 8 March 1790, grew up to be a ship owner, business address 29 Dockwray Square. At different times he lived in Rosella Place and King Street, North Shields. He married Isabella Moore, five years his junior and most of their large family died young. One son lived to 30 years. Matthew Poppelwell was one of the first six
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aldermen of Tynemouth in 1849 and became Mayor in 1853, and his partner George Tyzack was an early alderman of North Shields. Matthew Poppelwell died aged 74 on 12 August 1864 two years before his wife.
Matthew’s brother GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL, the second of his parents’ sons to bear these names, was baptised on 8 October 1788. Like his brother Matthew he lived into his seventies. His grave-stone shows 73 but counting between his birth and death adds up to 75.
Matthew’s and GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL’S father WILLIAM iii died in 1798 aged 48 and was buried in the mining town of Chester-le-Street, County Durham. Their mother ELIZABETH BELL POPPELWELL survived him at least until 1827 when, aged 67, she lived at Rosella Place, North Shields.
Despite the high mortality in her immediate family it is unlikely she was lonely. Some of her children who died as young adults may have left issue. Also most of her life had been spent in the North Shields/Tynemouth area and, apart from friends, it contained many relatives, connections by marriage and those who became so = Poppelwells, Crawfords, Laings, Bells, Coates, Tyzacks. Lacking complete records it isn’t always possible to fit them neatly into a family tree but the constantly repeating and interlocking names prove relationship.
Her son GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL i became a master mariner in the family tradition but six months short of his 24th birthday he changed direction drastically. He became a gentleman farmer. On 22 April 1812 at Ancroft a few miles south east of Berwick-upon-Tweed, he married ELIZABETH ENGLISH aged 27 of Fishwick Mains, Berwickshire, a farming property. Marriage records describe GEORGE as a bachelor of Ancroft Parish. Family lore has it that they met when she travelled to and
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from school as a passenger on a vessel he captained, that ELIZABETH was an heiress and had been educated in France. She was Roman Catholic as was her husband and his family.
Although the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1829, until 1836 all marriages in England had by law to be performed by an Anglican Minister. After 1836 other ministers could perform marriages subject to provisions regarding registration etc. So the venue of marriages prior to 1836 is not a guide to religion. It seems likely that Catholicism may have come through GEORGE’S mother and maternal grandmother as their surnames appear in Northumberland’s Catholic Records whereas ‘Poppelwell’ does not. Surnames which appear in Northumberland Catholic Records and are or become connected with the Poppelwells are = Bell, Crawford, Coates, Tyzack, Byrne, Laing and ENGLISH. So, once, does Outhwaite, although a later link with a Poppelwell was by friendship, not blood or marriage.
There is no doubt that GEORGE BELL and ELIZABETH ENGLISH POPPELWELL were practising Catholics.
For at least the first ten years of their marriage they lived in the Whitsome/Hilton area near ELIZABETH’S previous home, Fishwick Mains. Four of their five children were born there as shown by old baptism from the Church of Our Lady and St. Cuthbert, Ravensdowne, Berwick-upon-Tweed. The four born at Hilton/Whitsome were:
Name Birth date Baptism date Priest Sponsers [Sponsors]
Mary Anne Poppelwell 28.11.1814 1.12.1814 Thomas Cock MA John & Anna Crawford.
George 20.8.1816 1.9.1816 Thomas Cock MA Robert & Isabella Davison
WILLIAM POPPELWELL iv 23.2.1819 4.3.1819 William Pepper OSB Robert & Mary Davison
David Poppelwell 14.12.1821 William Pepper OSB Robert & Mary Davison
After the family moved to Sunwick
Elizabeth Poppelwell 16.9.I824 4.11.1824 William Birdsall MA George Brown & Mary Bolton
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Elizabeth’s birth was also entered in the Church of Scotland Parochial Registers at Hutton two miles from Sunwick where, instead of the above sponsors, witnesses to baptism are given as John English (kin to Elizabeth English Poppelwell, the baby’s mother?) and John Melrose described later in her husband’s will as “my old servant”.
Situate about five miles from Hilton, Sunwick was approximately 670 acres of near flat land, most being high quality soil well suited to both stock and crops. Cattle, grain, root crops and small flocks of sheep have all been produced there over the years: corn and wheat were regular and profitable crops. Stock requires barn feeding for six or seven months of the year in the area.
The house was (and is) a substantial two storey brick structure with Georgian style windows and adjacent coach house (which in modern times has been incorporated into the house). The original house was five bricks thick in parts, unusual for the time and place. Surrounded by ample cobbled yards and huge solid outbuildings (including a stone roosting-house where a variety of birds were kept in suitably sized “pigeonholes”) between it and the access road, the house looks serenely out over the farm’s productive acres and scattered trees. In Poppelwell times eight cottages on the property housed between fifty and sixty people. Perhaps thirty of these were agricultural employees, most on an annual basis with a few key people such as John Melrose and his family being more permanent. Other casual workers, often from Ireland, were employed for harvesting and as required. There were four indoor domestics, two male and two female when the family was young but this too varied with demand. There was little labour saving machinery inside or out at the period.
COUNTY OF BERWICK
1. Greenlaw
2. Stitchell and Hume
3. Nenthorn
4. Merton
5. Earlston
6. Legerwood
7. Gordon
8. Westruther
9. Lauder
10. Channelkirk
11. Longformacus and Ellim
12. Cranshaws
13. Langton
14. Dunse
15. Bunkle and Preston
16. Abbey St. Bathans
17. Oldhamstocks
18. Cockburnspath
19 Coldingham
20. Houndwood
21. Eyemouth
22. Ayton
23. Mordington
24. Foulden
25. Chirnside
26. Edrom
27. Hutton
28. Whitsome and Hilton
29. Ladykirk
30. Swinton and Simprim
31. Fogo
32. Polwarth
33. Eccles
34. Coldstream
35. Liberties of Berwick on Tweed
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A contemporary (last century) verse on local properties throws an unexpected gleam of light onto Sunwick.
“Hutton for auld wives’ wine
Broadmeadows for swine
Paxton for drucham wives and salmon sae fine
Crossing for lint (linen) and wool
Spittal for kale
Sunwick for cakes and cheese and lasses for sale”* ie female labour surplus to the farm’s needs and thus available for hire elsewhere. Hiring Fairs were held yearly in March, this giving way to the modern system of advertising in the later 1800s.
GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL i has been variously described as Freeholder (1826 and 1832 Northumberland Poll Book), Farmer (1841, 1851 & 1861 Census and his Will). He was definitely a farmer and (Parochial Record Church of Scotland at Hutton) also a freeholder and may also have been a tenant. The apparent contradiction could be explained if at some point he altered the freehold of Sunwick to a Life Tenancy. This would perhaps free up capital to help establish his younger sons. His eldest son George Bell Poppelwell ii, who might reasonably have been expected to take over Sunwick, died in his mid-30s after his younger brothers were established elsewhere.
Whatever its tenure Sunwick was his and his family’s home for forty years. It was the venue of many of their births, deaths and marriages: there their bereaved were sheltered, the hungry fed and long-absent returning travellers welcomed.
The life of a prosperous gentleman farmer at the time was generally a pleasant one and it seems also to have been a happy place of warm extended family relationships and lively children set within the interest and activity of seasonal farming cycles.
A French influence added another flavour to their world, surely uncommon in that conservative Border country. ELIZABETH ENGLISH POPPELWELL is thought to have received some of her education in a French Convent. She and at least one of her children spoke the language. However, the Napoleonic Wars covered most of her
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schooldays. There was (and is) a long established and well known Boarding School for girls in York where students from prosperous families in Scotland and elsewhere, including the Americas, were educated. This Bar Convent established and run by an English Catholic order of nuns, is most likely where ELIZABETH ENGLISH (later) SPEEDWELL was educated followed perhaps by a “finishing” spell in France about 1802 when the Treaty or Armeins brought a ten month truce in the war and made such a visit feasible. ELIZABETH would have been seventeen at the time. Travelling by sea to and from the York Convent fits family tradition on how and where she met her future husband.
The nearest Catholic Church (called a chapel) to Sunwick was nine miles away in the historic walled town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Now known as the Church of Our Lady & St. Cuthbert, Ravensdowne, Berwick-upon-Tweed it was started in 1780, but because of most of the congregation’s poverty, was not finished until fifty years later. When first in use stone slabs were used for pews. In 1829/30 when Father William Birdsall MA (who baptised Elizabeth Poppelwell) was Parish Priest, a substantial gift of money from GEORGE BELL and ELIZABETH ENGLISH POPPELWELL enabled the church to be completed. “They paid off the Parish debt,” is how a later Parish Priest explained it. At about the same time an annual Mass-in-Perpetuity for “Poppelwells throughout the world” was arranged and it is still faithfully celebrated (1990). This is where the family at Sunwick worshipped whenever weather and other conditions allowed. Two of their children George Bell Poppelwell and Elizabeth “of the Wooler Congregation” are recorded as having been confirmed there on 25 June 1837 by the Rt. Reverend John Briggs DD, MA of the Northern District.
Berwick-upon-Tweed, although very different now, had a turbulent mediaeval history when it changed hands so often that official documents and Acts of Parliament up to 1885 cited the realm as
Hutton Church (Free Church of Scotland: non-Catholic) where William Poppelwell’s parents are buried, two miles from Sunwick.
The Tweed and Brunswick from north.
Church of Our Lady & St. Cuthbert Berwick-upon-Tweed: entrance to its yard left of street dark arch with notice above: presbytery same side next door towards foreground.
Text of above Certificate: Wellington Port Nicholson New Zealand That WILLIAM POPPELWELL formerly of Berwick on Tweed Mariner and now of Wellington and CATHERINE ROBERTSON McLACHLAN daughter of Dugald McLachlan formerly of Kilmylie Lochaber have been duly proclaimed and no objection made is certified by
Robert Strang Registrar
of the Scotch Church N.Z.
The above parties married by me this seventh day of March One thousand eight hundred and forty three
JOHN MACFARLANE First Minister of the Scotch Church N.Z.
Above is thought to have come from early records of Scotch Church, Wgton.
– early 1840s.
Fairburn’s Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain & Ireland
“POPPELWELL, a lion rampant ppr. <Non nobis nascimur/ We were not born for Ourselves Alone.”
Jane Foster of NZ pays respect at the graveside of Forbears G. B. & E Poppelwell in the Hutton Church of Scotland graveyard near Sunwick.
Coat of Arms, Mullins of Dublin. Arms; Gyronny of 8 vert & or. On each a trefoil slipper & counter charged. Crest: a demi lion rampant ppr. Motto: Non Nobis Nascimur – “we are not born for Ourselves”.
0003230
NEW ZEALAND
CERTIFIED COPY OF ENTRY OF MARRIAGE
in the Registrar-General’s Office
Number
When married 7 MARCH 1843
where married WELLINGTON
Name and surname
Bridegroom WILLIAM POPPELWELL Bride CATHERINE ROBERTSON MCLACHLAN
Age – –
Profession or occupation MARINER –
Conjugal status (bachelor, spinster, widower, widow, or divorced) – –
Birthplace – –
Usual residence (in full) – –
Certified to be a true copy of the above particulars included in a marriage entry in the records of the Registrar-General’s Office.
Given under the seal of the Registrar-General at Lower Hutt. This 13 day of JUNE 1979
The fee for this certificate is $4
CAUTION – Any person who (1) falsifies any of the particulars on this certificate, or (2) uses if as true, knowing it to be false, is liable to prosecution under the Crimes Act 1961.
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“…England Scotland Ireland and Wales and our town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.” Its much contested castle has gone but massive walls still enclose the town, though the populace sprawls beyond and across the strongly tidal river. The Tweed, now sailed more by swans than shipping, is spanned by three busy bridges = the 17th century James 1/V1 structure with fifteen arches which is somehow symbolic, a Victorian Railway Bridge built in 1845 and officially opened by the Queen herself in 1847, and a 1920s road bridge.
For the writer, a visitor from 12,000 miles away, the little town was a brisk salty backwater of steep winding streets (a few still cobbled), a broad old market place and seagulls. Massive stone work, silver blue sea and pewter grey river lay bathed in pale cool sunlight spiced by a sharp breeze. Though I had never seen even a picture of it before, it seemed familiar, friendly but also enigmatic. Other visiting kin report ice floating in the river and bitterly piercing wind but I could not feel a stranger there.
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL iv, his parents’ second son and third child was intended for the Church. To further this aim he attended St. Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, Durham from 9 February 1830 to 11 May 1835. His mother died on 9 August of that year and was buried in the Mutton Church of Scotland graveyard. The Church’s Mort Cloth, a coffin covering, was hired for 1/- (as was customary) for the funeral.
The family ELIZABETH left comprised:
Mary Anne Poppelwell aged 18 years 10 months
George Bell Poppelwell ii aged not quite 17 years
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL iv aged 14 years 5 months
David Bell Poppelwell aged 11 years 8 month
Elizabeth Poppelwell aged 8 years 11 months
By the 1841 Census eight years afterwards their father had remarried, his second wife being Catherine Ewing who was born in Ellingham,
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Northumberland, England about the same time her husband was born at Tynemouth. She may have been a widow with the birth name of Reavely. There was no issue of this marriage. Family tradition and her Will of several decades later reveal the good relations which existed between her and her husband’s children.
George ii and David became farmers and no doubt learned farm management on the job at Sunwick. WILLIAM iv in his mid-teens changed career plans and trained as a mercantile marine officer, according to family tradition with the East India Company, as renowned for the high quality of its ships, personnel, discipline and efficiency, as for its profits. From the scanty records available it seems WILLIAM made several trips to eastern ports and contracted yellow fever during his service with the company = six years or so from about 1834 to 1840.
However there is an intriguing family story (for which neither proof nor disproof has yet been found). If true, it can only have occurred during this period.
It goes like this: WILLIAM was a junior officer on a ship taking convicts to Botany Bay Australia. The captain was a humane man and no doubt conscious of the trivial nature of the offences for which many of his charges were being transported. Once well out to sea he informed them that, subject to their good behaviour, they would be treated well and allowed as much freedom as was practicable during the voyage. On arrival at New South Wales four months later the convicts were handed over to authority there and the crew set about the lengthy business of revictualling. The seamen enjoyed to the full the feel of firm earth beneath their feet, new faces and fresh food after their long confinement at sea. However, they were shocked and infuriated when a party of them witnessed a brutal public flogging of some convicts (not those they had brought) in the
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town. They could do nothing to help these unfortunate men but they relieved their own anger by coming ashore at night and cutting down the flagpole erected on a high point near the military barracks. It was re-erected and a guard set but the sailors were young and dare-devil with righteousness to sharpen their wits. The flagpole toppled a second time and Authority was seriously displeased.
It was suspected who was responsible but lacking proof Authority contented itself with giving the ship’s master 24 hours to leave port. Though only partly provisioned, he made haste to obey, Authority having plenty of weight in those days. Faced with the need for more supplies he crossed the Tasman to New Zealand no doubt scolding hotheads all the while.
If the story is true, this may have been WILLIAM’S first sight of the green temperate land which eventually became his home.
In early 1841 he was back at Tynemouth, First Mate on the barque “Tyne” 427 tons, Captain Charles Robertson, home port Newcastle. She was a new vessel with the heavy hull, square stern and flat bottom usual to transports at the time. She does not seem to have been an East Indiaman. She was chartered by the New Zealand Company and carried eighty-six emigrants and cargo to Wellington and Auckland. She also carried as cabin passengers Government Officers including William Martin, Zealand’s first Chief Justice, William Swainson, Attorney General and Thomas Outhwaite, Court Registrar, the latter accompanied by his French wife Marie Henriette Louisa nee Roget. The Surgeon was James Innes and that important man, the cook, a Mr. J. Hart.
The voyage from Gravesend to Port Nicholson as Wellington Harbour was then called, lasted over four months. The Tyne’s blunt bow ploughed its way through the 12,000 miles of sea
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between, not fast but safely. Her 22 – year – old First Officer, who spoke French became friendly with the Outhwaites probably because of the language link.
Marie Henrietta Outhwaite had been a maid-of-honour at the Court of French King Louis Philippe when she met her English lawyer husband in Paris. Louis Philippe was cousin to Louis XVI who with his Queen Marie Antoinette was guillotined during the French Revolution. The dead king’s two younger brothers were successively Kings of France as Louis XVIII and Charles X during the post-Napoleon period, and Louis Philippe followed. Madame Outhwaite, who was 29,with her 36-year-old husband were bound for raw young Auckland and their friendship with the young mariner lasted into the next generation.
On the 9 August the “Tyne” came into Lambton Harbour, Port Nicholson, somewhat different from today’s Wellington even in its natural features. The harbour sheltered like a blue green jewel within “steep thickly wooded heights rising abruptly” an early arrival wrote. “More boistrous than agreeable”, “more picturesque than convenient” and “mountaineous ampitheatre that encloses Wellington” came from other pens. The settlement, not yet a year old, was approximately four miles by two in area, curved round a foreshore lined with wooden buildings. Cottages dotted the hills behind. The only flat land was swampy Te Aro at one end and Thorndon Flat at the other. (Earthquakes and reclamations eased this deficiency later). The invigorating climate was matched by its citizens urgent efforts building shelter from wind and rain. The population was already between 1500 and 2000 and was being augmented by new arrivals. Homes, hotels, emigrant barracks where newcomers could stay for three weeks, some official premises and much else had already been erected.
Since April 1840 a newspaper had been published regularly. The “Shipping Intelligence” section in each issue, although not always
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complete provided a wealth of information, valuable then as now. It recorded arrivals and departures of shipping, coastal and overseas, type of vessel, tonnage, Captain, and often also cargo, where she came from, destination and sometimes passengers’ names. These details add up to “footprints” of many connected with sea and shipping.
The “Tyne” landed 68 settlers at Wellington where she remained for just under a month. On 6 September 1841 she sailed for Auckland where, after discharging the balance of her cargo and passengers, she remained at anchor till 4 December 1841.
Auckland then had some similarity to Wellington: it was about a year old and wooden buildings cluttered the shoreline of beautiful Waitemata Harbour and nestled into rising land beyond. But unlike its southern counterpart the little settlement’s harbour was huge and wide tracts of flat or gently contoured land stretched spaciously around it. Conspicuous volcanic cones added dramatic detail to the scrub-and-bracken-clothed landscape.
There was much for WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL and his shipmates to enjoy in off duty time = fishing, exploring this strange warm fertile wilderness, getting to know the Maori, assessing their sea skills and picking up their language, helping the Outhwaites settle into their home below Government House and conveniently close to Thomas Outhwaites office and the Courthouse. A few years later (1843/4?) the Outhwaites established a roomy colonial residence in Carlton Gore Road and created two acres of exotic garden around it. The site is now Outhwaite Park opposite the Domain‘s main gate.
During the “Tyne’s” three months in Auckland she repeatedly advertised to carry freight and passengers “for the Bay of Islands and Sydney” but apparently without sufficient success for a direct trip. There is no evidence that the vessel visited the Bay of Islands, then jittery following the murder of Mrs. Robertson, a European widow and
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her household there by a Maori named Maketu (later tried and executed for the crime).
It is not unlikely however that Captain Robertson sent his First Mate north via a coastal trader to investigate cargo opportunities. A next generation report states that WILLIAM visited the Bay of Islands and Hokianga, voyages not shown in Shipping Intelligence columns of contemporary newspapers. Such visits could have happened during his first year in the Colony before he left the “Tyne”, as suggested above, or after he left the “Tyne” but prior to his name appearing as Captain of any local trader. He may prudently have sailed in a subordinate role to familiarize himself with the coasts. (See References later to “Kate” schooner p.21.). Alternatively if the convicts story is true, he may have seen Hokianga and the Bay of Islands would then be the most likely provisioning ports.
The “Tyne” was back in Wellington by 9 1841 and, two months afterwards on 12 February 1842 with a cargo of 72 tuns of whale oil, 50 pigs, 50 bushels maize and 2 tons potatoes, she sailed for England via Sydney.
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL was not aboard. Some time during the six months it was in New Zealand WILLIAM decided to stay and obtained his release from Captain Robertson, who carried back an explanatory letter to the young mariner’s father. WILLIAM had fallen in love with the challenging young Colony so different from his birthplace across the world ………… and with a Highland Scottish girl called CATHERINE!
This friendship was crucial in WILLIAM’S decision to remain in New Zealand.
15.
CATHERINE ROBERTSON McLACHLAN arrived in Wellington on 27 December 1840 on the “Blenheim” 375 tons Captain John Grey, which brought 200 immigrants mostly Scottish Highlanders from the Fort William, Inverness area. Included among them was CATHERINE, her three younger brothers Alexander, , Hugh and Duncan, her father and stepmother Dugald and Jane McLachlan, and her baby half-sister Isabella born on the 4-month voyage.
Records also show an older brother Cameron McLachlan born at Fasfern, Loch Eil in 1817 and thus eight years CATHERINE’S senior, who went to sea and later lived in Australia. They were Catholic.
CATHERINE was less than five feet tall with dark blue eyes, cloudy black hair, a brunette complexion and bright pink cheeks when young. She was vivacious and spirited and all through her long life she and fun tended to go together. Unlike many to her co-passengers she English in addition to her native Gaelic. Described as a sempstress, she was 15 years old on arrival having been born on arrival having been born on 16 November 1825 and baptised on 5 December following. Her father was then described as a weaver of Correbeg and her deceased mother was Ann Abercrombie Cleghorn McLachlan.
The “Blenheim” passengers were landed at Kaiwarra [Kaiwharawhara] possibly because of a suspected infection aboard. While vigorously washing clothes soon after disembarking CATHERINE pulled from a stream in spate small boy who was in danger of drowning. He grew up to become Archbishop Redwood, N.Z.’s first home-reared Catholic Archbishop.
Exactly where and when CATHERINE and WILLIAM met isn’t known except that it was in Wellington probably before the “Tyne” went to Auckland. A possibility is at a Gaelic service held
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occasionally for the Highlanders by the resident Free Church of Scotland minister, Rev. John Macfarlane. This service was in addition to the two regular services he held each Sunday for his own congregation.
They were married on 7 March 1843, thirteen months after the “Tyne” left the country and five months before her return on her second voyage. WILLIAM was 24, a slight cheerful young man with a fresh fair hair and hazel eyes of an unusual yellow-green. This eye colour re-appears regularly among his descendants as does his bride’s deep distinctive speaking voice also. She was 17 years and 3 months old.
A curious sense of humour which also appears regularly but not frequently among their descendants may originate from one of them or a combination of both. Delicious, whimsical, acute, enduring, it is entirely without malice or unkindness and is perhaps the most versatile and precious of their many endowments. It fits billowing sails, virgin soil and computer technology equally well.
The ceremony probably took place in the Courthouse, Lambton Quay: Rev. John Macfarlane officiated. There was then no Free Scotch Church in Wellington. The first one, situated in Lambton Quay near the Courthouse, was opened by the same minister ten months later. A bank now stands on the site but a plaque commemorates the original purpose.
For some time after Wellington’s establishment, no Catholic priest lived there, Catholics being served by very occasional visits from French Marist missionaries. Father Forest and two colleagues visited for five days in April 1842 and later the same year Father Borjon and Brother Deodate, en route from Auckland for this purpose on the “Eleanor” were, with all others aboard, lost at sea when she foundered. These
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two ill fated clerics had had all their money stolen on the first leg of their journey from Maketu, to Auckland where the loss was discovered. “A Catholic Frenchwoman married to a Protestant” (Madame Outhwaite?) loaned them some funds which, after all, did not bring them to Wellington. There were some hundreds of Catholics in Wellington in 1843 and already land had been secured for a Church, Presbytery, School and Cemetery and a sum collected towards eventual building. Father J.J.P. O’Reilly arrived unexpectedly by the “Thomas Sparkes” on 31 January 1843 and became the first resident Catholic priest, remaining there except for one trip aboard and pastoral visitations, until he died aged 80, forty-three years later. His parish originally included all the South Island as well. He was an Irish Capuchin 37 years old, a cultured man educated in France and spoke several European languages.
His arrival was five weeks before WILLIAM and CATHERINE’S wedding most of which time was at sea. He probably knew of the priest’s advent but presumably felt that the arrangements already made with Rev. John Macfarlane should go ahead. They were definitely married by him. WILLIAM’S father, whom was loved and respected, sent congratulations as follows: “if the bed you have made for yourself is such as I (George Bell Poppelwell) would wish, it will be a bed of roses.” His irreverent son was amused, but also touched by this romanticism and eighteen later (1861) he used the same thought when wishing CATHERINE’S brother Alexander happiness in his marriage.
Following their marriage the young Poppelwells lived in Wellington for a further two years eight months = it is thought in Pipitea Street, Thorndon Flat. CATHERINE’S family was not far away from Kaiwarra Road, also called Thorndon Quay.
It was a richly eventful if not always comfortable time for the two
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young people against a background of stirring events in the new Colony. There was massacre, martial drilling, shipwrecks, racial confrontation and co-operation. Also birth and business, fear, fire and good friends, love and laughter and joyously expanding personal development.
They made an attractive couple, he genial, gentlemanly and innately she buoyant, energetic and practical. Both were openhanded and had a lively sense of the ridiculous. They thrived in the stimulating atmosphere of arduous effort and painful pioneer compromise as a vigorous outpost of Empire emerged in in blowy cantankerous Port Nicholson.
Wellington was bitterly out-spokenly anti-Auckland, the capital at the time. The Wairau Massacre in the Nelson hinterland across the Cook Strait occurred on 17 June 1843, three months after WILLIAM and CATHERINE’S marriage: the Colony was between Governors, Hobson having died suddenly in office the previous September. His successor Captain Robert Fitzroy RN, who later earned Wellington’s enmity by finding the Europeans at fault over Wairau, did not arrive until December 1843: the Colonial Secretary Willoughby Shortland acted in the interim. Twenty-two Europeans lost their lives at Wairau in a land related dispute mainly through their own foolhardiness. Powerful warlike Te Rauparaha of Kapiti (also Mana Island and Otaki) and his kinsman Te Rangihaeata (whose wife died from a random musket shot at Wairau) were involved and rumours of further slaughter flew thick and furious about the small exposed settlements of Nelson and Wellington. Militia training and defensive works were organized, a redoubt being sited at Thorndon near the young Poppelwells’ home and overlooking wooden piers where WILLIAM’S cargoes were transhipped.
When home WILLIAM tutored his CATHERINE further in literacy and associated skills. (The family story that she was illiterate is unlikely to be true, as there was basic primary schooling in the area where she
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grew up and her father and uncles, and her brothers not much younger, were literate. She and they also spoke English as well as Gaelic. WILLIAM caught occasional glimpses of his friend Outhwaite and “Tyne” crewmates found much in common with Father O’Reilly on the few occasions they had time together. Away from home, trading about the coast, he learned Maori, survived shipwreck (once at least, possibly twice) and experienced a tense encounter with Te Rauparaha.
CATHERINE bore their first child, named George (iii) on 28 March 1844. The little family gained their living from WILLIAM’S employment as Master by owners of trading vessels. He sailed the then chartless and often stormy coasts from Poverty Bay in the north to Otaku (Otago) in the south. Otaki, Wanganui, Kapiti, Cloudy Bay, Golden Bay, Nelson and Akaroa were among his ports of call. Outward cargoes included sugar, tea and manufactured goods like tools, nails, window-glass and household articles of china and metal. He brought back barrels of whale oil, live pigs, salt pork, butter, cheese, potatoes, grain, wooden roofing shingles etc. all in strong demand in expanding Wellington. Passengers (sometimes called super-cargo) were carried but freight made up the bulk of the cargoes.
Successively he commanded three trading vessels: “Gannet”, “Nelson Packet” and “Levein” (also spelt Levin and Leven).
1. The schooner “Gannet” AG 40 tons built at Otaki by William Anderson and George Scott and owned by Wellington Merchant Alfred Hornabrook, he captained from 23 November 1842 to 12 July 1843 after which he was ashore for ten months. The “Gannet” was taken was taken over by a Captain Read and soon was totally wrecked but without loss of life. During this period ashore WILLIAM’S name appeared on the Jury List, and his son George (iii) was born.
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2. The schooner “Nelson Packet” 14/20 tons owned by James Jackson (McKay) ex-whaler of Te Awaiti, Queen Charlotte Sound, and then by and then by George Dagwell, a carpenter of the same place. Both had a hand in her building there in 1842 and they may have been co-owners.
Jackson, after whom Jackson’s Bay, Queen Charlotte Sound is named and who rarely used his McKay surname, captained her prior to WILLIAM POPPELWELL doing so. WILLIAM’S tenure was from 2 May 1844 to shortly after 5 July 1844 when he left Wellington ‘for the coast’ and was forced by bad weather to beach her. Date and location is not known but it was remote and in the Cook Strait region. Although family tradition mentions Golden Bay, it is unlikely because in 1844 this area was much plied by small vessels to and from Nelson.
