Elizabeth Cooper

Elizabeth Cooper, Betsy, was 10 years old when she and her siblings arrived in Wellington with their parents. She was baptised at St Catherine, Montacute on 17 April 1831.

Six years later, at just 16 she married Daniel Morrison a mariner who was 18 years older than her, just a few months before her elder sister was married. Betsey was the first of Samuel and Elizabeth’s children to marry.

In August 1858, Daniel died from injuries sustained when his ship was wrecked, leaving Elizabeth with their five children aged 2-11. Shortly after his death Daniel Wilson placed notices in the local newspapers asking for donations toward a memorial for Daniel and from September three others placed advertisements for subscriptions to benefit his widow and children who were left “wholly unprovided for”. On 8 November a concert in aid of the widows Morrison and Mackenzie (I don’t know of the connection between these two ladies, perhaps it was just fortuitous timing) was held at the Lyceum Theatre on Lambton Quay with glees, songs and instrumental music. Another researcher some years ago had found information at Alexander Turnbull Library reporting that the monies raised by public subscription enabled the public of Wellington to purchase a house for Elizabeth and her children.

Eleven months after Daniel’s death Elizabeth married Michael Twomey. He too was a mariner, they married at her private residence in Little Ghuznee Street (Now Egmont Street which runs between Ghuznee Street and Dixon Street).

They had a number of children together, possibly 10, although only 5 appear to have survived childhood. To make life interesting, or research tricky, Michael is sometimes recorded as Henry or Michael Henry. This was the case for the birth of one of their sons whose birth was registered by Elizabeth’s elderly mother in 1866.

Just yesterday I found advertisements in the local newspapers for 1868 where an

“old established GINGER-BEER, AERATED WATERS AND CORDIAL MANUFACTURY BUSINESS”

was to be sold by lottery. 200 tickets at £1 each. The business was being carried on by Messrs Cooper and Twomey on Molesworth Street, and the manager was noted as F Cooper. I have not been aware of this at all, but it would seem that this must be the business of Thomas Cooper who had drowned in February/March 1867, and that his younger brother Frederick and brother in law Michael had taken over to keep it afloat and possibly help to support Thomas' orphaned children.

At some time shortly after the sale Michael and Elizabeth left Wellington with their children. They made their way to the West Coast where Michael was involved in mining. It has been suggested that they may have spent some time visiting with Elizabeth’s brother John’s family in Kaikoura. In 1870 Elizabeth’s daughter Elizabeth from her first marriage was married to a local Kaikoura boy. By 1871 Michael and Elizabeth were in Hokitika area where their youngest two sons were born. They moved back to Kaikoura around 1894/95 and Daniel died there in 1897 described as a gardener.

I have often wondered if anyone in the family might have offered assistance to John Cooper’s wife Mary, who left him and took her three youngest children to Australia, creating a new life with Charles Nicholls there. It has been suggested that they sailed from Hokitika around 1876. Maybe it was Elizabeth. She and Mary would have been contemporaries, quite likely knew each other in Wellington before their marriages. They were two years apart in age and both married husbands a lot older than themselves. Perhaps Mary and the children visited or stayed with Michael and Elizabeth before their departure. Perhaps too, Michael’s network of connections from his time as a mariner helped them find passage on a ship bound for Melbourne. I have only just had these pieces of information fall into place in the timeline in my mind today.

Maybe it’s true, it is mostly conjecture, but it does feel like it could add up.

What stories she could have told. Old enough to remember what life in England was like, old enough to remember her grandmother and aunts and uncles. She experienced travel on an immigrant sailing ship, life in the fledgling Wellington settlement, survived both the 1848 and 1855 earthquakes and was part of the gold rush on the West Coast before returning to the pioneer town of Kaikoura for her final years. Elizabeth died 27 May 1906.

Mary Anne Cooper

Samuel Cooper had two daughters named Mary Anne.

