#52Ancestors, Week 13, The Old Homestead

Two possible homes spring to mind as subjects for this topic.

Both of them, I feel should be heritage listed. But I think the current owners might have different ideas.

Along Northbank Road running next to the Wairau River, past Onamalutu and heading towards Tophouse and St Arnaud, on the opposite side of the braided river to State Highway 63, is Fabian’s Valley Road. It is not always open to the public and crosses private farm land. It is rough metal and at times verges on 4WD territory. Sometime before you reach Fabian’s Valley Road you will have crossed an unremarkable bridge over Bartlett’s Creek.

Still standing along Bartlett’s Road, past a small cemetery, is a cob cottage. Built, most likely in the early 1850’s. It is a survivor of large earthquakes including the Kaikoura 2016 7.8 quake and quite likely the Wairarapa 1855 8.2 quake, storms and timeworn neglect.

The first time that my parents visited was in the early 1980’s. They went with a cousin also researching the family, and met with yet more cousins still farming the land. At that time cattle called it home, and the work to try to save it was just beginning. I wish I could find those photos to include – maybe later.

In 2014, I went to see if I could find it too. It seemed much more cared for, although obviously used by locals who had left their beer cans behind. Sacrilege to us ! The cattle were still there, but kept away by a fence and the creek, which would have been their water supply was so close. I imagine at times it must have been INSIDE !

This was the home of my great-great-great-grandparents John and Maria Bartlett. They had left their home in East Chinnock, Somerset, where their families had lived for generations working as weavers, sailmakers and glovers, and bought their young family to Nelson New Zealand in 1842. Their youngest children including my great-great-grandfather were born in Nelson, in the Matai Valley. There are Bartletts still in the area, I believe, who are connected in some way to John and Maria. Maybe they were orchardists, apple growing was a big industry in pioneer Nelson and still is. Perhaps they were farmers.

At any event, something prompted them, and other families to move over to Marlborough in the early 1850s. Was it gold ? Was it simply the availability of land ?

The cottage itself has two rooms possibly three, judging by the remnants of a partition wall, downstairs. One obviously the kitchen still with an old coal range; a staircase leads to a loft space upstairs. Timber shingles are still on the roof in places, but most have been replaced by corrugated iron.

In this home Maria raised her family. The older children were now adults, some marrying in the district within the first years of their arrival. Others like my great-great-grandfather were still very young. Someone ran a school for the local children. Whether this was in their home or at another nearby location I do not know. I don't think it was Maria, more likely a daughter or daughter in law. When she and John were married in 1825, they had both signed their names with “x” on the marriage register.

Tragedy came to the family, not long after their arrival. On 19 June 1860 John was drowned in Spring Valley Creek while crossing it on his way home from a meeting. He had safely crossed the Wairau only to come to grief in the creek not far from his home. His son Joseph and son-in-law John Ward were following and found him. Three years later on 18 December 1863 another crossing went awry, this time on the Wairau River. It claimed the lives of son Joseph and son-in-law John Ward. They are described in the newspaper report as shearers and had crossed on horseback. John Ward’s horse arrived home rider-less which alerted family members to the catastrophe.

The river, which looks shallow, gentle and mesmerisingly blue normally, can be treacherous when in flood. Life goes on though for our pioneers, both young widows married again. Maria died just three years later. Her son Thomas, who had married his brother Joseph’s widow, stayed and raised his family there. His descendants were farming there still as recently as 2016, maybe even now.

Today, the large sheep runs and sheep farming as a whole are being overtaken by grapes and more grapes. This is Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc country.

#52Ancestors, Week 12, Misfortune

Misfortune. Lucky one week, unlucky the next ? A series of unfortunate events ?

Some years ago while doing some searching “alongside” my 4^th cousin in the UK about the family line we share, and more particularly her branch of that line we came across a very sad discovery.

Two of my great grandmother’s cousins; brothers, moved their families from Wolverhampton to Glasgow around the turn of the century. The elder brother went first with his wife and young son between 1894 and 1897. About ten years later the younger brother followed with his wife and three young children.

Arthur and Martha (yes it’s true) had already lost one baby aged about eighteen months before travelling north. On the 1911 Scots census it stated that they had had eight children but only four were living. That itself was quite sad to learn. The determination to go on, to have more babies when you have lost so many in infancy, just astounds me.

From ScotlandsPeople we had built a picture of their family including the “unknown” children who had lived briefly between 1901 and 1911. Then an email arrived from my cousin to say she had been doing some more searching.

She had purchased the death certificate for Martha, who had died in February 1930. Martha it seemed came to an unfortunate end, so the search of newspapers began to see what might be uncovered. And this is where the misfortune became apparent.