This is when, a year after the Wairau Massacre, he had his meeting with Te Rauparaha which resulted in the Nelson Packet’s complement (between two and four) becoming overdue that concern for them first grew into acute anxiety. It seems the old chief made a request of the sea captain which he felt obliged to refuse. Its nature hasn’t survived but because of this no help was forthcoming to refloat the schooner (if that was possible) or to get the seamen back to a European settlement. Eventually in exchange for a pocket mirror which WILLIAM offered her, a Maori woman assisted them to obtain a canoe.
One cool evening towards the end of 1844 CATHERINE was outside their home in Pipitea Street, telling her she MUST begin to accept that WILLIAM had drowned like so many other colonial seafarers.
As she looked into the comfortless grey dusk she saw him walking towards her out of the gathering darkness. Incredulously she watched come closer and closer unable to believe her eyes until she felt his arms, warm and strong and ALIVE, around her. This deeply emotional event has been passed through four generations of their family.
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NOTE: It seems appropriate to interpolate here the following extract from “N.Z. Shipwrecks” / CWN Ingram p. 23
“ “KATE” schooner: When on a voyage from Wellington to Nelson the schooner was wrecked near Cape Terawiti [Terawhiti] on Sunday July 10 1842. On leaving Wellington the master steered a course through Chaffers Passage, and in negotiating this channel the vessel struck heavily on a rock, causing her to leak to such an extent that the pumps had to be kept going continually. Expecting that the wind would blow from the east and enable him to reach Nelson in a few hours, the master continued his passage instead of returning to Wellington. Later an attempt to enter the sounds failed owing to the tide setting out as did another to enter Cloudy Bay, the entrance to which would not be discerned. It was then decided to run the “KATE” under Cape Terawiti and keep her their until the wind became fair for running through the Strait. The master then went below for breakfast, leaving instructions not to go too near land, the schooner then being about three miles off shore. Shortly after the “KATE” struck on a sunken rock, which increased the leak so much that it was deemed necessary, for the safety of those on board, to run her on the reef. The schooner was bilged and became a total wreck, but a large part of her cargo was landed on the beach and later shipped back to Wellington.
The above extract and its date (which is when WILLIAM might have been at sea in a subordinate capacity learning local coasts and conditions prior to obtaining command of the “Gannet”) has several elements which fit family tradition of his absence and feared death. Therefore it seems proper to present the “KATE” as a possible alternative to the “Nelson Packet” in this role: this would time the incident during the couple’s courtship period. Both vessels were lost in Te Rauparaha country. The “KATE” is linked to WILLIAM POPPELWELL in his son Dougald [Dugald] Louis Poppelwell’s another son Sebastian George Alexander Poppelwell’s letters Memoirs / and in a letter by a Henderson grandson, but not otherwise.
END OF NOTE
3. The cutter “Leven” 24 tons, was POPPELWELL’S third N.Z. charge. Built at Thames by her first owner, William Henry Sampson of that place, she was later jointly owned by Israel Joseph of Wellington and David Nathan of Auckland, both Merchants, and finally by the prominent Otago chief Tuhawaiki also known as
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“Bloody Jack”. The transfer to Tuhawaiki is not registered in the European way, nor art the vessels he owned. WILLIAM was master of the “Leven” from late November 1844 until the end of August 1845 when he handed her over to a Maori skipper Te Ou Topi, kinsman and possibly co-owner with Tuhawaiki of the cutter. The latter chief was drowned off Timaru in the spring of 1844. POPPELWELL was probably employed by Robert Strang, Official Administrator of Intestate Estates at Wellington, who handled the dead chief’s estate. Tuhawaiki had received a substantial cash payment for land shortly before his death.
Whereas the “Gannet” had traded north to Poverty Bay, the “Leven” went south to Otaku. WILLIAM POPPELWELL is reputed to have been the first mariner to sail or navigate a vessel up Otago Harbour to the place that became Dunedin. Warping sea craft wanting to go there between the shoals was usual at the time. Both the “Gannet” (which is certainly incorrect) and a 27-ton schooner “Governor Hobson” have been mentioned in this connection but it seems likely it was the “Leven”.
En route to Otaku WILLIAM often called at the French settlement of Akaroa, Banks Peninsula. Here he and an unknown Frenchwoman once had communication difficulties, so the Englishman tried his rather rusty French. The settler’s delight resulted in a voluble flood of speech too fast for the mariner to follow. They kept trying and it wasn‘t until they were shaking hands on a completed deal that they both realized they had unconsciously dropped into Maori. They laughed aloud and congratulated each anew.
Midway through WILLIAM’S “Leven” period, in March 1845, war broke out between Maori and Europeans in the Bay of Islands in the far north of the country. It was the first significant collision between the two races.
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Shipping Intelligence reports were patchier during WILLIAM’S “Leven” command than previously and some contemporary newspapers of the period haven’t survived. His marine ‘footprints’ are correspondingly less complete. For instance his whereabouts on 4 July 1845 are uncertain. On that date the “Tyne”, returning to New Zealand on her third voyage, was wrecked off Sinclair Head near Wellington Harbour entrance in a severe gale. No lives were lost although there were some narrow escapes. A Mr. Selby was her only passenger. WILLIAM was most likely in Wellington (he and the “Leven” were there on 12 July) in which case he would be a member of the citizens’ group which went to help as soon as news of the disaster arrived. Three companies of militia and a party of the 96th Regiment followed. The barque, still under Captain Robertson, carried £6000 in gold coin, all of which was eventually recovered together with much sea-damaged merchandize and 13 out of 14 of mail.
If WILLIAM was at sea at the time, the “Tyne” wrecked on the Rimaripa [Rima Ripa] Rocks must have been a shocking sight when he passed it on his return to port.
He carved a crucifix from wood salvaged from the ship’s hull as a gift for the Outhwaites. Making keepsakes from wreck timbers, particularly when there was a personal link, was not uncommon at the time.
WILLIAM’S last trip on the “Leven” was intended to deliver the schooner to a Otaku chief (Topi?) but when bad weather caused delay, the chief impatiently came north on another vessel. Tiroa and most likely Topi also, kinsmen, co-chiefs and erstwhile comrades-in-arms of Tuhawaiki, arrived at Wellington on 12 August 1845 on the “Perseverance”, one of the late chief’s other vessels. WILLIAM finding the chief who was to take delivery of the cutter absent, lay off Pelichet Bay, Otago Harbour for some weeks and then returned
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to Wellington.
He resigned his “Leven” appointment in late August 1845 thus ending his professional sailing in N.Z. waters. Te Ou Topi left Wellington in the “Leven” for Otaku on 1 November 1845. He became paramount Southland chief as Tuhawaiki had been when the letter’s two sons were drowned in 1854, and nine years afterwards married the widow of Tuhawaiki’s elder son, Kehu.
In Wellington WILLIAM and CATHERINE set about winding up their affairs. They were heading for Scotland. A remittance in gold sovereigns from WILLIAM’S father yielded them £1.5.0. for each (a quarter more than face value) because of a general currency shortage. Wellington hadn’t had a vessel from Britain for over four months and the “Tyne’s” coinage was eagerly awaited. GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL’S (i) package for his son was almost certainly entrusted to Captain Robertson so perhaps the carved crucifix was a thanksgiving too.
There may have been a few debts to settle. Family tradition includes a business venture, but confirmation and details of when and what have proved elusive. A bakery which was burnt out with only a blanket saved is mentioned. WILLIAM’S partner scrupulously divided the blanket and solemnly handed one half to him with the words “Your share Pop.” The names “Richardson” and “Pharazen” emerge as a possible partner but even the chatty press of the day is unhelpful. There was a destructive fire at Lambton Quay on 9 November 1842 fourteen days before WILLIAM took over the schooner “Gannet” as Captain.
The young Poppelwells and their son travelled to the old world on the “David Malcolm” 600 tons, Captain Cabel “…. an AI barque 12-years-old, made of teak with splendid accommodation and a high poop.” She arrived at Port Nicholson via Sydney on 15 November 1845 and left for Auckland on 13 January 1846 with more than 20 adult and 7 child passengers, plus a cargo of whale oil, whale-bone and wool, produce of the southern region. She arrived at Auckland on 29 of the same month.
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During the “David Malcolm’s” two weeks in the northern port she took aboard as passengers to England Captain Fitzroy RN, retiring Governor of the Colony (replaced by Army Captain George Grey the previous November) and his household. This comprised Mrs. Fitzroy and their three children, her father General O’Brien, W.J.W. Hamilton, the ex-Governor’s Private Secretary, and domestic helpers.
Meanwhile the Poppelwells visited the Outhwaites, bestowed the crucifix, displayed small George and admired Isa (Louisa) 3½ and Charles Outhwaite 18 months. They saw the sights of Auckland, already growing into a garden town, its Government House, St. Paul’s Church, substantial Army Barracks, attractive one-storey wooden homes, and roomy commercial and official buildings. Port facilities were poorer than at Wellington but a naval flotilla on view made up for this. It was reprovisioning after having taken part in the Northern Maori War brought to a successful conclusion at Ruapekapeka Pa, Bay of Islands, just 18 days before the “David Malcolm”, and the Poppelwells, reached Auckland.
The frigates HMS Castor and Calliope, the Government brig Victoria, a transport barque Slains Castle and other naval and merchantile [mercantile] shipping made an impressive sight riding on Waitemata’s sparkling summer waters, but Her Majesty’s paddle steamer “Driver” 1058 tons, Commander Courtenay Hayes, just arrived from Singapore, stole the show. The brig-rigged “Driver” the first steam vessel to visit the Colony, was the only ship on the New Zealand coast independent of wind and tide, even though her boilers were inclined to be troublesome at inconvenient times. Mariner WILLIAM found her of particular interest.
On 3 February while the Poppelwells were still at Auckland the flotilla, full of soldiers and provisioned for three months, sailed for Wellington to quell imminent disturbances there. After
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the Poppelwells’ departure overseas hostilities broke out in the Hutt area in early March but neither Wellington nor Auckland became battlegrounds, although other places were not so fortunate.
The “David Malcolm” sailed on the 12 February 1846 for England via Cape Horn. The young Poppelwells were leaving behind a period of concentrated experience which thereafter greatly influenced their lives.
CATHERINE with her baby had lived under martial law amid war rumours, with her husband absent and had become a competent pioneer homemaker with all that/entailed. WILLIAM’S four and a half years in the country had brought him a wide general knowledge of it. He knew its coastal areas well and the principal European and many Maori settlements from trading there. He spoke Maori adequately and knew directly or indirectly many Maori leaders notably Tuhawaiki and Te Rauparaha, inveterate foes before British rule. His friend Outhwaite soon after taking office had had to arrange the trial of mass murderer Maketu, when that young man’s father turned him over to the new justice system and afterwards the execution.
Aboard ship they couldn’t avoid observing the recalled Governor Robert Fitzroy who pleased neither the Government he served nor those he governed. It is pleasant to find that the Auckland newspaper “New Zealander” reporting his departure, had the grace to print “… Although the term of his government in NZ has been brief, difficult and disastrous, yet in all the amenities of private life, Captain Fitzroy was truly the English gentleman.”
The voyage was hard and five months long resulting in shortages of fresh food and fuel. The “David Malcolm” was unable to round the Horn because of constant storms and weather severe even for this region notorious for its hostility to shipping. During abortive
27.
attempts to do so the services of all those aboard with sea experience were utilized including WILLIAM POPPELWELL and ex-Governor Robert Fitzroy RN. Once William on lookout for the frequent frighteningly beautiful icebergs, forgot at a critical moment that he wasn’t in command and gave a direct order to the steersman ….. a sea solecism, but excusable under the circumstances.
Finally it was decided to go through Magellan Straits because Fitzroy knew those waters well. He had been an officer on the naval ship “Beagle” which surveyed the Straits in the 1830s and was one of the few men on earth who could confidently bring the barque through the rough torturous waterway.
It must be realized that these were Pax Britannica times when, in addition to its primary duties, the British Navy kept peace on the seas “for all ships passing on their lawful occasions” and a basketful of other useful services to the world at large. Among these was charting the seven seas, such charts being made readily available at reasonable cost to anyone wanting to buy. So accurate were Royal Navy surveyors that seamen of many nations learned to swear by “faith in God and an Admiralty Chart”. Fitzroy learned the lay of Magellan land and sea during such a survey.
He brought the “David Malcolm” and all aboard her to a sheltered anchorage within the Straits despite continued appalling weather conditions. Initially anchors dragged but then held securely. WILLIAM watched it all with the critical eye of an experienced seaman, sharpened by his family responsibilities and told his CATHERINE “He’s a better navigator than governor.” It was an understatement. Fitzroy was a superb navigator.
The barque lay to for many days while the storm blew itself out. Everyone was glad of a respite especially CATHERINE queazy with her second pregnancy. She and WILLIAM were in a group which went
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ashore for a change. Fitzroy, who wished to inspect old survey pegs, led it. Practical CATHERINE on her own initiative took the means of making hot coffee which warmed and heartened the whole party when unruly seas delayed its return to the ship.
When the “David Malcolm” weighed anchor to leave, one of her anchors was found to be entangled with another, which had been lying on the seabed, lost by some previous ship. Both were hauled up for further use.
The barque arrived at Gravesend England on 14 July 1846 and soon afterwards Sunwick was welcoming home the travellers. Elizabeth Anne was born there on Christmas Day 1846, the only one of WILLIAM and CATHERINE’S twelve children born outside New Zealand. She was baptised on 7 January 1847 with WILLIAM’S two brothers George ii and David as sponsors.
By this time WILLIAM’S elder sister and brother Mary Anne and George were both married, the former in 1841 to George Tyzack of North Shields and the latter in 1844 to Jessie Carol, of Arbraoth, Ross-shire.
When WILLIAM and CATHERINE first returned they had open minds about where they would make their permanent home but in the event they decided to emigrate. They remained in Scotland for just under one year ten months. Tradition tells that WILLIAM became entitled to a share in a family inheritance. This could have derived from his mother: her youngest child, WILLIAM’S sister Elizabeth, came of age on 16 September 1845, (a usual milestone for a family trust to mature) or perhaps it was about this time that Sunwick freehold was converted, (page 7). The financial facts available could support either of these theories.
WILLIAM set about the serious business of learning farming. Life at Sunwick was the placid comfortable existence of conventional well to do prople [people] and in time the young couple found its limitations and restraints irksome after the freedom of the colonies, particularly CATHERINE whose
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livliness [liveliness] somewhat shocked her husband’s staid stepmother. There is an odd family story about her spending a period at a Convent to further her education. If true the Bar Convent at York attended by WILLIAM’S mother is the most likely place and deportment the most likely subject studied in an effort to persuade an independent Highland lass from a simpler background to conform to what may have seemed to her unimportant rules of behaviour.
However something much more basic underlay their decision to emigrate. These were the Hungry Forties, the time of the dreadful potato famine in Ireland. Male seasonal workers came every year to the Border Region including Sunwick from across the Irish Sea as casual harvesters but 1846 was the second consecutive year of the Irish famine and a stream of hungry people, often families, walked the roads seeking food and work. WILLIAM’S father GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL i, a kindly and humane man, did what he could to alleviate some of the misery. Big boilers of food were cooked every day at Sunwick for all comers. But such terible [terrible] poverty was more than WILLIAM and CATHERINE could endure.
On 17 March 1848 WILLIAM wrote to the Otago Association at Edinburgh, which had organized a new settlement called Dunedin at Otago, New Zealand, sponsored by the Scottish Free Church. WILLIAM knew the region as stable with a small peaceable Maori population, no racial disturbances and fertile land abounding. His letter reads:
“Sir, Being desirous of some information with regard to your advertized party of Colonists about to proceed to Otago NZ I take the liberty of addressing you in this manner for the purpose of eliciting such information as may be useful for a person in my situation intending to proceed to the colony.
First as regards the proposed free emigration, what persons are eligible for passages. Whether, should such an opportunity of emigration not be extended to those not particularly chosen by the Company’s agent, the vessel advertized to sail on the 29 April can afford such accommodation as comes generally under the names of intermediate or steerage passages: and if so what will be the amount of passage money, what the plan of fitting, what measurement or tonnage of luggage will be included, what the scale of fare, and what the charge for children if any, as also whether it is likely that the vessel will sail punctually on the date published.
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Should your information extend to the probability of a person going aboard being able to purchase a site for a house with a few acres and right of hill or common land, and if not whether the company or government have adopted or will allow a right of tenure by license, as is I understand extensively adopted in many parts of Australia, you will much oblige me by extending it to me.
Whether any allowance of passage money is made to those who purchase land at home in this country as has I believe been the case, as also whether at any time there occur sales of land in the colony by the company at which a person at some future period might have an opportunity of purchasing in small lots or otherwise.
Any further information as to whether the country is adapted for tillage or grazing and if for tillage or otherwise whether cattle can be procured for milk or for the yoke as occasion may require.
Generally what is known of the colony of which I would suppose you must be possessed of the most correct information possible, will be most acceptable to me.
In expectation of your early attention to this I remain yours
WILLIAM POPPELWELL
To The Principal Agent for OTAGO ASSOCIATION Friday March 17 1848.
Within seven weeks of penning this letter WILLIAM had secured the right to purchase a town and a suburban section in Otago. He had also conveyed his wife, children, their baggage and a complete outfit of farming necessaries aboard the “Blundell” 573 tons. Captain Renant, lying at London Docks. The “Blundell” which had previously transported convicts to Botany Bay and Tasmania, was a coppered barque built of teak, and had some similarity with the “Tyne” and “David Malcolm” on which shipwise WILLIAM travelled previously. She was a slow sailer but a good sea-boat and was once, crossly, described as a “short, squat, high-wooded, painted-port barque, more like a haystack than anything else, and she could sail about as fast as a man could walk.”
One hundred and fifty emigrants (a third under 12 years of age) and a crew of 33 did not overcrowd the roomy well-provisioned vessel. A Doctor Henry Wells supervised health during the 20-week voyage.
The Poppelwell’s’ previous experience of the colony was invaluable. Included in their farming outfit was a bullock team, cows and fowls, a dray and ironwork for a second one, spinning wheels, mill for grinding grain (corn, wheat etc.) a coffee mill, seeds, raspberry, gooseberry, red and black currant canes …..
NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.
OTAGO, TOWN LAND – CERTIFICATE OF SELECTION.
No 162
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that, in pursuance of a Land-Order issued by the NEW ZEALAND COMPANY, and dated at New Zealand House, London, the Second day of May Eighteen Hundred and Forty Eight, Number 131, William Poppelwell of Sunwick Berwickshire has selected ONE ALLOTMENT OF TOWN LAND in the Settlement of Otago, marked as undermentioned in a Map of such Settlement, namely,- Section No 58 Block 22 in the town of Dunedin, North by Frederick Street, on the East and South East by a line of Road Northwest by section 57 and on the South by Section 59.
This Certificate is accepted by the said William Poppelwell or his Assigns as conclusive Evidence of the Selection, and also as an actual; Delivery of the Possession of the said Land.
Dated at Dunedin the Twentieth day of December Eighteen hundred and Forty Nine.
Registered by me, Charles McKelvie
Principal Surveyor, NZ Co
W Cargill
Agent of the New Zealand Company for Settlement of Otago.
NEW ZEALAND LAND ORDER.
TOWN LANDS IN OTAGO.
No. 173
ORDER OF CHOICE.
One Hundred and Seventy-three
These Presents Certify that William Poppelwell of Sunwick Berkshire has purchased of the NEW ZEALAND COMPANY and is entitled to receive possession of and to hold to him his heirs and assigns, for ever, ONE ALLOTMENT OF LAND, comprising ONE QUARTER OF AN ACRE, be the same more or less, in the Settlement of Otago in New Zealand, and that he is entitled to choose and select the same out of the Town Lands of the appropriated for the purposes of such Settlement of Otago, in the Order of Choice above set forth, subject only to Rules of Regulations of the New Zealand Company, in respect of the Lands offered them for Sale in such Settlement.
On selection of the before-mentioned Land, the said Purchaser shall be entitled to a Certificate of such selection, and also, on payment of all costs charges and expenses in respect of a Conveyance from the Company, or from their Trustee or Trustees, to himself his heirs and assigns, or to such other lawful uses as he or they shall require.
No Notice of Transfer of this Order will be recognised by the Company, unless the Regulations endorsed hereon be strictly observed and fulfilled.
Witness the Seal of the New Zealand Company affixed hereto, at New Zealand House, London, this Second day of May Eighteen hundred and Forty Eight.
Entered, No. 131.
([…]) T. C. Harrington.
Secretary.
To the Principal Agent or Officer of the New Zealand Company, for Sale of Land at Otago.
CORPORATE SEAL OF THE COMPANY.
REGISTER of Wm Poppelwell & family’s milestone, in a small Bible with dark covers, thought to mark the first Mass celebrated in Dunedin at the Poppelwell North-East Valley home by Rev Mons’r A. Seon on 31.11.1850.
Father Petitjean, another French Marist priest who served Otago Catholics and visited the Poppelwells, circa the late 1850s and early 60s.
The modest Family Bible, still extant, is now worn & shabby.
NEW ZEALAND LAND ORDER
RURAL LANDS IN OTAGO.
No 173.
ORDER OF CHOICE.
One Hundred and Thirteen.
These Presents Certify that William Poppelwell of Sunwick, Berkshire has purchased of the NEW ZEALAND COMPANY, and is entitled to receive possession of to him his heirs and assigns, for ever, one ALLOTMENT OF RURAL LAND comprising FIFTY ACRES each, or Fifty Acres in all, but the same more or less, in the Settlement of Otago in New Zealand, and that he is entitled to and select the same out of the Rural Lands to be appropriated for the purposes of such Settlement of Otago, in the Order of Choice above set forth, subject only to the Rules and Regulations of the New Zealand Company, in respect of the Lands offered by them for Sale in such Settlement.
On selection of the before-mentioned Land, the said Purchaser shall be entitled to a Certificate of such selection, and also, on payment of all costs charges and expenses in respect of a Conveyance thereof, to receive, within a reasonable time after demand of writing, such Conveyance from the Company, or from their Trustee or Trustees, to himself his heirs and assigns, or such lawful uses as he or they shall require.
No Notice of Transfer of this Order will be recognised by the Company, unless the Regulations endorsed hereon be strictly observed and fulfilled.
Witness the Seal of the New Zealand Company affixed hereto, at New Zealand House, London, this Second day of May Eighteen Hundred and Forty Eight.
Entered No. 73.
([…]) T. C. Harrington.
Secretary[?]
Corporate Seal of the Company
To the Principal Agent or Officer of the New Zealand Company, for Sale of Land at Otago.
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In addition WILLIAM had with him two thousand sovereigns and very likely left funds with his later purchases.
He was 29, CATHERINE 24, small George 4 and Elizabeth Ann 16 months. WILLIAM contributed popular articles to the ship’s newspaper “Blundell Chronicle” on the new country they were all bound for.
The “Blundell” left England on 4 May 1848 and arrived at Otago on 21 September 1848. She was the fourth immigrant ship to reach Dunedin, and two more augmented the straggly little settlement before year’s end.
The following extracts of contemporary letters eloquently describe the Poppelwells’ new environment.
No. 1. “Oct. 1848 all who wish to enjoy health and prolong life should come here and live and bring with them plenty of money, coarse clothing, strong navvy boots etc. No natives, no poisonous reptiles, fine fertile land and the finest potatoes and beef I have ever ate. No wintering cattle here. They can run out summer and winter and are always as far as pigs. We never think of giving swine any meat inside, but turn them out and let them run till they get fat. The wild ones are plenty but not easily got at. Wild ducks and pigeons all over the country…be sure to let everyone know who may think of coming here, if they purchase land, to be sure to come with nothing less and £200 clear cash…There is one plain called Tokomairiro 20 miles long and 10 broad and scarcely a tree upon it. The section I have chosen are all covered with wood…”
No. 2 “Dec. 1848 Dunedin consists at present of 48 houses prettily sited though not very conveniently for those who have built, having placed themselves on the hilliest part of the place, neglecting a fine flat that would have held all Dunedin for 12 years to come. Plenty of flat land for a town belted with hills…The people of Dunedin seem to be a good sort, hospitable and friendly and anxious to improve their colony. We have chosen our town and suburban sections and are very pleased with them…The North West Valley is a most beautiful spot, bounded by hills on one side, clothed with trees, and on the other stretching away in pasture for flocks, with a stream…We are living at present in Barracks till we can get our house up. There are four of these of various sizes, three of wood and one of grass (Ware war ree). They are comfortable wooden houses, with a fireplace in each and fitted up from the woodwork of various ships that have come out with emigrants, and are very acceptable to the “homeless wanderer”…the weather is very pleasant as yet”.
No. 3 April 1849 Four months later in April 1849 “…Dunedin number of houses is I believe about 130 and the number of inhabitants about the town and country above 800. Small gardens are attached to houses: sites are reserved for markets and public buildings in the principal streets. There is a Police Magistrate. … two doctors, one solicitor, three merchants, two butchers, two bakers, one solicitor, three merchants, five shoemakers, one tailor, several storekeepers etc…Everyone
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who comes here must work like a labourer unless he has a fortune….”
No. 4. “April 1849…The country in general is rugged in the extreme with a great level plain here and there and I think by all accounts there is more level land in the Otago Block than there is in any of the other settlements…As regards climate it is very temperate, we had the thermometer as low as 27 degrees several times last winter and I have seen ice as thick as a penny but it uniformly disappeared by 9 a.m….a good deal of wet weather in May and June, our winter. Air pure and bracing: ample evidence in appearance of settlers, notwithstanding ail those exposures…As to myself I would not return to Scotland to live permanently. True to myself I would not return to Scotland to live permanently. True we have rough labour, but we can afford a day of recreation too and where can there be finer sport than a pig hunt…Paradise ducks, pigeons and no game laws…the want of roads is a serious evil as the roads we have at present are merely formed out of the soil and are more like canals of liquid mud and clay in winter…weather is very changeable…winter very disagreeable….intervening days often mild and pleasant…everal severe falls of snow and sharp frosts. People coming here should provide themselves with the strongest and most durable clothing, especially laced boots, both for men and women…”
No. 5. “Dec. 1849…Dunedin…laid out on a large flat…admirably suited for a town…backed by lofty hills. The streets that are to be are wide and well arranged and reserves for a cemetery, public gardens, markets etc. are made…contains about 100 houses built of wood and clay…about 70 inhabitants have a newspaper, a church, a school…well conducted, a gaol, two inns, a jetty…”
The POPPELWELLS’ first shelter on their 10-acre North East Valley section (near today’s Botanical Gardens) built with Maori help, had living trees for corner posts. Walls were saplings plastered between with clay and the roof was totara bark. A stream ran through the land, much of which was bush-clad. Building an adequate home, outbuildings and draining swampy areas, clearing and removing old strewn logs and making the land produce kept WILLIAM fully occupied during the next few years. He supplied timber and firewood to other settlers, using parts of such loads as temporary bridges (for the dray and team and the balance of the load) across many creeks. After importing cows from Australia he also supplied milk.
Like other pioneer homemakers CATHERINE tended house and husband, children, cows, hens, churn, garden and goodness knows what ‘else. Once she made a modest profit from milk payments. She casually put coppers aside until a shopkeeper complained of a penny shortage: her hoard of nearly £5’s worth earned her one eight/th above face value for each £.
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A second daughter, another Catherine, was born on 12 March 1849 six months after they arrived and fifteen months later on 31 December 1850, a second son, another William (v). Two years after that JOHN the last of their Dunedin-born children (and the writer’s grandfather) was born on 22 December 1852.
The first Catholic Mass in Dunedin, celebrated by French Missionary Father Antoine Seon SM on 30 November 1850, was at the Poppelwell’s North-East Valley home. The Marist priest is thought to have marked the occasion by giving them a small signed Bible. Today (1990) frayed by time and use it is treasured by WILLIAM and CATHERINE’S granddaughter Vivienne Winifred (Poppelwell) Palmer of Wellington. Its fly-leaf reads “Presented to William Poppelwell by the Rev. Mon’r Seon”. Opposite is a handwritten list of the couple’s milestones beginning with their birth and marriage dates. They were leading lay people among the few Catholics then in Dunedin.
The Rev. Thomas Burns (said to be related to the poet Robbie Burns) was also welcomed to the North-East Valley home. His Visitation Book shows four calls on the POPPELWELLS there. This good minister of the Scottish Free Church felt it his duty to visit every home in the settlement at least once a year. He even called on WILLIAM at Tokomairiro early in February 1853 although it was more than thirty rough miles south of Dunedin and the pastor no longer young.
That year the POPPELWELLS moved on to the almost treeless Tokomairiro Plain then being opened up and, during the ensuing 25 years, developed an Antipodean Sunwick, named for WILLIAM’S boyhood home. Their farm at Waronui, 2½ miles downstream from today’s Milton, had a two mile frontage to the Tokomairiro River. It was fairly level except for a 120 foot high hill they called “the Mound”.
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After the native vegetation of flax, scrub, rushes and tussock was cleared, swamp drained and soil tilled, it grew pasture, grain and root crops well.
