The mass of immigrants arriving in New Zealand in the 19th century took place between 1840 and 1890. An interesting analogy to the biblical forty years in the desert after the exodus from slavery in Egypt. Indeed some of the advertising for immigrants played on this very theme promising the biblical new life. These lands were perceived as having this freedom and promise, all the things that were the hopes of the poor struggling for existence in their native lands. Ownership of land, security, food, work, freedom and education. The conditions from which the immigrants came, the evictions in Ireland and Scotland, may be likened not only to the biblical slavery but also to ethnic cleansing that is happening in so many places at this time, at the end of the second millennium. John and Catherine Morriss my great-grandparents were two such caught in this exodus, they left the security of the known, to venture into the unknown. Severed from family and community they had to forge new lives, families and communities in unknown and unfamiliar places.
Catherine Scully was born in Headford County Galway probably in 1847 or 48. The exact year of her birth is unknown. On her daughter Sarah¹s birth certificate, of February 1878, her age is given as 30. Her mother was Sarah Molloy and her father Owen Scully. I was able to make a brief visit to the Galway Family History Centre in 1992 when I was visiting the Dominican Sisters in Taylor¹s Hill Galway City. We had trouble tracing any Scully¹s but at last ran to ground Owen Scully in the Griffiths valuation of Killursa 1855. This was the only Scully to appear. He was a tenant renting land of 2 acres total annual valuation of one pound 15 shillings and again house and land with Martin Connor, Bryan Dunne and John Dunne of 23 acres, his house and land portion valued at four pounds for the land and 10 shillings for the dwelling. So we surmise that he had another five acres or jointly worked the 23 acres although he paid the largest amount. This land was at Ower which is about two miles from Headford so it is possible that here Catherine was born. In 1994 I wrote to all the Scullys in Corrandulla as the History Centre Staff suggested that they would be my best bet for finding Catherine¹s family. In 1996 I received a reply from John Molloy of the Ower Post Office. Sarah Molloy was his father¹s aunt and married Owen Scully. Absolute certainty on this relationship is not yet established as he said they married in the 1860¹s however my great great grandparents would have had to have married at least in the early 1840s.
How many children they had is unknown but Catherine was at least the third daughter. At the time of her birth Headford was devastated by famine from the failure of the potato crops and 80 - 100% of the population were on the Poor Law Union food rations. It must be presumed that the Scully family were among these. The British Corn laws, passed in 1815 to protect British farming and land owners by banning imports of wheat until the domestic price reached 80 shilling a quarter, remained in force until 1846 when bad grain harvests and the potato famine made it imperative it be lifted. This lifting in 1846 was too late for many starving families and unable to feed themselves, or pay rent, were forced by hunger, and eviction to immigrate. Family oral history has Catherine¹s older sister (name unknown) and her husband set sail for New Zealand. They had five children when she died in a foreign land in the early 1860s. Her husband wrote back to Galway and asked that the next Scully girl come out and marry him and care for the five motherless children. She prepared but at the last minute said that she could not go. Catherine, then 15 years old, said that she would not see the children motherless so would take her place. Single women were not allowed to immigrate until they were 16 years so it was some time before everything was in order for her to leave. Dates and the ship she sailed on are unknown but probably early in 1864. There is no record of her in the Canterbury museum where all assisted immigrants are kept, so it seems that she either provided her own passage or her brother-in-law had sent money to assist. Usually young people travelled with friends or relatives but this too is unknown. On her arrival imagine her consternation when she discovered that her brother-in-law had already married a daughter of a well off landowner in the Ashburton district. Catherine then was left to fend for herself.
Employment was obtained in Christchurch
in the home of the Ruddenclaus. He, a business entrepreneur made money
quickly and had a large home in the quickly growing town. It is assumed
that she was a maid in the house. Many immigrant girls were employed in
servant work and it was the main employment of young unmarried women. However
in this new place servant girls had their own code of conduct in a land
where a subtle change had taken place between immigrants and employers.
The deference paid to the employing classes by the employed, gave way to
the understanding of equality whatever the work, and wages and conditions
were negotiated from the point of labour shortage. Trollop, writing from
New Zealand in the 1860¹s noted the lack of deference and how even
servant girls will refuse money. O
nly a poor Irish girl without a friend
in the world but not as mean as that¹. How this effected Catherine
in particular is unknown but certainly the attitudes would have been a
matter of discussion among her working companions and would effect the
attitudes of her children, all of whom were advocates of justice for the
working classes.
