#52Ancestors, Week 24, Fathers' Day

I wrote about my Dad and my grandfathers as part of the #52Stories blog challenge last year, and also it isn’t Fathers’ Day in Australia or New Zealand until later in the year. I wrote about my great grandmothers for Mothers’ Day this year; so great grandfathers...these four are all DNA confirmed too.

Francis Davys 

was born 11 January 1854 probably at Hurstone Farm in Milverton, Somerset. He was the 3^rd son in the family. His birth certificate gives his place of birth only as Milverton. I was hoping it would narrow down the date when his parents had moved from Nethercott Farm near Lydeard St Lawrence where his 2 elder brothers were born, and where they were still living at the 1851 census. But no.

His father’s family had been associated with the Milverton area and adjacent parishes since at least the middle of the 17^th century. They were farmers, landowners or leaseholders, with connections to many other notable families in the district. When he was seven years old, Francis emigrated to New Zealand with his parents and five brothers. They arrived in Auckland in 1862, part of the Albertland scheme to settle at Port Albert near Wellsford. On arrival it became apparent that the information they had been given prior to leaving England was not at all what it had seemed. The land was not particularly arable, the transport options to travel from Auckland to the Hokianga were not entirely reliable and the settlement itself was floundering. Many settlers did not go and claim their land at all. It is unclear whether they made the journey, or whether they elected to stay in Auckland and not go to Port Albert at all. Auckland was still a fledgling city, but with a little more resource and infrastructure than Port Albert.

The family did stay in Auckland for a time and a daughter was born a year after they arrived. By the time he was fifteen and his second sister was born in 1869, they had moved to Tararu on the Coromandel Peninsula on the shores of the Hauraki Gulf. Here the older boys and their father were gold mining. By the late 1870s-early 1880s most of the family had moved again to the Waikato and taken up farming. Later some of his brothers ran a sawmill at Rukuhia, and one became a builder in Cambridge and owned a timber yard there. Francis lived in Papakura for some years after he married Sarah Hall there in 1885 before moving to Taupiri where he and his brothers had another sawmill.  

At the end of 1907 they moved again, to Tamahere, where they lived until the end of 1913 on the corner opposite the church. I believe they had a shop there and ran the Post Office. They moved to Hamilton in early 1914, where Francis died on 11 March that year.

William Cooper 

was born 1 February 1867 at Kekerengu, North Canterbury. He was the 9^th child and 4^th son in his family. His parents were both immigrants having arrived in Wellington with their parents in 1841 & 1842. William’s father was a tailor, probably employed at Kekerengu Station.  Some of William’s maternal uncles also worked on the station as shepherds and one as an overseer. They all had large families, so he would have grown up in a sizeable extended family with many cousins. When he was about four his family moved south to the township of Kaikoura where his father continued to find work as a tailor. His three youngest siblings were born in Kaikoura. When he was about nine or ten his mother left the family, taking with her the three youngest children.

William became a builder, learning the trade possibly from his brother-in-law Tom Cooke, the husband of one of his elder sisters. Tom had initially come to New Zealand with his cousin William who established a business as an ironmonger, builder and contractor. Tom left his young family and returned to England in the late 1880s though. So it may have been William Cooke then, not Tom, who taught this William his trade.

By the 1890s William had moved to the Horowhenua, perhaps via Wellington. He married Emma Bartlett in Manakau in 1894. Their first three children were born there before they moved to Levin in 1899 where he built the new Post Office which was opened in 1903. About 1910 they moved to the Waikato and farmed at Elstow near Te Aroha until about 1918 when they moved further north to Auckland, before moving to Hamilton in 1921. They spent most of the 1930’s farming again near Katikati, returning briefly to Hamilton where he had built houses. He also built a home in Mission Bay Auckland and they lived there for a couple of years, returning to live in Hamilton in 1943. Emma and William celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1944. Emma died in 1945 and a few years later William remarried.