Only 10 miles from the sea it was a natural Paradise of wildlife which provided sport and provender. WILLIAM was 34 and CATHERINE 27 when they took up this land. The eldest of their five children was nine and the youngest JOHN a babe in arms. WILLIAM with helpers went ahead of the family taking a bullock-drawn dray loaded with building materials. It was the first wheeled vehicle to go into the area. The journey took nine days over ill-defined tracks, fords and a major ferry crossing. Secondary watercourses of varying size and boggy patches also hampered his passage. The dray was unloaded many times and was itself dismantled and re-assembled at the Taieri ferry crossing. Another river was crossed by caulking the dray like a boat and floating it over, the bullocks swimming behind.
When the first stage of the house was habitable CATHERINE family travelled out by cart, boat, sledge and on foot. Their journey, broken by a 3-day stay at Neil Bruce McGregor’s farmhouse at East Taieri, took almost as long as WILLIAM’S.
Sunwick homestead, which grew eventually into an L-shaped two-storey wooden dwelling with numerous rambling outbuildings, settled into the landscape. Trees, some being sycamores, were planted, a huge orchard established, fences erected and the land farmed. Early on a Maori neighbour solved a cropping problem by advising them to plant by a kowai [kowhai] tree’s stage of growth Instead of a calendar date. It worked like a charm through differing seasons. Sheep and cattle in good demand then for meat and stocking new farms, were raised as well as pigs, hens, geese and ducks. All poultry down was saved and on maturity each of the five daughters had a home-grown feather mattress and pillows. (One such pillow was used in old age by their grand daughter Henrietta Margaret (Poppelwell) Munro of Hastings. Oats,
LINE of COMMUNICATION BEFORE 1857
LINE of COMMUNICATION AFTER 1857
BUSH
40 CHAINS
William Strain George Lindsay James Lang Thomas Dall John Salmond Thomas Dall Alexander Duthie James Murdoch George Brown John Hardy John Alexander Duthie Edward Martin Thomas Brooks John Edward Martin James Brown William Reid James Smith Peter McGill Alexander Duthie James Martin Robert Martin Fairfax Government Township James Reid John Burnside John Gillies New South Range
FIG. 5. SETTLEMENT ON THE TOKOMAIRIRO PLAIN 1850-1857.
Received from the BEUCE DISTRICT COUNCIL, P.O. BOX 123, Milton, Otago.
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wheat, barley and root crops grew well for many years in the virgin soil. WILLIAM also leased an additional 1006 acres five miles away in the Rocky Valley/Mt. Misery area later freeholded by his elder sons. It was higher land rising to 14,000 feet above sea level, and somewhat broken with bush filled gullies. The inappropriate name came from surveyors being benighted there without matches in wet cold weather. It and Sunwick complemented each other. Strawberries and snow-berries (?) went wild and bore heavily. Convalescent children recuperated there and, as the boys grew, its pig hunting was popular.
After seven strenuous productive years WILLIAM recorded “We are in medium circumstances being possessed of some 2000 sheep, 60 to 70 head of cattle and 150 acres of freehold land which, setting aside calamity, will yield us a very snug living…….”
At Tokomairiro the POPPELWELLS had seven more children, twelve altogether who enjoyed a full free and healthy childhood in the new land. The full tally was:
George iii b. 28.3.1844 at Wellington N.Z. “George”
Elizabeth Ann b. 25.12.1846 at Sunwick, Paxton, Berwickshire, Scotland, “Lizzie”.
Catherine b. 12.3.1849 at Dunedin N.Z. “Kate”
William v b. 31.12.1850 at Dunedin N.Z. “Bill”
Abercrombie
JOHN b. 22.12.1852 at Dunedin N.Z. sometimes “Jack”
David b. 5.1.1855 at Tokomairiro (near Milton) N.Z. “David”
Ann/ b. 18.2.1857 at Tokomairiro (near Milton) N.Z. “Annie”
Charlotte Mary Veronica b. 29.12.1858 (near Milton) N.Z. “Lottie”
Sebastian George Alexander b. 26.6.1861 (near Milton) N.Z. “Bastie”
Dugald Louis b.2.7.1863 (near Milton) N.Z. “Dugald”
Matthew George Bell b. 23.12.1864 (near Milton) N.Z. “George” (iv)
Mary Frances b. 17.12.1866 (near Milton) N.Z. “Polly”
The big household at Sunwick lived generously “off the place”. It provided mutton, beef, poultry, eggs, fruit and vegetables in abundance and milk. Sport added wild pork, eels, mullet, flounder, cock-a-bullies and a multiplicity of birds, native and introduced. They made their own bread from home grown grain, and also butter and cheese. Once there was puzzlement about what was causing nibbled
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edges to maturing cheeses, until little JOHN told them, saying crossly “I’ll run away and get some little cheeses of my own!”
CATHERINE seldom sang having no talent for it but whenever she was kneading bread dough she habitually droned “Here Lies Poor Tom Bowling”, then a popular sea ballad, and her family came to associate the song with her and the task. There were however musical gifts in the family, brought to distinction by training and opportunity in a few, to a moderate degree by others and fully and simply enjoyed by the rest.
Wheat grown on the farm was at first ground into flour with a handmill, also used for coffee and later, after a mill was established in the district, for sporting gunpowder by the boys. WILLIAM is credited with being responsible for Peter McGill and his mill-stones coming to Tokomairiro about 1857 hence Milltown, now Milton which grew up on the plain fuelled by the big influx of people brought by the discovery of in 1861 at Gabriel’s Gully 20 miles odd further out. Sunwick supplied meat to the infant town at one stage.
Kitchen equipment at Sunwick included a large Colonial oven which could and did bake 24 loaves at a time, a metal “fountain” kettle with a tap at the bottom, suspended by a chain over the fire and a large scone girdle.
Highland CATHERINE gave her children hard-chewing oatcake which may have had something to do with their good teeth into old age. They habitually wore tam-o-shanters. Vast quantities of preserves of all kinds, including fruit wines, were made. Candles were fashioned from tallow poured into 6 and 8-candle moulds.
The household lived as a community and in the evenings they all forgathered = visitors, family, indoor and outdoor employees, in the huge living room = surely a homely equivalent of the mediaeval hall.
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They made music or a member of the family read aloud (Sir Walter Scott’s and Dickens’ new novels among others) while various activities proceeded : candle making, preparing fruit for preserves, sewing, knitting, mending clothes and harness …… An illiterate Highland shepherd, one Pat McGill, knitted many of the long heavy stockings they all wore for riding. He was an expert, his hands rarely idle. His only grievance was that his principles forbad him to knit on the Sabbath, so he grumbled the day away instead.
Various Highland employees generated affectionate rollicking laughter. Individual, independent, eloquent, often ignorant, durable as the heather on their native hills, they live warmly still in family lore.
A live in-tutor was employed until a local school was opened in 1856 sited at Fairfax (Tokoiti on today’s maps) across the river from Sunwick. The children crossed the intervening watercourses on stepping-stones and CATHERINE would watch from a high window and count heads as they climbed up the other side. For the first few/months a dairy building, not immediately needed, was used as a school room. George and Lizzie were foundation pupils there and were joined by William v and Kate after a new two-storey school building was erected. The ground floor provided schoolrooms with the teacher Alexander Ayson, brought specially from Scotland, and his family living above. Pupil numbers soon outgrew the floorspace so the Fairfax Presbyterian Church doubled as a school for five years when a new school was built at Milton. The Poppelwell children attended this until a Catholic Primary School, taught initially by lay teachers, was also opened. Tokomairiro’s good Grammar School provided secondary education for the boys except Dugald, who won prizes throughout his schooldays, including Bishop Moran’s Scholarship to the Christian brothers School opened in Dunedin in 1876. He was a pupil there in 1877 and 1878 and part of 1879,
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staying at the home of Henry and Maggie McCormick, Cargill Street, whose son attended the same school. Dugald had a year helping on the farms between his primary and secondary education and again for six months before taking up law training. At one point he did a six months’ stint as pupil teacher at the Christian Brothers but decided to do law instead of teaching as a livelihood: he eventually in 1892, aged 29, qualified as a lawyer.
Once JOHN in his teens, and spirited as all CATHERINE’S children were, had a tiff with his father and ran away from home. He had five shillings in his pocket and a heart full of indignation mixed with exultation. When out of sight of the farmhouse he celebrated with freedom by turning cartwheels and walking a little on his hands, thus losing his 5/-. He fell in with a bullock team called O’Connell who employed him and whiled away the evenings teaching the boy Euclid and higher mathematics. After a time his anger faded and the lad was ready to take his place in the family again.
The POPPELWELLS were all eager readers, a quality which turned up regularly among their descendants to this day: some are compulsive readers.
Until Dunedin could provide equivalent secondary education (about 1871) the POPPELWELL daughters attended St. Mary’s Convent, Hill Street, Wellington. Escorted by their father they travelled there by coastal shipping much as their grandmother WILLIAM’S mother ELIZABETH ENGLISH had journeyed between Berwick and York.
All the children could sing, dance and play the piano and/or other musical instruments. Their father who played the flute often led sea shanties. A music teacher and later a dancing master stayed at Sunwick from time to time to give them lessons.
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Domestic help was readily available with many young immigrant girls wanting work, but there was a quick turnover as many settlers also wanted wives. Girl employees were always married from the home stead, everyone thoroughly enjoying the festivities. One such wedding was between Stephen Joseph Fanning, a groom, and Grace Walsingham Clarke, housemaid on 10 August 1865. Another was that of Catherine Regan to James Keppel on 2 February 1867. Kate Poppelwell (it could have been either mother or daughter then nearly 18) and a John Buckley were witnesses. Then there was a Mrs. Hawke, a very old lady, whom a granddaughter of WILLIAM and CATHERINE Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin met in Wellington in 1921: she also had been married from Sunwick.
Whenever a ship from the old country arrived at Dunedin much of the employees being one object. Other purposes were purchasing scarce commodities, and taking delivery of imported implements or stock. WILLIAM imported both, the first back-delivery reaper used in Otago being one, and a threshing mill powered by a bullock-driven treadmill another. He was prominent in local agricultural affairs, being first President of the Tokomairiro Agricultural Society: it was an innovative period for farming methods and machinery.
In December 1859 (or about New Year 1860) during such a business trip to Dunedin Princes Street. WILLIAM attended Mass at Burke’s Bottle Store, Princes Street. Among the sixteen or so people present he met a newcomer, Henry Carr McCormick, previously of Dumbarton on the Clyde. Scottish born and bred of Irish/Scottish parentage, Henry was a ships’ carpenter by trade. His Scottish wife Maggie Agnew McCormick, a convert to Catholicism, her husband’s faith, encouraged him to widen his skills by studying at night school and together they scraped up enough money for assisted passages on the “Sevilla”. Their party consisted of Henry and Maggie, their three young children,
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and Henry’s four orphaned younger siblings. The eldest disembarked in Australia with her new husband met on the ship, and Henry and Maggie’s 12-month-old son died towards the end of the voyage. Dunedin greeted the grieving family with prolonged rain and Maggie contracted “colonial fever.” They bought en elevated section in Cargill Street, renting a house on the saturated flat until financially able to build. WILLIAM POPPELWELL advised doing so at once saying “Your wife will never be well where you are.” He guaranteed payment of the necessary materials.
Maggie McCormick took heart at the turn of events and, firmly putting grief aside, she set about clearing manuka from their section: and the sun came at last bringing hope and healing. Their home was soon finished except for window glass which had to await the next shipment. They went into residence with oiled sheeting stretched across the frames. “With all sails set” Maggie declared joyfully. On 26 July the next year 1861, a new child they called MARGARET filled the empty place in their hearts.
A close life-long friendship developed between the McCormicks and the POPPELWELLS despite widely different temperaments. The McCormicks were quiet and reserved, the POPPELWELLS buoyant outgoing and gregarious. The two families later became kin-by-marriage.
Father Delphin Moreau, a French visitation priest and, from 1861, Dunedin’s first Catholic Priest, was “at home” at the McCormicks until he had one of his own. Maggie did his washing and mending (her daughter remembered seeing his shabby soutane in the family mending basket) and the children learned their prayers at his knee = with a marked French accent.
CATHERINE’S brothers Duncan and Hugh (WILLIAM described Hugh as “the impenetrable”) lived and worked on the POPPELWELL properties, Duncan having charge of the sheep at one time. Both married local girls in 1862. WILLIAM regretted that their “Highland closeness of character”
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prevented him reporting more fully on them to their elder brother Alexander. There is a not unlikely tale that they had a whisky still in the hills which was only found when a favourite horse was let loose and followed.
Alexander McLachlan, who had been out of touch for some years, wrote from Coromandel some time after Easter 1860, a particularly welcome letter just then. WILLIAM was convalescent from a near fatal illness (which had brought Father Seon poste haste from Akaroa) and CATHERINE was exhausted and distressed from nursing him through it. Worst of all they and their family were also mourning the loss of the eldest son. George Poppelwell 15 years 10 months “nearly” as the Bible entry painfully notes, died on 19 January of that year (1860) at Tokomairiro from “ulceration of the throat”. It is likely that WILLIAM was already ill as George’s death was registered on the 20 February 1860 a month after his father’s friend Neil J.B. McGregor, Stockowner, of East Taieri. He described the boy as “seventeen years, Stockman” so he. must have been a well built lad, being not yet sixteen. Family tradition tells of a desease [disease] brought to N.Z. by soldiers from India. Two other Tokomairiro children, two and four years old respectively, died about the same time from “disease of the throat”. Possibly WILLIAM caught the same infection but recovered. He was convalescent when he answered Alexander McLachlan’s letter in June 1860.
Thereafter Alexander (Sandy) and WILLIAM corresponded regularly exchanging news: in 1861 it was Alexander’s marriage and WILLIAM’S unsuccessful, and it seems uncharacteristic, bid to represent Tokomairiro on the Provincial Council: in 1862 it was the marriages of Hugh and Duncan, Hugh’s bride being Scottish Margaret Brown, and Duncan’s an Irish Catholic Nora Lynch. CATHERINE sent Alexander’s bride a keeper made from gold her brothers won from their Tuapeka claim and a McLachlan Family Bible. Alexander visited them in Otago in late 1862/early 1863 and tried his luck briefly on the goldfields.
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as every able-bodied man within reach did then.
The diggings brought a big increase of callers to Sunwick. It was a halfway house, although a little off the main route, to Gabriel’s Gully. At the height of the gold-seeking era seldom fewer than 20 and often more than 30 sat down to dinner at Sunwick. Shakedowns in rush and fern-strewn outbuildings augmented the farmhouse. Son David later described seeing from the Mound a long line of men as far as eye could see coming towards the house, singly and in groups. An occasional horseman or bullock-drawn dray punctuated the heavily laden walkers: one man pushed a wheelbarrow with a sail up making use of a fair wind.
CATHERINE was seriously ill in mid-1863 following the birth of her sixth son Dugald Louis on 2 July. He alone of her twelve children was not breast fed and for six months had a nurse. Her father Dugald Louis McLachlan had been drowned in Wellington Harbour on 24 May 1854 and reports credit her with second sight in that she knew of his death before news of it arrived, as she is also said to have similarly known long ago in the Highlands when her mother died. Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Ann, her Scottish Christmas baby, seems also to have had a touch of this fey Celtic quality, but in undramatic and mundane matters.
WILLIAM’S father GEORGE BELL POLLELWELL [POPPELWELL] i died at Sunwick, Berwickshire, Scotland, on 23 January 1864 aged 75. His youngest N.Z. grandson born late that year was named Matthew George Bell Poppelwell (iv).
In his low profile way WILLIAM was active in farm, family, local and church affairs particularly the last. He pressed Bishop Viard and Father O’Reilly with polite persistence for priestly visits and Fathers Seon, Petijean, Moreau, Ecuyer and Bishop Viard all celebrated Mass at Sunwick and enjoyed its hospitality. Bishop Viard confirmed the older children in 1864. In between such visits WILLIAM regularly read Mass Prayers at 11 a.m. on Sundays for family, household and neighbours.
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Some time after the 1861 discovery of gold even elastic Sunwick became too small for the Catholic congregation. Then the Neil McGregors, the WILLIAM POPPELWELLS, their McLachlan kin and marriage connections and other energetic lay Catholics promoted at Milton first a makeshift chapel in an old converted store and, in 1869, a new church “a handsome Gothic building 45 x 28 feet”. Father O’Reilly sent £31 ($62) towards its cost, a useful gift by the values of the day. This building is still in use (1990) but not as a church. The builder was Henry Carr McCormick who prospered in the new country and had a holiday home at nearly Toko Mouth. He also wrote (robustly it is reported) for the Catholic and secular press.
The previous year (1868) WILLIAM and his friend Neil McGregor had secured for the Catholic Church, and were holding as Trustees, what became the site of St. Joseph’s Cathedral and ancilliary [ancillary] buildings in Rattray Street, Dunedin. There is (inter alia) a Poppelwell Family Memorial window in the Cathedral.
Respect for sincere religion came naturally to the POPPELWELLS and difference of belief or politics never interfered with friendship. CATHERINE recorded with amusement and admiration how a lay preacher refused to allow Tokomairiro River which was subject to flooding to prevent his weekly meeting. When he found it to be impassable, his congregation gathered on the other side and his sermon rolled powerfully over the swollen waters. This fine man adopted two children from a family of six orphaned by a diptheria [diphtheria] epidemic. Others welcomed the remainder.
Those were times of vigorous activity, spacious outlook, strong friendships and family ties, and abundant hospitality.
In retrospect the circumstances appear idyllic for youthful development,
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although the crucible of birth, illness, death, fire and flood had also to be managed or endured: it was material which taught maturity.
Diverse inside and outside work and recreational skills were automatically acquired within Colonial existence, which was not unlike bygone manorial living, but without the need for defence. The entire household participated according to inclination to a degree but subject to primary duties as all had to contribute to the well-being of the group.
The Poppelwell young people learned the management of a large domestic establishment, plus poultry, orchards and gardens, of bullocks, horses, cattle, pigs, dogs and sheep, including shearing and sheep-dipping: also fencing with turf-sods, post-and-rail and later wire and staples. They developed land = clearing, draining, tilling, sowing pasture, planting and harvesting crops, using bullock, horse and eventually simple machine power. They absorbed bushcraft and did coal and gold mining, the Mt. Misery/Rocky Valley properties having a significant deposit of one and a trace of the other. Diversions (which often had practical aspects) were shooting, fishing, swimming, riding (chasing moving cloud shadows was a popular pastime) and snow sports when weather co-operated. 1860, 1867 and 1878 brought heavy snowfalls and consequent heavy flooding.
Inside there were house parties at Christmas and other festivals and an occasional ball with music, games, charades, dancing, feasting and making merry…and always reading!
In early 1878 WILLIAM’S health which had been poor for some time collapsed completely. He had a stroke which left residual paralysis and was virtually bedridden for the last five or six years of his life. Perhaps the yellow fever suffered during his youthful seafaring and his 1860 illness left a legacy of bodily damage. His mind however was unimpaired and he kept up a keen interest in public and family affairs despite physical disability.
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By this time his two elder sons William (v), 27, and JOHN, 25, ran the Rocky Valley/Mt. Misery properties, 10006 acres, as freeholders. There seems to have been a house with outbuildings, and a hut some miles apart.
In addition to developing and running sheep and cattle and raising some crops, William .v. and JOHN were trying to help their ailing father manage Sunwick, a labour-intensive unit as its river flats were best suited to cropping.
This was during the worldwide “Long Depression (1870/1895). In N.Z. farming had suffered a decline, the demand for stock for new settlers’ farms had waned, there was only a small over-supplied domestic market for meat, refrigeration being still in the future. Sunwick’s soil (and much more) after 25 years’ use, with its fertilizer needs not fully understood, was returning diminishing yields.
After WILLIAM’S collapse Sunwick went out of the family, probably by Mortgagee sale. There is some suggestion that WILLIAM may have omitted to consolidate its title from the original license. This, its reduced fertility and poor market prospects, indicated a rationalization of holdings.
So, advised and assisted by their father’s friends Neil McGregor and Henry McCormick (and possibly also Peter McGill), William (v) and JOHN reorganized the family’s affairs, minimising loss and salvaging, among other things, that season’s crops. These were harvested by a co-operative effort of family and neighbours working well into the moonlit evenings.
The invalid WILLIAM and CATHERINE and the family still at home moved temporarily into the house at Rocky Valley/Mt. Misery, smaller than Sunwick homestead and augmented when necessary (as when there were visitors) by the younger boys sleeping in thatched outbuildings.
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Elizabeth, 31, and Kate 29, were married, David 23 trained as a chemist, lived in town, JOHN, William (v,) and Sebastian 17, lived on the properties wherever current work dictated. Dugald 14½ was at the Christian Brothers School during terms. George 13, Mary Frances “Polly” 11, Ann 21, and Charlotte 19½ were still at home so adequate help was available to nurse WILLIAM.
Despite the flurry of upsetting events, the new home was evidently a happy one as Sunwick had been. Mt. Misery, where a trig station peaked at 14,000 feet above sea level, had always been a special place for the young people. The house at 12,000 feet elevation, commanded a wide view. Terrible snow storms occurred that winter, 1878, the only one the senior POPPELWELLS lived there. After the thaw major flooding followed but, except for some difficulty getting in and out, the POPPELWELLS were relatively unaffected and thoroughly enjoyed their snow sports.
In 1879 William (v) and JOHN bought (possibly at first leased) land called severally “the Bush” and “the Glen” at Fairfax, close to Milton’s amenities for their parents and. younger siblings. Dugald started work at Mr. Donald Reid’s local law office on 25 August 1879. Fairfax (Tokoiti on modern maps) across the river from Sunwick where the older Poppelwell children first attended school, was planned by the Otago Provincial Council to be Tokomairiro’s town but Peter McGill’s flour mill and the gold rush decided otherwise. It and Milton, which became a Borough in 1886, are now joined.
The Dunedin and Tokomairiro years were WILLIAM and CATHERINE’S living years” in the fullest sense. Within them their twelve children were nurtured and a significant area of previously barren land was made fruitful, beginning with their tangled North-East Valley section. The Tokomairiro Plain was without amenities of any kind when they went there in 1853 and, when WILLIAM died in 1883 (CATHERINE survived
47.
until 1900) it was a productive farming area well provided with reasonable facilities including the service town of Milton, good roads, bridges and a railway line.
Described by a daughter-in-law as “a fine couple who helped many” they played a creditable part in all this.
WILLIAM had some quality of life during his last years. Much was happening publicly and privately and he retained his interest in affairs till the end. Refrigerated shipping and dairy factories were hovering on the horizon: vitally important with sons in farming. There were lively family comings and goings, courtships, marriages, grandchildren, branchings [branching] out, trainings ………. By 1878 when their father fell ill both Lizzie and Kate were married. They and/or Annie taught at Milton Catholic School as did McLachlan kin. JOHN married next, in 1879 to MARGARET McCORMICK daughter of Henry Carr McCormick and his wife, and William v in 1881.
JOHN had grown from a merry boy to a mettlesome man, albiet hard working, capable and versatile. Short of stature like his mother (two of his sons and a daughter followed him in this) he was good looking with regular features, bright blue eyes, ruddy complexion and a strong, dark, usually trimmed beard. A fine intelligence and wit distinguished him but it was his joie-le-vivre which endeared him most to those around him. His staid mother-in-law Maggie Agnew McCormick, particularly enjoyed this jollity. His personality was strongly individual, uncomfortably so in some circumstances and this too pops up among his descendants.
The clan’s marriage record follows:
Ann “Annie” and David did not marry and the first George died in his teens.
48.
1869 Catherine “Kate”, 20, m. Dr. A.J. Ferguson at Sunwick.
1871 Elizabeth Ann “Lizzie”, 25, m. James Alexander Henderson, Bank Officer at Sunwick.
3.9.1879 JOHN sometimes “Jack”, 26 years 9 months, m. MARGARET McCORMICK, 18 years 2 months, at Dunedin.
1881 William (v) “Bill”, 30, m. Elizabeth Henry, Dunedin.
30.11.1882 Charlotte Mary Veronica “Lottie”, 24, m. Augustus Henry Syme Mansford, a lawyer.
1889 Sebastian George Alexander “Bastie”,28, m. Margaret Pearse, Napier.
26.12.1890 Mary Frances “Polly”, 24, m. (1) Robert Boyle Monkman, an accountant and
1906 (2) William Dempster, a musician.
1892 George Matthew Bell, 28, Ellen Harnett, Andersons Bay.
1894 Dugald Louis, 31, m. Norah Green at Gore.
JOHN and MARGARET’S wedding was a gracious occasion. The bride’s carriage had the traditional two white horses to draw it and the groom’s sisters sang at the reception while the two large households and their friends celebrated. MARGARET’S brother James, a storekeeper of Dunedin and JOHN’S relatives in Britain, having been told that MARGARET was a New Zealander, gallantly sent felicitations “to him and his dusky bride”.
She was a very slight grey-eyed girl of eighteen about whom the ‘auld wives’ of Dunedin murmured “MARGARET’d be a pretty girl if it weren’t for that red hair.”
She was her parents’ first New Zealand born child who helped heal the loss of baby Henry who died on the voyage from Scotland.
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL’S siblings:
1. Mary Anne Poppelwell eldest child and daughter of her parents b. 28.11.1814 at Hilton/Whitsome, married on 26.8.1841 George Sabbas Tyzack son of Benjamin and Alice Tyzack of North Shields, from the family of her uncle Matthew Poppelwell’s partner. The officiating minister was Rev. Father Edward Smith. North Shields is thereafter given as their residence. A much later photograph showed they both grew very stout.
2. George Bell Poppelwell ii, second child, first son of his parents b. 20/8/1816 at Hilton/Whitsome, married at Sunwick on 9 October 1844 Jessie (also called Jesie, Jepie or Pepe) Carol daughter of John and Jane Carol of Arbraoth, Ross-shire. The 1851 Census shows them living at M Nansfield, [Mansfield] Berwickshire, with their two children:
Jean Elizabeth b. 8 October, baptised 10 October 1847 by Rev. Father Thomas Witham: sponsors David & Elizabeth Poppelwell (brother & sister of their father, David not having married his wife until the following year, and
George iii b. 1850 (details not known)
Sydney Melrose (from the John Melrose family at Sunwick?) was their house servant. In this Census George ii describes himself as 34 years of age “lately a farmer” so was probably already seriously ill. He died before the 1861 Census. After his death his two children and their mother, lived at Sunwick with their grandfather.
3. WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL = see mainline.
4. David Bell Poppelwell, fourth child, third son of his parents baptised 14.12.1821 at Hilton/Whitsome WILLIAM’S younger brother (his parish is entered as M Nansfield [Mansfield]) was married on 2 August 1848 to Elizabeth Jeffreys Oswald daughter of John Elizabeth Oswald of Ancroft, by the Rev. Father A.M. Dermott. They farmed 450 acres in the Parish of Coldingham, East Reston, near the town of Ayton, Berwickshire (see map). The 1861
2.
Census shows 14 labourers housed in 8 cottages were employed and three house servants. Also Thomas Oswald, married, gentleman and Rachel Oswald, unmarried, gentlewoman, both born in England were visitors, (Elizabeth’s brother and sister?). In 1853 David and Elizabeth Poppelwell lost two children Elizabeth 3 ½ years on 7 May and Henry one year, on 6 June. They were buried in Button next their grandmother. Six or seven other children were born to them, their family being *
Elizabeth b. 1849 d. 7 May 1853
Henry b. 1852 d. 6 June 1853
Magdalene (or Madeline) b. 1855
Madeline “of Whiterig Farm” (4 miles as crow flies from Sunwick) near Ayton, East Reston, on 26 November 1875 married Adam Dodds of Heathery Tops. Rev. Father Jacobus Farrell MA was the officiating priest.
Whiterig Farm may have been her parents’ farm or they may have relocated to it. The name wasn’t used in earlier records but it is in the same area. Perhaps the name came into use during Magdalena’s childhood.
Catherine b. 20 March 1856 at East Reston, baptised 8 April by, baptised 8 April by Rev. Father Thomas Hanigan: sponsors John & Elizabeth Byrne, her father’s sister and husband.
Sarah b. 24 January 1858 at East Reston, baptised 16 February 1858 by? priest: sponsors William Poppelwell (in absentia if it is her father’s brother WILLIAM, he being then in N.Z.) and Maria Anne Tyzack her father’s elder sister.
David b. ? 1859 at East Reston, baptised? by Rev. Father William Markland; sponsors Elizabeth Byrne her father’s younger sister and WILLIAM (in absentia as he was then in N.Z.) her father’s brother or perhaps another William Poppelwell, a kinsman.
Maria (Mary) b. 13 January 1861 at East Reston, baptised 30 January 1861 by Rev. Father William Markland: sponsors George Poppelwell (George ii may have been alive but was dead before 1861 Census, George iii was eleven years old) and Jean Poppelwell, (sister of George iii, thirteen years old?)
