THE TAIERI ALLANS
AND RELATED FAMILIES
A PAGE OUT OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF OTAGO
By
JAMES ALLAN THOMSON
"Honour thy father and thy mother;
that thy days may be long upon the land
which the Lord thy God giveth thee . "
This book was originally published by:
N.Z. Bible and Book Society,
Booksellers and Stationers,
48 Princes Street, Dunedin. 80 Willis Street, Wellington.
49-51 Esk Street, Invercargill
1929
It was printed by the Evening Star Co., Ltd., Stuart St., Dunedin.
This reprint was produced and published by Chad Oliver,
grandson of Eric Rupert Oliver (FVIIIb).
Chad Oliver
286 Suffolk Road,
R.D.8
Inglewood, 4388,
Taranaki,
New Zealand
ph: ++64 6 756 7775
This book was originally published in 1929, and the author, James
Allan Thomson, died in 1928. Under New Zealand copyright law,
the copyright to this book has expired. This reprint (printed in
2008) is therefore released into the public domain.
All rights that the author of this reprint might hold concerning
original aspects of this book (including, but not limited to, the
cover design) are also released into the public domain.
JOHN ALLAN, SEN. (1862). AGNES ALLAN (1884).
ALEXANDER McKAY (1874). JANET McKAY (1898).
JAMES ALLAN THOMSON (1928).
PREFACE
The proposal to edit this record of John and Agnes Allan and
their descendants was made to the older surviving members of the
family in 1919, but subsequent ill-health prevented any serious
work upon it until the close of 1925.
A young lady, who is herself a member of the family, when
shown the bulky papers and correspondence which have been
accumulated in preparation of this little book, asked the pertinent
question : “But why are you doing it?” That is a question which I
frequently ask myself, for I sometimes grudge the time taken from
my scientific pursuits, and find the answer somewhat as follows:
In these times of social unrest, when the family ties and
traditions which have done so much to the building up of the
British people are being unloosed as never before, and when the
liberty and prosperity which we New Zealanders enjoy is taken for
granted without a grateful thought for the struggles and
staunchness of the ancestors who have won them for us, the words
of Ecclesiastes seem to have a special meaning:
“Let us now praise famous men and the fathers who begat us.’
Ulster and Scottish Origins
9
Chapter I
ULSTER AND SCOTTISH ORIGINS
The Taieri Allans, with the related families of the McKays,
Andersons, and Olivers, are descended from John and Agnes Allan,
who came to New Zealand from Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, in
1842. In this chapter are gathered up the few details that are known
of their forebears, and of their life prior to leaving for New Zealand.
Agnes Allan did not change her name on marriage, but a family
tradition states that her husband spelt his surname Allen’ previous
to his marriage, making the change to Allan out of gallantry to his
wife. In favour of this tradition is the fact that his brother James,
who also came to New Zealand, spelt his name Allen’. On the other
hand, Provost Hogg, of Irvine, who has made a study of the local
Ayrshire records, does not seem aware of this change of spelling,
and states that our John Allan was related to the poet Robert Burns,
to the Allan who founded the Allan line of steamers, and to the John
Allan who emigrated to Virginia and became the foster father of
Edgar Allan Poe.
Although in the eighteenth century spellings of family names
were not firmly fixed, and an Allan might easily from personal
choice spell his name Allen, it does not seem probable that John
Allan was as closely related to the above Ayrshire Allans as the
Provost supposed. Both John and Agnes Allan were born in Ulster,
where the families had resided for an unknown period, although,
like many other Ulster families, hailing originally from Ayrshire. As
John Allan later came into close contact with Rev. Thomas Burns,
10
The Taieri Allans
nephew of the poet, in New Zealand, it does not seem likely that he
was aware of any relationship, or his family would surely have heard
of it. On the other hand Agnes Allan always claimed that her family
was related to the founder of the Allan line of steamers 1 .
John and Agnes Allan were both born in Ulster, and of the Ulster
Allans we have little knowledge. John Allan’s parents were farmers,
and died at an early age, leaving three orphan children, Margaret,
John (born 1791) 2 , and James, who passed with the farm to the care
of an uncle. John evidently did not get on well with his uncle, and at
the age of nine ran away from home and joined the Navy (1800),
with which he served more or less continuously until 1815, the year
of the battle of Waterloo, when apparently he settled down at
Irvine, in Ayrshire, later moving to Kilmarnock. Of his sister
Margaret we have no details. His brother James subsequently joined
him in New Zealand.
Agnes Allan, born in 1794, was the eldest daughter of Joseph
Allan, an Ulster weaver, who came to Irvine in the year 1809. He had
a brother Tom, who inherited considerable property in Derry. The
family was originally Scottish, but crossed to Ireland at the time of
the Stuart persecutions. Provost Hogg supplies the following note:
“Joseph Allan, born 1756, died 1846, came from
Derry, North Ireland, married Miss Woods, who died
about 1838. From an old census (1820) I found that
Joseph Allan was a weaver who came to Irvine in
the year 1809. The census notes that in 1820 he had
been resident eleven years in Irvine. He resided in
the Bridgegate, about where Miss Connor now has
her Upholsterer's shop. The old houses were
removed about forty years ago for the purpose of
street widening and improvement. I have a very
good photograph of the old houses which shows the
house where Joseph Allan lived. The family were
Ulster and Scottish Origins
11
Dissenters and attended the Burgher Kirk 3 of which
the Rev. Alexander Campbell was minister. The old
church (now a grain store) still stands in the Cotton
Row, Ballot Road, Irvine. The family appears to have
been in fair circumstances. It consisted of parents
and six daughters”.
Of Agnes Allan’s younger sister and their descendants we have
few details. Elizabeth married an Irvine weaver, Henry Neil, who
came from Ireland about 1818-19, and left no family. Janet, the third
daughter, married another weaver, William Corrance (?Corrans?),
who also came from North Ireland, in 1810, and was connected with
a religious sect known as the Macmillanites. In 1820 the household
consisted of two males and four females. A son, George Corrance,
emigrated to Otago in 1861, and in 1866 his mother joined him.
Other descendants of the Corrance family are still living in Irvine,
Kilmarnock, and Ayr, one being postmaster at Prestwick.
Mary, the fourth daughter of Joseph Allan, became Mrs Hill;
while Kate, the fifth, became Mrs Fulton. Both are believed to have
had families, but Provost Hogg states that there are now no
descendants in the Irvine district. Isabella, the youngest daughter,
became Mrs Wilson, and died in the Kilmarnock Hospital in 1898 as
the result of a burning accident. She is survived by a son, Andrew
Wilson, aged about eighty, a carpet weaver, living at 4 Dundonald
Road, Kilmarnock; and a daughter residing at 233 Meadowpath
Street, Dennistoun, Glasgow.
Certain Christian names have been much favoured by the
descendants of John and Agnes Allan, and of these we already find
the majority in use in the two families - Joseph, John, James, Agnes,
Janet, and Isabella.
The period of John Allan’s service with the Navy (1800-1815)
was one of almost continuous war with France, there being only one
short interlude of peace from March, 1802, to May, 1803, until the
banishment of Napoleon to Elba early in 1814. Owing to the military
successes of Napoleon on the Continent, England stood almost alone
12
The Taieri Allans
during the greater part of these years, and had opposed to her the
navies not only of France and Spain, but at one time also those of
Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. Moreover, from 1812 to 1814 there
was also war with America. During this time the British Navy gained
and held the command of the seas, thus averting the invasion and
conquest of Britain that was the great objective of Napoleon, and
permitting the landing of expeditionary forces in Egypt (1801),
Sweden (1808), Spain (1808), Portugal (1808-1813), and Walcheren
(1809). This command of the seas was maintained not only by the
great naval victories of Nelson in pitched battles with ships of the
line, but by ceaseless patrol of the enemy’s coasts and harassment of
his small shipping, and by search of neutral vessels for contraband
of war. These latter duties were carried out for the most part by
smaller vessels.
Of John Allan’s service during these years we have few
particulars, and for this reason we may assume that he was not
present at the larger engagements, and served mostly in the smaller
craft. We know that he commenced service under Lord Cochrane in
the ‘Speedy’ (1800-1801), was wounded, and for some time an
invalid in Italy, assisted in the embarkation of Moore’s army at the
battle of Coruna (1809), when he was captured and held prisoner by
the French for two years, and ultimately took his final discharge
from the Aboukir in 1815.
A full account of the cruises of the 'Speedy' from May, 1800 until
her capture by the French in June, 1801, has been placed on record
by Lord Cochrane (afterwards Earl of Dundonald) 4 . Writing in 1861,
he described her as follows:
“The 'Speedy' was little more than a burlesque on
a vessel of war, even sixty years ago. She was about
the size of an average coasting brig, her burden
being 158 tons. She was crowded, rather than
manned, with a crew of eighty-four men and six
officers, myself included. Her armament consisted
of fourteen four-pounders, a species of gun little
Ulster and Scottish Origins
13
larger than a blunderbuss, and formerly known in
the service under the name of ‘minion,’ 5 an
appellation which it certainly merited.”
His description of his cabin is amusing; its ceiling was only 5ft
high, and it was too small to accommodate a chair. To shave, he was
accustomed to remove the skylight, and putting his head through
the opening, to use the quarter-deck as a toilet table. Lord Cochrane
attempted to arm his vessel with twelve-pounders, but the timbers
were found too weak. He put in as a new main-yard the foretop-
gallant-yard of a French frigate, and even that had to be cut down.
With this crazy vessel he cruised for thirteen months in the Gulf of
Genoa, and on the Spanish coast, with short special missions to
Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. His task was evidently to harass the small
shipping of the enemy (French and Spanish), and though he
occasionally had to retire before superior strength, he chased or
captured most enemy vessels that he saw, many of them being
French or Spanish privateers, or allied vessels with enemy prize
crews aboard 6 . In all he captured upwards of 50 vessels, 122 guns,
and 534 prisoners, his greatest feat being the taking of the Spanish
xebec frigate ‘Gamo’ of 600 tons, 32 heavy guns, and 319 men. This
was effected by running under her sides, so that the big ship’s guns
could only sweep the ' Speedy "s rigging, and ultimately by boarding
her and hauling down her colours, when her crew, thinking that her
officers had struck, surrendered in a body. On this occasion the
'Speedy"s crew only consisted of 54 men. The Speedy was ultimately
sent with mails to Gibraltar, and meeting with three French ships of
the line, was unable to get away, and after a severe bombardment,
struck her colours. Fortunately the British had captured a French
boat a short time previously, and an exchange of both officers and
crews was effected in a few days, a happening the more fortunate in
that exchanges of prisoners were not often made in these wars.
It must have been an awesome experience for the boy of nine to
be under action so repeatedly. Like other seamen of the period, he
probably became early inured to the hardships the service entailed,
14
The Taieri Allans
and welcomed the actions as bringing in more prize money, in
which even the cabin boys and powder monkeys would share
proportionately. Lord Cochrane seemed to have been a popular
commander, with a reputation for gaining prizes, and remarks that
resort to the press gang to gain crews was only necessary with
unpopular officers, inefficient vessels, or out-of-the-way stations
where chances of prize money were few. Whether John Allan was
fortunate and remained on the 'Speedy' during her whole
adventurous thirteen months, or not, we do not know. Perhaps it
was then that he got the wound that necessitated a sojourn in Italy.
It appears that he served again under Lord Cochrane, for he was
present in the same boat at the storming of a fort when the captain
was wounded, and no such action is recorded during the cruise of
the 'Speedy'.
Of his fortunes during the next eight years no details have been
preserved. We next hear of him of him at the battle of Coruna, 16th-
18th January, 1809. Sir John Moore, in order to allow the Spanish
insurrectionaries in the south a breathing space in which to
organise a resistance to the French, had made a feint at the French
lines of communications in the north, and had successfully drawn
Napoleon to alter his plans and direct his main forces to meet the
danger. By a masterly retreat he had lured the French to follow him
to Coruna, where he had directed the fleet to meet him and re-
embark his army for transference to Portugal. The transports being
delayed by bad weather, Marshal Soult was able to bring up his
pursuing army in time to engage Moore before the embarkation,
and the battle of Coruna resulted. The British, in spite of their
inferior position, successfully repulsed the French attack, though
Moore himself was killed by a cannonball, and the main part of the
army successfully embarked during the night following the battle.
At dawn the French pushed forward to a hill commanding the
harbour, and:
“. . . about mid-day succeeded in establishing a
Ulster and Scottish Origins
15
battery, which played upon the shipping in the
harbour, caused a great deal of disorder among the
transports. Several masters cut their cables, and
four vessels went ashore; but the troops being
immediately removed by the men-of-war’s boats,
the stranded vessels were burnt, and the whole fleet
at last got out of the harbour. General Hill’s brigade
then embarked from the citadel; but General
Beresford, with a rear-guard, still kept possession of
that work till the 18th, when the wounded being all
put on board, his troops likewise embarked. The
inhabitants faithfully maintained the town against
the French, and the fleet sailed for England.” 7
Such is Napier’s account of the embarkation, but although none
of the ships, except those burnt, were lost, it appears that at least
one of the ship’s boats was cut off by the French. The cavalry acting
as rearguard were the last to embark, and as the horses could not be
shipped, the last act was to shoot them to prevent their being made
use of by the enemy. John Allan was with the last of the soldiers
engaged in the shooting of the horses when a band of French
soldiers came suddenly on the scene, and in the rush to escape the
boat became overcrowded and grounded. Before it could be
refloated the crew and passengers were captured. As prisoners they
had a hard time of it, how hard we can only guess, but recent novels,
dealing with the treatment of French prisoners in England at this
time describe almost unbelievable harshness of treatment except
for officers on parole. They had several weeks travelling to their
final destination, and only two, one of them John Allan, ultimately
survived. After two or three years imprisonment he secured his
release, it is said, through the interest of a French lady. Napoleon’s
policy was against the exchange of prisoners.
John Allan evidently rejoined the navy on his return to England,
for his certificate of discharge from the Aboukir’ in 1815 is
preserved in the possession of the McKay family. It runs as follows:
16
The Taieri Allans
“These are to certify that John Allan has served as
ordinary seaman on board of His Majesty’s ship
'Aboukir' under my command from the 12th day of
May, 1815, to the 13th day of September, 1815.
Dated the 13th day of September, 1815.
John Allan is 5ft 8in in height, is of a pale
complexion, and aged 22 years.
(Signed) W. THOMPSON, Captain.
By virtue of the Act of the 32nd of George the Third.”
After leaving the Navy John Allan apparently settled down in
Ayrshire, and made his living either as an agricultural labourer or as
a weaver, or in both ways. He married Agnes Allan, then living in
Irvine, about 1820, and made his home in Kilmarnock, where his
family of seven children was born. At the time of their departure for
New Zealand in 1842, their ages were as follows John Allan, 51; his
wife, Agnes, 48; Janet, 21; James, 18; Isabella, 16; Joseph, 14; John, 11;
Agnes, 8; and William, 4. The elder children were doubtless at work,
Janet being described in the Embarkation Register of the New
Zealand Company as sempstress and servant, James as agricultural
labourer, and Isabella as sempstress. Joseph was trained as a cobbler.
No details of their life in Ayrshire have been preserved, except the
interesting fact that owing to his father’s Calvinistic strictness,
James ran away to sea, thus following in his father’s footsteps. The
escapade, however, seems to have been of short duration.
What the reasons were that led John Allan to seek a home in a
new land or to choose New Zealand we do not know, but some idea
of the conditions at that time in Scotland can be gathered from Dr.
Hocken’s pages:
“Long before the New Zealand Company
commenced its colonisation operations, the state of
trade throughout the United Kingdom was greatly
depressed. Under this condition all suffered with
varying degrees of severity. The lower classes felt
Ulster and Scottish Origins
17
the keen pinch of poverty in hunger and
destitution, those above them in the evil effects of
stagnation and overcrowding. Many thoughtful
people said and wrote that relief and cure were to
be found in emigration only" . . . "The deplorable
state of trade and the condition of the poor at this
time (in 1840) demanded a potent remedy. Taking
Paisley as an index, in a population of 44,000, one
quarter, or 11,000, were actually out of work and
starving. Others were working sixteen hours a day
in the all but unsuccessful endeavour to keep body
and soul together on a pittance of seven or eight
shillings a week.”
if conditions were thus bad in Paisley, the home of the weavers,
then the weavers in Irvine and Kilmarnock, too, must have been
feeling the pinch, and Joseph and John Allan were weavers. No
doubt the improvements of power looms were rendering the calling
of the cottage weavers more precarious. Emigration societies had
been established in many large centres of population, and emigrant
vessels had for years been dispatched over-seas. In the four years
from 1839 to 1842, more than 400,000 people had left the United
Kingdom. Of these the great majority were following the beaten
tracks and going to America, only 8,000 were going to New Zealand,
and of these latter only 500 were comprised in the three ships of the
New Zealand Company that sailed from Scotland. That John Allan
should decide to emigrate at the age of 51 we may pretty
confidently put down to the hard times or the lack of outlook in the
weaving trade. That he was among the more venturesome spirits
who braved the terrors of the unknown in distant New Zealand may
perhaps be ascribed to his naval experiences and his familiarity with
ships and the sea. To those who have once crossed the ocean the
world does not seem so large nor does an ocean voyage seem so
irrevocable a step, and to one who has mixed with men of many
peoples, contact with a foreign race does not conjure up terrors.