He was reportedly visited by a man claiming to be his nephew from Australia, the son of one of his sisters who had left with his mother many years ago. This encounter was emphatically denied later, but was remembered by others who heard accounts of it at the time. He died 4 January 1961 in Hamilton.

John William Fuller 

was born 3 June 1866 in Christchurch, Canterbury. He was the 2^nd and youngest son of immigrant parents who had arrived in Christchurch in 1860. His father was a miller by trade and worked at and built a number of mills in early Christchurch. They lived in Fendalton, Riccarton, Avonside, Sydenham and Waltham. John was baptised at St Luke’s on the corner of Kilmore and Manchester Streets. The church was badly damaged in the 2011 earthquake and has since been demolished.

When he was almost twelve and his brother eighteen, his mother died. (So much for the story about her running off and their father needing to employ a wet-nurse ! Wonder where that story started ?) At this time they were living in Second Street, Waltham; sometimes described not as a street, but as a collection of houses. Today it is more Sydenham than Waltham and is named Sandyford Street and Byron Street. This location was close to the railway station and there were a number of mills and bakers in the area. In 1890 John appeared on the electoral roll at his father’s address in Stirling St Sydenham (now Cass Street). At this time his father also appeared on rolls for Ellesmere and Geraldine where he was working as a miller at Irwell and Pleasant Point. John was likely employed with the Railways by now, where he worked all his working life.

In the late 1890s he was living with his elder brother, his family and their father in Riccarton. It was here that he met his wife Edith Vose. They were married on 8 May 1901 in Sydenham. They lived their entire married life on the property which had been left to Edith by her elder brother Samuel and raised a family of five. John enjoyed photography and colourised pictures by hand. He was also a bit of an artist and some sketches survive that he made of the view from his window when ill in bed. He was also a fan of radio and would spend hours in his shed tinkering to receive a clear signal on shortwave. One afternoon his children hid outside and played a short recital to trick him – but that is another story. John died in Christchurch on 17 November 1942.

George Timms 

was born 20 August 1877 in Stamford Place Milverton, Warwickshire. He was the 2^nd son and youngest child in his family. When he was 6 months old his mother died, responsibility for his care and for his elder brother and sisters mostly likely fell on his eldest sister. In 1881, his second eldest sister was living out of the family home, in service. Alice aged 18 and Mary 13 were probably managing the house, perhaps with some support from their maternal grandparents who lived next door, while their father worked. In 1883, his father remarried to a widow who lived across the lane, this probably relieved Alice and Mary of some of their household duties.

At least two of his sisters moved away from Leamington, and most of his siblings were married by the start of the 20^th century. George followed a similar career path to his father and became a groom and then a coachman.  He was employed as the coachman at Cranford House, on Kenilworth Road when he married Laura Kelsey in 1901. The first two of their four children were born there before they moved back into Leamington.

In Leamington he became a motor car driver and later a taxi driver. Life threw Laura a few curve balls resulting in her becoming an absent parent and spending twenty years in an asylum. George raised his children mostly alone, depending on the eldest to help out in the home, in the same street where had had lived as a child. Life was strict though, if they saw him driving in the street they were not to acknowledge him at all. Since most of his sisters lived away from Leamington, and his brother lived some distance away it is unclear whether there was any other support available to the family. One aunt did live very close by, but from all accounts theirs was not a harmonious relationship.

His eldest daughters moved abroad to New Zealand in the 1920s. He died on 5 August 1939 from a fall down the stairs, perhaps a stroke.

#52Stories, Week 37, What are some of the stories you loved hearing about from your father’s youth ? Or from your grandfathers’s younger days ?

Dad had lots of stories which he shared about his childhood. They made the best bedtime stories.

I’ve already mentioned the rabbit they found on the embankment by the railway line one day. So tiny it fit into a teacup !

Another was about a solar eclipse. They knew it was going to happen and had prepared pieces of smoked glass so they would be able to look at the sun safely. On the day, he was so busy playing he didn’t notice the sky getting darker until it was too late.