Jepie b. 21 December 1862, baptised 8 January 1863 by Rev. Father William Markland: sponsors George Tyzack (brother-in-law to father) and Elizabeth Rawes (?)
a daughter b. ? 1867, baptised June 1867 by Rev. Father Denis Buckley: sponsors George Poppelwell and Anne Poppelwell (nephew of father then aged 17? and kinswoman?)
This last daughter would have been born when her mother Elizabeth Jeffreys Oswald Poppelwell was 47 years of age unless the age given in 1861 Census is incorrect. They sometimes were out a bit.
5. Elizabeth Poppelwell fifth child second daughter of her parents, the youngest of WILLIAM’S siblings b. 16.9.1824 at Sunwick, married John between 1851/1861 and in 1863 and 1864 they lived at No. 3
3.
Arthur Terrace, Higher Broughton, Manchester.
Their father GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL died at Sunwick on 23 January 1864 and was buried at Mutton Churchyard with his first wife ELIZABETH ENGLISH POPPELWELL His Executors were: his widow Catherine Ewing Poppelwell, his son David Bell Poppelwell and his son-in-law John Byrne. After a few small legacies i.e. £100 each in cash to his widow and daughter-in-law Jessie, 19 guineas and £5 respectively to two old servants, his estate which did not include the freehold of Sunwick, provided an annuity for his widow and the balance was divided into fifths, one share each for his surviving children Mary Anne Tyzack, WILLIAM POPPELWELL. David Poppelwell, and Elizabeth Byrne and the final fifth divided between dead George ii ‘s son and daughter George iii and Jean. The funds securing his widow’s annuity on her death went to the same legatees in the same ratio. She died on 1 October 1867 at East Percy Street, North Shields. The sole Executor of her modest estate was David Poppelwell Farmer of East Reston, her late husband’s son and he and her husband’s other surviving children were joint beneficiaries. She left her husband’s watch and seal to David Poppelwell and her household and personal effects between Elizabeth Byrne and Mary Anne Tyzack.
GEORGE BELL POPPELWELL’S personal estate at death amounted to £11,425.8.10. Real estate he owned in addition was one house in Tynemouth and a block of three houses in Stevenson Street, North Shields. Sunwick does not appear so it must have been turned from freehold into perhaps leasehold-for-life at an earlier date.
McLACHLAN Line
The forbears of CATHERINE ROBERTSON McLACHLAN later POPPELWELL have not been traced back beyond her parents, who were Dugald (Louis) McLachlan and Mary Anne Abercrombie Cleghorn McLachlan full name not always used.
They were Highlanders who lived in Kilmallie, Scotland’s second largest Parish situated in the Fort William area of Lochaber at the southern end of the Caledonian Canal and at the northern end of Loch Linnhe. McLachlans in this region were a sept from Strathlacan, Argyll, which relocated there many years earlier after disturbances endemic in Scotland for centuries, in their home area. (Ref. “Clans & Chiefs” Ian Grimble: pub Blond & Briggs 1980). The McLachlan badge bears the Latin tag “Fortis et Fidus” ‘Faithful and Strong’, and their shield “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit”: ‘No One Strikes me with Impunity”.
The person who kept parish records there during the period 1797/1812 approximately is reported by a researcher as being “disorganized untidy and semi-literate”. This and McLachlan being such a common local name, and Christian and other surnames being also constantly repeated there, make a line of descent difficult to trace at this distance. However, some useful written material has survived which enables a credible (if not fully proven) background to emerge. Among these are a Register in a Gaelic Family Bible, a long letter (26.6.1857) between two McLachlan brothers which came into CATHERINE McL POPPELWELL’S hands, and a group of letters (early 1860s) between her husband WILLIAM and her brother Alexander Cleghorn McLachlan.
Dugald (Louis) McLachlan was born at Corpach in the Fort William area on 27.11.1793. Ann Abercromby Cleghorn was born 11.1.1797 probably in another parish as researchers haven’t found it recorded in Kilmallie. They were married on 31.1.1816 aged 23 and 19 respectively. This also probably occurred in another parish (the bride’s?) as it too cannot be found in Kilmallie.
Dugald (Louis) McLachlan was a weaver of Correbeg and had two brothers and a sister surviving in 1857: John, Donald and Bell(e), as well as other kin in Scotland and overseas. They were literate with Gaelic most likely their first language and English a second.
2.
The extended family may have been among those displaced by the Clearances.
Less is known of CATHERINE’S mother. Her pre-marriage surname was Cleghorn: Abercrombie and probably Cameron and Robertson very likely also came from her family as was Scottish custom. In a personal way she can best be known through her daughter, who spoke Gaelic and English and was, when between 14 and 15 years, described as a “sempstress”. A family tale reporting her as unable to read and write is almost certainly untrue. The known literacy of her extended family and the basic primary schooling in the area when she was growing up support this view. She was a capable girl who nursed the sick, pulled the Redwood boy from a Wellington stream where she was doing the family wash after the four-month voyage, and no doubt coped with other domestic duties of the period. The most likely person to have taught or arranged for her to learn these things was her mother.
There are two other reports of CATHERINE and descendants which may relate back to Mary Anne Abercrombie Cleghorn McLachlan but they are harder to assess. An outbreak of illness on the “Blenheim” was feared to be smallpox. The patient was isolated and nursed by CATHERINE who did not catch the disease nor did it spread. It may, of course, have been a non-infectious fever/rash but CATHERINE’S grandson Augustine Stuart Henderson, a brilliant well-educated man, five times tried to be vaccinated against smallpox and it never “took”. The other concerns minor second sight which CATHERINE’S daughter Elizabeth (Augustine’s mother) also had. CATHERINE is reported to have “known” of her mother’s death though she was not present and later in New Zealand of her father’s.
Dugald (Louis) McLachlan and his wife Mary Anne Abercrombie Cleghorn McLachlan had issue: (Gaelic Family Bible Register and/or parish records)
(1) John Cameron b. Fasfern on Loch Eil 22.4.1817. (Loch Eil at a right angle to Loch Linnhe opposite Fort William).
(2) A son b. 13.3.1819: died before baptism?
(3) Ewen McLachlan b. 12.5.1820: died early?
(4) A son b. 14.7.1822: died before baptism?
(5) A son b. 9.9.1824: died before baptism?
3.
(6) CATHERINE ROBERTSON McLACHLAN b. 16.11.1825. baptised 5.12.1825.
(7) Alexander (Cleghorn) McLachlan b. 2.7.1828. baptised 10.9.1828.
(8) Ewen (Hugh) McLachlan b. 4.8.1831. baptised 8.2.1831.? (figure error somewhere).
(9) A son b. 1834. : died before baptism?
(10) Duncan McLachlan b. 15.12.1835.
Being stillborn or death before baptism would explain the unnamed children, and death during childhood the name EWEN being reused as the first or only Christian name for a son born later. This often happened in such circumstances.
Their mother Mary Anne Abercrombie Cleghorn McLachlan died between Duncan’s birthdate 15.12.1835. and 1838 when her husband remarried to Jane Cameron McPherson a widow aged 30.
He and Jane, who was pregnant with Isabella McIntyre McLachlan born on the voyage, emigrated to NZ on the barque “Blenheim” 375 tons Captain John Grey, leaving Greenock on the Clyde on 25 August 1840 and arriving at Wellington on 27 December 1840. All his children accompanied him except the eldest, 23-year-old John Cameron McLachlan b. 1817 who at some stage went to Australia. Dugald’s brother Donald also emigrated to Australia with his wife and seven children, in 1853. A third brother John McLachlan remained in Scotland and, from Bankside Corpach on 26.6.1857 wrote to his brother in NZ the informative letter which has survived and helped descendants learn a little of the family.
The Dugald Louis McLachlans, whose home area in the Highlands was Bonny Prince Charlie country, are said to have brought to NZ a drinking horn reputed to have been bestowed by the Prince about the time of the disastrous 1745 Jacobite rising via Dugald’s father or grandfather perhaps? It was lost generations later when CATHERINE’S sixth son Dugald Louis Poppelwell’s law office in Gore NZ was destroyed by fire in 1897 (Ref. “Sons of France/Mary Goulter).
The McLachlans lived in Wellington for about 14 years. “Dugald McLachlan, Labourer” appeared on the Jury List there twice, in 1844 and 1845, his address being “Kaiwarra Road” and “Thorndon Quay” respectively.
Jane and Dugald had issue five children, half-siblings to John Cameron, CATHERINE ROBERTSON, Alexander Cleghorn, Hugh and Duncan i.e.
4.
(1) Isabella McIntyre McLachlan b. aboard the “Blenheim” 27.10.1840. and who married Isiah Wade Leigh. and left issue, as did some of her siblings. (See Author’s note at end of this Inset).
(2) Dugald, who may have died as an infant.
(3) Louis.
(4) Mary.
(5) Annie.
Their father was drowned in Wellington Harbour on 23/24 May 1854 after which his widow and her children moved to Turakina, Wairarapa, where they had kin. Two years later on 25.6.1856. Jane Cameron McLachlan aged 45 married Robert Brabazon aged 50. They prospered modestly, were well respected and liked and lived into their 80s. Later there was cordial contact between Jane McL. Brabazon’s children and her stepson Alexander’s family, their kin.
Alexander and his two brothers, in their teens and before their father’s death, drifted away from his home. Duncan and then Hugh (in 1858/9) went south eventually: they finished up at Tokomairiro, Otago where their sister CATHERINE and her husband WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL. with their growing family, were established. Alexander Cleghorn McLachlan, the eldest brother, went north and finally settled at Coromandel. He (and also his brother Hugh/Ewen) had real rapport with the Maori people and both spoke the language fluently. In 1861 Alexander married Mary Argyle Naysmith, linked with the “Duchess of Argyle” one of Auckland’s First Ships: issue nine children i.e.
1. Richard Louis b. 10.3.1862. Became a seaman and was later lost at sea. (photo on his father’s knee as an infant)
2. Henry Alexander (Harry) b. 1865
3. Annie Catherine (Ann) b. 1868. m. Spraggon.
4. John James (Jim) b. 1870.
5. Elizabeth Mary b. 6.2.1873, Thames, m. Edward Donovan.
6. Janet Isabella b. 1875, died as a child.
7. Mary Christina (May) b. 1876, m. White.
8. Margarita Ewena (Eene) b. 1879, m. von Rotter.
9. Janet Scott (Jen) b. 1882, m. Stent.
Alexander worked in timber and mining in the Coromandel area and served with credit with McLeod’s Armed Sawyers during the Waikato War: he was prominent in community organizations i.e. Fire Brigade,
5.
Rechabite and Good Templar Lodges etc. He died at Thames 20.3.1902 aged 72. His wife survived until 1918.
Duncan and Hugh (Ewen) still resident at Tokomairiro, Otago, both married in 1862. Duncan’s wife was Norah Lynch, an Irish Catholic: issue at least four i.e. William, Annie, Catherine (later Henly) and Alice Genevieve (later Bremner.) The two last were teachers at Milton, Otago. Alice Genevieve McL Bremner, who died in Auckland 5.5.1949, was survived by her husband William Bremner, a son and a daughter Gwen (Bremner) Otto.
Hugh (Ewen) married:
1. Margaret Brown an unusually tall Scottish girl. Issue two daughters, and
2. ? Issue a large family of sons and daughters. Olive Saunders of Auckland is a descendant of Hugh McLachlan, who died at Owaka, Otago, in 1906 aged 75.
Author’s Note: Incompleteness and any errors in the foregoing are due to my not having researched this NZ branch very far, as more direct descendants are doing it.
I am indebted for much of the material to:
1. Yvonne (White) McConnell)
2. Bernadine (White) Enright
3. Adrian Enright)
sisters (granddaughters of Alexander Cleghorn McLachlan) and his great grandson, Adrian, through their mother and grandmother Mary Christina McL. White
and
4. Brian Donovan, descended from Alexander Cleghorn McLachlan through Elizabeth Mary McL. Donovan.
[…]
Ann Abercromby Cleghorn
Born Jan 11 1797
Married Jan 31 1818
Their issue:
John Cameron McLachlan
Born 22 April 1817
A son
Born March 13 1819
Ewen McLachlan
Born May 12 1829
A son
Born July 14 1822
A son
Born Sept 9 1824
Catherine Robertson McLachlan
Born Nov 16 1825
Alexander McLachlan
Born July 2 1828
Ewen McLachlan
Born August 9 1831
A son
Born 1834
Duncan McLachlan
Born Dec. 15 1835
No. 11504
R.G. 112
NEW ZEALAND
Certified Copy of Entry of Death in the Registrar-General’s Office
Place of Registration WELLINGTON
1. When died 24 May 1854
2. Where died
3. Usual place of residence
Description of Deceased
4. Name and surname Dugald McLACHLAN
5. Profession or occupation Labourer
6. Sex and age Male. Between 50 and 60 years
Causes of Death
4. Causes of death and intervals between onset and death Found Drowned
8. Medical attendant by whom certified and date last seen alive
Parents
9. Name and surname of
10. Name and surname of mother
11. Maiden surname of mother
12. Profession or occupation of father
Burial
13. When and where buried
Where Born
14. Where born and how long in New Zealand
If Deceased was Married
15. Where married
16. At what age married
17. To whom married
18. Age of widow
19. Ages and sex of living issue M.
Certified to be a true copy of the above particulars Included in an entry of death in the records of the Registrar-General’s office.
Given under the seal of the Registrar-General at Wellington,
the 30th day of November 1976
The fee for this certificate is $2.00
CAUTION – Any person who (1) falsifies any of the particulars for this certificate. Or (2) uses it as true, knowing it to be false, is liable to prosecution under the Crimes Act 1961.
JOHN POPPELWELL’S siblings
1. George Poppelwell eldest child, first son of his parents b. Wellington 28.3.1844 reared at Dunedin and Tokomairiro educated by a tutor, then Fairfax Primary and Tokomairiro Grammar Schools, died at Tokomairiro on 19 January 1860 from a throat infection, aged 15 years 10 months. His Death Certificate describes him as “a stock man”.
2. Elizabeth Ann Poppelwell “Lizzie” second child, first daughter of her parents b. Sunwick, Berwickshire, Scotland, 26.12.1846 reared in Dunedin and Tokomairiro, educated by a tutor, then Fairfax Primary School, she then attended St. Mary’s Convent, Hill Street, Wellington for some years. She was there during 1860 when 13 years 10 months old and was back at Sunwick, Tokomairiro, in April 1863 but it isn’t known whether she had left school or was on holiday. She was then 16 years 4 months old. An obituary says she was at St. Mary’s for eight years but this must be incorrect. She was at Fairfax Primary School in 1856 when 10½ years old. Short in stature like her mother she had a dimple in her chin like her father. She had thick dark hair, a strong constitution and was a noted horsewoman. She looked interesting and in later years had an air of serene distinction.
In 1871 at 25 she married James Alexander Henderson, a Bank Officer, youngest son of a prominent prosperous clever family from Aberdeen: A sketchy outline of his background follows:
? Henderson, manufacturer of heavy dock machinery. Issue: four, one daughter and three sons, James Alexander being the youngest. The daughter married a Professor Campbell Brown, Liverpool University. They had no issue.
2.
John, went into the family business: issue six sons five daughters, They were all very tall, a big built stock.
The second son (name unknown) was educated at Cambridge, became a lawyer: issue two sons, one Keith, became a well known artist.
James Alexander, third son, educated Edinburgh and Cambridge, gold medallist in English, who emigrated to N.Z. for health reasons about 1863, became a bank officer. He left the bank after his marriage to Elizabeth Ann Poppelwell in 1871. They lived at Milton, Tokomairiro and Kaitangata in Otago and, after 1888, in Wellington.
Their seven children are listed hereunder:
Catherine Henderson “Kate” b. 1873 in Otago.
George Macdonald Henderson b. 1876 in Milton.
Augustine Stuart Henderson “Austie” b. 1877 in Otago.
James Poppelwell Henderson “Jimmie” b. 1880 at Kaitangata.
Dugald Campbell Henderson b. 1884 Otago.
Cuthbert Cyril Henderson “Cuddie” b. 1886 Otago,
Hilary Damien Henderson b, 1890 Wellington.
The Hendersons moved to Wellington in 1888 and lived first at Karori where James Alexander Henderson died in 1892 and is buried. At some stage a daughter Florence was adopted. The family moved to a central situation at 70 Tasman Street, opposite the Boys Institute (now a High School) and close to the Wellington Museum. The modest house is still in good condition and still occupied. Buckle Street Catholic church (since replaced on another site) was close. Elizabeth, always a devout Catholic, attended Mass there daily whenever possible. Her death occurred a few days after breaking a hip when, aged over 80, she slipped stepping over a gutter on the way to morning Mass. Warmly hospitable, she was a small, firm, capable but gentle person who reared her family well before and after James’ death. Her brother JOHN’s family, who visited regularly from Hawkes Bay. loved her and their Henderson cousins dearly. She is thought to have had a degree of second sight like her Highland mother. Her son Jimmie tells of a breakfast remark that they might soon be hearing from her brother Bastie who had been out of touch some time aid whose
3.
whereabouts were unknown. Sebastian Poppelwell arrived the same day. Austie Henderson and George’s daughter Dorothy (Challies) also felt convinced there was some feyness in the family.
The Henderson children had multi-talents, academic, musical, artistic and practical. James Henderson, Snr., tutored his elder children Kate, George and Austie and very likely the younger ones to some extent. However, Jimmie and those younger than him also attended Marist Brothers School, Wellington. Tertiary qualifications, sometimes more than one discipline, were gained by some of them.
An incomplete outline of the branch follows as far as it is known to the writer. It is thought more direct descendants have or are doing research on it.
Catherine Henderson “Kate” b. 1873 trained as a teacher and being also an accomplished musician, became a music teacher and later worked from choice for many years in Beggs Music store, Wellington, where she helped young singers further their careers. About 1937 she retired to Hastings, Hawkes Bay, where she lived with a companion, a Miss Cash, and later died there.
George Macdonald Henderson b. Milton 1876, qualified as an engineer then gained MA at Victoria University, Wellington, and became a teacher. In 1903 he married another teacher, Mary Preston Player. Ben Barry (see later) attended the wedding. Issue: One son, Hamish, and five daughters all of whom married and had issue. They were = Dorothy Henderson Challies d. 1985, Elizabeth H. Millen, Lindsay H. Thompson, Zenocrates H. Graham (previously Mountjoy), Hilary H. Bertinshaw.
George was a popular man, humorous, whimsical, good company, a fluent Maori speaker, a writer, and served as an Inspector of Native Schools. He retired in 1932.
Augustine Stuart Henderson “Austie” b. 1877 Otago: career in N.Z. Railways and after retirement was extremely successful in property development. In 1908 m. Gertrude Wichellow. Issue: one son Alan Stewart Henderson who became a bank officer and did not marry, and one daughter Grace Henderson Rogers, who did. Austie was a brilliant, highly individual and well informed man, a notable sportman when young, and lived to vigorous old age. He died in 1973 aged 96.
4.
James Poppelwell Henderson “Jimmie” b, 1880 Kaitangata, Otago, worked all his adult life at Lysaghts [Lysaght] Ltd. an iron firm. When they opened a branch in Auckland in 1921 he went there as manager and was still with the firm in 1949 when cancer forced him to retire. In 1909 he married Gertrude Shaw. He died on 28.5.1949. and his wife survived him for 9 years until 2.5.1958. Both were musically gifted and enjoyed it all their lives. They had two children: Noela Poppelwell Henderson b. 1913 at Wellington who became Sister Juliana of the Sisters of Mercy, taught school from 1940 to the early 1980s and now (1990) does administrative accountancy work for the order. Her broter [brother] Fergus Poppelwell Henderson married Pat McKenna. Fergus died suddenly on 25.6.1951 aged 33 years from a flu virus, leaving four children = Peter, Vincent, Rita and Anthony (posthumous), three of whom are married with issue, a fourth not yet married.
Dugald Campbell Henderson b. 1884, Otago, had a most successful career with the Bank of New Zealand. In 1920 he married Edith Annie Pain, no issue. She went blind in late life, and predeceased her husband who lived until 92 years of age in vigorous health. He died in Wellington in April 1976 and his estate benefited Catholic education in that city very considerably, St. Patrick’s town college and St. Mary’s among them. His cousin Vivienne (Poppelwell) Palmer’s two sons Malcolm and Bruce attended the College and her sister (another cousin of Dugald’s) Ellinore (Poppelwell) Barry’s three sons Kevin, Neil and Bernard Barry all had teaching appointments at St. Pat’s when it was on the old site near the old Buckle Street Catholic Church. Kevin and Neil Barry financed an extra period of fulltime University study for their MAs by these teaching posts at St. Patrick’s town college. Vivienne (Poppelwell) Palmer helped Dugald greatly in his very late years by regular visits and assistance, thus enabling him to maintain his independence.
Cuthbert Cyril Henderson “Cuddle” b. 1886 Otago. In 1919 he married Mary Beatrice McLeod, no issue. Seems to have been less academic than his brothers but a thoroughly likeable kindly man with a merry nature. He lived in Gisborne in 1926.
Hilary Damien Henderson b. 1890 Wellington, served in World War I, visited Sunwick, Berwickshire, his grandfather’s boyhood home and was photographed under a curved “Sunwick” gate arch (since gone). He worked with the Survey Department and married late to Ann Bozanti of Christchurch. No issue. Hilary died on throat cancer.
Florence Henderson, an adopted daughter, was a sturdy robust girl. She married M. McGary: issue three children. Her descendants have kept in touch with her adoptive family into modern times.
3. Catherine Poppelwell “Kate” 2nd daughter, 3rd child of her parents b. Dunedin 12.3.1849, reared Dunedin and Tokomairiro, educated tutor, Fairfax Primary School, and St. Mary’s Convent, Hill Street, Wellington, At eleven years of age she was described by her father in a letter to her uncle Alexander McLachlan as “Kate, a sprightly lass as mischievous as her mother”. In 1867 she was bridesmaid to Catherine Regan (a Sunwick helper) on her
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marriage to James Keppel. In 1869 at 20, she married A.J. Fergusson of Dunedin, a doctor, being the first of the Poppelwell family of her generation to marry. They had two sons = Vincent Gregor b. 1873 and Reginald Milner b. 1875. Vincent studied medicine like his father and visited the United Kingdom, where he met and was made welcome by his Poppelwell relatives. He also enjoyed visiting his kin by marriage, the Hendersons of Aberdeen and was startled by the resemblance the artist Keith Henderson bore to his New Zealand cousin Augustine Henderson of Wellington. Vincent left no issue. Reginald married and left issue: Alex, Lindsay, Dorothy and Daisy. Kate (Poppelwell) Fergusson’s husband died on 25.9.1897 in Dunedin and (according to one death notice) Kate herself died in Wellington on 18.4.1904. Cemetery records indicate that she was buried in Dunedin.
4. William Poppelwell v “Bill”, 4th child, 2nd son of his parents b. Dunedin 31.12.1850 reared Dunedin and Tokomairiro, educated tutor, Fairfax Primary School and Tokomairiro Grammar. In his early years he took a full part in Milton’s developing social life, being noticably [noticeably] interested in the Volunteer Movement: he held a commission in the Bruce Rifles and attended Military Reviews. This Militia was, in the south, used mainly as a gold protection force. Bill farmed under his father at Sunwick and later in partnership with his brother, JOHN at Mt. Misery/Rocky Valley/Eliotvale (abutting?) and at Clover Meadows, Seaward Downs, Southland. About 1888 he turned from farming via some fellmongering (in 1889), to engineering and became a pioneer of the gold dredging industry. In the early 1890s he was associated with McGeorge Bros, in putting a small bucket/dredge into Deep Stream. In the early 1900s when the industry boomed
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he was manager and engineer (dredgemaster was the contemporary term) to several gold dredges in Otago and Westland. In 1898 he was working in that capacity at Alexandra South. When the industry waned he did contracting work in Otago. He had a quiet disposition and became very deaf in his later years, probably due to the machinery work. He was a handsome fair man with a rather long face and lighter bones than some of his siblings. He had a look of his Highland Uncle Alexander McLachlans. (He and his great nephew Leonard Cassin, grandson of JOHN POPPELWELL, as young men closely resemble each other in appearance.)
In 1881 when 31 years of age William Poppelwell v married Elizabeth Henry of Dunedin, called “Aunt William” by his brother JOHN’s descendants. It is thought all their five children listed below, were born in Otago/Southland.
Ivy Fenwick Poppelwell b. 1882
George William Bell Poppelwell b. 1884
Henry Kearns Poppelwell b. 1886
Colin McLachlan Poppelwell b. 1888
Cecil Edmonde Poppelwell b. 1890.
William Poppelwell v retired at 70 years of age. He and Elizabeth celebrated their Golden Wedding in 1931; On 4 July 1934 at his home in York Place, Dunedin, aged 84 years, William died, survived by his widow (who died 9.4.1946 aged 93) and three of their five children = Ivy Poppelwell) Ginn better known by her professional name “Anna” Ginn, of Wellington and Henry Kearns Poppelwell and Cecil Edmonde Poppelwell both of Dunedin.
An incomplete outline of this branch follows as far as the writer knows it.
Ivy Fenwick Poppelwell later better known by her professional name “Anna Ginn” eldest child and only daughter of her parents, b. 10.10.1882. She physically resembled her mother. She is also said to have been much like her older Poppelwell aunts in many ways during her later years. A warm generous caring person of strong personality and marked musical gifts, in her teens she lived as companion to her Aunt Fenwick, her mother’s sister, who fostered and financed her musical education
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and, after her death, left a bequest which enabled Ivy to continue her singing training overseas including work with Dame Nellie Melba and also in Germany. She has a fine mezzo singing voice and had a long career as pianist, accompanist, solo concert singer as well as music and voice teacher into late life. In 1914, aged 32, she married George Alfred Ginn a prosperous tea merchant older than herself, and not entirely robust in health, who died about 12 years after their marriage. They had one son Russel Ginn who went into Lloyd’s Insurance. She and her husband lived at Karori, Wellington for a while then established their home at 3 Collina Terrace, just off Molesworth Street, a few hundred yards from Parliament Buildings. It is an attractive square two storey house raised above Collina Terrace, a quiet little, known street giving access to only three or four houses. Part of the furniture of this home was the dining table of her grandparents, William Bell and Catherine McLachlan Poppelwell. St. Mary’s Convent, Hill Street, where her aunts Kate and Elizabeth were early boarders, abuts on the back of the property and the Bascilica [Basilica] of the Sacred Heart also in Hill Street, is just round the corner: here she attended daily Mass whenever possible. A devout Catholic Christian she was a wonderful counseller, [counsellor] friend and helper to a wide circle which included young relatives. During her life time she travelled overseas a good deal, to Australia, the U.K. and Europe and had turned 80 when she made her last holiday trip to England. She had her Collina Terrace home converted into flats and lived comfortably there till her death in January 1971. She was still teaching late the previous year.
Her son Russel married a Canadian, Ellinore nee Watson, with a daughter, Margo, from a previous wartime marriage. They had four more daughters = Joanna, Diana, Victoria and Adair, all artistic like their mother in various fields. Victoria is a gifted photographer/writer.
George William Bell Poppelwell b. 1884 left no issue. He died in Dunedin 28.1.1914 aged 29.
Henry Kearns Poppelwell b. 1886 educated Christian Brothers, served in World War I and while on leave in 1918 visited Berwick-upon-Tweed and served as altar boy for the Mass-in-Perpetuity of that year arranged by his great-grandparents George Bell and Elizabeth English Poppelwell. It was celebrated during his stay in Berwick. In 1920 he married Ethel Maude Hart of Lawrence, Otago. An accountant with Sligo Bros., he became a partner in 1925 and in 1930 the firm’s member of the Exchange. A leading lay Roman Catholic, he held many offices in church activities including the St. Vincent de Paul Society and in Catholic education. As a young man he was a successful Rugby player. Music was also a strong interest. He conducted St. Joseph’s Cathedral Choir and was a member of the Royal Male and R.S.A. Choirs. He died suddenly at 60 on 16 November 1946 while mowing a lawn at his home at Roslyn, Dunedin. His widow survived him and died 19.2.1950. They had no issue.
Colin McLachlan Poppelwell b. 1888 d. 17.9.1932 aged 44 years. He seems to have died without issue. He served in Otago Infantry Battalion, NZEF, World War I, and once visited the JOHN POPPELWELL home in Sylvan Road, Hastings: they found him good company. No other information.
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* Donaldson
Cecil Edmonde Poppelwell “Eddie” b. 1890. In 1918 married Amelia Bathhurst Issue four: William vi, Hilary. Myra and Colin, c Hilary no issue: *William vi left four sons = Stephen, Brian, Kevin and Graham. Myra issue two = Nicholas and Elizabeth. Colin issue four = Alison, Leslie, Janet and Christine. Amelia (Bathhurst) Poppelwell died 15.5.1953 aged 64 years and Cecil Edmonde Poppelwell, her husband, died 6.5.1967 aged 77 years.