18
The Taieri Allans
CHAPTER NOTES
1 See appendix
2 The date of John Allan’s birth is a little uncertain. In the certificate of
discharge from the Aboukir (given later) his age is stated as 22 in 1815,
which would make the date of birth 1793, and his age at joining the Navy
only seven, but this seems impossible. The Embarkation Register of the
New Zealand Company, not reliable on the ages of immigrants, gives his
age as 37 in 1842. Joseph A. Anderson, his grandson, states he remembers
an old family Bible with entries in Agnes Allan’s handwriting, giving his
birth at 1792 and her own as 1794. On his tombstone, however, he is stated
to have been 72 years at his death in 1863, making his birth in 1791, and
this is the date I have accepted as most probable.
3 The Burgher Kirk was one of the many sects into which Scottish
Presbyterianism rent itself in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries.
Apart from the Cameronian Kirk, which dates from the persecutions of the
Covenanters in the 17th century, the process of division began with the
First Secession in 1733, when Erskine and three other ministers withdrew
from the Church of Scotland over a question of patronage (the right of a
patron to appoint a minister), and formed the Associated Presbytery. In
1749 occurred ‘The Breach’, over the lawfulness to church members of the
oath required of Burgesses on taking office, and the Associated Presbytery
split into the Burgher and Anti-Burgher Kirks. In 1820 these two reunited
to form the United Secession Church, but in the meantime each had
suffered further division into New Lights and Old Lights (the latter well
known from J. M. Barrie’s “Auld Licht Idylls”). Another original secession
from the Church of Scotland over the question of patronage occurred in
1752, when Gillespie formed the Relief Church. In 1847 the United
Secession and Relief Churches joined forces and took the name of United
Presbyterian Church (popularly known as U.P.’s). These 18th century
secessions were made by men who were Liberal in political sympathy and
Evangelical in Church policy, while the Church of Scotland was Tory in
politics and Moderate in Church policy. The adherents of the Secession
Churches were almost entirely of the lower orders in social standing, and
with much piety and true religion combined a great deal of ignorance and
intolerable narrowness, with occasionally a strong vein of spiritual pride
and insincerity, which have been held up to scorn by Burns, Galt, and
Ulster and Scottish Origins
19
Barrie. Burns himself belonged to the New Light school of Moderates.
4 Thomas, tenth Earl of Dundonald. ‘The Autobiography of a Seaman’, 2
vols. London: Richard Bentley.
5 A Spanish word signifying small, from the Latin minuo, to make small.
6 When an enemy ship was captured, common practice was for a small
group of men, the ‘prize crew’, to take command of the captured vessel and
sail her to the closest friendly port.
7 W. F. P. Napier, ‘History of the War in the Peninsula’, vol. 1, London, 1828.
20
The Taieri Allans
Chapter II
ARRIVALS IN NEW ZEALAND
The Allans sailed to New Zealand by the ship ‘New Zealand’, 455
tons, Captain C. H. Worth, leaving Cumbrae 4th July, 1842, and
arriving at Nelson on November 3rd, 1842, a passage of 123 days. No
details of their voyage have been preserved, except that James Allan
was one of the most popular persons among his fellow travellers.
Being a good sailor, he was ever mindful of the many that were
down with seasickness, took the lead in all games, and was often up
aloft helping the sailors. J. W. Barnicoat, a surveyor, who emigrated
to Nelson in the ‘Lord Auckland’ earlier in 1842, records in his
Journal 8 some interesting details of emigrant ships of that date. The
New Zealand Company contracted with the shipowners to pay Is 3d
per day for each emigrant, according to a scale of rations attached.
The emigrants were under the entire care of a surgeon-
superintendent, who received a payment of £50 for the trip, and 10s
for every one he landed alive over 14 years of age, 5s for those
between 7 and 14 years, and 3s 4d for younger children; with a
deduction of £1 for every loss, infant or adult. There was also an
assistant superintendent, and a matron over the women. The
surgeon usually appointed honorary constables from the emigrants
to assist him in maintaining order.
John Allan had not been many years in Nelson before his family
became increased by the marriage of two of his daughters to two
Scotch immigrants who had come to New Zealand by an earlier ship.
Both hailed from Sutherland, Scotland, and had come out together
Arrivals in New Zealand
21
to Wellington in the ‘Oriental’, leaving London on September, 1839,
and arriving at Wellington on 30th January, 1840.
Alexander McKay, who married the eldest daughter, Janet Allan,
was born in the parish of Clyne, Sutherland, on August 12th, 1802,
and was thus 27 years old at the date of his emigration. He was the
son of Hector and Jane or Jean McKay, and claimed relationship with
the Leveson-Gower family, and also with Lord Reay, head of the
McKay clan. Charles McKay, the poet, was a cousin. Hector McKay’s
family consisted of five sons, Donald, Angus, William, Alexander,
and Robert; and two daughters, Jean and Elizabeth. Of the sons,
Angus and William lost their lives in the Peninsular Wars, serving in
a regiment raised in Sutherlandshire, one holding the rank of
Captain and the other of Lieutenant. Robert came to Otago some
years after his brother Alexander, and settled in Invercargill, where
he ultimately died.
Before coming to New Zealand Alexander McKay had an interest
in and managed a quarry in Brora, owned by Richard Barton, or
leased by him from the Duke of Sutherland. The stone was cut and
shifted to London and used at St. Katherine’s Docks. Richard Barton
also came out to New Zealand in the ‘Oriental’, and was a lifelong
friend of Alexander McKay. He settled in the Wairarapa district, near
Wellington, his surviving son, William Barton, being the present
owner of the White-rock Station, on the east coast of Wellington.
John Anderson, who married Isabella, the second daughter of
John Allan, was also a native of Sutherland, being born in 1819
within three miles of Dunrobin Castle, the chief seat of the Duke of
Sutherland. He was the son of James Anderson, who hailed from
Perthshire, and came to Sutherland to take charge of the first sheep
introduced into the country by the Duke, who owned the freehold of
almost the entire county. This introduction of sheep became
historical, because it was accompanied by the forcible eviction of
many thousands of small tenants who were farming in a primitive
and most unproductive manner. Much of the land thus taken was
22
The Taieri Allans
relet in large holdings to men with capital and some practical
knowledge, and this gave a great impetus to farming and to the
advance of the county generally. The evicted tenants were given
small holdings, called ‘crofts’, on the eastern seaboard, but large
numbers of them emigrated to Canada.
On leaving school, John Anderson became a shepherd lad on the
estate under his father, and before long became expert in the
training of sheep-dogs. In later years in Otago this ability did not
desert him, and the intelligent manner in which any of his dogs
would manage a flock or a single sheep was the admiration of his
sons. He was also a keen sport with the fowling piece, as is
witnessed by the following anecdote. On one occasion two
noblemen staying at Dunrobin Castle made a wager of £500 as to
which, with an assistant, would kill the most game in one day. One
of the two selected the head gamekeeper as his helper, but the latter
said he would find himself a better man, or rather boy, in the person
of John Anderson, who was then a youth of eighteen years. These
two won the match, and John Anderson’s reward was a purse of ten
sovereigns and a suit of sporting clothes.
Shortly after this John Anderson went to Canada to join an uncle
and cousins engaged in farming there, but only stayed a few
months. After his return to Scotland his father and brothers decided
with him to accept the call that was being made for emigrants for
the new colony of New Zealand. James Anderson had been for
several years a widower, and was accompanied by his eldest son,
Donald, with his wife; John, then aged twenty; and David, a year or
two younger. The eldest daughter, Ann, who had married a McKay,
stayed behind, and the youngest of the family, Catherine, a girl of
seventeen, rather than emigrate, got married to her sweetheart,
also a McKay, and stayed at home.
The Sutherland party, including the Andersons and McKays,
were cheered as the coach left Brora, and such is the force of
example, that in a few years ten of the young men who saw them off
also came to New Zealand, including Mr Robert Murray and Mr
Matheson, who subsequently settled in Tokomairiro.
Arrivals in New Zealand
23
The party travelled to London and had to wait there ten days or
more for the vessel’s sailing. An anecdote from that time showed
that their strict Presbyterianism has been preserved. In the county
of Sutherland at that time there was no church of any other
denomination. When Sunday came round the emigrants knew of no
Presbyterian Church in London, but one of the party could not rest
unless he attended a place of worship on that day. John Anderson
offered to find a church, and on doing so they both entered it and
quietly took their seats. When the organ started, however, his friend
at once arose, walked out of the church, made his way back to their
lodgings, and indignantly told the others that John Anderson had
taken him to a theatre on the Lord’s Day!
Shortly after arrival in Wellington, Alexander McKay proceeded
to Auckland, where he was appointed by Governor Hobson to
supervise some contract work for the Government. At some date
prior to the middle of 1843 he went to Nelson.
The Andersons remained for a few years in Wellington, where a
flourishing little town soon sprung into existence, and started a
butcher’s shop, obtaining their livestock by regular shipments from
Australia. Shortly after their arrival Donald Anderson took ill and
died, and his widow returned to the Home Country. David Anderson
left for Valparaiso, in South America, and eventually died in San
Francisco in 1872, leaving a wife and family.
In 1843 John Anderson and his father sold their butchery
business and left Wellington for Nelson with the intention of
starting sheep-farming, taking with them a shipment of sheep.
Unfortunately, on entering Nelson Harbour the vessel struck a rock
and became a wreck, the sheep being nearly all drowned. This loss
put sheep-farming out of the question, and James Anderson, being a
member of the Oddfellows’ Society, opened an hotel, which he called
the ‘Oddfellows’ Arms’, where the Society held its ordinary meetings.
Few details have been preserved of the doings of the Allans in
Nelson, which they ultimately left for Otago in 1848. The Nelson
settlement passed through much misfortune and distress in these
years, and the family doubtless shared in the general lack of
24
The Taieri Allans
prosperity.
Nelson 9 was the second settlement of the New Zealand
Company, which had started operations by founding Wellington at
Port Nicholson in 1840, and it suffered from the lack of initial
preparation which characterised the early colonising efforts of this
company. The name ‘Nelson’ was given in London to the new
settlement, which it decided to plant on a site to be determined
after arrival of the preliminary expedition, it being expected that it
would be somewhere in the vicinity of Banks Peninsula or Port
Cooper. When Captain Arthur Wakefield, the leader of the
expedition, arrived in Port Nicholson in September, 1841, with three
vessels (the barques ‘Whitby’ and ‘Will Watch’, and the brig ‘Arrow’)
containing the company’s surveyors, labourers, and stores, he
learned from his brother, Colonel William Wakefield, the company’s
principal agent, that Governor Hobson objected to a new settlement
being formed so far from the seat of Government, and wished it to
be located in the Auckland district. To this Colonel Wakefield would
not agree, and after three weeks’ useless debate, directed his
brother to proceed to Blind Bay and select a site there. At the south-
east corner of the bay they found a sheltered harbour, and Captain
Wakefield decided it was a satisfactory site for the town, brought
the ships in, and planted his flag. The claims of the local Natives
were satisfied by payments in blankets, axes, pipes, tobacco, guns,
gunpowder, biscuits, and shoes, of a value of about £400. The survey
parties and labourers lost no time in cutting tracks through the
bush, fern, flax, and toi-toi, and in building rude houses against the
arrival of the immigrant ships. The first of these, the Fifeshire,
arrived on February 1st, 1842, and before July of that year no less
than 67 vessels had visited Nelson, many of them, no doubt, small
ships trading between Sydney and Wellington. Up to a late date in
1842 the where-abouts of the Nelson settlement was still unknown
in London, and emigrant ships had first to call at Wellington to find
out their destination. By September there were 2,000 people in the
district, mostly congregated in the town of Nelson. Many neat
houses of brick, wood, or stone had been erected, gardens fenced
Arrivals in New Zealand
25
off, a newspaper was being published, and church services held.
Shortly after, a gaol and a pair of stocks were added. The Allans, as
already noted, arrived in New Zealand on November 3rd, 1842.
The advertisement of the New Zealand Company relative to the
Nelson Settlement offered for sale 201,000 acres in 1,000 allotments,
each to consist of 150 acres of rural land, 50 acres of accommodation
land in the immediate proximity of the town, and one town acre, at
a price of £300 per allotment. Of the purchase money received,
£130,000 was to be devoted to conveying labouring emigrants,
£20,000 to allowances to purchasers towards the cost of their
passages, £50,000 to the defraying of the company’s expenses in
selecting the site and establishing the settlement, and £50,000 to
public purposes such as religious and educational endowments and
the encouragement of steam navigation, leaving £50,000 profit to
the company. The first difficulties of the settlement were due to the
fact that the settlers arrived before the suburban and rural lands
were surveyed, and the large proportion of labourers brought out in
pursuance of the company’s policy had almost no market for their
labour but the company itself. The first rural land to be opened, the
Waimea district, was only surveyed by August 8th, 1842, and the
Moutere district by December 21st. Frederick Tuckett, the
company’s principal surveyor, was greatly disappointed at the
quality of the land, and at that time doubted the ability of New
Zealand to carry a large population. Certainly the amount of land
sold by the company could not be found nearer than the Wairau
Valley. Meanwhile, the supply of labourers was monthly increasing
with each emigrant ship. In August those employed by the company
were receiving 14s per week, together with rations of 7 lb. pork, 7 lb.
flour or biscuits, !4 lb. tea, and lib. sugar, as against 21s a week and
10 lb. rations previously. On January 16th, 1843, there was a
deputation of 100 to 200 men to Captain Wakefield to demand an
increase of wages, but without result.
In addition to these local troubles the New Zealand Company
was in difficulties owing to a dispute with the Government, who
contended that in the first place the Company had no right to make
26
The Taieri Allans
direct purchases from the Natives; that in any case an insufficient
consideration had been given; and that the bargain had not been
made with all the owners of the land. The Government, therefore,
refused to recognise the legal title of the company or their settlers
to the lands they claimed or were occupying. This difficulty over
land titles greatly retarded the progress of all the early settlements,
and gave the settlers a feeling of insecurity. Eventually the
Government agreed to grant to the company one acre for every 5s
spent in land, surveys, roads, conveyance of immigrants, etc. The
company thus became entitled to nearly a million acres, out of
several millions that they claimed to have purchased, but this was
conditional on Native titles being proved to have been extinguished.
Mr Spain was sent out as a special commissioner to investigate such
claims, and commenced in Wellington in 1842. It was many years
before finality was reached.
On top of these economic troubles came the Wairau Massacre
on June 17th, 1843, which threw gloom not only over the Nelson
settlement, but over the whole of New Zealand, and raised
apprehensions of a general rising of the Maori against the whites.
The happening was all the more unfortunate as undoubtedly the
Maoris had right on their side. Te Rauparaha, the paramount chief
of the south end of the North Island, claimed the ownership of what
is now Marlborough by right of conquest, and in March, 1843, called
on Captain Wakefield in Nelson and stated his opposition to any
survey of the Wairau district, but was willing to leave the matter to
Mr Spain’s decision. The New Zealand Company had purchased a
document purporting to be a receipt of sale of the Wairau lands,
which a whaler had obtained from Te Rauparaha by fraudulent
misrepresentations as to its contents, and which the latter
repudiated. Captain Wakefield, nevertheless, persisted in his
intention to settle the Wairau Valley, and sent a party of contract
surveyors, under Barnicoat, Cotterell, and Parkinson, to conduct the
survey. The party successfully eluded Te Rauparaha, and had just
concluded their survey when he arrived on the scene with a party of
125 men, woman, and children, of whom 25 were armed with
Arrivals in New Zealand
27
firearms. He did not attempt to molest the surveyors, but after
removing their personal effects, including the covering of
Barnicoat’s tent, he burnt their tent poles, bedding, survey stakes,
and a raupo hut erected by Cotterell, claiming that all these came
off his land and were, therefore, his property. A message was sent to
Nelson, and Captain Wakefield left in a brig for the Wairau with Mr
Thompson, the Police Magistrate, and a party of armed men, which,
when the surveyors had been picked up in Cloudy Bay, numbered 49
men. John Allan originally volunteered to join the party, but for
some reason did not accompany them. They came to Te Rauparaha’s
party at Tuamarina, in the Wairau Valley, and invited him to submit
to arrest and be handcuffed, and proceed to a boat to await trial for
the charge of burning down the house of a British subject. Te
Rauparaha naturally ignored this petty charge, and again stated his
willingness to submit the matter of the ownership of the land to Mr
Spain’s decision. Te Rangihaeta, the warlike lieutenant of Te
Rauparaha, who was the villain of the piece, tried to incite his men
to fight, but Te Rauparaha told him to keep quiet. Mr Thompson
then called up his men in an attempt to arrest and handcuff Te
Rauparaha, and in the ensuing scuffle a gun was fired, probably
accidentally, and the fighting became general. The Maoris had the
advantage of position and used the bush cover skilfully, and the
civilian whites were thrown into confusion and retreated, suffering
severely in the process. Captain Wakefield, seeing that the position
was hopeless, ordered his men to cease firing and throw down their
arms and surrender, and raised the white flag. Tuckett, Barnicoat,
and a few others preferred to risk their lives by escape, and got
safely away. The Maoris ceased firing on the others, but Te
Rangihaeta, whose wife had been killed, called for Utu, and himself
tomahawked the whole of the thirteen captives, including Captain
Wakefield and Mr Thompson. In all, twenty one were killed. Tuckett
and Barnicoat rejoined the boat and crossed to Wellington to report
the outrage.