The first was his second child with Charlotte Hann. She was baptised at St Catherine Montacute on 31 January 1820, the day after her mother was buried. This suggests that she was born in January 1820 and that her mother may have died shortly after her birth. So far no record for her death or a marriage has been found. In the 1841 census there is an Ann Cooper living in Montacute of the right age. Could this be her ? All of the other Coopers in the church records and on the census seem to be connected to the one family, but this Ann has a daughter in 1841 and does not appear to have a husband. As yet, I haven’t been able to find her on subsequent census’ to gather more information about her.

So the jury is out.

Maybe she did die in infancy and the Ann on the census is just a red herring.

On 20 August 1828 Samuel and his second wife Elizabeth had their second daughter, Mary Anne, baptised at St Catherine Montacute. It doesn't make a lot of sense, would you give a new child the same name as another living child ? Perhaps. Stranger things have happened.

This Mary Anne was about 13 when the family left England in 1841 for their new life in Wellington, New Zealand. Six years later in 1847 she married Christopher Lockyer. He has lots of appearances in the local newspapers running into trouble with the law, appearing in court for drunkenness, fighting with his brother, being a vagabond, keeping a disorderly house (brothel), spending time in jail in his old age because the Benevolent Home would not have him. But there is never a mention of Mary Anne.

There is a death record for Mary Ann Lockyer in 1931, but the notice in the newspaper (New Zealand Herald, 27 August 1931) identifies her as the wife of Samuel Lockyer, not Christopher…and Christopher had died in 1904. There is also a marriage for a Mary Anne Lockyer and Joseph Sanders in 1849, but when that Mary Anne died her age is out by about 10 years. 

The search continues to unravel this story.

Charlotte Cooper

Charlotte Cooper was Samuel’s 2^nd daughter, but the first for him and his 2^nd wife Elizabeth. She was born on 28 April 1824 and baptised 23 May the same year at St Catherine, Montacute, Somerset.

Since we don’t know anything about Elizabeth before her marriage there are no clues about where the name Charlotte might have come from for their daughter. Perhaps it was her mother’s name, or a sister- hopefully it wasn’t chosen by Samuel to memorialise his first wife.

Not a lot is known about Charlotte’s life either as is often the case with daughters.

She was 17 when the family emigrated to New Zealand and I imagine would have been a great help to her mother on the voyage caring for her younger siblings – the youngest just over a year old.

No marriage or death records have been located for her although it has been suggested by some researchers that she may have died about 1857. Three of her siblings named daughters Charlotte around this time – a clue perhaps ?

Thomas Cooper

Thomas Cooper was born in Montacute in 1826. He was baptised on 30 July that year but no birthdate was recorded in the register.

Thomas was 15 years old when his family emigrated to New Zealand in 1841. He first appears on a Jury list in 1847 when he would be 21 as a labourer living in Thorndon Flat. By 1848 he was recorded as a shoemaker and this remained the same until 1850 when he was described as a publican.

Thomas was married in 1850 to Charlotte Pike, another Somerset native who had emigrated with her parents arriving a few months ahead of the Cooper family in 1841. By 1852 his aerated water business, making ginger beer, soda water and cordials in Pipitea Street was becoming established. Thomas had placed advertisements in local newspapers from at least 1853 wanting to buy bottles.

By 1866 Thomas and Charlotte had a family of nine children. For a short time in the mid 1850’s Thomas is thought to have left Wellington and ventured to the Victorian goldfields with his brother James. There is also a mention of him relocating to the Rangitikei area briefly before returning to Wellington to re-establish his ginger beer and cordial enterprise on Mulgrave Street.

It would seem that the business must have operated from the site now occupied by Wellington Girls’ College or across the road close to the site of the old brewery (Staples Brewery est. 1866, later Thorndon Brewery and then Lion Breweries) where New World is now located.

In October 1866, two months after the death of his father, Thomas’s wife Charlotte passed away leaving him with their nine children aged 2-16. Just four and a half months later Thomas mysteriously disappeared. A report of his disappearance appeared in the local newspapers. This one in the Wellington Independent on Thursday 28 February reads:

"MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. – We regret to state that Mr Thomas Cooper, a ginger-beer manufacturer, residing at Thorndon, has disappeared in a very mysterious manner. He left the Thistle Inn about eight o’clock on Monday night, and was seen shortly afterwards by a man named Allison to be going in the direction of Brown’s wharf. It is feared that Mr Cooper, who had been drinking, missed his way and fell into the water, and the drags were employed in that part of the harbour yesterday, but nothing was discovered that would throw any light on the fate of the missing man."