5. JOHN POPPELWELL 5th child, third son, see MAINLINE.
6. David Poppelwell 6th child, fourth son of his parents b. 5.1.1855 at Tokomairiro, educated Fairfax Primary School and Tokomairiro Grammar School. He became a chemist after an apprenticeship with H.J. O’Leary. He lived and worked at Timaru and may have had his own business there as he later did (1894/?) in Hastings Street, Hastings, Hawkes Bay. David was musical, a violinist. He came to Dunedin once to have his right or “bow” wrist x/rayed, having fallen off a horse and broken it following a convivial evening. “Just sober enough to break my wrist instead of my neck” was how he put it. With care and exercises there were no permanent ill effects. He is said to have been his sister Polly’s (Mary FrancesMonkman) favourite brother. He didn’t marry. He was interested in photography. By the mid 1890s David was living in Hastings, Hawkes Bay practising as a chemist. He may have returned south at some time and later (post retirement?) he worked outside casually on sheep stations. After 1931 he lived at the home of his brother and sister-in-law JOHN and MARGARET POPPELWELL Sylvan Road, Hastings. A niece remembers him in his old age as a neat, clean, cheerful, lively little man. He died on 4.11.1937 having spent his last year or two at the home of his niece (JOHN’S daughter) Miriam <Poppelwell> Cassin at 809 Clive Street, Hastings and was buried at Hastings.
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7. Ann Abercrombie/ Poppelwell “Annie” 7th child, third daughter of her parents b. Tokomairiro 18.2.1857 reared at and Primary education at Tokomairiro. Prior to 1871 (when Bishop Moran became Catholic Bishop of southern New Zealand and made Catholic education a strong priority) there was a large Catholic School at Milton run under the aegis of the Parish Priest with lay teachers. Among these were the Misses Poppelwell (Elizabeth and/or Kate?), Lynch and McLachlan (kinswomen). The date this school opened is uncertain. It was before 1871 and later, in 1891, came into the care of the Dominican Sisters. Ann would have attended it if it was operating during her schooldays and, if not, would have been at the Milton Primary School. Her post-primary schooling may have started at St. Mary’s, Wellington, like her elder sisters but most likely would be at the Dominican Sisters’ School in Dunedin which opened in 1871 when Ann was 14. In 1872 a Poppelwell daughter (unnamed) was a pupil there. It was most likely Ann who turned 15 that year but, failing her, could only have been her next youngest sister Charlotte who was 14.
Less is known about Ann (and Sebastian and George) than about some of their siblings. hair. At 22 she was a pretty girl with thick dark hair. She didn’t marry and, after her father’s death., lived at Milton, Mosgiel and Dunedin with her widowed mother until the latter’s death in 1900. Then aged 43 and grown very like her father in appearance, she lived in Wellington where, aged 77, she was still alive in 1934. Her youngest sister (Mary Frances) Polly, then also resident in Wellington, was very fond of her and kept in close touch in Ann’s later years. Ann also had extended holidays in Hawke’s Bay with her niece Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin.
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8. Charlotte Mary Veronica Poppelwell “Lottie”, 8th child fourth daughter of her parents b. Tokomairiro 29.12.1858, reared and primary education at Tokomairiro, post-primary at St. Dominic’s, Dunedin, as her sister Annie (above) was. During term time both most likely stayed with their elder sister, Mrs. Kate Fergusson, as their younger sister Polly did later.
Charlotte had less claim to formal good looks than her sisters. Fairer and, when young, somewhat plump of face, she was nevertheless very attractive with a warm bubbling personality and had a host of admirers. At 24 she chose Augustus Henry Syme Mansford, a solicitor 12 years her senior. After their marriage on 30 November 1882 they lived at Gore. About 1890 they went to Melbourne, Australia, where other members of Augustus’ family lived. They were there in 1898. They returned to Milton, N.Z. for a time in the early 1900s (1904/1908?) where Augustus managed the Pottery works there but eventually, by 1926, had made their permanent home in Melbourne. They had no children of their own and Charlotte was very fond of her husband’s nieces and nephews: she helped pay their educational expenses. Under her influence some converted to Catholicism although not all those who did remained with that faith. It is thought Augustus died first. Charlotte was still alive in Melbourne in 1934 then aged 76.
9. Sebastian George Alexander Poppelwell “Bastie”, 9th child fifth son of his parents b. Tokomairiro 26.6.1861 reared and educated Tokomairiro at Milton Primary School until Milton Catholic School opened. If the latter had a secondary section he attended there, if not he went to the excellent Tokomairiro Grammar School which his elder brothers attended. Of medium colouring rather than dark, he had his father’s facial bone structure and strong regular features …. a good looking young man. He was musical
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like so many of his siblings. By the early 1890 during his young adult “working around” stage he/had discovered Hawkes Bay for his siblings, so was indirectly responsible for the good results that came to several of them there. Not a lot is known of his own adult years. On 26.6.1889 at Napier aged 28 he married Margaret Dorothea Pearse aged 27 who was connected to the Garner family of Palmerston North. They had six children; Frances Bell their only daughter, George Xavier Bell, Albert William Bell “Bert”, Frank Erhard Bell, John Guy Bell “Guy”, and Henry Witan Bell “Harry”.
Contemporary Trade Directories list Sebastian as a Commission Agent from 1894/9 and also as a Government Land Valuer in 1897: after 1902 he is shown as a flax miller. Place of residence is given as Napier, Hastings and once Paki Paki. He lived at various addressed in Hastings before 205 Miller Street, a comfortable, roomy, rather plain wooden house with wide colonial verandahs, became the family home about 1918. He was choirmaster at Sacred Heart Church a few blocks away, where also his five sons served altar boys. Sebastian died on 12.9.1939 aged 78. Margaret, his wife, an attractive woman with an oval madonna face and also musically gifted, predeceased him on 28.4.1933, aged 71 years. They are buried at Hastings in a family plot as is their second son Bert (A.W.B. Poppelwell) and a granddaughter Margaret Mary Poppelwell, daughter of their eldest son George Xavier Bell Poppelwell.
An incomplete outline of this branch as far as the writer knows it follows:
Frances Bell Poppelwell “Bell” b. 18.4.1890 m. Phil Shone Issue four i.e. Margaret, Marie, John and ? , the last three having issue i.e.
Marie m ? Richardson: issue Mary Later Weld) and Sally.
John m ? ? : issue Michael, Gerald, Susan & Janet.
? m ? ? : issue Edna, Francis,’ Penelope, Martin and Mary.
Phil Shone, Bell’s husband, was a radio announcer in Gisborne.
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George Xavier Bell Poppelwell b. 3.12.1891 m. Ellen Mary Sirett, a nurse. They met at Napier Hospital when he was invalided home after World War I. Issue five i.e. Margaret Mary b. July 1922 d. 5.8.1923 at 13 months, and four others: Michael, Alexander, Elizabeth and William. The latter two had issue:
Elizabeth “Beth” m. ? Hewitt. Issue Gerald, John & Geoffrey twins. (John is a doctor in Australia, has issue five including twins).
William m. ? ? Issue Anne, Mary, John, Catherine, Mark, Elizabeth, Matthew.
Albert William Bell Poppelwell “Bert” b. 8.4.1894 d. 8.11.1911 aged 17.
Frank Erhard Bell Poppelwell “Frank” b. 1896 became an estate agent. m. ? 1913. No issue. Died at Ranfurley [Ranfurly] Returned Services Home, Auckland.
John Guy Bell Poppelwell “Guy” b. 1897 m ? Bean, Issue one daughter Elizabeth b. early 1930s. Guy died at Suva 27.9.1933 aged 36. He was a Bank officer.
Henry Witan [Witen] Bell Poppelwell “Harry” b. 1899 m. Janet Gordon, September 1934 at St. Benedict’s, Auckland, both gifted musically and active in community, musically and otherwise. Church, civic and stage were among their interests. Harry had several Men’s Outfitters shops, was a civic leader with flair and energy and was awarded a MBE in 1971 for such work. Issue four sons i.e. Gordon, David, Michael and John, the last three having issue, among them =
David: Martin and Bridget.
Michael: Richard and Mark.
John: John, Margaret and Andrew,
and others.
Janet and Harry Poppelwell lived in Charles Street, Hastings, all their married life and died in 1988 a few months apart, Harry aged 89 on 5.9.1988.
10. Dougald Louis Poppelwell i “Dougald” 10th child, sixth son of his parents b. 2.7.1863 at Tokomairiro, reared there, educated first at Milton Primary School and then Milton Catholic School (which opened during his primary schooldays) then Christian Brothers, Dunedin and Otago University where he studied and qualified in law, having spent some years with the law firm of Donald Reid in Milton. He had a 12 months gap between primary and secondary schooling helping at home and again worked in Reid’s law office for some years before deciding to complete his law degree. At one point he spent six months as a pupil teacher at the Christian Brothers, Dunedin, but decided against teaching as a career. He was truly a man of many seasons with talents to match. The breaks in his formal education, occasioned by family upheaval following his father’s breakdown in
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health and consequent financial reverses, seem only to have broadened his interests and activities which included band music, sports, native flora and fauna, civic and church affairs. His own and the descendants of his extended family are indebted to him for much information not only about his own life and times but also those of his parents and siblings. This is because he was also a prolific writer and much of his work has survived. He was also much written about because of his 45 years of civic work in and around Gore where he set up a law practice in 1892, having just qualified as a barrister and solicitor. He also wrote and published scientific papers and addresses on native flora and fauna and his contribution to the Catholic Church earned him a papal cross in 1916.
Handwritten – Dugald Poppelwell was Mayor of Gore
Flossy fair as a child, he grew into a good looking lad, the darkest of his family. Physically vigorous all his long life, he was an innovative, energetic, practical administrator and held just about every public office in Gore at some time during his career, including those of Mayor and J.P. as well as cultural and sporting positions. Much of his father’s writings and other family material was lost when Dougald’s legal office was burnt down in the 1920s but he set about rewriting from memory what he could recall of it.
In 1894 aged 31 he married Nora Green daughter of a prominent early Southland settler. They had eight children:
Handwritten – Father of Marie Henry
William Thomas b 1896/1975 = 79 years. Issue see below
Harold Milton b. 25.1.1897/1972 = 75 years. Issue see below
Eric Francis b. 1898 d. 1898
Moana Eileen b. 1900/1976 = 76 years (Sister M. Cuthbert RSM)
Oswald Roy b. 19.4,1902 d. 24.4.1902 = 8 days
Mary Catherine b 1906/1974 = 68 years (Sister M. Joan RSM)
Dugald Louis ii “Louis” b. 1914/1964 = 50 years Issue see below
A son (untraced) who died in infancy “Sebastian ??”
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An incomplete outline of this branch follows, as far as the writer knows it.
William Thomas P. m. (1) Jessie Campbell (2) Rose Swanson Craig. Issue: Joyce Marie m.
Henry Fleury, Issue: Peter*, Christine, Ruth*, Victor, Donna*,Barry, Juliette, Angela. (* denotes issue)
William Thomas Poppelwell served as a Rifleman in 2nd N.Z.R.B., B Company, during World War I. He died 8.4.1975 aged 79, his wife surviving him.
Harold Milton P. became a lawyer and worked with his father. He served in World War I as a 2nd Lieutenant. Post war he was active in R.S.A. and Catholic lay life. A keen sportsman and outdoor man, his interests included Rugby, hunting and duck shooting. On 24.4.1930 he married Ivy Margaret Hiskins. Issue seven i.e.
Pauline Mary b. 1931 m. Dennis Whiteside. Issue: Judith, Patricia, Jeffrey, (all with issue) and Stephen.
William Norris b. 1932 m. Vonda Soane. Issue Brian and Chris.
Alister John b. 1933 m. Alvena Todd. Issue six: Teresa*, Bernadette*. Sharon, Christopher, Barbara*, Martin*. (* denotes issue).
Ruth Nora b. 1934 m. Kevin Creedy. Issue five: Denise* Philip, Mary Ann, Paula, Michael. (* denotes issue).
Terence Dugald b. 1939 m. Shirley Claridge. Issue: Hamish (adopted), Sandra (lived one day), Simon, Oliver, Brenda adopted).
Christopher b. 1941 (Brother Christopher F.M.S.)
Cecelia Ann “Cecily” b. 1946 m. David Fisher, Issue: Rebecca and Laura.
Harold Milton Poppelwell died in 1972 aged 75 years, his wife surviving him.
Dugald Louis P. ii “Louis” his parents youngest child, b. 1914. He trained initially in law, served in World War II in the R.N.Z.A.F. as Flight Lieutenant. Post war he trained as a surveyor and worked for the Southland Catchment Board for many years. Interests were R.N.Z.A.F. Association, the Air Training Corps, and the Boy Scout movement. He married Venia Muriel Brazil. Issue two: Lesley Jean b. 1947 m. David Walker = two children, and David m. Jean?
Dougald Louis Poppelwell i died at Gore on 23.9.1939 aged 76. His widow died in 1940.
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11. George Matthew Bell Poppelwell “George” (his Christian names are sometimes shown in different order) 11th child, seventh son of this parents b. 23.12.1864 at Tokomairiro, reared and educated there at Milton Catholic School (and if that school had no secondary department) at Tokomairiro Grammar School. He worked with his brothers William v and JOHN at Mt. Misery/Rocky Valley/Eliotvale farm properties and later at Clover Meadows, Seaward Downs, Southland. He also worked in both districts as a contractor and flax miller. In 1890 after his brothers had sold Clover Meadows and gone into other work George aged 27 was living at Milton again. In October 1891 he accepted office in the newly formed branch of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society. On 10.8.1892 aged nearly 28 he married Ellen Harnett, 26, daughter of an Anderson’s Bay Police Officer. William McLachlan of Milton and Julia Harnett of Anderson’s Bay were witnesses.
They had two children, a daughter Kate b. 1893 and a son John Kate b. 1893 b. 3.9.1895. They lived in Milton in 1893 and later at Dunedin.
1896/7 found them, with George listed as an Artilleryman, living *near Wanganui. He was a platelayer of Kaitoke*” in 1896/7 and the same in 1902. at 44 Austin Street, Wellington/ Between 1899/1905 they lived at Lyttleton, in London and Canterbury Streets, George being described on the Electoral Roll as an Artilleryman still. He is on the Roll and elsewhere at other times described as a flax miller, contractor, labourer, clerk (1906/9) and as a Mariner (i.e. on his Death Certificate). They moved in 1906 to Christchurch (presumably after the heart condition from which he died was diagnosed) to 342 Asaph Street, after which he worked as a clerk till not long before his death in 1910.
These meagre facts are all that the writer has been able to gather about his adult life, but It is evident he was a very pleasant
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person with his full share of the family puckish humour. His kindness and sensitive understanding of his brother JOHN’s very young children at Clover Meadows is surely unusual in a young man in his early 20s. NELL. (Ellinore Clare) the only Poppelwell baby born at Clover Meadows, who knew him till she was ten years old in 1897 when her family went north to Hawke’s Bay, left this snippet about him:
“One instance of Uncle George’s brand of humour…when he lived
“in town he impulsively pounced on a grave matron passing his
“gate, firmly gripped her shoulders, and ran her down on
“twinkling feet, to the tram stop at the foot of the hill.
He “whisked off before she had time to turn and get breath to
“unburden her soul to him”.
George Matthew Bell Poppelwell died on 18 September 1910 at 342 St. Asaph Street, Christchurch aged 45 years from heart disease of four years’ standing at the time of his death. He is described as a mariner on his Death Certificate and is buried at Linwood, Christchurch. Thereafter his wife ran a boardinghouse. An incomplete outline of this branch follows, as far as the writer knows it. A direct descendant is doing research on it.
Catherine Poppelwell “Kate” b. 1893 (d. 1928) m. in 1914 to George Albert Gill: issue = Joan Catherine b. 1916: Edna Joyce b. 1917 (d. 1973): Patrick b. 1920, all of whom married and had issue.
John “Jack” b. 1895 d. 1913. He was killed in a Railway accident near Cheviot, North Canterbury, aged 18 years.
12. Mary Frances Poppelwell “Polly” 12th and youngest child, fifth daughter of her parents b. 17.12.1866 at Tokomairiro, reared there and educated at Milton Catholic School and St. Dominic’s Convent, Dunedin, living during term time with her older sister Mrs. Kate (Poppelwell) Fergusson. Her good carriage, thick dark hair and regular features do not achieve beauty and her wilful little chin makes “pretty” inappropriate. But Nature was generous
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to her. She was warm and vital, had a vivid imagination, was frankly temperamental and had an enchanting mezzo singing voice of fine range, quality and eloquence. Her musical education was thorough, her voice being developed and trained by Mother Catherine at the Convent, a Miss Wyld and Herr Benno Scherek (for seven years) of Dunedin and H.H. Wells of Christchurch. She had an appealing stage presence and was in demand as a concert performer. It is possible her music had a bearing on her marriage breakdown although incompatibility also seems likely. At 23 she was a professional music teacher in Dunedin living in Moray Place prior to her marriage. At 24, on 26.12.1890 she married Robert Boyle Monkman, an accountant, of Dunedin. They had four children: Stella and Dorothy, who both died young, Edna and Noel.
Noel was about five when his parents separated and for a time had an unhappy disrupted childhood.
Polly earned her living as a speech, singing and music teacher, and concert artist. Her voice conveyed emotion as well as its other qualities. Among the stories of her which survive which left hardly a dry eye in the audience. Another moving song in her repertoire was “Under the Linden” but she never sang this after losing her daughters.
Following Robert Monkman’s early death on 3.2.1904 from rheumatic fever complications, she married in 1906 William Dempster, thereafter using “Madame Monkman-Dempster” as her professional name. They lived and worked in Dunedin, Christchurch and later Wellington, where their home was the spacious Pirie Street flat later occupied by her niece Rene (Poppelwell) Biggs and her children. About 1937 when Polly was in her early 70s and
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troubled with bronchitis they moved to Cairns, Queensland, near where her son Noel and his wife lived. Before leaving New Zealand she visited Hawkes Bay relatives including her niece NELL (POPPELWELL) BARRY, who warmly admired her.
An incomplete outline of this branch follows as far as the writer knows it.
Dorothy b. 1892 died in Dunedin at 11 years on 28.4.1903 from goitre, a disorder then difficult to treat.
Edna b. 1894, a warm personality who established and ran early kindergartens m. Ted Carr (or Carter) Issue: one son Ronald.
Noel b. 1896 m. Kitty Gelhoir (sp?) No issue. His Uncle David Poppelwell encouraged and helped him learn photography which became a lifetime interest and enthusiasm and also, eventually, his livlihood [livelihood]. They lived in Queensland where he studied and photographed and micro biological life of parts of the Great Barrier Reef. He became a pioneer of underwater phoptography [photography] and engaged in most aspects of early film making = directing, production, camera work and running theatres. He wrote at least two books “Quest of the Curly Tailed Horses” with some auto biographical content, not all of it considered accurate, and “Escape to Adventure” on natural underwater life, photography etc. Both Noel and Kitty were gifted musicians, she a pianist and he with a cello. They were members of the Sydney Orchestra at one time. Noel was included in several issues of the Australian “Who’s Who” and ‘made’ the New Zealand equivalent once during his later years.
Stella b. 1898 died in Wellington at 18 years on 1.9.1916, also from goitre.
1. The Henderson home, 70 Tasman St. Wgton.
2. Elizabeth (Poppelwell) Henderson c. 1926
3. Her Family: back l/r. Dugald & George
Middle l/r. Catherine James & Augustine
Front l/r. Hilary & Cuthbert, c. 1892
4. back l/r. Dugald, George, James, Cuthbert & Augustine.
Front. Hilary. c. 1928.
5. Noela Poppelwell Henderson (Sister Julie, Mercy Order) 1985.
McCORMICK Line
Not a great deal is known of James McCormick father of Henry Carr McCormick and grandfather of MARGARET McCORMICK POPPELWELL wife of JOHN POPPELWELL WILLIAM and CATHERINE McLACHLAN POPPELWELL’S third son.
He was a Catholic born in Ireland in 1801.
A shred of family tradition, which came through the family his youngest N.Z. grandson William McCormick, may refer to the family’s place of origin in Ireland. It was long felt to refer to the area of Scotland where he and his wife reared their children in Dumbartonshire, but close research has shown it cannot. So the Irish area where James McCormick was born is a possibility. It is unrevealing but interesting. “A small village, practically all the people were McCormicks. There were only two churches English and Catholic…….”
It seems James McCormick and his brother Henry emigrated to Scotland and were living at Kirkliston village near Edinburgh in the mid – 1820s. Henry lived there till he died but James moved away in the mid – 1830s to Dumbartonshire in West Scotland.
About 1827 James McCormick in his late twenties had married Scottish born Mary Kerr aged about 16 of whom even less is known. A letter dated 18.8.1892 written by their son Henry Carr McCormick has survived and describes meeting an 80-year-old woman in Kirkliston, his birthplace. She had known his uncle Henry McCormick, the latter’s wife and daughter Ann and also “his brother Jaime McCormick well (my father) and his big braw hieland wife. She was a grand woman and I knew her well……”
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James and Mary Kerr McCormick lived at Kirkliston until the mid-1830s. There their first two children were born, Henry Carr McCormick a redhead and Mary McCormick in 1828 and 1833 respectively.
James McCormick is variously described as a grocer, a labourer, a tea dealer (Census Returns 1841 and 1851) and a master tailor (family tradition through Henry Carr McCormick’s descendants). He was no doubt all of those things at different and/or overlapping periods as the family worked to improve its position.
1841 they lived in Mitchell Street, Alexandria in the Vale of Leven, Dumbartonshire on the River Leven which runs six winding miles from Loch Lomond into the River Clyde. With them lived Henry and Mary and four more children : James, John, Susan and three-months-old Catherine. Also there on Census Day 1841 was a Henry McCormick, labourer, aged 40, born in Ireland, probably James McCormick’s brother on a visit from Kirkliston. The younger children’s birthplaces (plus Jessie and Anne born after 1841) are given as : Dumbarton, Lanark at Glasgow, Ballagon, Mill of Haldane, and Alexandria, and may have been where they were registered rather than the actual birthplaces. All except Lanark, Glasgow (Susan b. 1837) are in the Vale of Leven.
At this period the Vale of Leven was the site of bleachfields, printfields and dyefields for the cotton industry. The River Leven’s steady flow and relative freedom from mineral and organic ingredients made it naturally suitable for the work and resulted in thriving employment opportunities there. The villages of Alexandria, Renton and Jamestown along the river bank were built to house cotton workers.
However, neither James nor his wife Mary worked in the industry. He had a tailoring and tea dealing business, employing six men and Mary ran an inn next door. She supervised the workers during James’ regular absences travelling into the Highlands buying homespun and getting orders for garments = and incidentally registering births (?). He was literate
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and when asked, read and wrote letters etc. for those along his way.
A family tradition mentions Glencoe, site of the tragic massacre, as an area where James McCormick travelled on business but GLEN CROE north of Arrochar on Upper Loch Lochmond seems more likely, it being closer to his home and more populous. (Ref. ‘Recollections of a tour in Scotland’ by Dorothy Wordsworth, pub.1803: page 121 describes the area)
By the 1851 Census James McCormick was a widower aged 50. He and his eight children, ranging from Henry aged 24, to Anne 6, then lived at Main Street, Renton, Parish of Cardross, Dumbartonshire. Family tradition has it that they moved after 1845 following Mary Kerr McCormick’s death. Henry was now a joiner and cabinetmaker and Mary ,18, and James, 16, worked in the printfields. Susan, 14, was housekeeper and John, 12, Catherine, 10, and Jessie, 8, were scholars with Anne, 6, not yet started school.
On 5 November 1853 Henry Carr McCormick of the Parish of Cardross and Margaret Agnew of the Parish of Bonhill, both in the Vale of Leven had their banns proclaimed for the first time and on 22 November 1853 they were married. Tall dark haired Maggie b. 1832 who also worked in the printfields, was quiet religious and reserved with a gentle disposition. Little is known of her family or upbringing except that she was born in Northern Ireland, orphaned, and brought up in a Presbyterian Minister’s family who may have been kin. She had a foster brother William A. Agnew who used “Cousin” to address Maggie’s husband. Her own surname is unknown. She converted to her husband’s faith on marriage. In later years her children and grandchildren were awed by her knowledge of the Bible. There are Catholic Agnews in Antrim, Northern Ireland, but nothing to connect Maggie’s Protestant
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foster family (kin?) with them.
This sketchy background can best be filled out by considering Henry’s and Maggie’s qualities in maturity……responsible, reliable, resourceful, clear thinking, industrious, capable, conscientious, strict, careful. James and Mary McCormick (which was the redhead I wonder?) and whoever reared Maggie Agnew had every reason to be proud of their offspring which also says something creditable about themselves.
Henry McCormick had become a ships’ carpenter (a ‘house wright’ on one Certificate), making and fitting interiors of vessels at a Clyde Shipyard, shipbuilding being then a major industry in the region.
Maggie Agnew McCormick encouraged her husband to widen his skills by attending night school, so he learned, among other things, to draw plans. Henry had a positive, practical, inquiring mind, a gift for robust writing, a dry humour and could be peppery. He was always a devoted husband with a protective attitude towards Maggie, as had their family when adult. Letters he wrote her in their seventies during a holiday absence have been described as ‘mature love letters’.
After his father James McCormick’s death between 1851 and 1859 Henry and Maggie decided to emigrate in search of better lives for their children and his four younger siblings, now his responsibility = John, 17, Catherine, 16. Jessie. 13, and Anne 11. Mary, James and Susan all young adults, remained in Scotland.
To raise the £104 ($208) needed for assisted passages for the party Maggie skimped, saved and managed while Henry fiddled at dances, made furniture in addition to his shipwork and even occasionally poached. In late life in N.Z. despite her stern Scottish conscience, Maggie was known to mildly boast that she was never without a barrel
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of pickled salmon…but never a whisper in Scotland for fear of their harsh game laws.
On 17 August 1859 when Henry was 31 and Maggie 27 they sailed from Glasgow on the “Sevilla” 660 tons, Captain H. Kerr, and arrived at Dunedin on 5 December 1859. Henry’s sister Catherine disembarked at Australia with her new husband, a Mr. Jay (they later came to Dunedin to live) and Henry and Maggie’s baby son died late in the voyage. In New Zealand they had four more children and the six survived them. James and Mary Jane (born 9.30 pm on 8.3.1856 at Renton) later O’Donnell, and baby Henry lost en route, were born in Scotland and MARGARET (later POPPELWELL), Henry ii, John and William in New Zealand.
The family prospered in the new country, Henry building small churches (Milton’s first Catholic Church in 1869 was one) and at least one lighthouse as well as general building, furniture etc. There were trade ups and downs, of course, necessitating him working away from home from time to time as was the pattern of the period = at Tokomairiro, Timaru (Maggie was with him there) and elsewhere. In 1869 removal to Fiji was considered but nothing seems to have come of it. However, in time the Henry McCormicks achieved modest prosperity from their industry, skills and good management.
They also had their share of sorrow. In addition to the baby, Henry’s youngest sister Ann died at 18 years on 27.7.1867 and John, his brother, was blinded in a whip accident and eventually died at the Auckland Blind Institute.
His sister, Catherine, and her husband, a carpenter, settled in Dunedin and had five or six children. The other sister Jessie married (1) a Mr. Barnes and (2) a Mr. Liddle. Her daughter (Barnes) became an actress and dancer in the United States under
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the name of “Lottie Devine”. She is thought to have died young of cancer leaving a young son.
From late March 1892 when in their early sixties Henry and Maggie made an eight-month holiday trip to Scotland travelling much of the time on RMS “Orient”. At Hobartown, Tasmania, their first stopover, Henry posted a letter to his son-in-law JOHN (Jack) POPPELWELL at Mt. Zehan, Tasmania, where he was then working. Their daughter JOHN’S wife MARGARET and children were looking after ‘the old mansion’, the McCormick home in Cargill Street, Dunedin. Colombo, Ceylon, was a port of call and Naples, Italy (from which they travelled to Rome for sightseeing and presentation to the Pope) another. On the last leg to the U.K. they travelled on the steamer “Orotava” which was crowded. They couldn’t get their preferred second salon accommodation or first salon either (there were three classes), but Henry to his amusement managed to arrange for them to have the lying-in hospital “as there are no likely cases pending: it is a good large place with two berths and two large ports so we have plenty of fresh air”. He posted that letter at Gibralter [Gibraltar].
Maggie’s foster brother (cousin?) William A. Agnew gave her a signed Bible, still extant, when they visited him in Glasgow. Maggie also brought back a large oval brooch which some of her descendants have worn. They also visited Kirkliston, Henry’s birthplace: he found the house which he had last seen as a six-year- old, unchanged. They also visited Dumbartonshire places they knew plus the tourist spots of the time.
Henry found few familiar faces among the villages (some grown to towns) they revisited, and those few were not too prosperous. “Old played out creatures still working for their grub” was his description. He saw his brother James briefly too, not doing too well either and may have seen his sister(s) although it is not
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mentioned in the letters which survive.