It took ten days for the news to reach Nelson, and the whole
community was thrown into consternation, fearing that a raid
28
The Taieri Allans
would be made on the town. John Allan was at work in the country,
and his wife travelled out to inform him and the other settlers of the
massacre, and that they were all to hurry to the town for protection.
The Church Hill was hastily fortified with earthworks, hundreds of
men were sworn in as special constables and exercised and drilled,
ships guns were dragged up and a body of gunners formed, and
scrub and fern were cleared to leave no cover for the enemy. As late
as October parties were still drilling, and day and night watchers
were posted at various points commanding the land passes into
Nelson, as well as views of the bay. Doubtless, John Allan, as an old
man-of-war’s man, took a part in the defensive measures. Alexander
McKay was one of those who helped to build the fortifications on
Church Hill.
Although the alarm for the immediate safety of Nelson
gradually subsided, the Wairau affair increased the general feeling
of insecurity amongst the colonists in all parts of New Zealand. A
Government Commission made a belated inquiry into the affair, and
reported that the Nelson people had acted indiscreetly, and
recommended that no further action should be taken. The Maoris
throughout New Zealand interpreted this as a sign that the white
man was afraid to go to war, and there is no doubt that the
ignorance shown by the civilian combatants at Wairau of the arts of
war was a factor in precipitating the first Maori War, which broke
out in the Auckland district in 1845.
The immediate effect of the feeling of insecurity in Nelson was
that parties of colonists began to leave the settlement, some going
to Sydney and others returning to England. The company was
restricting their expenditure in New Zealand, and Nelson was faced
with the prospect of unemployment and famine, as insufficient land
had been placed under cultivation, and many of the first sections
surveyed proved to be too poor in soil to support the settlers. The
situation was met by cutting up the land into five acre sections for
the working classes and giving them work for half the week with the
company, on full wages, on the condition that they devoted the
Arrivals in New Zealand
29
other half to the cultivation of their land.
On October 1st, 1843, news was brought that the English
Government had settled their differences with the New Zealand
Company, who were henceforth to become their colonising
instrument in New Zealand. This was celebrated in Nelson by a
Royal Salute. On December 20th news arrived that two new
settlements were to be formed immediately under the names of
New Edinburgh and the Church of England Colony. On Colonell
Wakefield fell the task of selecting suitable sites in the South Island,
and for this purpose he sent Frederick Tuckett, the chief surveyor in
Nelson, to spy out the land for the New Edinburgh settlement.
Tuckett accepted on condition of having liberty to examine the
whole coast from Banks Peninsula southwards and of being
unfettered in his final choice of a suitable site. Ele chartered the
brigantine 'Deborah', of 121 tons at Nelson, and left early in 1844 on
his mission, taking with him Barnicoat and Davidson as assistant
surveyors, J. J. Symonds as Government representative, Dr David
Munro of Nelson, and two missionaries. Full accounts of this very
interesting expedition have been given by Dr Elocken 10 , and need
not be reproduced here. Tuckett had the unfortunate experience of
losing his way and sleeping out in the open when at Port Cooper
(Lyttelton), and this doubtless influenced him in rejecting this
district as a site for New Edinburgh, with the result that his choice
finally fell upon Otago, after a full exploration of the coastal land as
far south as Stewart Island and Riverton. Tuckett purchased 400,000
acres from the Maoris for £2,400, and Colonel Wakefield came down
to Otago and made the payments, returning to Nelson on the
'Deborah' on 16th August. It was intended to procede at once with
more detailed surveys, and two cadets had already been dispatched
to assist Tuckett, who, with this assistance, surveyed the harbour
and the suburban sections, and proceeded to lay out the town.
Barnicoat, who had returned to Nelson, decided to accept a
surveying contract in Otago, and with Bridge engaged ten men and
a boy and a crew of four, and chartered the small schooner 'Carbon'
to take them to Otago, leaving Nelson on August 25th. On reaching
30
The Taieri Allans
Wellington, after a stormy passage, they learned news that made
them abandon their expedition and return to Nelson.
It appeared that Captain Fitzroy, on leaving England in June,
1843, to assume the Governorship, had written to the Colonial
Secretary for explanation of parts of the new agreement made with
the New Zealand Company, and received a reply which placed a very
different construction on them from what the company considered
they bore. The company again suspended operations, declined to
incur any further responsibility in inducing persons to proceed to
New Zealand, and sent instructions to their agents in the Colony to
discharge all their men. This meant renewed distress in Wellington
and Nelson, and the abandonment for the time being of the New
Edinburgh scheme. Tuckett applied to be relieved, and was replaced
by Mr William Davidson, who, after the departure of the cadets, was
left almost alone in a little brick house built by Tuckett on the beach
at Koputai (Port Chalmers).
Alexander McKay and John and James Anderson, having already
between then tested the prospects of Auckland, Wellington, and
Nelson, had resolved, when the new Edinburgh scheme was mooted,
to try their fortunes there. In this decision they were doubtless as
much influenced by the prospects of living once more in a Scotch
and Presbyterian community as by the lack of outlook in Nelson. In
1843 the New Zealand Company offered £150 for three years for a
Presbyterian minister at Nelson, and in 1844 steps were taken to
form a Presbyterian Church, but the foundations were not laid until
1849. When the news of the abandonment of the New Edinburgh
scheme reached them, these hardy pioneers did not doubt that it
would ultimately come to fruition, and they did not abandon their
plans. John Anderson had married Isabella Allan in April, 1844, and
on 9th December Alexander McKay was married to Janet Allan by
Rev. John Aldred in the Wesleyan Chapel. They left almost
immediately afterwards, chartering the ‘Deborah’ to Wellington,
and the ‘Sarah Ann’ to Otago, taking with them a large quantity of
flour, sugar, and other such supplies as they thought they might
require. The voyage was a very stormy one, and lasted three weeks.
Arrivals in New Zealand
31
Frequently they thought the end had come, and once the women,
sitting quietly in the cabin when the vessel heeled over with little
prospect of righting herself, heard McKay in a strong commanding
voice calling the sailors to cut the ropes. They anchored safely in
Otago Flarbour, at Koputai, on 3rd December, 1844, and before they
disembarked Isabella Anderson gave birth to her first son, James,
who thus had the honour of being the first white child born in
Otago Harbour, as his brother John had of being the first white child
born in Dunedin.
When Dr Hocken was writing his history of the Otago
settlement, Janet McKay and Isabella Anderson were still alive, and
from them he received much information as to these early days. We
cannot do better than transcribe his account of them:
“As was to be expected, the fame of these
proceedings (in regard to the New Edinburgh
settlement) was bruited abroad throughout the
other settlements. Some determined to repair
without delay to a field which had been selected
with so much care in readiness to reap its first
fruits. The foremost of these deserve special
mention, inasmuch as they must be credited with
being the bona fide pioneers of the new settlement.
Here they courageously remained for more than
three years until reinforced by the arrival of the
emigrants in 1848.
From one of the two survivors, now nearly eighty
years of age, the author has received an interesting
account of the hardships they underwent and the
Crusoe-like life they led in the solitudes around
them. They consisted of two families, connected by
marriage - the Andersons and the McKays - who
arrived at Koputai from Nelson after a three weeks
32
The Taieri Allans
HOPEHILL in 1890.
Arrivals in New Zealand
33
JAMES ALLAN (1874) AND JANE (SUTCLILLE) ALLAN (1890).
34
The Taieri Allans
passage, on the 30th of December, 1844. These were
Mr James Anderson, his son John, and John’s wife
Isabella; also Alexander McKay and his wife Janet.
Their descendants now number a yearly-increasing
throng, spread chiefly on the broad Taieri Plains - the
Andersons, McKays, Allans, Thomsons, McCaws, and
others 11 . Finding on their arrival that the tide [of
immigration] was not in flood, and that there was
little prospect of employment, yet having youth and
strength and faith in the future, they determined to
remain and encounter the certain hardships of the
new condition. McKay decided to stay at Koputai in
readiness to do business whenever the first vessels
arrived, or any accrued from the survey staff, or from
chance whalers. He opened the first public house at
Koputai, to which he gave the name of the 'Surveyors’
Arms'. It was on the same site as the later and present
'Port Chalmers Hotel'.
The Andersons circumnavigated the harbour, or the
river, as the whalers then called it, and finally decided
to pitch their tent in that pretty little inlet known
after them as Anderson’s Bay. Here was a strip of clear
land running from bay to ocean, with plenty of good
bush in the vicinity. Upon this they hoped to run a few
sheep, and perhaps cattle. They built a hut of rushes
and rough timber in that rising piece of foreshore
near the junction of the two roads and forming now
the Cintra property. For food, they had plenty of wild
pork, potatoes, and other vegetables of their own
raising; they also carefully eked out half a ton of flour
which they had brought down from Nelson. There was
an abundance of quail, which young Mrs Anderson,
who soon learnt to shoulder a gun, quickly brought to
earth in sportsmanlike fashion. Her sister down the
river, not quite so accomplished, was content to carry
Arrivals in New Zealand
35
the game bag for her husband and Mr Davidson when
they went a pigeon-shooting. Time hung heavily on
their hands, almost their sole occupation being
gardening, fishing, and boating.
On their boat trips they frequently visited the
future Dunedin, then covered with scrub and of
uninviting appearance, but teeming with wild pigs
and quail. Here dwelt two runaway sailors in a little
hut by the side of Kaituna Creek, close to the old
Maori landing place. They made a living by the sale or
exchange of wild pork to the whalers at the Heads.
These runaways were their only friends, and with
them they exchanged many a visit. But one day one of
these poor men died, and the spirits of the remaining
three, never high, became deplorably wretched, and
the bright future so intently hoped for seemed
immeasurably removed.
Thus passed a weary time, when one bright summer
day in February of 1846, to their amazement and
delight, they saw a fully manned whaling boat pulling
swiftly up the silent harbour. It contained Mr Kettle
and a party of his surveying staff so long looked for,
and at last speeding to the same scene of their future
labours. To complete this short story, John Anderson
got immediate employment amongst the surveyors,
and built a small house, which was long afterwards
occupied by Mr Pelichet. Here was born, on the 10th
of December, 1846, his son John, the first child born in
Dunedin 12 . Old Mr Anderson, the father, closed his
eyes in his son’s house in August, 1848, six months
after the arrival of the first settlers. He sleeps in the
old cemetery in York Place, which will always
overlook Anderson’s Bay.”
To the above account little can now be added. The McKays were
36
The Taieri Allans
able to get their stores occasionally replenished from the whaling
boats owned by John Jones, of Waikouaiti, which occasionally visited
Port Chalmers. They seem to have had no direct intercourse with
the European settlement at Waikouaiti, estimated by Dr Munro at
100 persons in 1844, since, except for her sisters, Mrs McKay did not
see a white woman for two years, until the arrival of Mrs Park and
Mrs Kettle with the survey party in 1846. Mrs Anderson frequently
had for company in her shooting expeditions a young Maori woman
called Akina. The larder was eked out not only by birds, but also by
fish and rock oysters, which were plentiful. Intercourse between the
two families had to be by boat, for the bush came close down to the
water over most of the harbour, and the only tracks were very rough
ones. The scenery was a constant delight, and it was a great grief to
the pioneers in after years that it had been so spoilt by the felling of
the bush.
The arrival of Charles Henry Kettle with his survey party in 1846
followed on a Parliamentary victory in June, 1845, gained by the
New Zealand Company, which was now able to resume colonising
operations and to take up again the preparations for the New
Edinburgh settlement. Kettle brought down from Wellington his
wife and Mr and Mrs Park and twenty-five labourers on a three
months’ engagement, their wages being 14s per week and weekly
rations of 101b of flour, 101b of salt pork, V/Ab of sugar, and a VAb of
tea. The Kettles and Parks occupied Tuckett’s small house, and the
meals at first were prepared in the whare of Alexander McKay, “who
thus came to the front with his Surveyors Arms.” Leaving Park and
Davidson to survey the port town (Port Chalmers) and take
soundings of the harbour, Kettle made a rapid journey through the
interior to determine town sites and to partition the area into
suitable blocks for the contract surveyors. On his return
specifications were drawn up for the contracts, five in number, and
the contracts were shortly let.
Our interest lies chiefly in the first contract, which included the
land to the right of the Molyneux, Balclutha, Inchclutha, Kaihiku,
Puerua, and Waiwera; this was taken by Messrs Wylie, Wills, and
Arrivals in New Zealand
37
Jollie, in partnership. All three had come out to Nelson in 1842, and
doubtless engaged their party in Nelson. Amongst them was James
Allan, the eldest son of John Allan, the brothers Martin (of
Tokomairiro), and Alexander Duthie and his wife, who was also a
Martin. Mrs Duthie probably stayed behind at Dunedin with the
Andersons, and became a lifelong friend of Mrs Anderson.
According to Dr Hocken:
“The provisions for the distant stations were
conveyed by whaleboat as far up the rivers Taieri
and Molyneux as practicable, and were then
‘humped’ over the intervening land portions of the
journey. Not infrequently wind and weather
reduced the camps to the point of starvation, and
then the alternative was to break camp and march
to Otago. But this outdoor life was pleasant and
healthful, and moreover, was well paid at these
rates.”
James Allan brought the plans of the Clutha district to Dunedin
at the conclusion of the survey. The date must have been in the
autumn of the year 1847, probably about March, as when the party
arrived at the Taieri Ferry the able-bodied Maoris were away
mutton-birding, and only the women and children, with a few of the
old men, were left behind.
He and two others crossed the Clutha River about where
Balclutha now stands, on a korari raft or floats, carrying the plans in
a long tin case. They made Taieri Ferry the first night, to find very
little food, only potatoes. Next morning one of the party was too
unwell to go further, and the other two started out again, but badly
provisioned for the walk. When they had gone some six or seven
miles, one of them felt unable to complete the journey and turned
back to the Ferry, leaving James Allan to proceed alone. It must have
been somewhere near his future home of Hopehill that he started
on his solitary walk. He probably skirted the foothills on the east of
38
The Taieri Allans
the Taieri Plains, and continued over the Chain Hills, crossing the
Kaikorai nearly opposite where Mornington now is, and continued
down the flax-covered ridge of what is now High Street, Dunedin. He
was very tired for want of food, and as he drew near the foot of the
ridge, cooee-ing all the way, and seeing no one, his heart sank at the
prospect of spending the night among the flax. Suddenly two men
emerged from behind a bush, and his troubles were soon at an end.
They had a camp down at Pelichet Bay, and for three days they had
come up in their boat to the creek where Wood’s Hotel now stands,
at the foot of Rattray Street, and had walked out to the top of the
high ground to look out for anyone walking up from the south. On
the evening of the third day they had just got into their boat,
preparatory for returning to camp, when they heard a cooee, and
hurrying up through the flax and scrub they met the solitary
traveller with his long tin case tramping down the ridge. The
Andersons do not seem to have been at Dunedin at this time.
James Allan returned to Nelson towards the end of 1847, or early
1848. We have little record of the family there, except that John
Allan had a small farm at Richmond, while his son John was
occupied as a shepherd lad for a farmer who owned a flock of
Southdown sheep. The whole family now decided to shift to Otago,
and in April 1848, they sailed in a small schooner of 12 tons, the
'Emily', in company with James Smith, who had been a fellow
passenger with them from the Home Country. Soon after leaving
Nelson John Allan fell ill, and they put in to Picton to consult the
doctor for a man-of-war which was anchored there. As this boat was
also going on to Otago, and then to the Chatham Islands, and as John
Allan had been a man-of-war’s man, the captain offered to take him
and his wife on to Otago so that he might have the attendance of the
ship’s doctor en voyage. After leaving Picton a fair wind for the
Chathams sprang up, so the captain decided to go there first.