While in service Catherine came in contact with a sensational murder of an Irish housemaid, Margaret Burke, employed in the house adjoining. She was taken over to see the scene of the murder by another maid presumably a friend. The Irish immigrants probably provided companionship and support for one another in a country so far from family support and so different in attitudes and culture. This incident had a huge effect on Catherine as she recalled it for her own children, especially the fact that the headstone in the cemetery was supposed to have a stain of blood on it even when a second replaced it. Such incidents must have reinforced the loneliness of the young immigrant and her vulnerability so far from home. Here no family support to call upon in time of trauma, only her own inner strength that had been developed early within her Irish family in times of hardship. She recalled the story to her daughter who retold it to her granddaughter.
Catherine was literate so must have received some education in Ireland, what education was available I have not yet researched. Many changes now took place in her life. Somewhere, among the support that the Irish immigrants gave one another, she met her future husband, also a native of Galway. As groups of settlers from the same counties tended to purchase land in the same areas so possibly in the cities the yearning for home and news of known people would draw together groups from Galway or Kerry or wherever. Some ten years later Catherine and John Morriss from Annaghdown were married in the Catholic Church at Lyttleton. The date, the 14th of March 1874. No other family we know were present but certainly other Irish friends would have been. Other relatives from Galway, Burkes by name would later live near them in Morven but whether they were among the guests we don¹t know. Perhaps it is the few there were to celebrate their own wedding that would influence them inviting over 500 guests to the wedding of their daughter Sarah and entertain them in a large marquee at their home in 1904, thirty years later.
John Morriss son of John and Catherine Morriss (maiden name unknown) was born in 1843. His family must have prized education as family tradition has it that he went to Edinburgh for one years university education before returning to Ireland and working as a tenant farmer on the Gort estate in Co Galway.
At the age of 21 he decided to immigrate to New Zealand. It seems he was attracted by the discovery of gold. He travelled on the ship Ivanhoe, which left London docks on the 25th February 1864. He was an assisted immigrant as there are records in the Canterbury Museum which give him as shepherd aged 20 years and has a cross reference to his travelling companions, Patrick Murphy aged 44 widower, a saddler, also his son Patrick aged 15 and his daughter Hannah aged 20 a domestic servant. The ship first docked at Timaru but on discovery of a number of deaths on board during the voyage from low fever, was put into quarantine for a week at Camp Bay in Lyttleton.
John, according to family memories of his eldest grandson, went to the gold diggings in Gabriel¹s Gully in Otago. Gold had been found here in 1861 and by 1864 most of the richest claims has been secured and worked over. John then walked up the centre of the South Island and crossed the Alps to the West Coast fields. This, although not authenticated, is probably true as many of the Otago miners took a route that went inland from Timaru and across the Arthur¹s Pass to the fields in Hokitika. In March of 1865 the whole of the Coast had been declared as gold field and Hokitika became the centre. This journey from Gabriel¹s Gully was over 350 miles over very rugged country on tracks and partially formed roads. Provisions for such a journey would have had to be carried. He returned to Christchurch late in 1866.
After working at Esk Head station in North Canterbury near Lake Sumner he purchased property in Temuka. How he met Catherine in Christchurch and what was their courtship we do not know, however they made their first home in Temuka where their first three children, Catherine, John and Sarah were born. The 1860s were probably the best time for immigrants to make their way in the new country. After 20 years of settlement, the boom time of the gold rushes and better conditions of communication and transport, there was little unemployment. Samuel Butler wrote that the readiness with which a skilled and steady rural worker might find alternative employment made him respectful and civil but with a lack of deference, a quite unobjectionable difference in their manner from those at home.
South Canterbury with an area half the size of Ireland had two priests to serve its needs. In Temuka Mass was celebrated at the home of Martin Connolly. By 1876 it became a parish and the church built in 1879 is the oldest surviving today. John most likely had a hand in the planning and erection as he would later in Morven where he was a member of the committee that build the church there.
In 1881 John, Catherine and their family moved to Morven. This town grew from the breaking up of the large sheep runs and was the centre for the former Waikakahi estate. The family purchased 100 acres of land here and gradually added to it until they owned 850 acres of freehold and 313 acres of leasehold land. John was interested in horse breeding, which he did as a sideline. He developed the land and as Morven was prone to drought became interested in irrigation. Lincoln College encouraged new initiatives and much information was shared at Farmers clubs and local Agricultural and Pastoral shows. His son John would put in the first water races for irrigation in the district. John became a member of the Lower Waitaki Irrigation Board and its chairman in 1903. Community minded, he as well as being an active member of the local church, represented the Waihao riding on the Waimate Borough Council.