The following week, on 5 March, 10 days after his disappearance his body was found by a lighterman taking ballast out to a ship moored in the harbour from near Plimmer’s wharf. The witnesses at the inquest held the same day at the Te Aro Police Station included a friend who had been with him at the Thistle and his younger brother Frederick. They, and the lighterman who also knew Thomas, identified him by the clothes he was wearing. Ten days in the water is not gentle on a body.

His death certificate records his date of death as 5 March 1867, the day of the inquest, when it is more likely to have been 25 February, the date which he was last seen alive.

I have done a little bit of research and have been able to identify the location of Brown’s wharf. Very close to the Thistle as it happens. Anyone familiar with Wellington will know the stories about patrons of old, including Te Rauparaha, pulling their dinghies or waka up on to the beach near the hotel. The steps outside now take you from the pavement to Kate Shephard Street (formerly Sydney Street West) but back in the days before earthquakes and reclamation the shoreline was right there.

In 1867 some reclamation had begun and of course the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855 also contributed to the changing shoreline. Browns wharf is described in the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection “Early Wellington” published by Whitcombe and Tombs Limited in 1928, as being

“opposite the Royal (now Cecil) Hotel”

The site of the Royal Hotel which later became the Cecil Hotel, was known as the Hotel Cecil Block and was situated on Thorndon Quay where the Wellington bus terminus now is.

Plimmer’s wharf will have been located further along Lambton Quay, close to Plimmer’s Steps near the Old Bank Arcade (formerly Bank of New Zealand). 

Who was looking after the children all of this time while their father was missing ? Who assumed responsibility for them after his death ? More about Thomas’ business can be found here. 

 

 

 

 

John Cooper

John Cooper, my 2 x great grandfather, was born in Montacute, Somerset most likely in the summer of 1822. His baptism is recorded in the church register for St Catherine on 10 June 1822. He was the first born son of Samuel Cooper a tailor, and his 2^nd wife Elizabeth. 

Nothing else is known about John before his arrival in New Zealand, and even that is shrouded in mystery. John was listed on Samuel’s application for passage for his wife and family, first for the Lord William Bentinck and then the Oriental. At the time that the Oriental sailed he would have been 21 years old, perhaps that caused confusion and he should have been recorded separately to the rest of his family because of his age. Whatever happened, he isn’t recorded as disembarking in Wellington with the rest of the family once they arrived after 3 months at sea.

This sailing of the Oriental in 1841 was under charter to the Plymouth Company, ostensibly bringing settlers to settle in New Plymouth in the Taranaki, but arriving by way of Wellington. News of unrest in the Taranaki apparently caused some settlers to abandon their plans to travel on further and some disembarked in Wellington. I am not sure if the Cooper family’s intention was to settle in New Plymouth at all. Since their first application was for a voyage to Wellington, perhaps Wellington was their chosen destination all along. We have wondered though, whether John travelled on to Taranaki after the rest of the family disembarked to survey the situation and report back. However, he is not recorded as disembarking there either. Only recently I discovered that after delivering the remaining settlers to New Plymouth, the Oriental returned to Wellington before preparing to leave to return to England via India. So did John join the crew for the trip to New Plymouth and back and just not get recorded anywhere ?

However, we know he did arrive because we are all here as proof.

Occupationally John followed his father and become a tailor, although on the earliest Jury Lists for Wellington he was recorded as a labourer. In 1860/61 he placed regular advertisements in the Wellington Independent advertising his business on Lambton Quay next to the Eagle Tavern. I have tried several times over the last ten or more years to find out where the Eagle Tavern was situated. No luck at all until last week. Did I choose different search words or just see something I had completely missed before ?