Consequently, Agnes Allan was the first white woman to visit the
Chatham Islands.
The rest of the family continued the voyage in the 'Emily', and
spent five or six weeks on the journey, being storm-stayed for three
Arrivals in New Zealand
39
weeks at Akaroa. They arrived in Dunedin in May, a few weeks after
the arrival of the first immigrant ships.
CHAPTER NOTES
8 A typed copy of this journal is in the Turnbull Library, Wellington.
9 For the following account of early Nelson, the chief sources are ‘Early
Colonisations: The Settlement of Nelson,’ published by the Canterbury
Times, January 30th, 1896; the ‘Nelson Evening Mail,’ Jubilee Issue, March
4th, 1916; and ‘Barnicoat’s Journal,’ already referred to.
10 T.M. Hocken, ‘Contributions to the early History of New Zealand
(Settlement of Otago)’, London, 1898. Hocken reproduces Tuckett’s Diary, a
letter to Dr Hodgkinson, and a narrative written by Dr Munro for the
‘Nelson Examiner’.
‘Barnicoat’s Journal’ also gives an account of this expedition.
11 Dr Hocken was not quite correct here, the Allans and Thomsons being
descendants of John Allan, but not of the Andersons and McKays, and the
McCaws not being relatives.
12 This statement of Dr Hocken’s had been challenged in the Otago Daily
Times, by Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt, who claims that the distinction of
priority of birth belongs to Patrick Park, son of the surveyor who laid out
the town of Dunedin. This child was born on August the 2nd, 1846. Fred
Waite had discussed the question in an article in the Times, and came to
the conclusion that Dr Hocken was right, Patrick Park being born at Port
Chalmers, in the brick house built by Mr Tuckett.
If the Andersons are admitted as pioneers of the Otago settlement, then
the first child of the settlement was neither of the above, but instead James
Anderson, born on ship the day his parents arrived at Koputai. Mrs Taylor
(nee Carey), of Carey’s Bay, is generally recognised as the first white child
born in Otago. She died in Littlebourne, Dunedin, in 1928 (J. A. T.)
40
The Taieri Allans
Chapter III
THE OTAGO SETTLEMENT
As has already been mentioned, the Otago settlement (as the
New Edinburgh settlement soon became called) started with two
initial advantages over the earlier northern settlements - viz., the
freedom from fear of the Maoris becoming hostile, and the security
of title to the land of the original Otago Block. As early as October,
1848, the Otago Block, which comprised a coastal strip from Otago
Heads to the Clutha River, contained 444 whites and only 166
Maoris, and on the proclamation of the provinces, on the 1st of
January, 1854, the Otago Province contained a population of around
2,400, of which 2,000 were in the Otago Block. The Maoris were thus
greatly outnumbered, and even had they had hostile inclinations
could not have become a serious danger. Fortunately, owing to the
purchase of the lands being conducted in a manner satisfactory to
them, with ample provisions in the way of reserves for their small
numbers, there never was any suggestion of hostility between the
two races in Otago.
Another great advantage of the Otago settlement in the early
days lay in the homogenous nature of the community in matters of
racial sentiment and religion, so that the acute differences of public
opinion which often divided the northern settlements were avoided
during the early pioneering stage, and the whole energies of the
settlers could be devoted to the task of building homes and breaking
in the land. This homogeneity arose from the manner of selection of
the immigrants, which in turn was the outcome of long and difficult
The Otago Settlement
41
negotiations carried on by a group of Scottish gentlemen with the
New Zealand Company and the Colonial Office. These gentlemen
were Mr George Rennie, Captain William Cargill, Rev. Thomas Burns,
and Dr Andrew Aldcorn.
It would take us too far from our present purpose to follow
these negotiations in detail, a task that has been admirably fulfilled
by Dr Hocken, and only their final upshot needs to be given here. Mr
Rennie was the original proposer of a new settlement on improved
lines with proper prior preparation before the arrival of the
immigrants. Captain Cargill joined him in advocating that it should
be Scottish and Presbyterian, while Rev. Burns and Dr Aldcorn gave
active support when it was proposed that it should be established in
connection with the Free Church of Scotland. Mr Rennie did not
favour this exclusiveness, and ultimately retired from the scheme,
and its final success was largely due to the unflagging labours of
Captain Cargill and Mr Burns.
The Free Church of Scotland came into being on the 18th of May,
1843, when 474 ministers of the Established Kirk of Scotland, headed
by Dr Chalmers, marched out from the General Assembly of the
Established Church, and constituted themselves the General
Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. The cause of this great
schism, which is known as the Disruption, was the old sore of
patronage, which had already caused so many earlier divisions. The
rights of the patrons, who were usually the largest landholders in
the parish, to present a minister to a vacant congregation in
defiance of the expressed wishes of the parishioners and the
Presbytery, had recently been upheld by the Courts, and Chalmers
and his followers saw no way of gaining freedom but by the sacrifice
of all the buildings, lands, and stipends over which the State claimed
administrative right. The stipends given up amount to over
£100,000, while the sacrifice of the associations in churches and
manses could not be measured. This example of religious heroism
on the part of their ministers stirred the people to generous
emulation, for on them fell the hardship of finding funds for the
new churches, manses, and stipends that were necessary. This
42
The Taieri Allans
Disruption, besides quickening the religious life of the whole
community, proved a test for the courage and unselfishness of the
individuals. It was from people who had already given this proof of
independence and virility that the first Otago immigrants were
largely selected.
The actual selection of the immigrants and the sale of the lands
was not carried out directly by the New Zealand Company, as was
the case in the earlier northern settlements, but by a body
organised by Captain Cargill and Mr Burns, and known as the Lay
Association of the Free Church of Scotland, which was founded on
the 16th of May, 1845, and until its dissolution on the 17th of May,
1853, watched over the interests of the Otago settlement. After
Captain Cargill and Mr Burns came to Dunedin in 1848, the affairs of
the association were in the hands of its able and zealous secretary,
Mr John McGlashan, who subsequently came to Dunedin in 1853.
While the company retained the duty of purchasing and surveying
the land, conveying the immigrants, and carrying out public works,
the association assumed the task of carrying out the scheme on Free
Church principles, promoting the settlement by selecting the free
and assisted emigrants, deciding as to the eligibility of persons
desirous of purchasing land, and of effecting the sale of the
properties.
Briefly stated, the special features of the scheme of the Otago
settlement provided that of the money derived from the sale of
lands, three-eighths were to be appropriated to emigration and the
supply of labour, two-eighths to civil uses, including surveys, roads,
and other public works, two-eighths to the New Zealand Company
on account of its capital and risk, and one-eighth to religious and
educational uses, to be administered by trustees. Similar, though
much less generous provisions for religious and educational
purposes in the case of the earlier settlements had proved
ineffective owing to the number of religious denominations to be
served, and their restriction in the case of Otago to the Free Church
of Scotland undoubtedly was calculated to increase their efficiency
greatly.
The Otago Settlement
43
In the propaganda employed by the Lay Association to attract
emigrants, a special feature was made of the religious and
educational advantages, as will appear from the following
representative example:
“The inducements to emigrate, from the prospects
of future advantage are: First, the provision made in
the scheme and that for the first time in any British
enterprise of the kind (with one, or perhaps two
exceptions of an early date) for a church and a stated
Christian Ministry, and for schools and teachers from
the very outset, and for the increase and continuance
of these institutions as the colony advances, which of
themselves are sufficient to recommend this scheme
above all of the same kind that have gone before it.
There is also provision for a college, which, by the
blessing of God, may in time be the means of
diffusing more widely over the settlements of New
Zealand and others around the inestimable privileges
of a Christian education. We do not intend here to
enter at any length on the religious, educational, and
social merits of this scheme. Suffice it at present to
say that the colonists from the beginning have their
ministers and schoolmasters among them; that
provision is made in the plan for supplying additional
ministers and schoolmasters as the population
increases; that they will be governed locally from the
first by municipal institutions chosen by themselves;
and that they will have among them persons of
various grades, such as labourers, mechanics, and
capitalists - in short, an entire section of the middle
and lower classes of the Flome population. These are
merits which can hardly be over-estimated in any
scheme, but which have been unhappily neglected at
the outset amongst all of our colonising enterprises
44
The Taieri Allans
since the days of the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, who showed
themselves far more solicitous about their spiritual
than their temporal wants, and in the midst of the
severest hardships and privations maintained the
internal and public ordinances of religion, as well
as the practice of the sacred duties of the family
and the closet, with the most unfailing devotion -
the effects of which, by the blessings of God, were
light and truth and vital godliness among many
generations of their posterity in New England.
What, therefore, may we not hope from another
British colony founded on the same principles in
New Zealand, for Britons now and their posterity,
not only in that country, but in all those around it?
Everything, by the same blessing, which attended
the labours of the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, if they set
about it with but a part of the humble and
prayerful spirit, the purity and piety of nature, and
the indomitable courage of those eminently
Christian men . . .”
Although these appeals were issued primarily to Free Church
Presbyterians, the Lay Association evidently did not refuse
emigrants of other denominations who accepted the conditions of
the scheme. The census taken in Otago on March the 31st, 1849,
shows the religious affiliation of the population as follows:
Presbyterian Church of Otago 476
Church of England 161
Unknown 92
Methodists 8
Roman Catholics 7
Independent 1
Total 745
The Otago Settlement
45
The policy of ‘class settlements’ pursued by the New Zealand
Company in Otago and Canterbury was often severely criticised
both in New Zealand and England, and was unwelcome both to
governors Fitzroy and Grey. It is now generally recognised that it
resulted in a fine stock of settlers, whose descendants have given
stability to the populations of Canterbury and Otago. The
advantages during the early pioneering days in Otago have been
well expressed by New Zealand historians not generally prone to
laudatory commendations of current events:
“The national and sectarian character of the
settlement aimed at by its founders was
undoubtedly an advantage to the colony in the first
stages of its existence. It attracted and gave
confidence to complete families, and, in that way,
prevented the Scottish men from coming out alone
so much as they are prone to do. It supplied a bond
of union and a foundation for intimacy between the
whole family of early settlers, and gave a certain
amount of position and authority to their church
elders which could be utilised with much advantage
during the growth of more comprehensive and
more national constitutions; thus utilising longer
than could otherwise have been done the many
good points in their national religion and their
national characters” 13
Although Captain Cargill and Rev Mr Burns fought hard to
maintain the Scottish and Presbyterian nature of the settlement, the
exclusiveness soon broke down. When in 1855 it became necessary
to stimulate emigration, it was at first proposed that the emigration
agency should be established in Scotland alone, and that the
emigrants should be Scottish. But at a public meeting, by an
overwhelming majority, it was agreed that provided the emigrants
were of a respectable and suitable class, no preference should be
46
The Taieri Allans
given to any particular nationality. Similarly in education, when in
1856 an Education Ordinance was passed by the Provincial Council,
its framers made a strong effort to "introduce the religious teaching
of the Bible as set forth in the Shorter Catechism,” but at a public
meeting, attended by about 200 people, all but six carried the
resolution that the Bible should be read without comment.
Nevertheless, the Scottish character of the initial settlement has
maintained itself right up to the present by the fact that Otago has
always attracted Scottish immigrants in a far greater number than
any other province.
Commencing with the arrival of the ships ‘John Wickliffe’ on
March 23rd, 1848, with 97 emigrants, and ‘Philip Laing’ on April
15th, with 247 emigrants, the Otago settlement grew relatively
slowly until the functioning of the Provincial Council in 1854.
Successive estimates of the population were as follows : October
1848, 444 whites and 166 Maoris (Otago Block only); November 1849,
Dunedin 444, Port Chalmers 38, Country 263, total 745; March 1850,
1,182; January 1854, 2,400 (Otago Province). On 31st December, 1859,
the population of the province had risen to 8,899, of whom only
2,262 were in Dunedin. In its early years Otago had a much smaller
population than Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, or Canterbury, as the
following table shows:
Year
1856-7
1858
Auckland
15,518
18,177
New Plymouth
2,488
2,650
Wellington
11,919
11,728
Nelson
7,509
9,272
Canterbury
6,230
8,967
Otago
3,796
6,944
New Zealand
47,460
57,738
The Otago Settlement
47
The reasons for the comparative stagnation of Otago in its early
days seem to have been mainly two - viz., the poor sales of land at
the original price asked by the company, and the lack of road access
to the country. The founders and early leaders of the settlement
were townsmen, and did not sufficiently realise that the town could
only develop healthily as the country was opened up; consequently,
too much of the small amount of money available for public works
was spent in the neighbourhood of Dunedin, and the provision of
roads and bridges to the outlying districts was at first largely left to
the initiative of the settlers themselves.
The Otago Block was divided into 2,400 properties, of which
2,000 were offered for sale to private individuals. Each property
consisted of sixty-and-a-quarter acres, divided into three
allotments; a town allotment of a quarter of an acre, a suburban
allotment of ten acres, and a rural allotment of fifty acres, the price
of the whole property being £120 10s, equal to 40s an acre. The
remaining 400 properties were to be purchased at the same price by
the Local Municipal Government (100), the Trustees for Religious
and Educational Uses (100), and the New Zealand Company (200),
the total proceeds being estimated at £289,200. Unfortunately, these
expectations were far from being realised. A period of five years
from the date of the first embarkation was agreed upon between the
Lay Association and the New Zealand Company for the former to
dispose of the lands, after which the company reserved the right to
re-enter into possession of the unsold lands. Prior to the sailing of
the first emigrant ship, only 104 properties had been purchased, the
price of which would amount to £12,532. In 1850 the New Zealand
Company gave up operations on account of their unprofitable
nature, and surrendered its charter and all claims and titles to the
land granted it to the British Government. Their expenses in Otago
had been £55,000 and the receipts only £27,500. The Lay Association
carried on until the 17th of May, 1853, but during this time the sales
of land only amounted to £3,753, of which £1,150 had been
expended for passages to emigrants. Apparently, therefore, only
48
The Taieri Allans
about 258 properties in all were disposed of at the original price of
£2 an acre, out of the 2,400 in the Otago block.
Apparently that price for land was considered too high by
would-be purchasers, and with the relatively high price of labour, 3 s
6d a day, the result was the failure to attract capital to the new
settlement. A shortage of capital, lack of banking facilities, and a
high rate of interest made it difficult for settlers to secure land and
extend their holdings. Similar difficulties were met with in the
other settlements, and evidently the price asked by the company
was too high under the existing conditions.
Provisions for leasing land were also poor. Under the original
terms land purchasers were entitled to depasture sheep on
unappropriated lands for an annual licence fee of 10s 6d, and this
right extended to a further 600,000 acres lying outside the Otago
Block, to which the company had gained a title, and which reverted
to the Crown in 1850. Captain Cargill had been gazetted
Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Otago Block only, and having
received no definite instructions, took no action on the applications
he received for depasturing licenses on the outlying lands, and
merely filed them. Many of the applicants ran sheep on the waste
lands without any license or title, but, of course, had no security of
tenure.
The state of comparative stagnation lasted till about 1855, and
was succeeded by a period of prosperity, to which three causes
mainly contributed. The first was the new land regulations
promulgated by Sir George Grey in 1853, by which the price of land
was reduced. The second was the establishment of Provincial
Governments with a consequent acceleration of public works and
immigration. The third was the increased prices obtainable for all
agricultural produce as a result of the large population in the
Australian goldfields. Carnegie, an early settler who found
storekeeping and business in Dunedin unprofitable in 1852, and had
left for Sydney, found, on his return in 1855, that Otago had
“advanced from a paltry poor place to a bustling place of business.”
Previous to 1853 New Zealand was governed by a Governor and
The Otago Settlement
49
a nominated Legislative Council. Representative Government was
introduced by the Constitution Act, which passed the British
Parliament in 1852 and came into operation by a proclamation of
the Governor, Sir George Grey, on 7th January, 1853. The Act
provided for a General Assembly for the whole country, consisting
as at present of a nominated Legislative Council and an elected
House of Representatives. In addition, provision was made for a
number of Provinces, each with a popularly-elected Superintendent
and an elected Provincial Council. Sir George Grey, however, took a
much-debated course in taking immediate steps to have the
Provincial Councils elected and provided with funds to work upon,
but he delayed calling together the General Assembly, which did not
meet until May, 1854. The Provincial Councils thus got a long start,
and took upon themselves many functions which might have been
expected to fall to the General Assembly. The immediate results
were that the Provincial Councils became strong and active bodies,
and carried on vigorous policies of public works. The ultimate result
was friction between the Provincial Councils and the Central
Government, culminating in the abolition of the provinces in 1876.
Meanwhile, the Provincial Councils attracted intense local
patriotism, and secured the services of a very high type of settlers as
members.