Three more children were born in Morven. Margaret, Michael and Patrick. They attended to local state school where they had an excellent Englishman as a teacher. Sarah and Margaret were trained by him as pupil teachers. Their home was at first a sod house with later wooden additions, fascinating to me in my childhood in the 1940s as it still had no electricity and one took a candle to bed, going up three steps from the kitchen in the sod area to the bedrooms in the wooden part. Candlelight was mysterious for me. Catherine and John were dead by then but the household was run by their blind daughter Caty and son John. It was a place of poetry reading, political debate and interesting discussion.
Catherine died in 1916 at the age of 69. John in 1925 at the age of 82. They had experienced the exodus from their home country, the separation from family and friend and the forging of new ties in a new land. A hundred and fifty years later this land is forever different for this migration and the other migrations that came before and after. The moulding of the cultures is only now coming to age in the arts of Aotearoa - New Zealand that reflect their love of word, poetry, serious debate, social justice and culture carried across vast oceans. Strands of Galway live on in the generations that look down from their shoulders on the stones placed on the walls they created here in a new land.
The glimpses show us earthy people rooted
in the land, struggling to make a better world. Their grandchildren¹s
memory of their home is of a place where they loved to go. A place where
they were treated with love and respect and entertained by wholesome gatherings
where their world was stretched and they had to think about God, the land
and the meaning of life. Surely these were the building stones transported
from the family traditions in Galway. They were not middle-class people
with a middle-class respectability, but people not afraid to express new
ideas, and forthright opinions on everything from farming practices and
politics to world trade. Not yet had they achieved enough money to make
them complacent and content to look after only themselves. When the land
produced well, John could return to Europe, but when it went ill the belts
were tightened. They lived with the rhythms of the earth and had to take
it fortunes good or bad. There were new rhythms to be learned here and
adaptations to be made. The delicate, beautiful, dancing, solid lace walls
would symbolise the new life too; a life that has enduring qualities passed
on through the generations.
References
Scotter W H History of Canterbury
Vol 111
Whitcombe & Tombes
Simpson T The Immigrants 1840-1890
Godwit
Gillespie O A South Canterbury a record
of settlement
Centennial Committee
Cyclopedia of New Zealand
Canterbury Volume 1903
Records in the Canterbury Museum
Galway Family History Centre
Oral Family History
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We spent some time staying with Peg and
Mick at Exeter St. It was an interesting house for us. There was antique
furniture in the front room and hardly ever did anyone go in there. We
spent most of the time in the living room at the back. Peg and Mick sat
one each side of the fireplace and after lunch would doze off to sleep
each snoring in a different key and in different rhythm’s we in the background
trying not to giggle too loudly and wake them up. Peg liked us to brush
her hair when she was sitting there. Mama (Sarah) used to too. Her hair
was beautiful and thick and snowy white with lots of curls. Pegs was thinner
as she got old and she dyed it henna until she was in her eighties. Peg
had lots of strings of beads and rings and trinkets that we played with
and lots of makeup. I remember her wearing lots of powder. She always took
a pride in how she looked and in her clothes. There was an orchard out
the back and the cherry trees were encased in a wire netting frame so the
birds couldn't get them. There were big walnut trees. Mick always had a
dog by his side. When he died suddenly from a heart attack sitting in his
chair Peg was alerted by the dog which was outside but set up a howling.
She looked at Mick and found him dead. When we were in Australia and staying
with Corrys, mum said that she thought Miss Corry looked like Peg and they
came from the same place in Galway. I didn't see such a likeness but one
afternoon I was reading and became aware that there was someone else in
the room and looked up and got quite a fright for Mick was standing there
with his dog beside him but I knew that he was dead. It was Mr Corry. After
he didn't look so much like him but it was something in the silent way
he was looking at me just a fleeting moment of someone returning from the
dead.
Peg used to read to us poetry and things.
She talked about her good memory one night and to show us got out the "Man
from Snowy River" read it three times and then said it right through from
memory.
She drove a little Austin seven. One evening
when half light she hit a sheep and the car tipped right over but she was
not hurt. Another time dad was in the square in Christchurch and he saw
a little car going the wrong way against the traffic. It was Peg from Waimate.