Turns out Lambton Quay didn’t end where it does today, at Stewart Dawson’s corner. For some time it extended around that windy corner into what is now Willis Street – and that was where the Eagle Tavern was; a few building beyond the Commercial (which eventually became the Grand), about opposite Chew’s Lane.

In 1850, John married Mary Ann Barratt. She had arrived in Wellington with her parents and siblings in May 1842. When they married Mary was 17 and John 27. They lived in Wellington until about 1861 when they moved, along with some of Mary’s married sisters, to join her mother and youngest siblings in Kekerengu north of Kaikoura where John had secured a position as a tailor on the sheep station. Their first 6 children were born in Wellington and a further 4 at Kekerengu. About 1871 they moved further south to the township of Kaikoura. It has been suggested by another family historian, that the move to Kaikoura may have been prompted by the Tetley Affair. This involved some mismanagement of finances on the part of the owners of the Kekerengu Station and would likely have had follow on effects for those employed to work there. Another 3 children were born in Kaikoura.

Electoral rolls and jury lists show his occupation as tailor, apart from 1847 where he was listed as a labourer. His death certificate in 1895 records him as a gardener and a photograph has recently been shared with us of him standing outside his shop in Kaikoura where he is “J. Cooper, Fruiterer”.

Charles Cooper

Charles Cooper was the first child of my 3 x great grandfather Samuel Cooper and his 1^st wife Charlotte Hann. He was baptised on 11 October 1818 just 5 months after his parent’s marriage. The cleric made an error with the entry and he is recorded as Charles Hann instead of Charles Cooper – the other details (parent’s names and occupation) are correct.

Not much else is known about him. He is referred to (but not named) in the Churchwarden Accounts for the parish of Montacute several times while the parish contributed financially to his upkeep after his mother died in January 1820. Because residents were not identified by name (unless they were the householder) on the 1821 Survey or Census he hasn’t been identified there. But, he wasn’t recorded as living with his father and does not appear to have been with his paternal grandmother either.

The next entry for Charles in the church records is his marriage to Mary Ann Tavender (sometimes written as Taviner) in 1837. By the time the 1841 census came around, Charles and his small family were living in Middle Street, Montacute. By this time there were two young daughters, Ellen & Jane. Charles was a Chandler; a candle maker or a seller of provisions like groceries.

By searching the GRO indexes it appears that Charles and Mary had four other children by 1850; Matilda, George Owen, Walter Henry and Richmond Tom. To be extra helpful for researchers like me almost 200 years later, Charles and Mary don’t appear to have had their children baptised, at least not in the Church of England.

Charles appears a couple of times in the Churchwarden Accounts living in a rateable property in 1841 and 1847. I haven’t been able to find any further documentation for him post 1850. Did they emigrate too ? And if they did, where did they go ? Or did something else happen ?

The search continues.

Samuel Cooper

Samuel Cooper, my 3 x great grandfather, was probably born in Montacute, Somerset or a nearby parish in about 1789, no baptism record has been found for him yet. His parents John Cooper and Ann Pullman had married in Stoke sub Hamdon in the summer of 1784. The marriage record says they were both of the parish although John was described as a Sojourner.

Samuel earned his living as a Tailor, it is unclear where he learned this trade but occupations in the rag-trade feature throughout the census’ of the mid 19^th century. Perhaps his father was also a Tailor, but no records survive to confirm that. Almost as many townsfolk were listed as Glovers, Leather dressers, Weavers and Tailors as were recorded as Ag Labs in the 1841 and 1851 census’.

Samuel’s brothers John and Uriah are often mentioned in the Churchwarden’s accounts for St Catherine’s, Montacute, being paid for work on the roads in the parish, cleaning the inside of the church tower, washing down the wall between the church and the chancel, picking up boundary stones and other menial tasks. Samuel’s father John died in March 1810, most likely a few days after the baptism of his son Thomas, who subsequently died a month later. From the church records for Stoke sub Hamdon and Montacute it seems John and Ann had at least 10 children, however only half of them lived to adulthood. After John’s death Ann often appeared in the Churchwarden accounts receiving financial assistance from the parish.