The newspaper reported that Arthur had come home in the middle of the day for his dinner and discovered the grisly scene. It was reported that Martha was greatly upset about the death of her daughter Emma who had died earlier in the week and been buried the previous day. The timing of Emma’s death had brought to the surface the memory of another daughter who had died aged sixteen, just three years earlier.

What was going on here ?

But, this was a double tragedy as Martha did not just take her own life, she also had inflicted serious injury to their youngest daughter who died soon after Arthur had arrived home. Martha’s despair must have been enormous, and the guilt for Arthur; that had he been moments earlier he may have been able to avert the tragedy.

This led me to use up my credits on ScotlandsPeople and purchase more death certificates. The names of the unknown babies were discovered and the causes of death for their children.

Martha Agnes	23 November 1905	16m	Broncho-Pneumonia 28days Cardiac Asthemia 1day
Charles	13 January 1907	7w	Premature Birth Asthemia
Frederick	9 March 1909	6m	Acute Bronchitis Convulsions
Minnie Mildred	9 February 1927	16	Percarditis ? Endocarditis, Cardiac Failure
Emma Elizabeth	4 February 1930	30	Embolism of Heart
Martha	8 February 1930	56	Haemorrhage, cut throat
Martha	8 February 1930	11	Haemorrhage , cut throat
Arthur George	9 July 1932 –	31	Cardiac Failure, Acute endocarditis, Mitral Stenosis

It all pointed sadly to a genetic heart defect, seemingly passed on to at least six of their children.

How difficult must it have been to live with that, and how unjust must it have seemed that you lost so many babies. In December 1906 when baby Charles was born, Arthur’s seventeen year old unmarried half sister Ellen was staying with the family and gave birth to her own daughter at their home that month.

I wonder how each mother felt, one bereft and one grateful.

#52Ancestors, Week 11, Lucky

I have been thinking long and hard about this one – all the way into Week 12 !

I don’t know if anyone had a dog named Lucky. I am pretty sure there is no-one called Fortuna or anything similar hiding somewhere in my tree. The only two relatively lucky people though sheer luck that I can think of, I have already written about before. My great grand uncle Walter who did pretty darned well on the Thames goldfields and then on the Coolgardie fields of Western Australia; and my daughter’s great great grand aunt Carrie who won a tiara in an Art Union raffle.

When I mentioned my dilemma to my daughter she simply said “The luck of the Irish.” Very cliché – but LUCKY she said that, and LUCKY that I asked her because suddenly there was my inspiration.

There is not a lot of Irish in my tree, but there are a lot of DNA connections it seems for that small branch. That is another topic though and I feel I need to spend a lot more time researching those families.

There is even less in my daughter’s paternal tree. Imagine my surprise when I discovered some years ago that one of her Irish families was from the same county as mine.

So where does luck come into it ? Wait and see.

Richard Gibson married Harriet Irvine in Kiama, New South Wales, Australia on 3 June 1870. She was the daughter of Irish immigrants, who had been living in Jamberoo since early 1840. Their marriage certificate gave no clues about where he was born. Much later, from his death certificate just the county Cavan was provided.

I did however come across his arrival to New South Wales in 1867 on the Light Horse. There was a lot of information on these pages including confirmation of his parent’s names and that he had a brother James in Sydney. There was also a place name – Killishandra (sic), Cavan.

So I began to see what I could find out about Killishandra, which turned out to be Killeshandra. I posted questions on RootsChat in 2009 and later on Ancestry message boards. I contacted a person through RootsChat who had access to the few surviving pieces of the 1841 Irish census – and they were for Cavan.

And here is the LUCKY bit. The parish for Killeshandra had survived and he was able to send me the information about the whole family.

The Irish census’, for anyone who has not looked at them, are a mine of information ! Remember this is 1841 too.

The family was made up of :

William, 51, farmer, head of the household, married in 1815

Sydney, 42, wife

Mary, 23, daughter

Jane, 18, daughter

Ufemy (sic), 13, daughter

Emily, 13, daughter

James, 9, son

Ephram (sic), 7, son

Richard, 4 months, son

In addition to this on another page where listed “those who have left the house or died since the 1831 census”

Hester, 21, daughter, in America, house servant

Margaret, 13, daughter, deceased, died 1838

William, 1 month, son, deceased, died 1836

George, 16, son, deceased, died 1839

Wm Henry, 1 month, son, deceased, died 1840

I’ve not been able to find too much more about them. I have emailed someone in the past who was a descendant of Mary or Jane and today while searching I rediscovered some messages to a descendant of Emily as well. I think that James was married to a sister of Richard’s wife Harriet, and that Ephraim also went to America.

Reading this back, I think it is time I made a more concerted research effort on all my Irish folk. Unfortunately changes of email provider and hardware over the years has meant that I have lost the traces of some of my earlier messages.

Maybe some of them will get their DNA tested so that I can sort that puzzle out too.