Aunty Katy stayed with us for a while after she left the farm and before
she went to Nazareth House. Although she was blind she seemed not to miss
much. Uncle John stayed quite a bit longer before he too went to Nazareth
House. We used to go and visit them both. John always had a cigarette hanging
out of his mouth. Julienne was Aunty Peg's favourite I think because she
was her Godchild. She gave her a watch long before I got one and I really
was jealous. Mama thought that was unfair as I was older and sent me some
money for one but dad said it wouldn't get a good one so to save it until
there was enough. I had to wait a few years until my 16th birthday. David
was only four then and came in early on the birthday and said 'let me see
your clock, I said I didn't have one and he said Yes you have, daddy buyed
you a clock.
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Author
Mary Horn OP
Great-grand-daughter, Dominican Sister, teacher,
artist and organic gardener, collector of family history.
When I was in Ireland in 1992 I found the lace stone walls in the West Country fascinating. Around Otago where I come from in New Zealand there are a number of different stone walls most of them of the solid Scottish construction rather like my Scottish ancestors. The lace stone was different, Delicate, dancing stones placed rather precariously on top of each other but strangely solid and enduring. It was the little glimpses through the chinks that caught my eye as we travelled along. On could see little vistas of another world on the other side, a world that could have held all sorts o wonder and mystery. When I came to write the story of my great-grandparents the bits I could discover were a bit like the glimpses through the chinks. A scarcity of facts could be gleaned which pointed to bigger story another richness at which we can only guess. They were like the balanced stones each in its place, standing on the foundation of others. If one attacked the wall at a low level and knocked out the holding rock, great gaping holes would be left. I wondered if this is what happened when so many sons and daughters of the land disappeared into the exodus of the 19th century. Most families were left with gaping holes but now one hundred and fifty odd years later connections are being made to repair the walls and allow the children's children of the third and forth generations to discover the founding stones upon which they can placed to say 'this is where I come from, these are the foundations which tell me who I am"
The mass of immigrants arriving in New Zealand in the l 9th century took place between 1840 an 1890. An interesting analogy to the biblical forty years in the desert after the exodus from slavery in Egypt. Indeed some of the advertising for immigrants played on this very theme promising the biblical new life. These lands were perceived as having this freedom and promise, all the things that were the hopes of the poor struggling for existence in their native lands. Ownership of land, security, food, work, freedom and education. The conditions from which the immigrants came, the evictions in Ireland and Scotland, may be likened not only to the biblical slavery but also to ethnic cleansing that is happening in so many places at this time, at the end of the second millennium. John and Catherine Morriss, my great-grandparents, were two such caught in this exodus, they left the security of the known, to venture into the unknown. Severed from family and community they had to forge new lives, families and communities in unknown and unfamiliar places
Catherine Scully was born in Headford County Galway probably in 1847 or 48. The exact year of he birth is unknown. On her daughter Sarah's birth certificate, of February 1878, her age is given as 30. Her mother was Sarah Molloy and her father Owen Scully. I was able to make a brief visit to the Galway Family History Centre in 1992 when I was visiting the Dominican Sisters in Taylor's Hill Galway City. We had trouble tracing any Scully's but at last ran to ground Owen Scully in the Griffiths valuation o Killursa 1855. This was the only Scully to appear. He was a tenant, renting land of 2 acres total annual valuation of one pound 15 shillings and again house and land with Martin Connor, Bryan Dunne an John Dunne of 23 acres, his house and land portion valued at four pounds for the land and 1 shillings for the dwelling. So we surmise that he had another five acres or jointly worked the 23-acre although he paid the largest amount. This land was at Ower which is about two miles from Headford it is possible, that here Catherine was born. In 1994 I wrote to all the Scullys in Corrandulla as the History Centre Staff suggested that they would be my best bet for finding Catherine's family. In 1996 I received a reply from John Molloy of the Ower Post Office. Sarah Molloy was his father's aunt and married Owen Scully. Absolute certainty on this relationship is not yet established as he said they married in the 1860's however my great-great-grandparents would have had to have married at least in the early 1840s.