The proclamation of the Otago Province was made on April 30th,
1853. Captain Cargill was elected unopposed as the first
Superintendent on September 10th, and the nine members of the
first Provincial Council were elected on October 1st. A preliminary
meeting of the Council was held on November 19th, and the first
session was formally opened on the 30th of December, and lasted
until 25th April, 1854.
Concurrently with the proclamation of the Provinces in 1853, Sir
George Grey promulgated new land regulations, reducing the price
to 10s, and under certain circumstances to 5s, an acre. Grey, though
autocratic in his methods, was thoroughly democratic in sympathy,
and planned by this action to enable the poorer settlers to take up
land for themselves. He thus hoped to prevent the perpetuation in
50
The Taieri Allans
KELVIN GROVE in 1895.
The Otago Settlement
51
JOHN ANDERSON (1861) AND ISABELLA (ALLAN) ANDERSON (1898).
52
The Taieri Allans
THE HOLMES in 1900.
The Otago Settlement
53
JOSEPH ALLAN (1874) AND HENRIETTA (SUTCLIFFE) ALLAN (1898).
54
The Taieri Allans
New Zealand of the class distinctions between rich and poor, capital
and labour, which had been the aim of the Wakefield plan to create
by “a high and sufficient price for land,” and the policy of bringing
out a large proportion of labouring immigrants. As he himself had
to regretfully admit in later years, his policy had different results
from his anticipations. Although many small settlers were able to
take up land, the chief result was that the low price attracted
capitalists and speculators, particularly from Australia, and wealthy
men bought up great tracts of land and built up large estates in
many parts of New Zealand.
In the Otago Block, however, this evil was not so pronounced as
elsewhere, due presumably to the modifications of Grey regulations,
introduced by the Provincial Council. The latter could not legislate
on the land question until after the meeting of the General
Assembly, which alone could delegate the necessary powers to the
various Councils. In 1855 temporary Land Regulations were issued
by which parties were put provisionally on the land at 10s per acre,
provided a further 30s per acre was expended within five years. This
had the effect of deterring speculators, and encouraging bona fide
settlers, and as a result much land was taken up, particularly in the
Tokomairiro district. As illustrating the cost of stocking a farm, it
may be mentioned that in 1857 riding horses cost E60-E80, working
bullocks E20-E25, and sheep 20s to 30s each. The temporary
regulations were confirmed by Land Sales and Leases Ordinance in
1856.
The provisions for improvements, however, only applied to the
Otago Block, and the 600,000 acres outside it were open for sale in
blocks of not less than 2,000 acres, at 10s an acre, without the
improvement clause. This concession was made to meet the
demands of the Council for revenue, which came mainly from sales
of land. In addition, runs were leased for periods of fourteen years,
at a yearly assessment of 6d a head for cattle and id for sheep. The
result was that the land was speedily taken up, until 1861, when
there was little waste land worth using that was unoccupied, and
the tally of stock had increased from 6,500 cattle and 59,000 sheep in
The Otago Settlement
55
1855, to 44,000 cattle and 694,000 sheep in 1861. During the years
1856-1866 river-washed wool was sold at 2s to 2s 6d a pound,
shearers worked for a wage of 10s a day, plus three nobblers of rum,
and a man shore an average of sixty to seventy sheep a day.
The increasing sales of land and its utilisation soon resulted in a
shortage of labour, and an active immigration policy was renewed
by the Provincial Council. Not only were agents appointed in
London and Edinburgh, but in 1855 a special agent was sent to
Melbourne to exploit the unemployment there which followed the
subsiding of the “gold fever”. In 1857 another agent was dispatched
to London, and succeeded in raising the annual immigration from
500 to 2,800. In 1860 the addition was 3,000, including a contingent
of 100 from Auckland, which was not prospering like Otago. As
already stated, the population had increased to nearly 9,000 in 1859.
With the sales of land and increased population, the provincial
revenues also steadily increased from £900 in 1848 to £46,000 in
1858. The revenue was augmented by loans, and the Appropriation
Bills of the Provincial Council increased from £1,995 in the first
session in 1854 to £110,000 in 1859. This permitted a vigorous policy
of public works to be pursued, although it was not until 1859 that a
passable road for wheeled traffic was opened to the south. Even
after that date water carriage by small craft up the Taieri River to
Waihola Lake was still largely used. The first steamer trading from
Dunedin was purchased by Mr James Macandrew in 1858, and others
quickly followed, opening up a regular service to Wellington, or
even to Melbourne, and helping, of course, to improve the market
for agricultural produce.
The steady progress of the province from 1855 to 1860 was,
however, entirely eclipsed by the effect of the gold rush which
followed in 1861. Gold had been known to exist in various parts of
the province since 1851, but it was not until 1861 that a payable
goldfield was discovered by Gabriel Reid at “Gabriel’s Gully.” A
“rush” at once set in from Dunedin, being quickly followed by
crowded vessels from Victoria, bringing, by December, nearly 20,000
people. In the three years, 1861-1863, no less that 78,000 persons
56
The Taieri Allans
were added to the population. The revenue increased from £97,000
in 1860 to £470,000 in 1862.
The inrush of population brought a lucrative market to the
farming community and increased opportunities to the merchants
of the city. That it was not an unmixed blessing to the farmers
appears from the reminiscences of James Smith, of Greenfield 14 , the
lessee of the run in which Gabriel’s Gully lay, who wrote:
“I had to be a good part of my time about the
diggings, looking after matters, but even so, we had
great numbers of sheep taken for wild pigs.
Shepherds’ wages rose at once from £45 and £50 to
as high as £90. With my permission, as lessee of the
run, the late Mr H. Clapcott started a wholesale
slaughter yard on the top of the ridge between
Munro and Gabriel’s Gullies, and did an immense
trade. He brought all our fat wethers at 40s each,
and our fat cattle at 8d per lb., selling at Is per lb.
These seem long prices for us to have received, but
it must be recollected that we had to pay 35s for
poor merino wethers from Victoria, which were the
means of introducing the scab, which cost me far
more to eradicate than I got from all the fat sheep”
The newcomers attracted by the lure of gold were of a different
type from the original settlers, whom they nicknamed ‘the old
identities,’ a name that has persisted and passed into current speech
in the Dominion. In turn they were sometimes spoken of as ‘the new
iniquities.’ No doubt they were less law-abiding and less severe in
their moral judgements than the original settlers, but the less
desirable elements in the mining camps soon passed on to other
goldfields, while the more stable of the immigrants remained to
enrich the mercantile life of the province. Canterbury shared with
Otago in the material prosperity brought about by the increased
prices for agricultural produce, the production of large sums of
The Otago Settlement
57
gold, the introduction of fresh capital, and the plentiful supply of
labour. Auckland, Taranaki, and Wellington were at the time
distracted and impoverished by the Maori Wars, which lasted most
of the ‘sixties’. Thus the South Island gained a long lead in
prosperity and population over the North Island, and was able to
dominate the Central Government and gain the larger proportion of
the borrowed money of the next decade. It was not until the present
century that the North Island began to reduce this lead and finally
surpassed the South Island in population and assumed the control
of the political power.
The ‘new iniquities’ brought to New Zealand a more
enterprising spirit in commerce. The gold miner is accustomed to
spend freely the money which, when his luck is in, he makes so
easily, and is more inclined to speculate in business as well as
gamble for amusement. The amalgamation of this enterprising
spirit in business with the canniness and shrewdness of the original
Scottish stock in Otago, soon made Dunedin the principal
commercial town in the colony. Dunedin has always been known in
banking and business circles as a town where business is ‘sound’,
and bankruptcies rare. The leading merchants soon established
branches in the other centres, and gained a dominating position in
the trade of the colony, which their firms largely hold to this day,
although in the present century the tendency has been to shift their
headquarters to Wellington. In particular the financing and control
of the Westport coal mines, and the phenomenal success of the
Union Steam Ship Company gave Dunedin the dominating position
in the commercial life of the colony. The poor harbour facilities of
Dunedin were not a severe handicap until the large steamers of the
present century were built, and Dunedin was an important port of
entry until twenty years ago, but has now had to give place to the
magnificent harbours of Wellington and Auckland.
By the end of the sixties the first flush of prosperity caused by
the easily-won alluvial gold was passing away, and the South Island
had to face the prospect, and for a few years the reality, of
producing more primary products. This was a policy that would
58
The Taieri Allans
have commended itself to the original settlers, who were never
afraid of hard work and hard fare, and would soon have restored the
prosperity of the colony. But to the new elements in the population
hardly-won earnings did not readily appeal, and a short-cut was
attempted. As Condliffe has so well put it:
“The new gold-seekers were men of a different
type. They had their own characteristic virtues, but
generally lacked the patient determination of the
early colonists, and were more apt to seek a short
adventurous way out of any difficulty. It was to such
men as these that schemes for borrowing and quick
development appealed most strongly. When they
formed a sufficiently strong section of the
population it needed only a bold, speculative leader
for New Zealand to be launched in a great orgy of
borrowing. Such a leader was soon found in Julius
Vogel.” 15
Under Vogel’s lead over twenty million pounds was borrowed by
the colony between 1870 and 1880, and spent on railways, roads, and
immigration, resulting in an increase in population from 248,000 to
485,000. The greater part of this money was spent in the South
Island, not always wisely, but the exports of wool, skins, tallow, and
wheat were greatly expanded, and the prices received were good. A
large part of the new immigrants, however, were not suitable for
country life, and were absorbed in the establishment of
manufacturing industries in the towns, whose market depended on
the prices for primary produce realised by the farmers.
In 1879 there was a sharp decline in the price of wool, which had
been as high as 24d per lb. in the boom years following the Franco-
Prussian War, and now dropped to 4d, with little prospect of any
substantial recovery. Prices fell steadily and persistently all over the
world from 1873 to 1893, and a long period of financial stringency,
similar to the depression of later years, had to be faced by New
The Otago Settlement
59
Zealand. Hard work and hard fare, without any easy way out, had
this time to be endured by the people of New Zealand, and there is
no doubt that it was largely through the sterling qualities of the
original settlers and their descendants that New Zealand was able to
issue successfully from the ordeal. The depression came about the
time the sons of the original settlers were endeavouring to establish
homes and farms for themselves, and they had a long and weary
struggle to succeed. In the eighties and early nineties, when the
writer was a boy in Dunedin, farming was not considered a
promising career for any youth without considerable capital, and
many a prospective farmer was at that time diverted to some city
occupation.
The way back to prosperity came from the development of the
freezing industry, which gave the farmer a strong market for meat,
to supplement the market for wool. The first experimental cargo
from New Zealand was shipped in 1882, but it was not until the
nineties that an extensive export was established. As the bulk of the
sheep runs were in the South Island, this part of New Zealand was
able to keep its supremacy until the early years of the 20th century.
It would take us too far from our present subject, the fortunes of
the Otago settlement, to follow the political changes which matured
during the eighties and nineties, culminating in the Ballance-
Seddon Government, with its policy of cheap money for farmers and
the breaking up of large estates. In the 20th century the completion
of the Main Trunk railway line in the North Island, the opening up
of large areas of land formerly in Maori hands, the draining of the
extensive swamps in South Auckland, and the development of the
dairy products export trade, have attracted population to the North
Island, and transferred the commercial supremacy from Dunedin to
Auckland. In view of the unfavourable geographical position of
Dunedin in relation to foreign trade, Wellington and Auckland being
the natural ports of entry, and the poor harbour facilities in both
Canterbury and Dunedin, it is doubtful whether the South Island
can regain its dominating position in commerce as long as New
Zealand depends mainly on its primary products.
60
The Taieri Allans
But just as Scotland, with its high standard of education and the
grit and shrewdness of its people, continues to contribute to
England Prime Ministers, Archbishops, heads of colleges, and
leaders in commerce, in numbers out of all proportion to its
population, so in New Zealand Otago, with its sterling Scottish
original stock and its love of learning, continues to supply the rest
of New Zealand with a very large proportion of leaders in all
branches of life in the Dominion.
CHAPTER NOTES
13 A. Saunders, ‘History of New Zealand, 1842-61.’ Whitcombe and Tombs,
1896, p.p. 259-260.
14 ‘Evening Star’s Otago Jubilee Edition’, March 23rd, 1898, pg. 50.
15 J. B. Condliffe, ‘A Short History of New Zealand.’ L. M. Isitt, Ltd.,
Christchurch, 1925, p.134.
Settlement in the Taieri
61
Chapter IV
SETTLEMENT IN THE TAIERI
In the preceding chapter we have followed the general
economic progress of the Otago settlement. We must now return to
the individual fortunes of the Allan family and their ultimate
settlement in the main homesteads by which the various branches
of the family were subsequently to become known.
The first years of the settlement, as we have seen, were a period
of comparative stagnation, the day of small things. Money was
scarce, and a system of barter largely prevailed. Nearly all the
citizens, as well as the farmers, were cultivators, and there was
constant interchange of the various products, which were also
accepted at the stores. Credit was good, and labour, or a promise of
a deferred payment, would ensure the purchase of goods, and such
promises were rarely broken. All the country settler needed in the
way of stores was flour, tea, sugar, and soap, and to gain these he
could sell or exchange butter and eggs. Much of the flour and
oatmeal used was home-grown, threshed with flails, and ground in
hand mills. Wild pig and such native game as pigeon, kaka, weka,
pukeko, duck, and the now-extinct native quail, made welcome
additions to the larder of such as could find time to hunt. The
customary dress of the settlers was a blue woollen shirt or blouse,
moleskin or cord trousers, and a felt hat, a working costume in
which they were not ashamed to go to church.
The pioneer had to be able to turn his hand to many trades. He
62
The Taieri Allans
must be able to build a mud house, and if he wanted a wooden one,
to fell and saw up timber in a saw-pit. He must be able to manage a
boat, walk long distances, hump heavy loads on his back, and ford
and swim rivers. Settled on the land, he must be able to plough with
a bullock team, reap with a sickle or scythe, thresh with a flail, grind
his wheat in a hand mill, and either he or his wife must be able to
bake bread, milk cows, and make butter and cheese. Not only must
he clear and fence his land, but he must also be prepared to build a
road and bridges if need be. Besides all that the present-day farmer
has to do, he must be able to shear his own sheep and be his own
black-smith and harness maker.
Pit-sawing was thus described by an early settler:
“The bush was first inspected, and wherever the
greatest number of trees suitable for cutting into
timber was found, there a pit was built. This was
done by cutting a scarf into two trees about 20ft
apart and about 6ft from the ground; then placing
the end of a good sized sapling in the scarf at either
end, supported by two or three forked ones let into
the ground, being careful that the forks were wider
than the plates (side saplings) , so that they could
not split them. This formed one side of the pit; the
other side was made in the same manner. Two
pieces of wood were then placed across to hold the
log. Two ‘skids’, or fair-sized trees, were put into
position to enable the trees to be sawn to be rolled
to the top of the pit, and stays were put between the
sides of the pit to prevent collapse. Next a suitable
tree was felled, cut into lengths, the bark knocked
off it to make it slide on roots of trees or other
obstacles, and by the aid of a ships’ double blocks
and tackle, it was dragged to the pit. In later years
this was done by bullocks; in the early days they
were not always procurable. After the log had, by
Settlement in the Taieri
63
much hard work, reached the pit, it was rolled up
the ‘skids’ onto the top, leaving about 6ft
underneath for the pit man to work the saw. After
marking the log with a worsted cord soaked in
charcoal, and getting the top and bottom line
perfectly plumb, a saw 7ft long was used, one man
standing on the top and another in the pit. The
man on the top had the hardest and most difficult
task to perform: he not only had to lift the saw for
each stroke, and regulate the cut by allowing it to
descend as lightly as possible from a light hand -
otherwise the hooked teeth of the saw would catch
and no progress would be made - but he also had to
balance himself on top of the log, a most difficult
feat to perform when the bark was removed and
therefore could not provide a good grip. Especially,
cutting through the side line of the log was difficult.
When it had been cut into ‘flitches’ or squares, it
was comparatively easy to cut these into boards and
scantling.”
As the memories of the oldest surviving members of the Allan
go little beyond 1860, and the older people did not leave written
records, only a bare outline of their doings in the earliest years can
be recorded, and the reader must read between the lines and
imagine the details from the reminiscences of other early settlers
that have been recorded in the different settlements of New
Zealand. In recording the settlement in the various homesteads it is
not possible to keep to a chronological order, and the subject will be
treated under the various heads of families.
The East Taieri district, where the Allans mainly settled, is a
strip of gently-featured country, interspersed between the steep
Taieri Hills on the east and the low-lying flat Taieri Plain. The latter
was at that time largely swamp, with much raupo and flax, and
required extensive draining before it could become the rich
64
The Taieri Allans
BELLFIELD in 1855
Settlement in the Taieri
65
JOHN ALLAN (1898) AND MARY JANE (BLACKIE) ALLAN (1874).