It is as well that they had their much enjoyed holiday trip when they did as, while they were away, major currency changes in N.Z. (for which Henry held R.J. Seddon responsible) resulted in significant financial loss for the senior McCormicks. Although secure they were no longer well off, and thereafter Seddon’s name usually caused an angry reaction in Henry.
He was a man who valued quality in everything including workmanship, fabric and furniture.
Henry and Maggie moved their home to Hastings between April 1904 and April 1905, where they lived first in Victoria Street and then in Alexander Street. After Henry’s death aged 79 early in 1907, Maggie’s son John and his wife and their family lived with her at her home for a while. Then about 1911, aged about 80, Maggie moved to the home of her daughter and son-in-law MARGARET and JOHN POPPELWELL at 807 Sylvan Road, Hastings, now part of Windsor Park. Maggie was 92 when she died there in 1924: on her 90th birthday she said “I suppose it is a long life but it doesn’t seem very long.” Her grandchildren recalled her speaking of Disraeli and Gladstone as real people not historical figures.
Sources: Family tradition: “The Lowlands of Scotland, Glasgow & the North”/Maurice Lindsay: 1841 Census which reads= “Alexandria, Mitchell St. James McCormick, Grocer, 40, Labourer born Ireland, Mary, 30, Scottish born, Henry 12, Mary 8, James 5, John 3, Susan 3, Catherine 3 months. Also Henry McCormick, Labourer, born in Ireland.” 1851 Census which reads “Village of Renton, Parish of Cardross, Dumbartonshire, Address Main Street, James McCormick, head, widower 50 tea dealer, born Ireland, Henry son, 24, joiner & Cabinetmaker born Linlithgow, Kirkliston, Mary, 19, worker in printfield, born Linlithgow, Kirkliston, James, 16, worker in printfield, born Dunbarton, Susan, 14, housekeeper, born Lanark, Glasgow, John 12, scholar born Ballagon, Dunbartonshire, Catherine 10, Scholar, born Mill of Haldane Dunbartonshire, Jessie 8, Scholar, born Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, Anne, 6, at home, born Alexandria, Dunbartonshire. “Recollections of a Tour of Scotland” by Dorothy Wordsworth, pub 1803, p. 121.
A quality of reticence observable in some descendants may well have come through this branch via Maggie, as did the red gold hair via her husband which appeared in Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin and some or her children. Also this line may have given large intensely blue eyes which appear regularly but not frequently among McCormick progeny.
It is not good that Man should be alone: I will make him and help meet for him.
That Henry McCormick in the Parish of Cardross, and Margaret Agnew, in Parish, have been Proclaimed in the Parish Church of Bonhill, in order to Marriage several times, and no objections made, is Attested at Bonhill, the twenty first day of November, One thousand eight hundred and fifty three years by Patrick Session Clerk.
At Dumbarton the 21st day of November 1853 the above mentioned parties were Married by me
Minister of. This is now, and Flesh of my Flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
who performs the Marriage Ceremony, should after Certify the Marriage as above, request the parties to return to the Session Clerk with the Certificate the Marriage recorded in the Register kept for that purpose, for which no charge of any kind is made.
Certificate of Banns & Marriage of Margaret Agnew & Henry McCormick. 22.11. 1853.
PATRICK HENDERSON & CO.’S
REGULAR LINE OF PACKET SHIPS TO NEW ZEALAND.
18° and 19° Victoria, Cap. 119. SCHEDULE (L)
STEERAGE PASSENGER CONTRACT TICKET.
Ship “Sevilla” of Glasgow Register to take in Passengers at GLASGOW for OTAGO, on the seventeenth day of AUGUST, 1859.
Name Ages
Henry McCormick 31 1
Margaret 27 1
James 5 1
Mary 3 1
Henry 10 mnths 1
John McCormick 17 1
Catherine 16 1
Jessie 13 1
Ann 11 1
Deposit. £30: Balance. £74: Total £104 to be paid to the Provincial Treasurer of
NOTICE TO PASSENGERS. THIS CONTRACT TICKET IS EXEMPT FROM STAMP DUTY.
“Sevilla” ticket for the McCormick party in 1859.
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JOHN and MARGARET POPPELWELL lived first at Rocky Valley/Mt. Misery. Their nearest neighbour was five miles away. Dunedin bred MARGARET found it quiet and lonely “all sea and tussock and sky” but she came to enjoy the wild life her husband, an outdoor man if ever there was one, showed her ……. the sentinel rabbit which, whenever a human came close, thumped a warning to the swarming multitude that came out on summer evenings: the way a sow living au natural meshed leaves into a nest several feet thick for her piglets, the big shallow milk dish full of goose eggs laid in the barn………
The young couple visited the eider Poppelwells at “the Bush” regularly and cordial affection existed between MARGARET and her husband’s people. She and CATHERINE made several visits, riding side-saddle, about the district to make her known to the neighbours. They were away three or four days at a time staying at a different home each night. MARGARET never forgot a boy of about ten met on one of these trips. He was playing hop-scotch with other children with the latest baby in a shawl on his back and his knitting in his hand. Whenever not having his turn he busily knitted.
MARGARET went to her mother’s home in Cargill Street, Dunedin for the births of her first, third and fourth children and to CATHERINE POPPELWELL at Fairfax Tokomairiro for the birth of her second child.
William (v) was married in 1881: he and JOHN began to look at exporting frozen meat, the first shipment having left Port Chalmers in February of that year and were soon supplying the trade. They also, with the help of an engineer friend named McAlister, developed to some extent the coal deposit on the western side of Mt. Misery, afterwards known as Eliotvale. At first it supplied local domestic needs and the steam-powered machines (agricultural and industrial) which had come into use the previous decade. The Poppelwell brothers used a steam-powered threshing-engine in their farming operations. Part of a 12-foot-thick seam of coal was exposed and then worked by driving underground into the face and working side-
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drives. This mine was subsequently leased yielding useful royalties as farming returns continued poor.
There is a report that there was also coal on Sunwick which was exploited to some degree when the POPPELWELLS owned it, and fully afterwards, but details are sketchy.
The “Long Depression” continued unabated. The gold rush had waned, farming was at a low ebb, much land having fallen into the hands of Mortgagees as Sunwick may have. Long-used wheatlands had become acid, crops growing only a foot high and being smothered in sorrel. Lime was unobtainable and there was a big surplus of virtually unsellable foodstuffs. A leg of lamb cost 6d in Dunedin at the time. Frozen meat and dairy factories were in their early experimental stages.
The Poppelwell brothers were in a better position that most with their coal royalties and under-used freehold land in the Bruce district and also Southland. A Return of Freeholders dated October 1882 shows William (v) and JOHN holding two blocks = 1006 acres valued at £1800 in Bruce County (Mt. Misery/Rocky Valley/Eliotvale?) and 1498 acres valued at £7040 in Southland (Clover Meadows, Seaward Downs?).
Despite problems these were happy useful years for the extended family, buoyant with youth, energy and hope.
Charlotte’s affairs also claimed attention during 1882. At the time flirting among young people was an art: it entailed much practice and gallantry and exchanging love letters between meetings. Lottie had many of these and she and her sister-in-law MARGARET whiled away occasional summer evenings sitting behind the haystacks reading Lottie’s current mail. They were obliged to hide because teenage George wanted the letters for his and his friends’ amusement. Once Charlotte gave MARGARET a pillowcaseful to take home to Mt. Misery for safekeeping.
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Charlotte’s marriage was both romantic and the opposite. Like many girls with a lot of admirers she was in no hurry to marry and was calmly pleased with a change of company when a friend they had all known since childhood returned from a period overseas. Augustus Mansford, son of a Port Chalmers lawyer who later became a Judge, and whose uncle W.H. Mansford was a Milton businessman, visited the Poppelwells for a week renewing acquaintenance. After he left Charlotte was astonished to receive from him a formal written proposal of marriage. She had no special feeling for him other than friendship and was inclined to refuse but consulted her older brothers. Their answer was unanimous. “Of course, accept him,” “Very good chap”, “Nicest fellow imaginable”, “Couldn’t do better”. So Lottie said “Yes.” MARGARET rode over to hear all about it and to her “How are you?” Charlotte wailed “I don’t know! I think I’m going mad. I’m marrying this man and I don’t really know why ……and I’ve got neuralgia……”
However they were married on the last day of November 1882 and went to live at Gore fifty odd miles south.
JOHN travelled down there some months afterwards and returned chuckling. He laughed and laughed as he fobbed off his eager questioners while he refreshed himself after the journey, but eventually satisfied their queries. He had spent the entire visit listening to Lottie extolling her Augustus’ virtues. “Augustus thinks this, Augustus does that, Augustus was everything to be desired in every possible way, wise and kind and………The name rang in JOHN’S ears till he was quite tired of it. “Oh, yes Mother, they seem happy!” “Of course they’re happy” the other brothers chorused. “He’s the best fellow imaginable….”
WILLIAM BELL POPPELWELL died at his Fairfax home, Tokomairiro, on 29 August 1883, aged 64 years. His doctor, Peter Stewart, saw him two days earlier and gave cause of death as General Paralysis of
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six years duration. He was buried at Fairfax Cemetery on 31 August with Father Thomas Lenihan, Milton’s first Catholic Parish Priest, conducting the funeral service. His son Dugald, since March the previous year an Articled Law Clerk, was among those present when WILLIAM died and formally registered the death.
During her 17 widowed years CATHERINE grew to be the beloved “Little Granny” of her many grandchildren. Less than five feet tall and somewhat stout from age and childbearing, it was said affectionately that she resembled the statue of Queen Victoria in Kent/Cambridge Terrace, Wellington, no doubt because the same causes affected the outlines of both ladies.
Eleven of her twelve children survived her and she left approximately 40 descendants. She lived her later years with her unmarried daughter Ann at Mosgeil [Mosgiel] (about two years) then in Dunedin. She died on 8 March 1900 aged 74 years at her home Serpentine Avenue, Dunedin. She had been infirm for four years probably from a stroke. She was buried at Fairfax Cemetery by Father J. O’Neill. Her obituary emphasised her charitable and hospitable nature.
Afterwards Annie Poppelwell lived in Wellington.
Sometime in the early 1880s William (v) and JOHN began developing Clover Meadows, part of the Seaward Downs Estate, the land they had taken up in Southland. JOHN and MARGARET and their children moved there to live about 1883, William (v) and his wife remaining in the Tokomairiro district at least for a time. It seems both properties (Clover Meadows in Southland and Rocky Valley/Mt. Misery/Eliotvale in Bruce County, which included Tokomairiro) and also “the Bush” at Fairfax were held concurrently. During this period
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William (v) JOHN and young George Poppelwell worked as and where needed on the properties, and George also worked as a flaxmiller and contractor in both areas. By July 1887 William (v) and his household were living at Wyndham a few miles from Clover Meadows. In 1883 the Rocky Valley/Mt. Misery/Eliotvale property was sold to the Kaitangata Coal for £10,000, apparently considered a good price. JOHN gave MARGARET a luxurious photograph album with a mother-of-pearl cover at the time of the sale. Their eldest child Doll (Henrietta Margaret) wrote some wobbly primer lettering in this much prized gift and in old age treasured it.
Clover Meadows comprised 1546 acres, was 30 miles north of Invercargill, provincial capital of Southland. The farm was half-way between Invercargill and Gore where Dugald Poppelwell later made his home. Edendale seven miles away was the nearest service town: Morton Mains Crossing six miles away was the nearest railway station.
An 1885 Valuation of over £10,000 described Clover Meadows as a desirable property, well sheltered, containing:
1546 acres : 710 acres under cultivation
520 acres in English grass
316 acres in natural grass, being drained river flat, surface sown with clover etc.
Buildings : a 10-roomed house and 2 mens’ huts 13 slatted (or stalled?) stable, cowshed, woolshed
2 acres fruit-bearing orchard. (500 acres of deep alluvial river flat, ideal for wheat, need more drainage).
Here for something like five years the Poppelwell brothers raised grain, sheep, cattle and crops. They expended much time, energy and money draining hundreds of acres of rich swampy land.
Early in this chapter of their lives the JOHN POPPELWELL’S had an unexpected joy and sorrow come to them. Their special quality as individuals and a couple had already been recognised by others.
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When MARGARET was 26 (1887) and expecting her fifth child they were entrusted with a baby boy by his mortally ill mother. Bella Denny Harkness, daughter of a shipping family in the U.K. was either widowed or otherwise alone at the time. Details surrounding the tragedy are blurred now except for a few poignant facts. The chief is that the anguished mother gave her son into JOHN’S charge on the Waihola Railway Station. JOHN took the child home to his gentle MARGARET and their four young children. Doll (Henrietta Margaret) all her 87 years remembered her small foster brother as an unusually beautiful child. They all wanted to keep him but Bella’s people in Scotland had first claim and arrangements were made for him to be taken to them.
JOHN and MARGARET’S children at Clover Meadows, while comfortable with strange men, were very shy of women other than their mother and her Irish immigrant girl helper Brigid Curran. They would hide in the bush to avoid women visitors. A deep-banked but usually shallow stream separated the wooden homestead with its wide colonial verandahs from the stockyards. The front door opened into the main living room which, to MARGARET’S annoyance, had five doors leading out of it. For cooking MARGARET used a 3-leg gypsy pot 2-3 feet across which was placed over an open fire in the kitchen and raised and lowered by chains. The fireplace had wide hobs and took up most of one wall. A baker’s oven without a separate firebox was built-in beside it. The fire was lit inside the oven, which was big enough for post-length pieces of wood. When the wood was burnt down the embers were raked out and bread put in. It was cooked by the time the oven was cool. On baking days MARGARET hung a sheet on a particular clothes line which could be seen by surveyors in the hills, who then sent someone down to get their share.
The overgrown 2-acre orchard with its jungle of untended raspberry vines was out of bounds for the children. At one time an ill-natured
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pig took up residence among the raspberries which grew taller than a man and viciously hunted intruders out including once a man on horseback.
The bush too was out of bounds though there was a time when Doll disobeyed. She and her sister Mill liked to lie face down on the bridge spanning the stream between house and stockyards to watch ducks and geese through the cracks and one day Millicent fell in. Doll jumped after her and pulled her to the edge of the summer-shallow water but they couldn’t climb the steep six-foot banks topped with tall cocksfoot grass. After much calling Uncle Bill found them. He carried the weeping younger child in doors where she was changed, wrapped in a blanket and set before the fire with a mug of cocoa. The 5-year old rescuer only a little less wet, awaited her share of attention but it did not come soon enough and she quietly took her wounded feelings outside resolving “I’ll go into the bush……” and so she did. The bush stretched away for 3000 acres but beneficient [beneficent] Providence brought her out again a mile from home, weary, wet and cold, and there by good chance was Uncle George at work. She wept out the whole sad story to him. “Never mind,” he comforted. “I’LL wrap you up in front of the fire and I’LL get you some cocoa MYSELF”. He pick-a-backed her home and faithfully fulfilled his promises.
He again came to the rescue when a gander chased the children and pecked little Bert on the leg. Uncle George evened the score by catching the big bird and solemnly placing small Bert on its back: Firmly clutching the wings the child rode around until honour felt itself satisfied. Doll and Millicent remembered another Clover Meadows incident into their old age. They were sitting on the verandah while the men were yarding some bush cattle across the stream. Suddenly there was a thump and a clatter behind them and a bullock which had hurdled rails and stream, thundered wildly across the verandah between the children, on to the lawn,
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over the fence, escaping into the bush again. Their elders doubted the adventure until they saw the muddy hoof prints on the boards.
A fifth child ELLINORE CLARE was born to JOHN and MARGARET on 19 September 1887. The older children learned their first lessons at home from their parents and later went to school at Ravensbourne, Dunedin after Clover Meadows was sold about five years after it was taken up.
The brothers made this decision after a series of misfortunes. Farming returns were still poor and one year it rained so much that grain grew in the stooks. The next year excellent crops were harvested into thatched stacks when a phenomenally big flood swept them all away. (Such floods still occur in the region with equally devastating results but then there was no Government assistance). In addition many cattle died from sickness related to eating lush bush grass. The sale although not disastrous was at a loss.
The Poppelwell brothers held land in the Tokomairiro district till about 1890: the small “Bush” property at Fairfax served various family members as home at different times.
After Clover Meadows Bill and JOHN put away farming with its disasters and uncertainties. Bill made a career in machinery, becoming a pioneer in gold dredging work and JOHN set up a flaxmill at Evans Flat near Lawrence. The family home was at Ravensbourne on the Port Chalmers Road where a fourth daughter Miriam was born in 1889. In 1891 fire destroyed the flaxmill. MARGARET described it “a beautiful and terrifying spectacle with flames leaping from point to point like a wild beast.”
Marguerite was born the same year.
The full family, eleven eventually, is as under:
Catherine, widow of William Bell POPPELWELL (deceased) with her son, William Jnr. who was born in this house in North East Valley, Dunedin, built as a family home circa 1848. Photograph circa 1895.
Fr. Antoine SEON celebrated first Mass in Dunedin on 30.11.1850 at the Poppelwell North-East Valley home.
Memorial window to William & Catherine POPPELWELL at Dunedin Catholic Cathedral.
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Henrietta Margaret “Doll” b. 25.4.1881 at Dunedin
Millicent Agnes “Mill” b. 19.12.1882 at Tokomairiro
Francis John “Frank” b. 11.8.1884 at Dunedin
Ethelbert Adrian “Bert” b. 6.8.1885 at Dunedin
ELLINORE CLARE “Nell” b. 19.9.1887 at Clover Meadows, Edendale, Southland.
Miriam Catherine “Mim” b. 28.8.1889 at Ravensbourne, Dunedin. Her father now described as flaxmiller instead of a farmer.
Marguerite Josephine “Daisy” b. 27.6.1891 at Ravensbourne, Dunedin. Her father entered again as a farmer.
Irene Bernice “Rene” b. 18.5.1898 at Hastings H.B.: Her father now a contractor.
Alma Theresa “Al” b. 16.5.1901 at Hastings H.B.
Douglas Lachlan “Doug” b. Sept/Oct 1903 at Hastings H.B.
Vivienne Winifred “Viv” b. 20.4.1906 at Hastings H.B.
After the flaxmill fire (which probably occurred before June 1891 as Daisy’s Birth Certificate describes her father as a farmer) with their capital virtually gone and prospects poor in the Otago district, a radical course was decided on, which lasted for seven years. MARGARET and the seven children were to remain in Dunedin close to McCormick and Poppelwell kin, schools etc. JOHN was to go wherever there was suitable work. The Ravensbourne home may have had to be sold to provide needed finance (travel costs and grubstake for JOHN till he was again earning, plus living expenses for MARGARET and the family until funds from him reached her.). Whatever the reason MARGARET and family lived for a short period in District Road, Dunedin (vicinity Green Island) in late 1891/early 1892 just round the corner from where JOHN’S widowed mother and sister Ann were then living. Early in 1892 they moved to her parents’ Cargill Street home, the senior McCormicks being on an overseas holiday trip for most of that year. They may have lived there until the move to Hawkes Bay in 1897.
It seems that JOHN went first to Australia including the gold mining area of Zehan [Zeehan] on the west coast of Tasmania. He was there in March 1892. He sent home money and built up a modest stake for a fresh start. While working in a quartz mine there he qualified as an engine driver and on his return to N.Z. used this ‘ticket’ on a Murchison gold venture. His sister Kate’s
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husband Alec Fergusson had a considerable sum invested in the enterprise and was not satisfied with the returns so wanted an independent informed but unobtrusive opinion on management. There was something wrong and JOHN had difficulty getting the several months’ wages due to him. On Fergusson’s advice he sold his wages claim to a money dealer, thus minimising loss.
By this time Sebastian Poppelwell (and David also) had settled in Hawkes Bay and wrote glowing reports of the land, climate and opportunities. 1894/5 found JOHN working there too. (Trade Directories of that period).
In 1897 he and MARGARET decided to move their family home to Hastings, Hawkes Bay.
Heretaunga’s great alluvial river flat, sheltered from weather excesses by distant ranges and closer foothills, was already nurturing two embryo towns = Hastings and Napier. Settlers were eagerly tapping its productive abundance and beginning to farm the also plenteous hinterland. It was a vigorous expanding district already supplied with reasonable amenities. The POPPELWELLS lived at 807 Sylvan Road, a sound medium-sized house on a small block of land (2 acres, 2 roods 28 perches Block 9, D.P. 362 C/T 68/1.) At first they rented it but between April and October 1903 MARGARET’S father financed her purchase of it as a family home.
A stream separated the property from a pine plantation which became Beatson’s Park and later (cleared and developed) was re-named Windsor Park. There they lived until they died in late 1933 within a month of each other. It was a good decision perhaps best measured, as is their own quality, by the fact that eventually MARGARET’S parents retired there and her brothers
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Will and Jack followed them. Will McCormick settled in nearby Napier. The senior McCormick’s home was in Victoria Street, then in Alexander Street, Hastings. Jack McCormick lived at several addresses in Hastings at different times, one such being Miller Street where Sebastian Poppelwell’s home was. The town’s Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart sat four square at one end of Miller Street where it touched Heretaunga Street, the town’s main thoroughfare. Built in 1895 it was the second church for the parish which opened in 1882. At the other end of Miller Street in Jervois Street there were flat green paddocks, since built over except where they have became playing fields for St. John’s Catholic College. Following his mother’s death in 1924 Jack McCormick and his family returned to Dunedin where Liz his wife had a successful cake and small goods bakery business. David Poppelwell came and went to his brother’s home and lived there for a time in his retirement. Following JOHN and MARGARET’S deaths he spent his last years at 809 Clive Street, Hastings at the home of their daughter, his niece Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin, by this time a widow.
Just before leaving Dunedin by sea in 1897 a group photograph was taken of MARGARET’S sister Mary (McCormick) O’Donnell and her three sons and JOHN and MARGARET POPPELWELL and their brood of seven aged from six to sixteen. JOHN was 45 and MARGARET 36. The sisters look gravely out of the faded oblong, MARGARET too slender, her eyes tired in her small serious face. The previous years when she had sole charge of their children could not have been easy for her and she was leaving friends, family, familiar places……
She was an undemonstrative person, slow to anger and not easy to placate when her sense of fitness was offended. Discerning, patient, kind and deeply affectionate she and JOHN came to be held in high
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regard generally and, perhaps the most exacting of all standards, they had a lifelong love and respect of their family as children and as adults. Both were blessed with a sense of humour which no doubt helped the arduous re-establishment period. Among their off-spring it darted like quicksilver, rippled and chuckled like brook water and occasionally roared into rolling boistrous hilarity. Both partners had high standards of personal conduct. MARGARET’S quiet capability and well informed mind complemented JOHN’S livliness and during his regular work absences she managed home and family with cheerful good sense. Such a pattern of living, dictated by prevailing circumstances, was common at the time.
JOHN enjoyed his children’s company: a good father always he was specially attentive during the post working away period, perhaps realizing for the first time how heavy MARGARET’S load had been and what he himself had missed during that time. His older sons, just entering their teens, worked with him from time to time when their apprenticeship courses allowed and he set his younger daughters domestic tasks and saw they accomplished them. Family memories include him telling them marvellous stories, improvising vividly, teaching them to dance quadrilles and barn dances in the sitting room on winter evenings while their mother played the piano, or led them in singing from his wide repertoire of songs such favourites as “My Grandfather’s Clock”, “Lord Lovell” and “Ben Baxter” among others.
MARGARET ran their farmlet (also a common pattern then) like a miniature Sunwick with milk, butter, eggs, fruit, walnuts, vegetables and some meat “off the place.” Preserving sessions used 70-lb-bags of sugar at a time.
Meanwhile JOHN did a diversity of outdoor work in and around Hawkes Bay always connected with land and machinery and sometimes both, usually his own enterprise or as a contractor: he was a prodigious worker. Sometimes he worked from home but often he camped on the job,
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again part of life’s pattern then, but now within reasonable reach. Road making, bridge building and milling timber were prominent among his activities. He cut by contract AGO acres of scrub from Maraekakaho to Fernhill, constructed major drains across the site of Hastings, plentifully supplied with artesian water. His experience at Clover Meadows stood him in good stead in this regard and enabled him to satisfactorily drain a big area of land near Tomoana, outside Hastings, after engineers had turned down the job. The fall was half an inch to a chain. This Tomoana drainage work was probably prior to his family moving north.
Wherever he went he panned likely creeks and rivers for gold. He found brown coal on or near the Havelock Hills and a deposit of phosphate with a good first test. He loved ideas and once designed an improved and workable dredge. He was liberal, trusting and generous, so accumulated fewer assets that his industry, talents and substantial earnings warranted.
After living expenses were provided for, he put surplus profits, sometimes considerable, into a variety of ventures including oil exploration. Sometimes he did very well, sometimes less well and occasionally poorly: a sawmill near Pahiatua in which he had an interest about 1907/16 had to be sold when fire ‘the auld enemy’, destroyed all the drying timber and his partner, unknown to JOHN was found to have incurred private debts: partners were then liable for each other’s private as well as company debts.
Had JOHN been less optimistic and openhanded or MARGARET more grasping they would have done better financially but they would not then have been the people they were. As it was they did pretty well and all lived lives full of interest, variety lived lives full of interest, variety and warmth.
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The first ten years of the new century was a very eventful period for JOHN and MARGARET.
Early on JOHN acquired timber rights in a northern Hawke’s Bay bush block (described later). Their three youngest children were born in 1901, 1903 and 1906 = Alma, Doug and Viv respectively. The rented Sylvan Road property was purchased (1903) with financial assistance from MARGARET’S parents. They, the senior McCormicks moved from Dunedin to Hastings probably in early 1905. They had made separate pre-visits (1903?) “to look around the make inquiries” as Henry put it and make sure that the area had assets other than “grand soil and a glorious climate” It also had one major industry, the then 6-months-old Tomoana Meat Works, a railway running through the town to the Napier seaport some 20 miles away. It was already a bustling, if still raw, town with increasing amenities and service businesses for its burgeoning population.
Three of the Poppelwell brothers, JOHN. Sebastian and David, were making good livings there and JOHN’S elder sons beginning to. There were some but few, openings for girls. Millicent Poppelwell, 23, who had been companionating her grandparents in Dunedin, came to Hastings with them but found it dull and returned south.
Sebastian Poppelwell was having a family home built and JOHN’S thoughts too turned in that direction as their existing house was too small. After working the bush block for some years he sold the lease very profitably. Some of the proceeds went into his next venture, the sawmill with a partner in the Pahiatua/Eketahuna area (Hamua?). With the balance they had a spacious new house built, completely furnished throughout with new quality furniture, furnishings, fittings etc. The family moved in about May 1906. It was a joy to MARGARET and a comfortable attractive home for them all. The 222.9 sq. m. (2500 sq. ft.) dwelling had big airy rooms with four exterior doors, plus three sets of french windows
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opening on to a wide L-shaped verandah. In time it was surrounded by a beautiful garden with wisteria screening the verandah and Virginia creeper on one wall. A well in the back yard, covered with a heavy metal lid, and frighteningly dark and deep to children, supplied cold sweet artesian water until municipal services came into use. A ram pumped this water up so that it could be used to keep meat etc. cold until refrigeration came to town.
Their first Hastings house, solidly built but too small for the family, was later (1909) sold and moved to a site in Miller Street where it served another family well for years. (It has now given place to a sports clubrooms. The Poppelwell’s new homestead was in 1981/2 restored by the Heretaunga Round Table and used as their clubrooms by arrangement with the Hastings Borough Council which acquired the property and incorporated it into Windsor Park on the death in 1979 of Douglas Lachlan Poppelwell, JOHN and MARGARET’S youngest son. As a small boy of six he watched the first house being moved. In 1988 the house was sold by the Council and removed to another site at Havelock North to allow further recreational development of Windsor Park.)
During the new century’s first decade there were also the family’s first four weddings: Bert 1907, Mill in the South Island 1909, and Mim and Doll in 1910. MARGARET’S 75-year-old mother was ill in April 1906 (Daisy went to help) and her father Henry McCormick died in early 1907. In 1911 MARGARET’S mother came to live with them at Sylvan Road.
All in all it was a busy decade!
The bush section of which JOHN leased the timber rights was a 4000 acre block of virgin bush called Rotokokaranu (also Rotokokoranga) in Northern Hawkes Bay. Sometimes he worked it alone and sometimes not. (This connection with timber, the first known in the family,
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may have tapped an affinity with wood as many of JOHN’S descendants worked wood or planted and tended forest trees. His sons Bert, Frank and Douglas and his grandsons Dick and Colin Cassin and John Poppelwell ii, and his great-grandson Douglas Foster did so). JOHN felled the timber and rolled it to the Mohaka River, which edged the block and floated it down as rafts to Mohaka township. There was one occasion when a sudden big rise in the river resulted in logs ending up at sea instead. The swift treacherous Mohaka had to be crossed to reach the block. Once while working alone JOHN was injured by a falling tree. He bandaged his broken ribs as best he could, climbed a hill and caught his horse, swam it across the river and rode the 50 odd miles (80 km) home to Hastings arriving in the early hours of the morning.