How many children they had is unknown but Catherine was at least the third daughter. At the time her birth Headford was devastated by famine from the failure of the potato crops and 80 - 100% of the population were on the Poor Law Union food rations- It must be presumed that the Scully family were among these. The British Corn laws, passed in 1815 to protect British farming and land owners b banning imports of wheat until the domestic price reached 80 shilling a quarter, remained in force until 1846 when bad grain harvests and the potato famine made it imperative it be lifted. This lifting in 1846 was too late for many starving families and unable to feed themselves, or pay rent, were forced by hunger, and eviction to immigrate. Family oral history has Catherine's older sister (name unknown) and her husband set sail for New Zealand. They had five children when she died in a foreign land in the earl 1860s. Her husband wrote back to Galway and asked that the next Scully girl come out and marry him and care for the five motherless children. She prepared but at the last minute said that she could not go. Catherine, then 15 years old, said that she would not see the children motherless so would take her place. Single women were not allowed to immigrate until they were 16 years so it was some time before everything was in order for her to leave. Dates and the ship she sailed on are unknown but probably early in 1864. There is no record of her in the Canterbury museum where all assisted immigrants are kept, so it seems that she either provided her own passage or her brother-in-law had sent money to assist. Usually young people travelled with friends or relatives but this too is unknown. On her arrival imagine her consternation when she discovered that her brother-in-law had already married a daughter of a well off landowner in the Ashburton district. Catherine then was left to fend for herself.
Employment was obtained in Christchurch in the home of the Ruddenclaus. He, a business entrepreneur made money quickly and had a large home in the quickly growing town. It is assumed that she was a maid in the house. Many immigrant girls were employed in servant work and it was the main employment of young unmarried women. However in this new place servant girls had their own code of conduct in a land where a subtle change had taken place between immigrants and employers. The deference paid to the employing classes by the employed, gave way to the understanding of equality whatever the work, and wages and conditions were negotiated from the point of labour shortage. Trollop, writing from New Zealand in the 1860's noted the lack of deference and how even servant girls will refuse money 'only a poor Irish girl without a friend in the world but not as mean as that'. How this effected Catherine in particular is unknown but certainly the attitudes would have been a matter of discussion among her working companions and would effect the attitudes of her children, all of whom were advocates of justice for the working classes.
While in service Catherine came in contact with a sensational murder of an Irish housemaid, Margaret Burke, employed in the house adjoining. She was taken over to see the scene of the murder by another maid presumably a friend. The Irish immigrants probably provided companionship and support for one another in a country so far from family support and so different in attitudes and culture. This incident had a huge effect on Catherine as she recalled it for her own children, especially the fact that the headstone in the cemetery was supposed to have a stain of blood on it even when a second replaced it. Such incidents must have reinforced the loneliness of the young immigrant and her vulnerability so far from home. Here no family support to call upon in time of trauma, only her own inner strength that had been developed early within her Irish family in times of hardship. She recalled the story to her daughter who retold it to her granddaughter.
Catherine was literate, so must have received some education in Ireland, what education was available I have not yet researched. Many changes now took place in her life. Somewhere, among the support that the Irish immigrants gave one another, she met her future husband, also a native of Galway- As groups of settlers from the same counties tended to purchase land in the same areas so possibly in the cities the yearning for home and news of known people would draw together groups from Galway or Kerry or wherever. Some ten years later Catherine and John Morriss from Annaghdown were married in the Catholic Church at Lyttleton. The date the 14th of March 1874. No other family we know were present but certainly other Irish friends would have been. Other relatives from Galway, Burkes by name would later live near them in Morven but whether they were among the guests we don't know. Perhaps it is the few there were to celebrate their own wedding that would influence them inviting over 500 guests to the wedding of their daughter Sarah and entertain them in a large marquee at their home in 1904, thirty years later.
John Morriss son of John and Catherine Morriss (maiden name unknown) was born in 1843. His family must have prized education as family tradition has it that he went to Edinburgh for one years university education before returning to Ireland and working as a tenant farmer on the Gort estate in Co Galway
At the age of 21 he decided to emigrate
to New Zealand. It seems he was attracted by the discovery of
gold. He travelled on the ship Ivanhoe
which left London docks on the 25th February 1864. He was an assisted immigrant
as there are records in the Canterbury Museum which give him as shepherd
aged 20 years and has a cross reference to his travelling corn anions Patrick
Murphy 3 widower, a saddler, also his son Patrick aged 15 and his daughter
Hannah aged 20 a domestic servant. The ship first docked at Timaru, but
on discovery of a number of deaths on board during the voyage from low
fever, was put into quarantine for a week at Camp Bay in Lyttleton.