66
The Taieri Allans
agricultural district it now is. The hills consist of mica-schist,
capped by the volcanic neck of Saddle Hill at the north end, and
were too steep and rocky to cultivate, though their treeless tussock
slopes formed excellent pasturage for sheep. The intermediate East
Taieri district forms a sort of bench between the hills and plain, cut
through by numerous small valleys with gently rounded sides, and
has a soil relatively free from rocks, and therefore readily
ploughable. Its freedom from heavy bush also made it attractive to
the early settlers. The Main South Road runs along this bench,
dipping in and out of gullies like a switchback. Along it lie five of the
Allan family homesteads - Bellfield, at the top of the rise from
Riccarton; Dunrobin, adjoining Bellfield; the Holmes next, a little off
the road towards the plain, Helenslea, on the Main South Road
adjoining the Holmes’s farm; and Hopehill, six miles further on,
beyond Allanton.
JOHN ALLAN SENIOR, OF BELLFIELD
After the arrival of John Allan and the remainder of the family
in Dunedin in 1848, he took up his residence at Anderson’s Bay,
while the younger men took advantage of the market for labour and
trade at Dunedin and Port Chalmers created by the incoming of the
immigrants. John Allan remained for two years at Anderson’s Bay,
and then took up land at East Taieri in 1850, where Alexander
McKay had preceded him in 1849. John Allan named his farm
Bellfield, a name suggested by his wife, probably from her Ayrshire
home. The first building there was erected on the crown of a ridge
about 200yds below the main road, and close to the boundary line of
the section that later on became the Laureston farm of Robert
Somerville. This house was one of the usual pioneering type,
consisting of clay or sod walls, thatched roof, and earth floor. In the
summer months of 1853-54, Robert Murray, a carpenter from
Tokomairiro, built the present Bellfield house on the Main South
Road, from the timber sawn by John Allan jr., and his pit-mate
Thomas Hastie (later a noted sheep shearer), in the Saddle Hill bush.
Settlement in the Taieri
67
It says much for the quality of this timber, now seventy-three years
in the house, that it said to be in better condition than the timber
from Southland used in building an addition to the house more
than a quarter of a century afterwards.
Bellfield remained the headquarters of the family till all the
sons and daughters had married and made homes for themselves.
After John Allan’s death it passed into the possession of his son
John, and is now gone out of the family’s possession.
John Allan senior was a deeply religious man, and became the
first elder of the Taieri Church, which was the second church in
Otago, and was constituted when Rev. William Will came to the
province in 1854. With the coming of Mr Will and also Rev. Mr
Bannerman, it was possible to inaugurate an Otago Presbytery in
June, 1854. The roll is of interest as showing the influential citizens
with whom John Allan became thus associated. Portraits of the
members are published in ‘Fifty Years Syne,” page 128 A. 16
Moderator: Rev. Thomas Burns.
Clerk of Presbytery: Mr John McGlashan
Ministers: Rev. William Will, of Taieri and Waihola
districts. Rev William Bannerman, of Clutha and
Tokomairiro districts.
Elders: Captain W. Cargill, Commissioner for the
Kirk Session of Dunedin. Mr John Allan,
Commissioner for the Kirk Session of Taieri.
Mr John McGlashan was invited to sit and vote
with the Presbytery as Procurator of the Church.
John Allan continued to farm at Bellfield till his death in August,
1863. The following recollections of him have been contributed by
his grandson, Joseph Anderson (C III.):
"It was during the later years of his life that I have
any distinct remembrance of my Grandfather Allan.
To me he had the slow-moving step of an old man,
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The Taieri Allans
ADAM (1898) AND AGNES (ALLAN) (1898) OLIVER.
Settlement in the Taieri
69
who had evidently passed through much hardship
in his younger days. He was never idle, however,
always attending to some work. He had great
physical courage. I saw him stand up to a wild
rushing cow that was defending her young calf that
was lying in a ditch. Grandfather and a young man
went to lift the calf out of the ditch; the cow
charged them, and the young man ran for it.
Grandfather, with a short stick in his hand, faced
the cow, and a number of us on the safe side of the
fence expected to see the worst happen. But when
the animal reached within a couple of yards of him
she stood, and came no further. The next day, being
Sunday, several of the men were available to get the
cow into the stockyard. The young man who had
run away the previous day, Tom Pratt, bullock
driver at Dunrobin, attempted to try Grandfather’s
tactics and stood up to the cow, but with disastrous
results. The cow charged, knocked him down, and
began to gore him, and it was with difficulty that
she was beaten off.
“Although genial and obliging, Grandfather was
severe on what he considered wrong-doing. He once
took exception to a sermon preached by Mr Will,
and did not enter the church door for eighteen
months afterwards.
“One wet harvest day I was in the Bellfield sitting
room watching the men playing cards. Suddenly the
cards disappeared, books lying on the table were
opened and looked into, and the old man walked
into the room and immediately innocently
remarked: “Well, boys, are you at your books?”
“Although Grandfather knew nothing about
horses, he once, with McKay, started out on a
hundred-mile ride to visit us in Tapanui. They had
70
The Taieri Allans
strung across the seat of the saddle saddlebags
packed full with many good things for the family. On
arriving at their destination and removing the bags,
glassware was heard to crack. McKay cried out with
some concern: “I hope it is a bottle of jam.” A bottle
of jam it must have been, for the bottle of stronger
liquid was available for subsequent evenings.
“Grandfather was much respected by all his
neighbours. One of these, Mr J.B. McGregor, took up
a sheep station on the Silver Peaks, and one of these
peaks he named Mount Allan, and this name and the
names of Mount Allan Creek, and Mount Allan
railway station, remain to the present day.”
Agnes Allan survived her husband by twenty-eight years, and
died at Bellfield on 10th April, 1891, at the advanced age of ninety-
six years. Joseph Anderson has contributed the following
recollections:
“She was a typical woman for a new country. Of
rather under-sized stature, she was active and wiry,
maintaining her activity of mind and body until the
end of her long life. When I was a child of two-and-a-
half years of age I was staying at Bellfield, when
Grandmother took me home to Port Chalmers. We
left the Taieri in the morning with the bullock
sledge that was going as far as Dunedin, where we
stayed the night with James Allan. During the
afternoon I got lost - a frequent occurrence. As
there was a great fear that I might wander into the
surrounding scrub and bush, a search party was
organised. When I was found, Grandmother rushed
up and caught me in her arms, declaring: “I will
never lose sight of him again until I place him in the
charge of his mother.” Next day when we again
Settlement in the Taieri
71
started on our journey she said I walked bravely for
a mile or two, and when I grew tired she carried me
on her back for the remaining seven miles! All I
remember of the journey was that when we entered
Port Chalmers, my brother John, with another small
boy, came to meet us, and from my high elevation
on grandmother’s back I was throwing down a
biscuit from a paper bag to each of the boys.
“Some time after we had removed to Waiwera she
decided on coming out to see us. Without sending
word, she stepped onto the public coach that passed
Bellfield in the morning and arrived at the Waiwera
Hotel after dark on the same day, where she stayed
over night. Next morning an obliging shepherd who
had his sheep rounds in our direction piloted her
over some deep creeks and through the open
tussock country for the three miles from the hotel
to Kelvingrove.
“In the early Taieri life she was looked upon by
her neighbours as truly ‘a mother in Israel.’
Whenever sickness occurred the cry at once arose:
“Go for Mrs Allan.” I can remember seeing gathered
at Bellfield a number of mothers getting their
children vaccinated.
“When her death took place the attendance at her
funeral was one of the largest of any that ever took
place in the Taieri, and was probably exceeded only
by that of her son, James Allan, of Hopehill, who
died a few months after his mother.”
ALEXANDER MCKAY, OF DUNROBIN
Alexander and Janet McKay remained at Port Chalmers during
1848, their eldest son, Hector, being born there on the 10th of
December. At the end of that year they left the Port and settled on a
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The Taieri Allans
farm at East Taieri, which was named Dunrobin, after Dunrobin
Castle, in Sutherlandshire, near McKay’s birthplace. Here they
ended their days, Alexander McKay dying in 1879, his wife surviving
him till 1899, and here the three surviving daughters still live.
McKay was keenly interested in all matters of Church and State in
the Homeland as well as in the land of his adoption. He was a friend
and ardent supporter of the Hon. James Macandrew of Otago
politics, but apparently took no part in public affairs. Janet McKay’s
portrait bears witness to her keen and intelligent mind, no less than
to her kindly disposition. She retained to the last very clear
recollections of the early days, and was one of the main personal
sources from which Dr Hocken’s picture of early Dunedin was
drawn.
JOHN ANDERSON, OF KELVINGROVE
Old James Anderson died at Anderson’s bay in August, 1848. In
the following year John Anderson and family went to Port Chalmers,
where he started a business as a butcher. He got his stock from John
Jones, at Waikouaiti, strong merino wethers, and as part of the road
consisted of a narrow track through scrub on the side of Blueskin
Hill, it took careful handling to take the sheep through. In 1853 he
moved to the Taieri, owning land that afterwards became a part of
Dunrobin, and also the section on which the present Owhiro railway
station is placed, and occupying the old Bellfield house. Anderson
left for the Blue Mountain district in 1857, as narrated in the next
chapter, and ultimately settled at Kelvingrove, Waiwera.
JAMES ALLAN, OF HOPEHILL
When James Smith came to Dunedin from Nelson with the
Allans in May, 1848, he brought with him £120 worth of goods,
consisting of boots, flour, onions, bricks and lime for an oven, etc.,
and taking James Allan into partnership, started a store and
bakehouse in Dunedin, under the name of Smith and Allan. The
Settlement in the Taieri
73
business appears to have been profitable, and in 1851 James Smith
retired from the store and took up land at East Taieri, at what
subsequently became Hopehill station. At the beginning of 1852 he
transferred Hopehill to James Allan, who gave up his Dunedin
business, while Smith took up land at Tokomairiro. A few years later
James Allan again joined him in partnership in a run near
Tokomairiro, though still residing at Hopehill, and held this interest
until 1860. James Smith soon afterwards sold out to the
Government, and then acquired the Greenfield Station, which he
held until his death. The closest bonds of friendship always united
the Hopehill and Greenfield families.
While in Dunedin, James Allan married Jane Sutcliffe on March
18th, 1850. She had come to Dunedin with her father, Richard
Sutcliffe, and two sisters, in the ship Ajax’, in January 1849. An
account of the Sutcliffe family is given in a later chapter.
James Smith’s reminiscences were published at the time of the
Otago Jubilee, from which the following extract 17 , describing the
partnership with James Allan, is taken:
“Mr James Allan and I agreed to go into
partnership as Smith and Allan. We sawed timber in
the bush at Port Chalmers, bought a boat from the
late Thomas Jones (brother of the late John Jones),
and rafted the timber up to Dunedin to build a
Bakehouse. Then, as there was no draught animal in
Dunedin at that time, we carried it out, wet as it
was, on our shoulders, and up to what afterwards
became known as Bullen’s Corner, at the top of
Rattray Street. This section we had leased from the
Rev. Thomas (afterwards Dr) Burns for a term of
seven years, at a rental of £4 per annum, he being
attorney in the matter for an Edinburgh lady. We
then bought some Nelson timber (three and four-
inch planks) out of a vessel arrived from Nelson,
erected a saw pit at high water mark on the beach,
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The Taieri Allans
under where the old First Church stood, and ripped
it up into three-quarter and one-inch boards. As Mr
A. C. Strode, then R.M., could not get timber enough
to finish the gaol, we cut a small portion of it out of
the planks to enable him to finish. After that we got
Captain Cargill’s sanction to cut enough timber at
Quarry Point, Anderson’s Bay, to finish our
bakehouse, and help build a store. We cut it, carried
it out on our shoulders to the water’s edge, and
boated it across in our whaleboat, which we had
bought for £28 from Mr Thomas Jones, of
Waikouaiti. We were sawing there when the
‘Blundell’ arrived with Mr Adam Begg (of
Anderson’s Bay), Mr Somerville, and others as
passengers. We had the bakehouse erected about
the site where Mrs Wood’s Temperance Flotel
(Rattray Street) now stands, about October, 1848.
About January, 1849, the store was erected where
Bullen’s (afterwards Hardie’s) shop was, and we at
once began business as storekeepers 18 . When the
boats first came up with flour and other goods from
Port Chalmers we had to wade into the tide nearly
up to our middles, and carry out the 200lb bags of
flour on our backs up to the bakehouse. Mr George
Westland afterwards got a draught poly bullock and
cart, which saved us a lot of heavy carrying. By the
way, I helped to drive this bullock from Waikouaiti
to Dunedin, over Flagstaff, in company with the late
Mr Edmund Smith, of the Savings bank, then a
cadet with the Dunedin butcher, Mr Alexander
McDonald.
“As before stated, I started baking about October
1848, and in 1849, employed a man to assist me,
James Jones, afterwards of Jones and Willliamson.
Our business as storekeepers was carried on in
Settlement in the Taieri
75
conjunction with the bakery. The late Mr John Jones
was the only wholesale merchant at that time, and
he only employed one man (James Marshall, of
Halfway Bush). Mr Jones kept his own schooner (the
‘Scotia’) running constantly to Sydney for supplies,
but sometimes the supplies ran out, and then a
famine prevailed for a while. On one occasion, in
1850, we were about six weeks without any flour in
Dunedin, with the exception of enough to make one
batch of bread. This we made from the surplus of
some seed wheat that was imported from Nelson for
the late Rev. Dr Burns, and was sown by him at
Grant’s Braes, near where Mr Scobie Mackenzie’s
house now stands. My man and I ground this
surplus wheat in a steel mill, baked it, and were
rushed for the bread before it was out of the oven.
On another occasion there was no salt to be got for
two or three months. We had to boil down the sea
water to get enough salt to bake the bread, a
process which entailed great labour, and was not
very satisfactory when done.”
Further details of the flour and salt famines are given in the
‘Otago Daily Times’ and ‘Witness’ Otago Settlement Jubilee
Supplementary Number, p. 17:
“Mr J Gebbie relates that he was then working for
Mr Kettle, Littlebourne, and on one occasion, when
returning to his home in the Northeast Valley, he
called at the bakers for bread. It was Saturday night,
and he had been requested to take home the next
day’s supply. The baker had not a loaf, and what was
worse, no flour to make any. When Mr Gebbie got
home the tea was ready, but there was no bread.
This was a very serious matter, and after
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The Taieri Allans
consultation with his wife he went to a neighbour,
Mr Robert Chapman, and was fortunate enough to
obtain a small supply of potatoes. On the Monday
they made another effort to obtain flour, but had to
put up with rice.
“People made all sorts of shifts when cooking
rice, which was often the only substitute for flour
obtainable. They baked it, boiled it, fried it, and
tried to make bread from it, but it could not be
made to fill the place of flour. This dearth of flour
proved to be a blessing in disguise, for after the
scarcity everyone grew wheat. Mr Gebbie grew a
small plot, which he harvested in due time, and
ground in a large-sized coffee mill, which he and a
neighbour bought between them. This neighbour
had in his kitchen the stump of a tree which had
been left when the house was constructed (a
frequent practice at that time, when chairs and
tables were few), and to this stump the mill was
fixed.
“No sooner had the scarcity of flour come to an
end, than the community ran out of salt. All sorts of
devices were resorted to to obtain this necessary
item. The barrels in which the salted goods had
been imported were washed out. Some people went
to the ocean and scraped the salt from the beach,
while others took the salt water home and boiled it
until the water evaporated and left the salt at the
bottom of the camp oven, which very frequently
was the only boiler. One lady says that she obtained
enough salt in this way to salt a pig. She boiled the
water in her camp oven, but the process took a very
long time and a great deal of fuel and many trips to
and from the wharf for the water. It was at this time
that it was found that the water of the open ocean
Settlement in the Taieri
77
was much salter than that of the harbour.”
To resume James Smith’s narrative:
“In December, 1849, we found that we were
getting stronger, and decided that I should go to
Nelson to buy a small cargo of goods, comprising
flour, oats, butter, onions, rope, etc. When I got to
Wellington I found a schooner (the 'Perseverance')
just arrived from Hobart Town with a cargo of
between seventy and eighty tons of flour and other
goods. I bought the lot on condition that it was to
be landed at Port Chalmers, and also another thirty
tons of flour out of a small cutter (the 'Alpha') and
arranged for the whole to come round with me to
Port Chalmers. That venture turned out very
satisfactorily, as the flour cost us about £16 10s
landed at Dunedin, and we got £20 for most of what
we sold, the ordinary selling price by Mr Jones
being about £18. When our stock of flour decreased
to about twenty or thirty tons we ceased to sell, but
instead baked it all into bread, charging 5d and 6d
the 2lb loaf. After it was all baked up there was a
famine of bread and flour for about six weeks, as
before mentioned. During this famine we subsisted
on potatoes and pork, which we bought from the
Maoris, and I need hardly say that after living a few
weeks on this diet bread was a most welcome
luxury. In 1850 we chartered the schooner 'Otago',
seventy tons (commanded and owned by Captain
Stevens, late of Picton), to make a trading voyage to
Port Cooper (not then settled), Wellington, and
Nelson. I went with the schooner; Mrs Smith (not
long married) accompanied me. I sold some goods
in Nelson that were not saleable here, buying and
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The Taieri Allans
bringing back in turn Nelson produce. The venture
answered fairly well. Those were the days of small
things.