Somewhere not too far away from home, there was a pond where they used to play. It was here that he was, the day the sky went dark and he had to run all the way home. I think there were tadpoles there and I know there was a mishap with his Mum’s favourite glass bowl. Maybe on the day the sky darkened !

Also nearby there were piles of sand where they used to go and make tunnels and play. Imagine parents today letting their kids go off for hours and hours and do this. They’d get reported to the authorities quick as blink.

At school he was in a production where the children were soldiers, nurses and the like – and he was the littlest soldier.

Sometimes in the school holidays he would go and stay with his Aunt and Uncle and cousins on their farm and help with jobs – like removing the thistles from a paddock !! Hard labour for many of today’s kids.

There were plenty of others too – but I think I need to make a more concerted effort to get them recorded. Maybe that will be a goal for my Oral History paper coming up.

#52Stories, Week 36, Fathers' Day

Dad was born in Hamilton. An inland town fast becoming a city. With a lake and a river running through the centre to separate it, east from west.

His grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins from both sides of the family all lived relatively close. If not in Hamilton, in smaller rural towns or on farms in the Waikato area.

He helped build our house, working with the builder after work and at weekends. He and Mum were a great wallpapering team, transforming rooms. Dad is very precise and has a strong attention to detail, so pattern matching was thorough and always perfect. Symmetry is key.

Dad went to computer programming classes at night school. Back when computers were so large they filled a room, and you had to feed punch cards into them which contained coded messages hidden in the binary numbers row upon row. Who knew that would catch on ?

He built a stereo too, importing all the little bits (fuses, valves and little transistory circuit things) to solder together in the right order and places. Speakers too, including building the speaker boxes.

There was always a good vege garden to be cared for and lots of lawn to mow. A little less once the double garage was built in place of the old toolshed and lean-to.

Dad liked gem collecting too and many holidays and weekends we went searching for rocks. He always talked about wanting to be able to polish them smooth, but that didn’t eventuate. I think this fascination with rock must be in his blood – passed down from those first settlers who went goldmining in the Coromandel.

Dad was also a stamp collector, we used to help with this. Carefully tearing the stamps from the corner of the envelopes and soaking them with water so that the stamp could be separated from the envelope and then leaving them to dry face down – ready to go in to an album.

He also loves astronomy – not astrology. I remember watching the moon landing on the tv early one morning. It seemed incomprehensible that people were actually in space, on the moon. Now they stay for months at a time in the International Space Station and fly over us at least once a day ! Dad started to build his own telescope, something that began with a thick chunk of glass cut in a circle, which needed to be ground to become concave. That seemed like a neverending task to me. Planetarium meetings and running sessions for the public kept him busy too. Committee meetings negotiating for premises in Harris Street and then starting again when the council decided to expand the library and carpark and take back the building and land. That move took them to the top of the cable car in the Botanic Gardens, where the Planetarium is still located.

Later, much like the stereo, he and some friends began to build their own home computers. The Commodore 64 came along though, and the home made version went on the back burner.

Dad was always calm and didn’t seem to lose his temper very often, he likes to do crosswords and read. These days Suduko have become a favourite pastime as well.

Genealogy is still an interest today. Search methods have changed from the way they were though, so much is available online. Although you can still go and search old and original records, not so much time is spent in library reading rooms anymore.

He’s a great story teller too, he would read to us at night – a chapter or two from whatever was the current novel we were reading. Or he would tell stories about when he was little and the adventures they would get up to. The eclipse of the sun, finding the teeny rabbit by the railway tracks, so small he fit in a tea cup and more.

As a grandfather too, he would read stories, putting on voices for each character in Goodnight Owl and the BFG – among others.

He’s a great Dad ! All wired up and techy; emailing, texting, whatsapping, skyping - you name it. I hope we are as on to it and willing to try new things too.