John, according to family memories of his eldest grandson, went to the gold diggings in Gabriel’s Gully in Otago. Gold had been found here in 1861 and by 1864 most of the richest claims has been secured and worked over. John then walked up the centre of the South Island and crossed the Alps to the West Coast fields. This, although not authenticated, is probably true as many of the Otago miners took a route that went inland from Timaru and across the Arthur's Pass to the fields in Hokitika. In March of 1865 the whole of the Coast had been declared as gold field and Hokitika became the centre. This journey from Gabriel's Gully was over 350 miles over very rugged country on tracks and partially formed roads. Provisions for such a journey would have had to be carried. He returned to Christchurch late in 1866.
After working at Esk Head station in North Canterbury near Lake Sumner he purchased property in Temuka. How he met Catherine in Christchurch and what was their courtship we do not know, however they made their first home in Temuka where their first three children, Catherine, John and Sarah were born. The 1860s was probably the best time for immigrants to make their way in the new country. After 20 years of settlement, the boom time of the gold rushes and better conditions of communication and transport, there was little unemployment. Samuel Butler wrote that the readiness with which a skilled and steady rural worker might find alternative employment made him respectful and civil but with a lack of deference, a quite unobjectionable difference in their manner from those at home.
South Canterbury with an area half the size of Ireland had two priests to serve its needs. In Temuka Mass was celebrated at the home of Martin Connolly. By 1876 it became a parish and the church built in 1879 is the oldest surviving today. John most likely had a hand in the planning and erection as he would later in Morven where he was a member of the committee that build the church there.
In 1881 John, Catherine and their family moved to Morven. This town grew from the breaking up of the large sheep runs and was the centre for the former Waikakahi estate. The family purchased 100 acres of land here and gradually added to it until they owned 850 acres of freehold and 313 acres of leasehold land. John was interested in horse breeding which he did as a side line. He developed the land and as Morven was prone to drought became interested in irrigation. Lincoln College encouraged new initiatives and much information was shared at Farmers clubs and local Agricultural and Pastoral shows. His son John would put in the first water races for irrigation in the district. John became a member of the Lower Waitaki Irrigation Board and its chairman in 1903. Community minded, he as well as being an active member of the local church, represented the Waihao riding on the Waimate Borough Council.
Three more children were born in Morven. Margaret, Michael and Patrick. They attended to local state school where they had an excellent Englishman as a teacher. Sarah and Margaret were trained by him as pupil teachers. Their home was at first a sod house with later wooden additions, fascinating to me in my childhood in the 1940s as it still had no electricity and one took a candle to bed, going up three steps from the kitchen in the sod area to the bedrooms in the wooden part. Candlelight was mysterious for me. Catherine and John were dead by then but the household was run by their blind daughter Catty and son John. It was a place of poetry reading, political debate and interesting discussion.
Catherine died in 1916 at the age of 69. John in 1925 at the age of 82. They had experienced the exodus from their home country, the separation from family and friend and the forging of new ties in a new land. A hundred and fifty years later this land is forever different for this migration and the other migrations that came before and after. The moulding of the cultures is only now coming to age in the arts of Aoteroa - New Zealand that reflect their love of word, poetry, serious debater social justice and culture carried across vast oceans. Strands of Galway live on in the generations their look down from their shoulders on the stones placed on the walls they created here in a new land.
The glimpses show us earthy people rooted in the land, struggling to make a better world. Their grandchildren's memory of their home is of a place where they loved to go. A place where they were treated with love and respect and entertained by wholesome gatherings where their world was stretched and they had to think about God, the land and the meaning of life. Surely these were the building stones transported from the family traditions in Galway. They were not middle-class people with a middle-class respectability, but people not afraid to express new ideas, and forthright opinions on everything from farming practices and politics to world trade. Not yet had they achieved enough money to make them complacent and content to look after only themselves. When the land produced well, John could return to Europe, but when it went ill the belts were tightened. They lived with the rhythms of the earth and had to take it fortunes good or bad. There were new rhythms to be learned here and adaptations to be made. The delicate, beautiful, dancing, solid lace walls would symbolise the new life too, a life that has enduring qualities passed on through the generations.
References
Scotter W H
History of Canterbury Vol 111
Whitcombe & Tombes
Simpson T
The Immigrants 1840-1890
Godwit
Gillespie 0 A
South Canterbury a record of settlement
Centennial Committee
Cydopedia of New Zealand
Canterbury Volume 1903
Records in the Canterbury Museum
Galway Family History Centre
Oral Family History
Author
Mary Horn OP
Great-grand-daughter, Dominican Sister, teacher,
artist and organic gardener, collector of family history.
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top