“Both Mr James Allan and I got married in the
early part of 1850. Each of our houses was about
18ft by 12ft, built of wattle and daub. I need hardly
say that in those days we did not have any time for
honeymooning; we had to stick most religiously to
our work. A little later we bought the first sheep we
had from the late Mr John Jones, at Waikouaiti (500
merino lambs at 10s each), and engaged Mr Walter
Miller as our shepherd. We sent the sheep on to a
50-acre section that we had bought from Mr Filleul,
at Hopehill, East Taieri, the same section that now
constitutes the Hopehilll homestead 19 . In 1851 we
dissolved partnership, Mr Allan keeping on the
store in Dunedin, while I took over the fifty acres at
Hopehill. I broke in a team of bullocks, and
ploughed up a piece of the section, which was
covered with cabbage trees, and afterwards sowed it
in wheat. The seed of this wheat I had gotten from
Mr Valpy, at Waihola, and boated to Scrogg’s Creek,
near Greytown (now Allanton). Before the wheat
was ripe Mr Allan decided on leaving Dunedin, and
bought Hopehill back from me.
“I then came out to Tokomairiro (this was in
January, 1852), taking with me the first team of
bullocks belonging to any settler there or south of
the Taieri. I bought half of a fifty-acre section there
belonging to Mr Alex Duthie, with the firm
determination that I would never acquire any more.
I broke in bullocks for most of the early settlers -
viz., Messrs Alex Duthie, Edward Martin, Robert
Martin, William Black, and Thomas Brooks. I had
the first crop of wheat grown in Tokomairiro, which
Settlement in the Taieri
79
yielded forty bushels to the acre. It had all to be cut
by hook and threshed by the flail. The late Mr
Edward McGlashen purchased the wheat from me at
13 s per bushel, delivered at the head of Waihola
Lake (This was shortly after the Melbourne diggings
broke out). Mr McGlashan had to send it round to
Dunedin in Mr James Harrold’s open boat, and cart
it to the Water of Leith, there to grind it. Ten bags a
load was as much as we could take on a dray with
eight bullocks from Tokomairiro to Waihola Lake.
There were no bridges over any of the creeks. Lor
example, on one of my trips I twisted the axle of the
dray in one of the creeks, took it off, and sent it to
Dunedin by Mr Harrold’s open boat. It duly arrived
at Mr Miller’s blacksmith shop (situated where Begg
and Co.’s Music Warehouse now stands), got
repaired all right, and was replaced on the boat
already mentioned, to be taken to Waihola Lake. But
no news either of the axle or the boat was heard for
weeks. I think nearly two months elapsed before
any trace of them was found. The boat had been
blown to the Bluff.
“I was the first who tooled a team to Balclutha,
taking a load of provisions for the late Mr Henry
Clapcott, who had provisions on the way to him in a
boat that had left Dunedin some months previous -
at all events they were nearly starving. It was a
tough job getting to Balclutha in those days. I made
several trips there after that, being the first to
assist a settler (Mr Wright) to reach near where
Kaitangata now stands. My route all the way down
ran along the bank of the Clutha River, and was a
most arduous trip, as at that time it lay through a
miniature forest of native flax. Messrs Maitland and
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The Taieri Allans
Pillans were then the only settlers, Mr Pillans being
at Myers, his homestead.
“About 1855 or 1856 James Allan and I made a
journey to Riverton to buy cattle from Captain
Howell’s people, as we could not purchase any in
Otago. We succeeded in buying and bringing home
about thirty head, but had a rough time of it before
we reached the Clutha. There was not a single settler
between Popotunoa, where Mr Fulton had just
settled, and the south or west side of the New River
or Oreti. The country was without any sign of
cultivation or habitation, covered in some places
with bush and in others with snow grass as high as a
man, the whole being intersected with swamps and
creeks. We had to cross the flooded Mataura in a
‘moggy’ made of bulrushes. One party before us
succeeded in bringing cattle from there - viz., Mr
Alex McDonald or Sinclair. I think he came through
by the Toi Tois.
“In 1854 I bought, from Mr J. R. Birrey, a second
twenty-five acres, and shortly afterwards fifty acres
more from the Government. A little later I purchased
from the Government an additional 175 acres, which
include the site on which the offices of Mr Donal
Reid, solicitor, Bank of New Zealand, Grey’s stores,
and Catholic Church, in Milton, now stand. About
1856 or 1857 we 20 took up as a sheep run the country
from Milton to Evan’s Flat, including Gabriel’s Gully,
and removed the sheep from the Taieri to
Tokomairiro. About the year 1857 we bought land at
what is now called the Woolshed (about 1,500 acres)
and erected a woolshed there, where Mr William
Cameron now lives. In this woolshed Mr Henry Clark
erected for us a small screw wool press, which was, as
far as I know, the first in the country. We had to cart
Settlement in the Taieri
81
the wool to the head of Waihola Lake, seven bales at a
load, thence to Scrogg’s Creek, by boat to Greytown,
and then cart it to Dunedin. Not one of the many soft
creeks between Tokomairiro and the Waihola Lake,
there being thirteen all told (if my memory serves me
correctly), was spanned by anything in the shape of a
bridge until about 1857, when the settlers all turned
out and cut stuff in the bush for bridges, which we
carried out on our shoulders to the open; and as I had
the only team of bullocks at that time in the district,
it fell to my lot to cart it to the various crossings. We
then all set to work, using spades, barrows, axes, etc.,
for a few days, and made a fairly good road to the
head of Waihola Lake.
“About 1859 we sent sheep out to the back part of
the run, under the charge of Mr George Munro, his
homestead being afterwards named Munro Gully.
About 1860 my partner (Mr Allan) sold out to my
wife’s brother (Mr John Martin, of Wellington,
afterwards the Hon. John Martin), who remained my
partner until after Gabriel’s Gully broke out. Then we
had to sell out to the Government. Mr Martin
thereupon severed his connection with the run by
selling his sheep to me. I had meanwhile bought Run
106, leasehold, 33,000 acres, near Greenfield; and Run
123, near Tuapeka West, 30,000 acres, which I had to
surrender to the Government, getting about £1,500 by
way of compensation.”
Although interested with James Smith in the Woolshed Station,
and for a time in partnership with his brothers and brother-in-law
in a run in the Blue Mountain district, James Allan continued to
reside at Hopehill until his death in 1891, and here he brought up
his large family. The original Hopehill freehold of 50 acres was
added to from time to time until it reached an area of 5,000 acres,
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The Taieri Allans
and the homestead buildings, yards, gardens, and plantations
formed the largest establishment for many miles around, and were a
never-ending source of delight for his grandchildren in the eighties.
James Allan’s success as a farmer and breeder of stock was
considerable, and was gained in many a keen competition in the
show ring. Unfortunately, owing largely to his open-handed
generosity, he suffered reverses in his declining years, and after his
death the property had to be sold, but after a short period was
purchased for the estate of his daughter-in-law, Mrs Joseph Allan,
and was finally again sold out of the family a few years ago by her
son Charles.
James Allan took a considerable share in public affairs. When
the volunteer movement sprung up in 1864 or 1865, he became the
Captain of the East Taieri Company, which soon became the leading
rifle-shooting company in the colony. He became an elder of the
East Taieri Church, and took a prominent part in 1869 in starting the
building of the new church. In 1873 he was elected unopposed to a
vacancy in the representation of the Taieri in the Provincial Council,
and continued with Donald Reid and James Shand to represent the
district until the abolition of the provinces in 1876. He was then
elected a member of the Taieri Country Council, and sat for several
years. He took an active part in road board and school matters, and
was one of the pioneers in the drainage of the Taieri Plain.
James Allan seems to have been a man of a singularly attractive
personality, and was not only esteemed for his integrity and many-
sided capacity, but was universally loved for his kindly disposition.
Joseph Anderson writes:
“He was active, open-hearted, and helpful to all
his relations and also to others. Many a kind help
did our family get from him. Living as we did in the
Tapanui and Waiwera country, far removed from
school and church, his presents to us children often
took the form of books. One of these to my eldest
brother, James, was the first edition of Chamber’s
Settlement in the Taieri
83
Encyclopedia, which came volume by volume as it
was issued from the press.”
His nephew, James Allan, of Tasman, writes:
“I would like to add just a word or two as a tribute
to my uncle of Hopehill. Born in 1856, 1 came on the
scene too late to know anything of those early
pioneering days, but memory goes back to the later
sixties, when we sometimes got a holiday run to
Hopehill. At that time our world was circumscribed,
and Hopehill was the centre of it, and Uncle and
Aunt were the centre of Hopehill. We boys had our
‘little Bush Gully,’ and the lagoon where the pukekos
were, and many other interests, but after all it was
the personality of Uncle himself that made
Hopehill. When at the High School in Dunedin in
1871, we rejoiced to hear of his return at the head of
the poll to the Provincial Council. Our politics were
of a very local description, but none the less
interesting, nor was the result any the less a great
victory. In the County Council later he was a faithful
worker, and also in the Grey Road Board. As clerk of
the board, I had opportunities of seeing the place he
filled among his fellow members, and the
pioneering road work that was done, and also have
still a kindly remembrance of the guiding hand that
helped my secretarial work. In the later seventies
the Holmes teams, after finishing harvest at home,
used to help out the last few days of the leading at
Hopehill. The harvest was mainly across the river,
great crops of wheat were gathered into big stacks,
and these were dotted all over the fields; we sat
down to lunch with 60 or 70 men. There was no ‘go-
slow’ in those days; the guiding hand was never
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The Taieri Allans
questioned; everyone did his best. In after years in
Southland the writer came across many whose
earlier experiences had been working at Hopehill,
and all alike had the same kindly remembrance of
Uncle. Many of them could tell of help given, and
the spur of his example seems to have remained
with them. Uncle was an elder of East Taieri Church,
and a very regular attender. For many years the
Hopehill buggy brought its load to church, and
passing back again, called either at Bellfield or the
Holmes, and the brothers would enjoy an hour after
lunch in friendly chat.”
Jane Allan survived her husband for thirty -two years, dying at
Romahapa at the great age of ninety-four years. For many years
after leaving Hopehill she lived in Mosgiel, first with her son, Dr
William Allan, and later with her daughter Jane, and on the latter’s
marriage to Edgar Burn, she accompanied her to Romahapa.
George M. Thomson, a son-in-law, writes this:
“My acquaintance with Mrs James Allan only
dates from 1872, by which time her family was
comfortably settled in their home at Hopehill, and
the older members were growing into manhood and
womanhood. Born and brought up as she was in a
comfortable English home, the change to the
primitive conditions of the early Otago days was a
radical one, but she brought up her large family
with scrupulous care. Quiet and reserved, she had a
large fund of common sense and determination,
and saw to it that all her children had the benefits
of the best education available. They and her
numerous grandchildren filled her life in her later
years, and her gentle, affectionate care was
appreciated by them and by all others who knew
Settlement in the Taieri
85
WILLIAM ALLAN (1861) AND HELLEN (SPEID) ALLAN (1874).
86
The Taieri Allans
her.”
JOSEPH ALLAN, OP HOLMES
Joseph Allan, the second son of John Allan, married Henrietta
Sutcliffe, the younger sister of Jane (Mrs James Allan), at
Christchurch early in 1855, and settled soon after in East Taieri, on
what has since become known as the Holmes Farm. This consisted of
two sections of 52 % acres each, and in addition a further section of
the same size, reserved as a corporation property for the City of
Dunedin, was leased. The farm thus consisted of 15714 acres. A sod
whare, with clay floor and thatched roof, was built on the banks of
the Owhiro Creek, which flowed through the middle of the farm,
and formed the first home for years. It was long afterwards known
as ‘the old house,’ and the native bush that surrounded it as ‘the old
garden’.
Except for occasional absences in the Blue Mountain district,
where other members of the family were farming, for a visit to the
goldfields, and a trip to Melbourne for horses, as narrated in a later
chapter, Joseph Allan spent his remaining days at the Holmes, dying
in 1878 at the age of fifty years. His widow, Henrietta, survived him
for twenty-nine years, dying in 1907 at the age of seventy-three.
Their eldest son, James Allan (now of Tasman, Nelson), has
contributed the following account of his recollections of his father
and mother:
“In his youth my father learned something of
the bootmaking trade, but after taking up the farm
he never actively engaged in it further than to give
some attention to the family boots. For a good many
years, however, the seat and tools were a part of the
household furnishings, and later on were more
often used to patch harnesses than to mend boots.
When taken up, the Holmes Farm was like any other
of that time, in its natural state. The higher ground
Settlement in the Taieri
87
was tussock and fern, with flax clumps, and
occasional cabbage trees. Across the creek there
were a few acres of native bush, and then tussock
and swamp grass, ending in Maori heads. There
were also a good many cabbage trees, and the land
contained roots, which showed that the land was
once a forest. The pioneering work of those days
consisted of breaking up the land bit by bit, ring
fencing and sub-dividing it, mostly with sod ridges
and post-and-rail fences.
“Of the earlier years till 1861, when Gabriel
Reid’s discovery of gold was made, there is no
record to which we could turn. It must, however,
have been a time of beginnings; clearing and
breaking up could only come slowly. It was the days
of the bullock team; the first harvests were cut with
the hook, and later the scythe was used; still later
came the back-delivery reapers. In the digging [gold
rush] days the farms were deserted by the men. My
first memories are of the drays coming and going,
taking stores and tools to the diggings. One incident
of those trips was the loss of a valuable horse.
Memory also recalls the visits from Bellfield of the
aged grandfather, whose charge seems to have been
caring for the women left behind. The carting
ended rather suddenly, as the last load brought
from town never went forward, and as a
consequence, picks were very plentiful at the
Holmes for long years afterwards. As a farmer,
Father was very methodical and thorough in his
work. Two - and at times three - teams of horses
were kept, and although the farm was small, there
was always plenty of work for them. As a horse
breeder he was invariably successful, and every
winter found him with two or three colts or fillies
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The Taieri Allans
for the market at good values. The dairy herd was a
prominent feature of the farm. At one time it was
wiped out with pleuro-pneumonia through
infection from a passing herd of recently-imported
Australian cattle. His leaning was for a milking
strain of Shorthorns, and with these he was also
very successful. Another interest that appealed to
him was Border Leicester Sheep, and although only
a small breeding flock was kept, the showing of
these at agricultural shows always gave him good
results. The farm itself was naturally rich, but his
aim was to increase its productive power, and a full
stackyard of neatly-trimmed stacks was the
invariable reward. Looking back over it all and
remembering all the hardships of those early
pioneering days, the twenty-three years - 1855 to
1878 - become a wonderful record of progress.
Mother’s hand was in it all, and in the days when
her family was young, she often single-handedly did
the milking herself, besides cooking for a band of
harvesters. Helps were usually available, but there
were times when she thought it easier to do the
work than to bother with the help. Born as she was
into an English Church home, and transplanted into
a Presbyterian home, there must have been a
certain amount of endurance required, but we
children were never conscious of it. I have often
seen Father in the evening sit down at the fireside
showing signs of weariness. Mother would open the
piano - it always spoke when she touched it - and
play, perhaps something lively to begin with,
passing into a few minstrel songs, seldom with any
music before her, but passing lightly from one thing
to another, and ending with ‘Glory To Thee My God
This Night’. It lifted a whole load of care, and yet we
Settlement in the Taieri
89
were hardly conscious of it, hardly knew what had
been done.
“In the Scottish home of a past generation,
Christmas Day was always overshadowed by New
Year’s Day. We were long in getting to know Santa
Claus. But we had another visitor. Grannie came
often, but there was every other year a visit of a
more business-like nature; there was a preparation
for it almost like spring cleaning. Sometimes we
were at school and sometimes we were in our beds,
but Santa Claus’ dolls were not in it with the one
that Grannie brought. There were no Plunket nurses
it those days, and sometimes even the old doctor
must have been very jealous of Grannie.