Samuel’s sisters Ann and Mary married in 1812 and 1818. Mary died just six years later, Ann however lived to be 101, almost 102. Samuel married Charlotte Hann on 11 May 1818 in St Catherine, Montacute, 6 weeks after his sister Mary had married. He and Charlotte had a son Charles in September, followed by a daughter Mary Anne in January 1820. Charlotte died in the same month. It is unclear whether Mary Ann survived, however on the 1841 census there is an Annie Cooper of the right age, a Glover and single parent. There only seems to be one Cooper family in Montacute and Yeovil this whole time, so maybe ?

On the 1821 census, found amongst the documents in the parish chest (and available thanks to the Church of the Latter Day Saints), only the name of the householder is recorded, then tally marks to denote the numbers of people within given age frames and identifying their occupations. Samuel is there, living alone and engaged in a trade. His mother Ann is in a different house, where his brother John is recorded as the householder. John is engaged in agricultural work. The ages of the others, a male aged 10-15, 2 males aged 20-30, another 30-40 and a female aged 50-60 seem likely to be Ann 57, her sons, John 33 & Uriah 13 and two other unknown people. Not knowing the name of Charlotte’s father made it difficult to place Samuel’s children. Hann is a much more common name in Montacute than Cooper ! However the Churchwarden accounts record Samuel receiving assistance from the parish for himself and his child/children up until 1821.

Samuel remarried on 17 September 1821 to Elizabeth Hill. In the margin of the church register is a note "First marriage solemnized after rebuilding of the chancel". There don’t seem to be many people named Hill either in Montacute so nothing is known of Elizabeth prior to her marriage. But, she is definitely a Hill despite many people naming her otherwise in their trees having accepted an error on her eldest son’s death certificate as correct. I now have 4 documents where her maiden name is correctly recorded as Hill.

Of his siblings, Samuel appears to be the only one who could sign his name. He did this for both of his marriages, and also as a witness to another marriage in the parish. Charlotte his first wife signed her name, but Elizabeth did not. As a Tailor and businessman, the ability to read and write would have been necessary, I imagine.

Emigration schemes to New Zealand enticing free settlers to take the opportunity to settle a new colony at the far reaches of the globe began advertising in the late 1830’s. I guess we will never really know what Samuel’s motivation was to pack up his family and leave for New Zealand. At about the same time his brother Uriah was planning to leave Montacute too, although he would make his new life in the colonies which later became Australia.

Competition for work, and overall work opportunities may have been deciding factors. Times were changing in 1830/1840s England. Cottage industry weavers and glovers were being replaced by larger urban factories. Even in a tiny village like Montacute there were about 7 other Tailors in the 1841 census.

Samuel & Elizabeth applied for passage to Wellington on the Lord William Bentinck but did not sail for some reason, re-applying instead a few months later for passage on the Oriental which was to leave Plymouth bound for Wellington and New Plymouth. Their youngest son Frederick was 5 months old at the time of their application for passage on the Oriental. So perhaps they had decided to wait until he was a little older before travelling. He would have been about 8 months old had they sailed on the Lord William Bentinck compared to 14 months when the Oriental sailed. 

Samuel and his family don't appear on the 1841 census in Montacute - and so far nowhere else either. The census was taken on 6 June 1841 and the Oriental sailed from Plymouth on 22 June. I have wondered if they were somewhere en route, or perhaps even on board as ships in port were not enumrated in 1841. However being on board twelve days prior to sailing seems a bit extreme, especially since I discovered another family who emigrated on an earlier sailing still at home on census night. Perhaps they just decided not to complete the census as they were leaving.

Samuel’s son Charles, from his first marriage, was married with two children by 1841. He has been a little elusive to track since then – but I think I might have found him in Yeovil. Some more research is required.

Once in Wellington, the family lived in Thorndon Flat, around Little Pipitea, Mulgrave and Molesworth Streets. Samuel continued to make his living as a Tailor. Samuel and Elizabeth had one more child after their arrival in Wellington. Most of their children had married and were growing their own families by the time Samuel died in 1866 and Elizabeth in 1869. Like most early settlers in Wellington they were buried at the Bolton Street Cemetery.