This enterprise gave his five daughters (then aged ten to 20?) an out-of-this-world wilderness holiday with their father in the bush camp. Farewelled by MARGARET, teenagers Frank and Bert, and the younger children, they set out on a long ago January morning. They travelled by buggy, leading a burdened pack horse. The five excited girls wore wide brimmed hats covering their long hair, long durable cotton frocks and boots. They camped the first night at Tangoio in a fairy-tale fern-filled glen with a stream running through it.
There were no bridges, only fords, and no road after Tutira where they camped the second night and left the buggy. The lake was ‘brilliantly blue under a blue blue sky’. Pollution’s grimy fingers hadn’t intruded then. They walked the last twelve miles through open scrub country along a pack track, the girls taking turns on the pack horse: the others at intervals held on to the unfortunate animal’s tail for a tow. They slept out one
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more night before reaching Willow Flat farm which was the closest habitation to the Rotokok [Rotokoku] camp. However the house had been unoccupied for some time and long fern fronds were growing through the clay floor.
The crossing was half a mile further on and here was the hard core of the journey. The river was less than a chain wide, relatively calm at the edges but with a fast vicious current at the centre. The rushing green water was dashed into a frothy lather on a broken barrier of papa rocks like widely spaced stones, which lay a little downstream. Te Kooti and his warriors were said to have crossed on these stones when he was marauding in the area, In the late 1870/early ’80s.
JOHN had an uneasy feeling, shared by his wife, about the crossing which influenced him eventually to dispose of the leasehold: and indeed the next owner’s son lost his life there. (Was this foreboding a shadow of Highland Catherine’s second sight.?)
The girls crossed in a home-made boat. They hung on tightly, baling furiously, as their father paddled upstream in the quiet sidewater, then turned quickly with precise skill into the current and flashed across in seconds to the only place on the other bank where it was safe to land. The packhorse had been tethered pending the gear being removed and brought over on a second trip, but he tore loose and swam after the boat, soaking blankets clothing and all in the process.
There was a two-roomed bach 50 yards from the river. It consisted of a sturdy wooden framework with a corrugated iron roof and walls of split timber with bark still in place. It had two doors, no windows and wide eaves. Sack bunks slung
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between four posts sunk into the earthern floor made very comfortable beds. Table and bench seats were the same style, the entire habitation being made from hand-sawn timber in the nearby pit. In the living-room a fireplace took up most of one wall. From inside, looking up the chimney was a narrow oblong opening in the roof. Outside it rose a few inches above the ridge and it never smoked. Cooking was done mainly in a camp oven, a shallow cast iron utensil about a foot in diameter with a deeply grooved lid, handle and three short legs. A slow fire underneath and embers on the top lid ensured food was cooked to a turn…….and what food! Meat was wild pork with a pigeon or two for variety. Vegetables came from the garden the solitary bushman had made by draining a small swampy plateau behind the hut: the rich damp soil yielded abundantly. Scone loaf the size and shape of the camp oven was their bread. It was their father’s specialty [speciality] and he called it “slog dollager” since formal language provided no fitting word for it. JOHN with his Highland heritage often found everyday English inadequate. There was lard from the pork to spread on it and later wild honey.
Someone discovered a great hive of bees in a hollow tree. JOHN spread a paste of gunpowder on a sack and set it alight to create smoke to stupify the bees. But they were either too numerous or they didn’t stupify easy, and showed their resentment in characteristic fashion. While his daughters frantically brushed them off with leafy branchlets the robber danced and swatted and yelled. He never used strong language in the presence of women even under such stress as this and had to content himself with “Godfrey Daniels! GODFREY Daniels!) DOUBLE DANIELS !!!!” as he hopped and howled. But there was honey to spare and a kerosene tinful to take home afterwards.
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There was fruit too. Early French missionaries had planted an orchard in an open grassy space on the far border of the block and in time abandoned it. The trees were mostly cherries laden with ripe red fruit but there were also five honey pippin apple trees which bore sweet slightly dry fleshy fruit. An all-day expedition to this place was a highlight of the holiday. Two miles of track lay between the camp and the orchard, track confined on both sides and often overhead too with green primeval bush. Bell birds, tuis and pigeons abounded. One of the few commands JOHN POPPELWELL laid on his daughters was that they were never under any circumstances to go off the track. It was so easy to become hopelessly lost.
The girls stayed at the camp for three never-to-be-forgotten weeks. A favourite pastime was swinging out high above a gully on a natural swing of rata vines. They never tired of it and their laughter must have been a strange new sound in that brooding bushland.
The only remembered disadvantages were an over supply of fleas about the hut: outdoor men always had dogs in those days….and spiders! Dark brown velvety hairy spiders which seemed all of two inches across haunted walls and roof.
A fresh slog dollager loaf was the main item of their rations for their journey home, but the cook, a storm lantern at his shoulder, became immersed in a book the evening before departure and forgot about replenishing the fire. So they had a mess that was neither dough nor bread which rubbed into worm-like rolls when they tried to cut it. They were so heartily sick of it the third morning that they gave
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what was left to the dogs, who also refused it.
The final crown was the welcome they received from their usually reserved mother, always “Mam” to them. She was milking the cows when they arrived and stood up “smiling all over” as her glowing grey glance embraced them all = Doll and Millicent, Mim and Nell, and little Marguerite, who was always called Daisy, safely back from the wilderness.
JOHN was highly individual and independent by nature, his own man but quite without aggressiveness or rancour and had a wide sturdy patriarchal outlook on life. Black-bearded most of his life and then snowy white with ruddy complexion and bright blue eyes, he enjoyed robust health into late life although both he and MARGARET had an operation in or about middle life. His happy sociable disposition, infectious cheerfulness and strong loyalties earned him many friends. Not a public man like some of his kin he nevertheless was active in getting the Mahora Block in North Hastings opened up about 1904 although, being a back country man, he did not want any of it himself. These 40/60 acre sections set many families on the way to security and then modest prosperity. Initially used for small dairy units, this rich alluvial land is now used for cropping, where it hasn’t been built over. Only half a year’s rent was needed to gain possession.
JOHN was a voracious reader, Dickens, Thackery and Scott being among his favourite authors. Always an early riser he was known to break the ice on a water butt outside on a winter’s morning to wash himself, in preference to using the bathroom. He worked into old age. At 72 he, with a son-in-law and others, were doing assembly work for the East Coast Railway at Tutira: another
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late years job was servicing freezing works machinery near Hastings.
Some time after Vivienne was born, when she was past 45, MARGARET had a miscarriage and JOHN later expressed mild regret “that we didn’t manage a round dozen, Peg”. Content alone in the bush he also loved company. It gave him special joy to see his progeny, in-laws and friends around his well-laden dining table in a room heated by a roaring fire which he kept well stoked up, sometimes to the discomfort of those closest to it. The huge rimu dining table was one of two he made for an Exhibition in the South Island on condition that it came back to him. His grandson Bruce Palmer, has it now.
MARGARET and JOHN’S children received their education first from their parents at Clover Meadows, then at Dunedin’s excellent schools until 1897, then at St. Joseph’s Convent, Hastings. It is likely that the formal post-primary education of the “middle” children (Nell, Mim and Daisy) was not as extensive as that of their siblings. However their love of reading ensured that, informally, learning was life-long.
The younger girls Rene, Alma and Viv attended St. Joseph’s Convent Hastings and then Napier’s high quality Technical College, where the two younger girls completed commercial courses. Douglas Poppelwell, the youngest son, attended St. Joseph’s Convent, Hastings, and Marist Brothers, Napier, then Napier Tech where he did an agricultural course. These Poppelwell pupils travelled to and from Napier (13 miles -21 km) daily by train. All the family sang and learned music and were good at and keen on sport = football, hockey, tennis, riding….. Faithful Catholics, they were active in Parish activities, especially
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the choir. NELL (Ellinore Clare) had a beautiful singing voice and also took part in local music and stage shows, as did Rene.
Inter family visits within Hawkes Bay and to Aunt Elizabeth Henderson’s home in Wellington extended and enriched all their lives. Doll trained as a dressmaker, NELL as a tailor and Frank as a carpenter. Bert trained first as a printer, then via timber work, went into Odlin’s Timber Co. and eventually became their Hastings manager. Mill may have done nursing in Dunedin and/or Christchurch, Neither Mim nor Rene, both of whom married early, did career training. Daisy worked for Roach’s a leading Hastings Department store as a saleswoman. Viv and Alma did clerical work in Napier, the latter with the Public Trust Office.
The family’s marriage details are:
1907 Ethelbert Adrian “Bert”, 22, m. Mabel Baillie Ashford
1909 Millicent Agnes “Mill”, 26, m. William Walter Miles
28.3.1910 Miriam Catherine “Mim, 20, m. John Joseph Cassin
1910 (spring) Henrietta Margaret “Doll, 29, m. John Henry Thomas Munro
31.12.1918 ELLINORE CLARE “Nell”, 31, EDWARD JAMES VINCENT BARRY
1919 Irene Bernice “Rene”, 21, m. Percy Alfred Malhoff Biggs
1927 Alma Therese “A1”, 26, m. Keith William Bull
late 1920s Francis John “Frank”, 4Os, m. Lucy Savage
1927/8? Marguerite Josephine “Daisy”, mid/30s m. Frank Fanning
1929/30 Douglas Lachlan “Doug”, 26?, m. Doretha Goodall
1931 Vivienne Winifred “Viv”, 25, m. Stanley Austin Palmer
MARGARET maintained good relations with her young people’s partners which could not always have been easy as the Sylvan Road home housed them and their children from time to time and personalities were diverse. Her three daughters-in-law valued her and the one really
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unsatisfactory son-in-law was brought to improved conduct at least temporarily by hers and JOHN’S influence.
MARGARET’S father Henry Carr McCormick died early in 1907 and, for a period her son Jack and his wife and family lived with his mother at her Alexander Street home. Then, about 1911, his widow Maggie Agnew McCormick moved to and thereafter lived with the JOHN POPPELWELLS at Sylvan Road, where she died in 1924 aged 92. She was a devout Catholic and in her later years contributed generously to various church charities. At her funeral service the Parish Priest preached on “a saint has passed away in our midst”. As the old lady had occasionally exercised her right and privilege to be as difficult as most very old people are within the home circle, the family heard it with a touch of wry amusement.
In 1909/10 when she was in her late 70s Maggie Agnew McCormick hand-hemmed much of the household linen for two of her granddaughters married in 1910. As late as 1958 one of the brides, Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin had in her linen cupboard dusters made from the white cotton remnants of those bridal sheets, still showing the old lady’s strong tiny stitches.
Photographs of MARGARET POPPELWELL during her 60s and 70s show an endearing “koala” look with short new hair tufting about her ears. At least one daughter and one granddaughter had the same koala look at the same age from the same cause. She also had a fleshy pad between ankle and heel in late years which caused no problems and also appeared in at least one daughter and one granddaughter.
MARGARET (McCORMICK) POPPELWELL died at her home on 13 November 1933 aged 72 years from cancer and her husband JOHN a month
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later on 13 December 1935 aged 81.
All their children and 36 grandchildren (a few more came afterwards) survived them. NELL’S last child was born less than a month before her mother’s death and Vivienne’s first a few months after it. Alma, expecting her second child, did not realize it in time to tell her mother.
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ELLINORE CLARE POPPELWELL ” Nell” 5th child, third daughter of her parents b. 19 September 1887 at Clover Meadows, Edendale, Southland. She lived there and at Dunedin until her family moved to Hastings, Hawkes Bay in 1897, when she was ten years old. She then had a slight Scottish burr which was soon lost and was very fond of her Little Granny McLachlan still in Otago. For education and growing up years see previous sections re her parents and siblings.
Of slight build and medium height NELL had thick black springy hair which as a child she wore in ringlets as did her sisters. Their Mam put their tresses into rag curlers each evening and next morning combed the five heads successively into graceful ringlets for the day. Twenty minutes ‘did’ them all: they knelt in turn on a hassock in front of their mother. Teen years found it tied behind with a wide ribbon. As a young woman NELL’S hair was so long she could sit on it and, when “up” it made an effective frame for her face. Her older children remember it being worn on the back of her head in a large “bob” until cut in the 1920s when long hair went out of fashion. She had hazel eyes and a matt white fine-textured skin with bright colour in her cheeks like her father when young and after exertion. It never tanned, burned or freckled. She had a different look from her siblings, slightly exotic and close to beauty. Broadly and academically intelligent (she was dux of her primary school), she loved learning and always regretted being unable to continue schooling further, although the wide reading characteristic of her family and strong in herself, ensured that it continued anyway. People mattered to her and she tended to see them subjectively.
Gregarious and spirited with a sassy tongue and a temperament to
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match hex high true sweet soprano voice, she sang in local choirs, concerts, musical groups and operettas, dancing as well as singing. She loved ballroom dancing too and was colour and design sensitive, making her an innovative dresser when her plans came off, which they did often but not always. She was a keen sportswoman particularly horse riding and tennis: one year she was Women’s Champion of two separate Hastings tennis clubs.
She trained as a tailor with, and worked for, the Hastings firm of Wrights for many years.
Not a tidy person and neither practical nor organized by nature NELL’S enthusiasms occasionally out ran her not inexhaustible energy, and her siblings would affectionately welcome her home with “Here comes old weary legs”. “Witchy fingers” was another nickname derived from long slender fingers which pounced effectively during card and board games very different from the work-thickened hands her children remember.
She also had real writing ability although this was never developed, Early on, other priorities prevented it and later, time and health gave out. Nevertheless she did write some prose, poems, song lyrics and a little musical composition to accompany the latter. Her son Brian inherited her special almost musical word aptness.
Acute observation and a wicked wit, which mellowed with maturity, was evident during NELL’S youth. MARGARET POPPELWELL once reproved her daughters for criticising a woman acquaintance, saying she was a good mother. NELL retorted “So’s our cat!” sending her father into roars of laughter.
Except for holidays NELL lived at home till her marriage at 32
ELLINORE CLARE “NELL.” POPPELWELL’S siblings
1. Henrietta Margaret Poppelwell “Doll” eldest child, first daughter of her parents b. 25.4.1861 at her McCormick grandparents’ home in Dunedin, spent her early years at Tokomairiro and at Clover Meadows near Edendale, Southland, then at Ravensbourne and elsewhere in Dunedin until 1897 when the family moved to Hastings, Hawkes Bay when she was 16. For education and growing up years see MAINLINE.
Doll trained with Kirkcaldie & Stains, Wellington, as a dressmaker, staying with her Henderson kin during the course. This firm (still in business in Lambton Quay Wellington but as a Department Store only) was then top in retail and manufacturing fields, so Doll had a head start when she set up business in Hastings after graduating.
Dark-haired Doll had clearly defined bone structure, was of medium height and build and even when young had a touch of gentle austerity in her expression and an innate dignity like her Aunt Elizabeth Henderson. In 1910, aged 29, she married John Henry Thomas Munro, an English engineer, met through a church choir, and thought to have a British Army background. He retained the ramrod back till he died and served with the N.Z. Forces in World War I. After several miscarriages, he and Doll had one son, dark-haired Ian b. 1920, who was drowned at 3 years of age at Awatoto near Napier where they then lived. When his mother checked she heard his visiting playmate (his cousin Joan Biggs, Rene Poppelwell Biggs’ second child) chattering and assumed it was to Ian and that
both children were behind an intervening bush. When she next checked and saw Ian wasn’t there, little Joan told her he had gone to the sea to get water. His body was never found. Doll was pregnant at the time but miscarried and to their sorrow they had no more children. Doll cared for her sister NELL’S eldest child for some months. Clare was fragile following a series of ailments and her aunt nursed her back to health.
After the tragedy John Munro was offered a good engineering appointment at Tuai, Waikaremoana on the Hydro Electric Power Station there. Here they lived until they retired, when they moved to Willowpark Road, Hastings, both surviving well into their 80s.
John Munro (called “Uncle Munny” ) was a much admired man, competent at his work, erudite, kindly, rather sensitive and highly strung. Doll was a supportive devoted wife, a little peppery in later years, wisely managing when indicated as illustrated by the matter of her mother-in-law’s letters. She noticed her husband was always down-in-the-mouth after an English mail and was puzzled as her own letters from his mother (who wrote to them separately) suggested no cause. So she read some to her husband and found them reproachful and complaining in tone for no good reason. After that she arranged for the old lady to write to them jointly, tactfully citing the letter’s increasing years. Munny’s depressions vanished. She outlived her husband her niece Jean Cassin, after her own mother’s death, caring for them both, then the survivor in their Willowpark Road home.
2. Millicent Agnes Poppelwell “Mill”, second child, second daughter of her parents b. 19.12.1882 at her Poppelwell grandparents’ home, Fairfax, Tokomairiro. Her early years were spent there and at Clover Meadows, near Edendale,
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Southland, then Ravensbourne and elsewhere in Dunedin until 1897 when the family moved to Hastings, H.B. when she was 15. For education and growing-up years see MAINLINE. Mill returned to Dunedin for a time to be companion for her McCormick grandparents, travelling with them to Hastings when they retired there about 1904/5. However, Mill found Hastings rather quiet and went south again to Christchurch possibly doing nursing. She was then into her twenties and her Uncle George Poppelwell’s home was at Christchurch.
Her young photographs show a beautiful girl with big eyes, a smiling roundness of face and figure and an abundance of piled dark hair noticably [noticeably] luxuriant in a family where vigorous crowning glories were taken for granted. She had a light brunette skin and hazel/green eyes. She was imaginative, and very independent with a keen sense of humour.
In 1909 when 26 years of age she married William Walter Miles, an Australian, in Christchurch, and they had issue eight children: Margaret, Kevin, Dorothy, Walter, John, Rosalie, Malcolm and Francis. Except by letters they had little personal contact with relatives in the North Island. During the 1920s and 30s, economic conditions, distance and difficulty of travel, plus family commitments prevented it. So Mill was a stranger to. most of her sisters’ children. During World War II when most of the young people were adult and Mill was 60ish, David Vincent Barry, NELL POPPELWELL BARRY’S eldest son, posted to a nearby Air Force Station called on weekend leave at the address his mother had given him. When the door was opened by a small white-haired woman his mouth dropped open and he exclaimed “God, MUM!” She smiled serenely and said “Red hair. Now you must be a Barry: come on in.”
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An incomplete outline of this branch as far as the writer knows it follows:
Margaret No information
Kevin May have been a professional soldier: was a Major during World War II. m. ? no issue.
Dorothy did not marry: a successful professional nurse, held hospital and later administrative posts.
Walter m. ? issue = one son, Anthony.
John no issue.
Rosalie m. ? Crawley: issue one daughter, Margaret.
Malcolm m. ? issue 3 = Alan, Ruth and Pamela.
Francis “Frank” m. ? Issue two daughters, Suzanne (in. M. Morris) and Patricia who m. ? Ockwell or Cockwell.
Mill’s husband was an aimable [amiable] man, a modest earner and she had a harder than usual task rearing her family. Her parents JOHN and MARGARET POPPELWELL gave her £200 which enabled her to take advantage of an opportunity of securing a modest home for them. Her husband predeceased her. In her later years after World War II in late 1959/early 1960, she had a holiday trip to Hawkes Bay, visiting surviving siblings who lived there, Doll, Mim, NELL, Frank, Alma and Doug. Doug, who was at this time driving big tankers over fearsome roads to Taupo and Waikaremoana, took his elder sisters Mill and Mim, along one day. No, they weren’t nervous. “A most interesting day………..Doug drove as firmly as a rock.” They would have re-lived their Mohaka wilderness trip as young people with their father as they passed close to it.
3. Francis John Poppelwell “Frank” third child, eldest son of his parents b. 11.8.1884 at his McCormick grandparents’ home in Dunedin, spent his early years at Clover Meadows, near Edendale, Southland, then Ravensbourne and elsewhere in Dunedin until 1897 when the family moved to Hastings H.B. when he was 13. See MAINLINE. Frank was short of stature, compounded by a boyhood back injury from football. He had dark hair, light brunette skin, hazel eyes,
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a round face and went bald early. Also he was born with a cleft palate and, as there was no corrective surgery at the time, had the characteristic indistinct speech. These difficulties did not impair strength, ability or longevity. After apprenticeship training, he had a long active career as carpenter and builder, associated at times with the Railway Department. An occasional stint at orchard work provided variety. He was a kindly jovial sociable man, generous to a fault and occasionally peppery and played the piano well. Between 1926 and 1930 when in his 40s, he married Lucy Savage, a Maori school teacher, quiet and dignified. They had no surviving issue. Two full-term babies were stillborn for no ascertainable reason. Lucy Savage Poppelwell died fairly young before 1936 and Frank continued to work at his trade in and about Hawkes Bay, Wellington and the Wairarapa. In the mid-1930s he and his sister Miriam’s son Dick Cassin did timber work related to the first Mohaka Viaduct which was opened in 1937 (since replaced by an even more imposing span.) Hastings was Frank’s base after his wife’s death, at his sister Miriam Poppelwell Cassin’s home and, after her 1961 death, with her daughter Miriam (Cassin) Gunn, both in Clive Street and with his younger brother Douglas Lachlan Poppelwell at the old Sylvan Road house. He lived into his late 80s and died in June 1972.
4. Ethelbert Adrian Poppelwell “Bert” fourth child, second son of his parents b. 6.8.1885 at his McCormick grandparents’ home in Dunedin. He spent his early years at Clover Meadows, near Edendale, Southland where, with his Uncle George’s help, he ‘rode the pecking goose’ as a three-year-old. Then he lived at Ravensbourne and elsewhere in Dunedin until 1897 when
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the family moved to Hastings H.B. when he was 12. He was Dux of his Primary school. For education and growing up years see MAINLINE.
Bert was short of stature, obviously taking after his diminutive grandmother CATHERINE. He was a genial, round-faced rosy little man who went bald early and could stand tall in any company. Of a gentle affectionate disposition he loved reading, sport and music.
After leaving Primary school he completed a printing apprenticeship in Hastings about 1905, then joined his father at the sawmill in the Pahiatua/Eketahuna area which JOHN POPPELWELL and a partner then ran. There at Hamua he met Mabel Baillie Ashford. In 1907 when Bert was 22 they married. They had three children i.e. Vera Mavis Poppelwell b. Eketahuna 1908 Millicent Agnes Poppelwell b. 1910 at and Ronald Ashford Poppelwell b. 1913 at Waipukurau where Bert worked for some years with the firm of Winloves. Their home here had several paddocks attached to it, on which they ran cows, not unusual at the period. Bert’s young sister Vivienne (later Palmer) holidayed with them there. By 1922 Bert and Mabel were running their own sawmill, albiet small, in Tikokino in the district. Mabel revelled in the extremely hard work involved. (In her very late years she often dwelt nostalgically, and rather touchingly, on this short Tikokino sawmill experience in the early 1920s). About 1924 while playing a Rugby match, management v. men, Bert broke a leg badly. He was in Hospital for about a year and incapacitated even longer, but it mended completely without leaving a limp. During part of the time he was unable to work Mabel worked as a domestic at Greenmeadows Marist Seminary, Hawkes Bay. Vera went to boarding school in Napier and Milly and Ron were with their grandparents at Sylvan Road, Hastings.
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About 1925 Bert began a long career with Odlin’s Timber Co. Ltd. initially at Napier. They had a section there next to the home of Bert’s maternal Uncle Will McCormick, where they planned to build. But Bert was offered managership of Odlin’s Hastings branch so they moved to that town. Bert held this post till he retired.
Bert had a share of his family’s sense of fun shown when, in the late 1920S (with their family nearly grown) he announced in a letter to a sister that he and Mabel had a new baby called “Austin”. A postscript revealed that the baby was a “Baby Austin” car just come on the market.
Vera, their eldest child, was close in age to her youngest aunt Vivienne Winifred Poppelwell, and they were companions from time to time during their growing years. When Viv wished to make a point over Vera she would insist on being addressed as “Aunty Viv, please, Vera” and Vera was known to reply passionately, “I don’t care, when I’m 21 (the then age of majority) I’ll NEVER call you Aunty!”
Bert was innovative: he bought a coupe car when THEY were new too and, shortly after retiring about the mid 1940s, took a wandering holiday in Northland picking up odd jobs at the small timber mills still operating in out-of-the-way corners. This casual rouseabout [roustabout] unquestionably puzzled the good northerners with his wide knowledge gained under his father’s tutelage, from his Waiupkurau [Waipukurau] experiences, and over fifteen years with Odlins.
He died at Wanganui in June 1955 aged nearly 70 from cancer, and is buried there. Mabel, his wife, lived into her 90s.
An incomplete outline of this branch as far as the writer knows it, follows:
Vera Mavis Poppelwell b. 1908 at Eketahuna m. Edgar Probert: issue 3 daughters = Diane, Gaye and Vera. The marriage failed and Vera, a gifted dress designer and needlewoman, maintained herself and her young children. With help from her parents (practical and financial, separately and co-operatively) she set up a women’s clothing manufacturing business, first at Grafton, Auckland and later at Wanganui where overheads were lower. She had creative flair and, inter alia, did well in up-market blouses and underwear, a niche not well supplied in those pre-production line times. Her daughter Gaye m.? Pedersen: issue one son. No other information
Millicent Agnes Poppelwell b. 1910, tiny, petite build, brown hair, office worker, married in late middle-age her first cousin Richard John Cassin, eldest son of Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin. They lived at 807 Lawrence Street, Hastings. No issue. Dick died in the mid-1970s and Milly still lives in their big old modernized house, since divided into flats.
Ronald Ashford Poppelwell b. 1913 m. young? Frost and had issue two daughters and a son John, Sue (later Picot) and and, after his wife’s early death he later remarried. There is one daughter, Kim, of this marriage. Ron was an accountant (now retired) and lived and worked in Marton for many years.
5. ELLINORE CLARE POPPELWELL “NELL” fifth child, third daughter of her parents b. 19.9.1887 at Clover Meadows, near Edendale, Southland. Was ten years old when family moved north in 1897. See MAINLINE
6. Miriam Catherine Poppelwell “Mim” sixth child, fourth daughter of her parents, was born at Ravensbourne, Dunedin on 28.8.1889 where (plus elsewhere in Dunedin) her early years were spent until the family moved north to H.B. in 1897 when she was eight years old. See MAINLINE for education and growing up years. Like her grandmother CATHERINE (McLachlan) POPPELWELL Mim was petite, barely five feet tall. Alone among her siblings she had her mother’s red-gold hair and, although five of her own nine children had red hair and the fair freckle-prone skin that often goes with it, Mim herself did not. Hers was a delicate creamy pink when young as an oil portrait from that period shows. The Hastings climate and a life long love of gardening mellowed it to a warm tawny brown. Her youthful daintiness became well proportioned roundness but she never carried excess weight. Her early photographs
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show a sweet serious expression on an oval face with neat features above a firm chin. On 28 March 1910 when she was 20 years of age Miriam married John Joseph Cassin “Jack” aged 29, who had his own well established furniture business. They had been engaged since Miriam was seventeen, but her parents wouldn’t allow marriage till she was older although they, like everyone else, esteemed her fiancee Jack Cassin highly. He supervised the building of the Poppelwells’ second home at Sylvan Road as JOHN was working away a lot at his Pahiatua/Eketahuna sawmill at the time. Jack Cassin was tall, lean, dark-haired, kind, a keen sportsman and was generally much liked and respected. He bought several acres of land in south Hastings with frontages to both Clive Street and Churchill Street. (Hastings is set out on the American grid system into rather small blocks). He had built there the spacious wooden house with extra-wide L-shaped verandahs on unusually high foundations, which was their family home until they died. The high foundations were because of a potential flood hazard (which never happened) the land being relatively low-lying. The major drainage work of the town had not then been completed. The Main South Drain, on which Mim’s father had earlier worked as a contractor, was part of this work. Also Jack Cassin’s uncle (or cousin?) had been drowned in the calamitous flood of 1897 when the three big rivers of the Heretaunga Plain, the Tukituki, Ngaruroro and Tutaekuri, are reported to have joined with devastating effect. Jack was specially aware of flood dangers!
Behind and about the house was a detached washhouse (customary at the time) and car-shed, croquet lawn, orchard, berry bushes, gardens, hen-run, hay-shed and a bail for the house-cows. Jack even reared a few pigs for home use. He liked them and averred they were innately clean animals, which they were under his care. Their car was a Maxwell, huge by modern standards with a
flexible folding hood. Mim’s youngest sister, Vivienne, who spent a lot of time with the Cassins, remembers them all going to Napier in this car to celebrate Armistice in 1918, when she was 12 years old. Jack sold it later, fearing his adventurous little wife would kill herself in it.
Mim and Jack had nine children:
Miriam Grace “Miri” later “Mim” b. 15.10.1912
Richard John “Dick” b. 14.5.1913,
Allen Joseph b. 17.8.1914.
Frances Jean b. 18.8.1916
Moira Elizabeth “Snow b. 12.3.1918.
Noel “Paddy” b. 14.12. 1919
Colin Henry “Col”) Collectively “the Bing) b. 22.10.22.
Philip Louis “Phil”) Boys” from a pop group) b. 14.12.23.
Leonard Francis “Len”) of the 20s. b. 6.6.25.
Mim had a special rapport with her father having inherited his intellectual curiosity and independence of spirit which (in her) was inextricably allied to everyday practicality. She followed intelligently the fluctuating often radical opinions of her times (World War I and the twenties brought major social change), evaluated them and, when it seemed appropriate but not otherwise, applied them. An example was refusing to accept the then new and passionately propagated concept of no corporal punishment. As she told a Parents’ Meeting of her “Bing Boys” Kindergarten (also new in the area then) “Nature punishes.” A careful concern for her childrens’ health led her always to use wholemeal flour, brown sugar, masses of milk, rich yellow butter, fresh vegetables, eggs and fruit, gooseberries, red and black currants, much of it home produced. They slept on the long side verandah, divided into “boys” and “girls” dormitories. It was open to the air above a wooden half-wall with a striped rolled canvas screen let down occasionally in severe weather. A long-sash window from the parents’ bedroom opened on to the verandah, providing ready access.
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(In later years after the family was adult this verandah was glassed in with sliding windows and made luxurious underfoot with thick red ex-hotel carpeting.
Jack Cassin died of cancer aged 45 in the spring of 1926 when Miri, the eldest child, was 15 years and Leonard, the youngest, fifteen months. His elder children had for a time a distaste for the scent of spring flowers as they associated it with his funeral.
This was a period of deepening depression which became long term. Mim marshalled her resources and her family into meeting their needs. The house cows increased to a small herd and, hand-milked by the elder children, provided veal and bobby beef as well as an abundance of dairy products and some cash surplus. The area was semi-rural then and spare grazing was available at low cost. Domestic refrigeration was in the future but meat could be stored in a compartmented commercial freezer in town which charged a small fee for each opening of the door. Using early forms of tilling machinery Mim grew mangolds and other crops for winter feed for the stock and grew and preserved vast quantities of fresh fruit, berries and vegetables. Household soap was made in the washhouse copper. The work was spread according to age, ability and talents. Home management eventually became the domain of Jean, the second daughter, because of her undoubted skill there, the other older ones “spanked” the cows, Mim herself did much of the heavy cropping work despite her diminutive size. Then there were the younger children to be cared for, clothing and all their schooling to be overseen. In the Poppelwell tradition particular attention was given to the latter. The family attended St. Joseph’s Convent and Hastings High School. In her thoughtful way Mim felt a larger secondary school with a wider curriculum and more mixed philosophical background was a better preparation for life than the small post primary division which was all that local Catholic education could then offer.
Three progressed to tertiary education in teaching, medicine and library fields but this was later, mainly post-World-War II when able to finance themselves. In these daunting, challenging, stimulating conditions Mim reared her family into healthy robust adults and first rate citizens.
There was fun too, picnics at parks and riversides, walking to and fro: there were also reciprocal holidays away from home with friends and kin and varied sporting interests. They all took after their father in this respect and, like him too, enjoyed card and board games. They all learned music…….piano or violin. There were bicycles for transport, the popular mode of getting about in flat flourishing Hastings. Dick had his father’s high distinctive two-bar model. Guy Fawkes was a special event with Dick lighting the fireworks safely for the younger children to admire.
Nor was helping others neglected. Unbelievably, the Cassins found time and resources to do far more than most in this field. There was always a welcome and a corner for kin and some others in need in their hospitable home. Surplus produce found its way to those in want, and there were many in those hard thirties.
Mim’s sister NELL (POPPELWELL) BARRY’S family were regular visitors at the Cassin’s from their backblocks country home. Most years they spent about six weeks in Hastings, outfitting etc., the children (the writer being one) going to the Convent with their Cassin cousins while there. Range-cooked milk puddings, velvet smooth in huge enamel pie-dishes, and outsize Spotted Dog boiled pudding, first hot with sauce, then the surplus, cold, sliced and dipped into thick yellow cream as after-school snacks are delicious memories of these visits.
Later during a bad patch after they had left the farm NELL (POPPELWELL) BARRY, her husband and their then seven children
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lived for about a year at the Cassin home, extra kitchen facilities having been installed and one end of the front verandah turned into another “boys’ dormitory”. Nineteen people (three adults and sixteen children) were safely sheltered there during this time.
Mim lived through World War II with outward calm, though at one time five of her six sons were in the forces. Her inner anxiety showed through once when a telegram of exam good wishes came for Leonard from an older brother in camp in New Zealand. Without looking at the name Mim grabbed it and tore in open in a most uncharacteristic way. They all returned safely.
She was a wide reader notably during her senior years when time and health compelled more rest. She brought her garden on to the verandah then, empty since the family had flown the nest and, as an interest, specialized in growing cyclamen and maidenhair fern in pots. She supplied the latter to local florists. Her daughter Jean, who did not marry, was a great help to her in later life. Most of her children lived in and about Hastings and the many grandchildren were a source of continuing enjoyment and interest. This grand little woman once said “The serene sixties are worth waiting for.” One of the few regrets she expressed was ‘that it was hard expending her energy in three pence worths.’
Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin died peacefully at home on 7 September 1961 aged 72 years.
As has emerged often in this chronicle the Bibical [Biblical] truth about trees being known by their fruit is again reflected by the descendants of Miriam and Jack Cassin. A record of this branch follows, incomplete but fuller than some others in this history as it has been the writer’s privilege to have had much contact with the Cassins in early life and, despite distance and divergence
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since, not to have quite lost touch. Allen Cassin put it thus when, frail and unwell, he made a long journey to a Barry funeral. “I hadn’t to come. We’ve always been together.”
Miriam Grace Cassin “Miri” “Mim” / b. 15.10.1912 eldest daughter and child of her parents, tall, slender, red-gold hair m. William Gunn of Hastings 1945. Issue: Rosalie, Terence, Martin, Elizabeth, Gerard. They lived first at her mother’s flat once occupied by her Aunt NELL’S family and then at their own home in Clive Street, a few chains away from her mother’s home. Miri was always fond of her Uncle Frank Poppelwell, her mother’s brother, and he lived with them for a spell in his old age.
Richard John Cassin “Dick” b. 14.5.1913, second child, eldest son of his parents, medium-to-tall, red hair, fair skin. As youth and man he worked in Hastings and northern H.B. at timber mills and, with his Uncle Frank Poppelwell, at carpentry work related to the Mohaka Viaduct, opened in 1937, and for a considerable time with Odlins Timber Co. Hastings. He served in the Army during World War II in the Middle Eastern and Italian theatres. On his return he went into horticulture, owning big glasshouses producing tomatoes and other vegetables. In 1966 aged 53 he married his cousin Millicent Agnew Poppelwell, second daughter of his Uncle Bert Poppelwell. No issue. They lived at 807 Lawrence Street, Hastings where Dick’s glasshouses were sited, in a roomy old house (moved from another site) skilfully modernized and, after Dick’s death in the mid 1970s, turned into two flats. One his widow lives in and the other is let (1990). Dick was an equable kind, likable [likeable] person who did much church and charitable work for the community. He played a leading part in establishing a Credit Union in Hastings. He suffered from diabetes in his later years.
Allen Joseph Cassin “Dick” b. 17.8.1914, third child, second son of his parents, medium-to-tall, dark brown hair, olive skin, green/brown (?) eyes, very handsome as a young man, trained as a Primary School teacher, served in the Tanks Corps in the Army During World War II in the Middle East and the Italian theatres. He met his future wife in northern Italy and wished to marry and bring her home, such brides being brought to New Zealand by the New Zealand Government. However she was only 19 and her parents were doubtful about such a wartime match. They said if he was still of the same mind after he had been home and seen his family they would consent. Allen was not a practical person but he worked his way back to Italy after repatriation and discharge from the forces and married his Dina (Leonardo Pepe ‘Dina’), as her parents wished. Their qualms were set at rest by his persistence and determination supported by letters from his mother to Dina’s parents. It was very difficult as there was no regular shipping service to Italy in that disorganized immediately post-war period. (Air transport in a commercial way had not then developed). He had first to get to England and then after a long wait managed to get a passage to Italy, costs having to be borne by himself instead of the Army. This was 1947.
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He and Dina settled in Hastings and had a family of 18 beautiful, healthy, bi-lingual children = Miriam Catherine, Maria Antoinette, John Teodoro, Rosanna Christina, Rita Theresa, Josephine Veronica, Juliana Josephine, Adela Margaret, Tony Francis, Christine Theresa, Dianne Mary, Nino Guiseppei, Henry Mark, David Gerard, Johanna Mary Victoria, Adrian Peter, Jeffrey Paul, and Andrew Philip.
Allen taught at Primary schools in Hastings for many years and had other secondary occupations also. He tutored private pupils, harvested cocksfoot seed on a commercial basis with employees, and grew crops etc. Dina was also extremely energetic and a good manager. She too worked outside the home from time to time and so financed several trips back to Italy. Their family home was in Riverslea Road, S. Hastings and in their later years they moved to Manurewa, Auckland where many of their grown-up children were (others were in Australia) and which had a climate better suited to Allen’s heart condition than H.B.’s severe winters. Allen died there in late 1986. A likeable, kindly, charming, not entirely practical person, who commanded affection.
Frances Jean Cassin “Jean” b. 18.3.1916, fourth child, second daughter of her parents, thick red-gold hair, green (?) eyes, fair skin, strong build, energetic, very good organizer. Worked at power-machining during wartime manpower years and later. Did not marry and was a big help and comfort to her mother and also at times to her siblings. She suffered poor health for some years after her mother’s death in 1961 and later cared for her aunt and uncle Doll and John Munro. After their deaths she lived in her own home in Willowpark Road N. Hastings (which was let until she was free to live in it) and had great pleasure furnishing it and developing its garden to her liking. Jean was a true “home” person, an excellent domestic, financial and practical manager. Many kin have found warm welcome at her home. Her brother Paddy and his sons do the heavy cultivation of her extensive garden now she is in late years. She deep-freezes much of its produce for out-of-season use, thoroughly enjoying it all. She is a skilled needlewoman, knitter and handworker.
Moira Elizabeth Cassin “Snow” b. 12.3.1918, fifth child, third daughter of her parents, very fair hair as a child, darkened to honey blonde as a young adult, large deep blue eyes, dark lashes, creamy skin, adademic, [academic,] did clerical work but during World War II opted for band Army work in orchards for which there was urgent need. In 1946 she married Eric Burge son of the family she had helped while he was away serving overseas. Issue five Colleen Margaret, Garry Kenneth, Brent William, Marlene Louise, Gail Patricia. Snow and Eric ran an orchard near Hastings for many years and when their family were nearly adult, sold it and spent a period in Australia, a working holiday, seeing the place and doing casual orchard work to finance living expenses. They retired to Westshore, Napier, N.Z. where they still live (1990.)
Noel Cassin “Paddy” b. 14.12.1919, sixth child, third son of his parents, dark brown hair, blue eyes, olive skin, small stature, slight build. Capable, quiet, genial. Served in Army during World War II, Pacific theatre, contracted malaria: after the War he worked with machinery at Whakatu Freezing Works near Hastings until retirement on 20.10.1984 after 50 years with the firm. In 1947 he married Violet Blanche
Avison “Vi”, an attractive, lovely-natured, dark-haired girl and lived at their own Fenwick Street, Hastings, home, which has a big double section with gardens and orchard. Issue five: Brian John, Kevin Michael, Michael Arthur, Sheena Dorothy, Mark Gerard. Paddy’s brother, Colin, was his best man and he later married one of the bridesmaids, Eileen Bowyer, a silver-fair blonde.
Colin Henry Cassin b. 22.10.1922, seventh child, fourth son, of his parents, yellow-gold hair, slight build, fair skin, short-to-medium height. Quiet, capable, conservative, extremely independent nature. Trained as a builder, carpenter and furniture maker. He worked always as his own master and successfully renovated old houses, among other things. He served in the Army during World War II. In 1949 he married Eileen Mary Bowyer. Issue five: Judith Ann, Barry John, Rhonda Christine, Christopher Nigel and Susan Margaret.
Phillip Louis Cassin b. 14.12.1923, eighth child, fifth son of his parents, dark brown hair, olive skin, medium height, academic. Began training as a teacher but was drawn to medicine. During the War his mother reluctantly consented to him joining the Hospital ship Monowai (he was under age for overseas duty at the time) but she felt a stint on a wartime hospital ship would thoroughly test his wish to be a doctor. He became the fifth of her six sons to serve in the forces at the one time. Leonard was too young. After the War Philip qualified as a Doctor at Otago and practised at various places in N.Z. including the West Coast. In 1956 he married Dierdre [Deirdre] Margaret Corder, an English nurse, of Christchurch. Issue six: Simon John, Theresa Anne, Rose Marianne, Jeremy James, Andrew Mark and Alister Paul, who was b. in 1965 and died two months later. One of their daughters was an adopted Chinese refugee child. They moved to Melbourne, Australia, worked very hard and did well. Philip was gifted in and successful with financial investment.
Leonard Francis Cassin b. 6.6.1925. ninth and youngest child of his parents, yellow gold hair, fair skin, medium to tall, practical with a good brain but preferred working outside when possible. Later he worked and did well in the Library field for some years and then trained as a manufacturing craftsman of costume jewellery. Did not marry. Has lived in Wellington for many years.
7. Marguerite Josephine Poppelwell “Daisy” seventh child, fifth daughter of her parents b. 27.6.1891 Ravensbourne and elsewhere in Dunedin until her family moved north to Hawkes Bay in 1897 when she was six years old. See MAINLINE for education and growing up years. Dark haired Daisy, who had hazel eyes and a brunette complexion, was attractive rather than beautiful. She had an oval face and seems to have had an equable disposition.
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Within her family there was a special affection towards her. She worked in the Ladies Showroom of Roach’s Department Store in Hastings for some years and elsewhere, eventually in Melbourne, Australia. It was a satisfactory career at which she did well at that time of limited opportunity for women. In 1927 in her mid-thirties she married M.F. Fannin “Frank” of Melbourne. Issue: one son, John Fannin. Daisy returned to New Zealand to see her family just prior to her marriage in 1927 and (inter alia) visited her sister NELL, and family on their backblocks home in northern H.B. She affectionately told her sister she was “the same old NELL, fussing about things that don’t matter at all,” and took her three little nieces (the writer was one) for walks. She insisted to their amusement on always carrying a stick “for the snakes”, and coaxed them out of their shyness with wonderful stories. Among these was her plan to marry a kangaroo which they didn’t really believe but couldn’t quite discount either. She assured them she would teach him how to shear sheep. After Daisy’s return to Melbourne a magnificent big bound volume of “The Adventures of Bib and Bub” (popular Australian comic characters based on gum-nuts) arrived. On the fly leaf was: “To the little Barrys from Uncle Frank Fannin, the Kangaroo.”
Much later, in 1945, NELL wrote Daisy telling her that her wrote Daisy telling her that her son David was returning from World War II on the ss “Andes” which was to call at Melbourne. Sent by surface mail it arrived the morning of the day the transport was due to sail in the late afternoon. So Daisy spent the day striding the streets of Melbourne frequented by servicemen ashore, peering into the faces of red-haired N.Z. airmen and inquiring their names from those which seemed possibles. It was fruitless and
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she relieved her feelings by a letter of sisterly frankness to NELL for not having posted her news air mail. Daisy predeceased her husband who died in late December 1976. Their only child John married Hero, an ethnic Japanese girl.
8. Irene Bernice Poppelwell “Rene” eighth child, sixth daughter of her parents b. 18.5.1898. at Hastings H.B. See MAINLINE for early years. Hazel eyed, dark haired Rene with light brunette colouring, was a bonny boistrous capable lass and had a lively sense of humour. She played hockey, had a good singing voice and was a gifted pianist once winning a gold medal for a performance. She shared her sister NELL’S choir, concert and stage musical interests. She and her sisters Alma and Viv were taught music by Mr. Richard (“Dicky”) Ryan, a Hastings music teacher.
In 1919 at 21 she made a most unfortunate marriage to Percy Alfred Malhoff Biggs. They lived in Napier and Christchurch. Issue three i.e. Noeline, Joan and Ivan. Her husband treated her badly and although her parents helped them materially and from time to time persuaded him to better behaviour, it never lasted. She “went it alone” after something like 17 difficult years, making a home in Wellington. Without help from their father and despite some harassment from him until a law change prevented it, she provided for and reared their children well. From about this time (1936?) Ivan spent much time with his Cassin cousins in Hastings, another ‘son’ for Miriam (Poppelwell) Cassin, contemporary with her Bing boys.
Stanley and Vivienne (Poppelwell) Palmer, her sister and brother-in-law, helped a lot during the hard early stages. Vivienne with a toddler and a babe in arms, coped with the needs of herself, her husband, her sister and two teenage nieces. Rene, her robust
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sense of humour still intact, held down two full time jobs (factory work by day and evening waitressing) to establish and furnish the comfortable roomy flat in Pirie Street Wellington (within walking distance of all facilities) which she took over from her aunt Polly Monkman-Dempster about late 1937/early 1938. Rene’s overwork during this stage may have been an underlying cause of her later bad health. She became forewoman at Frosty Jack Ice Cream Factory and was so valued that, when she needed an operation during the War, the firm insisted on paying for it to be done at a private hospital. Extended family kin, including her sister NELL’S four eldest, in Wellington during World War II, were made warmly welcome there. Rene lived in Wellington for 13 years. After World War II, her two daughters married and Ivan independent, Rene became more mobile. She lived at Feilding, Palmerston North and Hastings (where she had a home) visiting her family or flatting nearby. She had enjoyable stays at her childhood home in Sylvan Road, when the Palmers were up from Wellington. She died at Hastings in the 1970s aged about 75. Her later years were dogged by indifferent health but her children and kin loved and valued her always.
An incomplete outline of this branch follows as far as the writer knows it:
Noeline Ivy Biggs b. 1919, dark brown hair, smooth olive skin, grey-blue eyes, a champion swimmer as a schoolgirl m. fairly young John?, an English immigrant. Issue: John jnr. and others. Noeline died fairly young before all her children were fully grown.
Joan Biggs b. 1921, mid-brown hair, fair skin, hazel eyes, good sportswoman and dressmaker: held by Manpower Regulations at a factory making battledress during World War II m. William Prout about 1944. Issue three, all young adults when Joan died suddenly on a golf course when still relatively young in the mid-1970s.
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Ivan Biggs b. about 1924, brown hair, medium height and strong build, strong facial resemblance to his uncle Douglas Lachlan Poppelwell, m. Joan?. Issue: several including a son who became an Anglican minister. They live in Copeland Road, Hastings. Ivan works in the wool industry and he and his wife were among those supportive to Douglas Poppelwell when he was old.
9. Alma Theresa Poppelwell ninth child, seventh daughter of her parents b. 16.5.1901 at Hastings. See MAINLINE for early years. Dark brown hair, a frank positive personality sociable by nature. Golf and music were among her interests. Educated at St. Joseph’s Convent, Hastings and Napier Technical College, where she did a commercial course. She worked in the Public Trust Office, Napier after leaving school and in 1927 married Keith William Bull whom she had known since schooldays. They lived at Napier and had issue three children: Hilary, Warwick and Margot. Keith Bull worked for Union Steamship Co. and did well there, becoming manager of their Napier office and, after 1936, their Gisborne branch. At Gisborne he was also joint manager of N.Z. Shipping Co. and later was Napier Manager of this firm. Alma’s talents were a great help to him in his work. A kind, vigorous, humorous commonsense was a feature of her make-up.
After the family returned to Napier when the two eldest were married. Alma died unexpectedly early on 10 February 1960 at not quite 60. Her husband (who survived till 2 October 1978) remarried. He lived into his 80s.
An incomplete record of this branch follows as far as the writer knows it:
Hilary Alison Bull b. 24.9.1929 brown eyes, dark hair, slim build m. in 1953 Garth Goddard. Issue six: Wendy Jane m. J. van Straten, Deborah Margaret m. Graeme Ross, Helen, Frances, Alison, Julie, Peter.
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John Warwick Bull “Warwick” b. 29.4.1934., blue eyes, fair skin, dark hair, strong build. Warwick qualified as a Civil Engineer, worked and lived Napier, Taupo, Hastings. A keen water sportsman, he sings well taking part in choirs and other musical events: Rotary, NZEI, Wine Society etc. with his wife Judy. Both are active in various community fields. They were married on 7.11.1959. Issue four:
Stephen Warwick b. 21.5.1961
Nicola Judith b. 24.5.1962
Philip Keith b. 11.9.1965
Malcolm John b. 31.5.1968.
Margo Elizabeth Bull b. 11.10.1937. Brown eyes, dark hair, m. Maxwell H. Kay. Issue two
i.e. Simon & Robert (twins) b. 10.9.1967. Lived Auckland.
10. Douglas Lachlan Poppelwell tenth child, third and youngest son of his parents b. September/October (?) 1903 at Hastings, see MAINLINE for early years. Dark brown curly hair, brunette complexion, hazel eyes, medium height and build, always a good looking man, jovial sense of humour and a sometimes pungent wit. Fiercely independent in nature. Doug was two and a half years old when the new house was built at Sylvan Road: he remembered into old age seeing the previous one, where he had been born, being transported away. This happened in 1909 on the first day he started school aged six. He was educated first at the Hastings Convent, then at Marist Brothers, Napier, where he was very happy. Then he did an Agricultural course at Napier Technical College which his sisters had also attended. Doug was basically an outdoor man. He worked on the Napier wharf, on farms and with timber, planting trees on a rugged block of land on the Napier Taupo Road which he bought. He eventually gravitated to driving big vehicles, oil tankers etc. from Napier north into the formidible [formidable] terrain about Taupo, Tuai etc. before roading was modernized. He married Dorothea Goodall of Wairoa about 1930. Issue two sons, John and Gilbert: lived first at Port Ahuriri, Napier and at his boyhood home at 807 Sylvan Road, Hastings, which he bought
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from his parents’ estate about 1941. His marriage was not successful. Dorothea was a devoted mother and to a degree a hard, though disorganized, worker. But she lacked something…judgment, [judgement] balance, moderation? Certainly tolerance, kindness, commonsense, even fairness, particularly towards her husband, was not evident in her make up. She was to some extent eccentric and disharmony followed her, surely an unhappy burden for anyone to carry. However, she left no stone unturned to help her elder son, and she also worked in a factory to enable her younger son to gain the tertiary qualification he wanted.
Doug’s lot was not an easy one but he managed it surprisingly well, fulfilling all reasonable responsibilities. The experience shadowed but did not sour his personality. He and Dorothea separated by mutual consent when the sons were fully adult after Dorothea inherited property at Wairoa from a bachelor half-brother, where she lived thereafter. Life became pleasant for Doug then. He was still working fulltime and lived peacefully in his childhood home, garden-farming the land about it. After retirement he became adept at freezing and preserving produce from it. His elder brother Frank lived with him until professional care became necessary and his sister Vivienne and her husband visited regularly when business took them to Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne. Vivienne cared for Doug during convalescence following an operation during this period. The Cassins, Kevin Barry, Ivan Biggs and his wife Joan, Judy and Warwick Bull and other Hastings kin and friends enjoyed his company and saw to his welfare.
Douglas Lachlan Poppelwell died at Hastings Memorial Hospital on 27 October 1979 aged 76 years with his nephews Kevin Barry and Ivan Biggs, and Ivan’s wife Joan, at his bedside. Three months earlier he had sold his property, with a life tenancy proviso, to the Hastings City Council which wanted it to complete development of Windsor Park. He asked that his ashes be spread on the land which
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was done. This seemed fitting in every way, although there was no grave to show his son John when he contacted Hastings cousins asking where his father lay. He and his brother had been notified and warmly pressed to attend the funeral, and assured that nothing painful would be mentioned, but did not come, which was an added sadness to those who loved Doug.
An incomplete record of this branch follows as far as the writer knows it.
John Poppelwell b. February 1931 at Palmerston North where his mother had been evacuated on a relief train soon after the Hawkes Bay Earthquake on 3 February 1931. John has dark brown hair, olive skin, brown eyes is medium to tall with strong build, and a gentle affectionate nature. He is slightly intellectually handicapped. He and his father were fond of each other.
Gilbert Poppelwell b. 1936 Napier, brown hair, olive skin, good looking, academic, qualified as a civil engineer at Christchurch University: Engineer to the Napier City Council for many years, attached to his mother, cool to his father.
11. Vivienne Winifred Poppelwell 11th and youngest child, eighth daughter of her parents b. Hastings 20 April 1906, dark hair, light brunette skin, hazel eyes, clearly defined facial bone structure, a “McCormick” look, medium build and height, specially dear to her parents (her father called her “Squivvles”) and indeed to her entire family. Intelligent, objective, tolerant, kind, hospitable, sensitive with strong family feeling, an infectious sense of humour sometimes mildly ironical. She attended St. Joseph’s Convent, Hastings, and Napier Technical College, a commercial course, and later worked in offices in Napier. She played hockey and golf and loved gardening. In 1931 aged 25 Vivienne Poppelwell married Stanley Austin Palmer in the garden of the Sylvan Road home. Harry Poppelwell, youngest son of Sebastian Poppelwell, and the bride’s cousin, was best man. Stan and Viv lived initially in Napier and
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moved to Wellington about 1935. They lived briefly at Khandallah before buying their permanent family home at 8 Tisdall Street, Karori, Wellington, where they lived for many years. Stan died at Wellington on 4 October 1987 and in 1989 Viv relocated to Eastborne [Eastbourne].
Viv and Stan Palmer gave help, kindness and sensitive practical support to many, among them Rene Biggs and her family, Len Cassin and NELL and Ben Barry and their family.
They had three children, Malcolm, Bruce and Susan.
An incomplete record of this branch follows as far as the writer knows it:
Malcolm b. Napier January 1934, fair, medium height and build, resembles his father, educated Karori Convent and St. Patrick’s town college Wellington. His cousin Kevin Barry was one of his teachers: he works in commerce. m. Gilda Issue five i.e. Michael, Matthew, Catherine, Richard and Jonathan.
Bruce b. 1937(?) attended Karori Convent and St. Patrick’s town college (where his cousins Kevin and Niel [Neil] Barry were on the staff at one stage: also Bernard Barry, but at a later time.) Bruce qualified in law at Victoria University, Wellington, practised for some years and became a District Court Judge. He also worked in the Islands in a justice capacity and in 1987 was appointed to the Labour Court bench in the industrial sphere. m. Gillian Issue eight i.e. Elaine, Nicholas, Julian, Cecily, Kate, Nathan, Julie and Emily. They live in Christchurch.
Susan fair, large blue eyes, resembles her father, attended Karori Convent and St. Mary’s College m. Peter Donovan who was once a pupil of her cousin Kevin Barry at St. Patrick’s town college. Issue six: Julie (m. Adrian Brown – a daughter Grace Isabel b. 1987), Paul, Mark, Cecilia, Jeremy and Peter Donovan is in External Affairs Department and has worked in N.Z., France and Australia. The French appointment was for six years and the family had the advantage of a wider environment as a result.
Their daughter Julie’s husband is in TV reporting and has worked in London, Hong Kong, China etc.
WEDDING GROUP JOHN & DOLL (POPPELWELL) MUNRO 1910
Back l to r: Jack Cassin, Mrs O Avison (friend), John Poppelwell, Barney O’Kane (family friend), Ossie Avison (best man), Nell Poppelwell (later Barry), Daisy Poppelwell (later Fannin), Isabel Nihill (friend), Frank Poppelwell, Father Keogh:
Front l to r: Alma Poppelwell (later Bull), Miriam Cassin (nee Poppelwell), Douglas Poppelwell, Mrs. Margaret Poppelwell mother of the bride, Vivienne Poppelwell (later Palmer), John Munro the groom, Doll Munro the bride (nee Poppelwell), Mrs. M. C. McCormick, grandmother of the bride, Rene Poppelwell (later Biggs), Mrs. Maurice Cheer, (friend).
East Coast Railway workers near Tutira HB. John Poppelwell at far right, aged 72: published Weekly News 1.9.1924
Margaret McC Poppelwell’s funeral: November 1933: Back l to r: Bert P(son), Wm. McCormick(brother), Frank P.(son),David P (bro-in-law), Douglas P (son), Maurice Cheer(friend);
Middle l to r: ?, Stan Palmer, John Munro Ben Barry & Percy Biggs (sons-in-law), Dick Cassin (grandson): Front 1 to r: Dorethea [Dorothea] P (d-in-law), Alma & Doll (daughters), John Poppelwell (husband), Miriam & Vivienne & Irene (daughters), Mrs. M. Cheer (friend.
Wedding 1945: l to r: Dick Cassin, Kevin Barry, Doll Munro, Doug Poppelwell, Bernard Barry (schoolboy in front), June Barry, Moira Cassin, Frank Poppelwell, Millicent Poppelwell, Alma Bull, Viv Palmer John Munro and Miriam Cassin.
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