“In public life my father was always keenly
interested in all that was going on. In ploughing
matches, agricultural shows, and to the work of the
East Taieri Road Board, he gave of his time
ungrudgingly. In Provincial Council days he was a
great admirer of the work and policy of Mr Donald
Reid, more especially that policy that led to the
selling of land under a system of deferred
payments. He was also an earnest supporter of the
church, and took a keen interest in the building of
the brick church that stands so prominently
overlooking the plain. He was also keenly interested
in the social work that centred in the Riccarton
Athenaeum. In this latter work Mother also was ever
willing to lend a helping hand; her piano work
always gave her a place, and she was glad to assist
either in accompanying or in orchestral work.
During her long widowhood Mother ever lived in
the bosom of her family, their need was ever her
urgent call. As each of them left the home roof to
take up new responsibilities and found new homes,
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The Taieri Allans
she rejoiced with them and always did what she
could to speed them on to take up their own new
life in the best way.
“We could write much more, but enough has
been said to interest those who come after us, in the
beginnings of our home life in this, the land of our
adoption.”
CHAPTER NOTES
16 ‘A Jubilee Memorial of the Presbyterian Church of Otago’, by Rev. James
Chisholm, Dunedin; 1898.
17 ‘Evening Star’s Otago Jubilee Edition’, March 23rd, 1898, p. 50.
18 Smith and Allan’s Bakery is enumerated in 24 buildings shown in C. H.
Kettle’s ‘Views of Dunedin, 1849’, reproduced in Hocken’s Early History, p.
104, but unfortunately cannot be distinguished in the view.
19 Mr Joseph Anderson writes: “The site of Hopehill House is on Section 71,
Irregular Block, but as this section runs only 16 chains back from the main
road it is possible that the sheep yards and perhaps some of the out
buildings would be on Section 7, Block 2, Otakia S.D.
20 The ‘we’ seems to mean James Allan and himself.
Settlement in the Blue Mountains and Waiwera Districts
91
Chapter V
SETTLEMENT IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS AND
WAIWERA DISTRICTS
In 1855, Agnes, the youngest daughter of John Allan, married
Adam Oliver, this being the first marriage in East Taieri celebrated
by Rev. W. Will. Adam Oliver was born at upper Hindhope Farm,
Roxburgh, Scotland, on 1st April, 1824, of a family of sheepfarmers
in the southern part of the Border adjoining England, and known as
the Jad Fair district. His grandfather’s farm was and still is called
Oxnam Mains, and his father’s was called Bellhill. His mother was a
Scot of Magdalen Hall. Adam Oliver was brought up on the Tweed,
near Kelso, by an uncle, who wished to adopt him. He preferred
instead to try his fortune in New Zealand, and emigrated from
London in October, 1850, in the ship ‘Cresswell’, along with his
brother, Thomas Oliver (late Otago Road Engineer) and his wife. He
spent his first years previous to his marriage gaining colonial
experience with various settlers at Halfway Bush, Taieri, and
Tokomairiro, and in 1857 went into partnership with James Allan
and his younger brothers in a sheep run in the Blue Mountains.
Early in 1857 John Anderson took a sub-lease of Dalvey Station,
in the Tapanui district, from Thomas Martin, who at that time was
farming in the Te Haka district of Clutha. The latter had received
1,000 young merino sheep from his father-in-law, Tom Jones, of
Waikouaiti (brother to the better-known John or Johnny Jones), and
leased the sheep and run to Anderson, who lifted the sheep from Te
Haka, and was the first to occupy the run, which extended from the
east side of the Pomahaka River to the top of the Blue Mountains.
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The Taieri Allans
For the first eighteen months there was some doubt whether it
was to be Dalvey Station (Run No. 140) or Brooksdale (Run No. 163)
that Anderson should occupy. William Pinkerton, sheep inspector
for South Otago and Southland, was the first applicant for Dalvey,
and Thomas Martin for Brooksdale. Immediately afterwards they
agreed to exchange runs, and consequently Anderson took
possession of Dalvey and Pinkerton of Brooksdale. The Land Office,
however, was slow in acknowledging this exchange. Pinkerton had
previously been an Australian runholder, who was practically
ruined by the great grass fires of ‘Black Wednesday and Thursday,’
the smoke of which drifted as far as Otago. Fie secured sufficient
sheep to put the necessary stocking of the run in order, but soon
after he sold these sheep. Six months without sheep would have
made the run liable to forfeiture, and as it was still in Martin’s
name, Anderson removed his sheep to Brooksdale and camped with
them for a month or two at Black Gully. When the family arrived in
July, 1858, he was back on Dalvey, but word had just been received
that the Land Office would not agree to the exchange of runs;
consequently, the stock was again transferred, and a house erected
at Black Gully. After occupying it for three months he learned that
the Land Office had reconsidered the exchange and had finally
sanctioned it, so the family again removed to Dalvey, taking up
Anderson’s old quarters at the Bush Side, five miles south-east of
the present Tapanui township, which is also on the run.
In 1857 the Allan brothers and Adam Oliver took up Run No. 168,
afterwards known as Glenkenich Station, on the west side of the
Pomahaka River, opposite Dalvey, Oliver being the resident partner.
At the end of 1858 a flaw in the lease was discovered, and they had
to leave. It appears that when James Allan originally made inquiry
at the Land Office about a sheep station, Mr Proudfoot,
Commissioner of Lands, pointed out Run No. 168. He mentioned that
it had previously been applied for by a man from Australia, who had
paid a deposit of 20 pounds on it, and had then gone back to
Australia and had not been heard of since. As it was necessary that a
run should be taken possession of and stocked within six months of
Settlement in the Blue Mountains and Waiwera Districts
93
the application, this run had therefore been forfeited. As it was a
good one, Proudfoot recommended it, and accepted James Allan’s
application and deposit. The firm took up the run and were in
undisputed possession for upwards of a year and a half. Captain
Mackenzie held Run No. 167, Conical Hill Station, separated from
Glenkenich by the Waikoikoi Stream, and was on good terms with
Oliver and his partners, having been given a small flat on
Glenkenich to build his steading on. Meanwhile, Proudfoot had
taken ill and died, and his successor as Land Commissioner, Mr W. H.
Cutten, declared that the cancellation of the original application by
the Australian had been irregular. He therefore gazetted the
forfeiture of the run, and declared it open for application again.
Neither the Allans nor the Olivers heard anything of these steps, but
Captain Mackenzie was promptly at the office with his application,
and Cutten declared him the rightful possessor of the run. This
piece of sharp practice probably materially altered the fortunes of
Oliver and the young Allan brothers, who would, in all likelihood,
otherwise have become large run-holders.
On leaving Glenkenich, the Allan brothers and Oliver removed
their stock to a portion of Dalvey Station, but shortly after took up
the Rankleburn Station, on the east side of the Blue Mountains, a
rough piece of country mostly covered with birch forest, manuka,
scrub, and fern. They secured a small piece of open country on the
banks of the Clutha River from Archbold Brothers, of Lower
Clydevale, on which they erected their steading, afterwards known
as Upper Clydevale, about one and a half miles below the junction of
the Tuapeka River. After holding this for two years, in April, 1863,
they sold out the lease of Rankleburn to the New Zealand Company,
who had purchased from Archbold Brothers and the Crown the
freehold of all the land between the Pomahaka and Clutha Rivers,
and also the open land on Rankleburn, without which the rest of the
run was not of much use. This brought the partnership of the Allan
brothers and Oliver to an end, and Oliver purchased the freehold of
land near Palmerston, known as Smiler’s Peak.
Joseph Anderson has contributed recollections of a journey
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The Taieri Allans
from the Taieri to Dalvey in 1855, and several incidents of the time
when the various members of the family lived in the Tuapeka
district:
“My mother and family left the Taieri in July,
1855, for the Blue Mountains. Grandmother (Agnes
Allan) and a servant maid also went with us, and
also Mrs William Oliver and her young daughter
going to join her husband, who was on the station
with his brother Adam. We travelled with two
bullock drays, driven respectively by James Allan, of
Hopehill, and Joseph Allan, of the Holmes.
Travelling by bullock drays was slow work in those
days, as it occupied eight day’s travelling to reach
Oliver’s, a distance of about 100 miles. The Taieri
Ferry was crossed in a punt. At Clutha Ferry there
was no punt, so boats did the work, while the
bullocks swam the river. The smaller rivers and
creeks, and the Pomahaka River, were forded. For
six of the nights a camp had to be made. The
women and children slept in a tent, while I was with
my uncles under a tarpaulin thrown over the pole of
one of the drays. Fortunately, we had good weather
for most of the journey.
“My brother John (Anderson), who had gone out a
few months earlier along with friends, driving
cattle to stock the run, had a different experience.
They had very wet weather and the streams were in
high flood, so they had to swim both cattle and
themselves over the Kaihiku, Waiwera, Wairuna,
and Waipahi Streams. At Waipahi they found a man
sitting on the opposite bank waiting patiently for
the going down of the waters. This proved to be
Alex McNab, father of the late Hon. Robert McNab,
who was travelling on foot from his run on the
Settlement in the Blue Mountains and Waiwera Districts
95
Mataura, to Dunedin. After getting the cattle over
they put McNab across on one of the stock horses,
and he went on his way rejoicing.
“A house had to be built at Black Gully,
Brooksdale, for the family, and this was
accomplished by uncles James and Joseph Allan,
with the help of two other men, in eight days. The
house was typical of many country houses of the
time, and was built of sod walls and thatched roof,
with the natural ground for a floor. It consisted of a
bedroom and a kitchen, the latter with a bed
curtained off for the maid servant, with a loft above
as sleeping accommodation. Every station had also a
store called a ‘futter,’ built on high piles sheathed
with tin to prevent rats from getting in. Rats there
were in thousands, living chiefly on the oily roots of
the spear grass, which grew in great abundance.
“Tapanui at this time consisted of large runs,
varying in size from 25,000 to 100,000 acres. Stock
had plenty of scope, and did well, but the scourge of
the country was the wild dogs, which caused a great
deal of harm among the sheep. Every run had a pack
of dogs - bull dogs, kangaroo dogs, or foxhounds -
for hunting them. When the wild dogs proved
troublesome, the sheep were usually gathered
together and watched over at night, while, if wood
was available, fires were lit at night to scare them
away. One night my father took the first watch, and
during the short time he was absent rousing his
assistant to relieve him, the dogs attacked the sheep
and killed thirty lambs. Strychnine poisoning was a
great help in destroying these pests. A sheep’s
kidney or other piece of meat was used as bait. This
was tied to a piece of flax string and dragged along
the ground, and then tied to a tree. It was then
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The Taieri Allans
opened with a knife and a few grains of strychnine
inserted in the cut. if the bait was taken by a dog,
the string was usually cut or broken, but if it was
taken by a hawk or rat, the meat would be eaten out
and the string and knot left intact.
“Wild cattle, escapees from Oliver’s and
Archbold’s stations, were also very plentiful on the
Blue Mountains, and for many years they were
hunted for their skins. Native quail were very
plentiful, and proved to be very fine for the table.
The sparrow hawks would follow the shepherds
through the run for hours on the watch for the dogs
raising a quail, if one was raised, the hawk was after
it like an arrow, if the quail secured cover in the
grass in time the hawk would again quietly resume
his following of the dogs.
“Previously to 1853 there were no wild pigs
known on the Blue Mountains, but in that year,
when Oliver was running his stock on a part of
Dalvey, the hut occupied by himself and his
shepherd was burnt down. Some pigs in a sty,
originally wild pigs, caught on the Otakaima Hills
near Pukerau, had to be released, and quickly went
wild in the scrub and fern. Within ten years the
district was heavily stocked with wild pigs.
“When Oliver was living at Rankleburn Station,
one evening some hundreds of diggers were
observed approaching the river from the Tuapeka
side. They made signs to be taken across. The only
menfolk on the station at the time were a man and a
boy, Oliver being away in Dunedin. The diggers,
when the boat came over, soon organised matters.
Boat crews were appointed, and from the first
batches sent over men were appointed to assist Mrs
Oliver in serving out foodstuff, which they must
Settlement in the Blue Mountains and Waiwera Districts
97
have. Everything, however, was paid for on a liberal
basis, and next morning they wended their way
over the mountains to the Tapanui side, only to find
that there was no gold there worth working for.
“During the autumn of 1862 Oliver took two men
across the Molyneux from the Tuapeka side. The
men then started up the west side of the river
(which was at that time at its lowest on record), and
were not heard of for three months, except when
they occasionally got a few stores from the
adjoining runs. Suddenly great excitement took
place when these two men, Hartley and Riley,
arrived in Dunedin with eighty-seven pounds
weight of gold, and secured a reward of £2,000 for
the discovery of a payable goldfield at the Dunstan
or Clutha.”
John Anderson left Dalvey in 1862. Towards the latter end of
1857, Mr W. G. Rees, subsequently of Lake Wakatipu, acting on
behalf of friends in the Home Country (Messrs Gammie and Grant),
bought from Thomas Martin the Dalvey Station, subject to
Anderson's lease, which had still over two years to run. Anderson
gave the new purchasers the right to the portion of the run that had
previously been lent to graze Allan and Oliver’s sheep. In April,
1862, at the expiration of the lease, the new firm took over the
whole run. As there were at that time no sheep stations in the
vicinity for sale, John Anderson bought from the Crown the freehold
of the block XCVII., Clutha Survey, consisting of 630 acres in the
Waiwera district. Here he made his final home of Kelvingrove.
Subsequently, he purchased about 1,000 acres of adjoining hill land,
which in after years became part of the Carol property of his sons.
John Anderson died in 1873, at the comparatively young age of
fifty-four years; he had been in rather poor health for several years
preceding his death. Having left no will, his eldest son, James,
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The Taieri Allans
became heir (as the law then stood) to all the realty (property in
land), with some support allowed to the widow, while the
personality went in the proportion of one-third to the widow and
two-thirds to the children. As there were eleven in the family, this
would have left them very poorly provided for indeed. James
Anderson acted very generously: he lifted the mortgage on the
Kelvingrove block of 630 acres and conveyed it to his mother free of
any encumbrance, and conveyed the hill property to the joint
ownership of the three oldest brothers - viz., himself, John, and
Joseph. As there was a mortgage on it, there was not a very large
margin of value in the hill land. After a few years James Anderson
sold out his interest to the two brothers and acquired land on the
Otama Flat, on the Mataura River. John and Joseph added to the hill
property, which took the name of Carol, and John Anderson’s widow
still lives there.
Isabella Anderson continued to farm Kelvingrove with the
assistance of her son, William Brown, until her death in 1905, at the
age of seventy-nine years. Small and active like her mother, she
endured the many hardships of the early days with courage and
cheerfulness, and was a worthy type of that noble band of pioneers
to whom our country owes so much.
NOTE BY J. A. ANDERSON ON THE BLUE
MOUNTAINS.
W. H. Valpy, of the Valpy family who came to Otago in 1849,
viewed the Blue Mountain from the hills around Tokomairiro.
Believing it to be a fresh discovery, he named the place after his
family as “Mount Valpy.” For a number of years it frequently went
by that name, and the whole locality as the Blue Mountain or
Pomahaka district.
The earlier name “Blue Mountain” probably originated in 1846
or 1847. Wylie surveyed the Waiwera district at that date. James
Allan was on the staff, and for six months they would be daily in
view of and at times with ten miles of the base of the hill. After the
Settlement in the Blue Mountains and Waiwera Districts
99
false gold rush over the hill in November, 1861, the name “Valpy”
dropped out, and many people gathered the impression that it was
the diggers who called the range after the New South Wales Blue
Mountains.
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The Taieri Allans
Chapter VI
GOLDFIELD EXPERIENCES AND THE
YOUNGER SONS
The discovery of rich alluvial gold by Gabriel Reid, at Gabriel’s
Gully, near Lawrence in May 1861, set all Otago in a ferment. Nearly
all the men, both citizens and farmers, who could get away, hurried
to the goldfields, and the excitement spread to the North Island and
Australia. It was estimated that by the end of September, 1861,
10,000 miners had left Victoria for Otago. Gabriel’s Gully itself was
pegged out to the last inch, and about 4,000 men were soon at work
in that field alone. James Smith on one occasion counted 1,100 men
on the road from Dunedin to Tuapeka, all of whom had to pass
Bellfield. It was no wonder that the Allan brothers caught the ‘gold
fever’, as it was called.
William Brown Allan, the youngest son, had married Helen
Webster Speid in April, 1861, and had settled at Helenslea, on the
Main South Road, adjoining the Holmes Farm. John, the third son,
was shortly to be married to Mary Jane Blackie, eldest daughter of
Captain Blackie, of Glasgow Farm, on the Taieri Plain. Joseph and
William Allan left for the goldfields, while John hurried on his
marriage, which took place on 23rd July, and a few days after
hastened to join his brothers. The young wives were left at Bellfield
in the charge of John Allan, sen., Mrs Joseph Allan staying on at the
Holmes with her two infant children. At this time Joseph Anderson
was under his grandmother’s care at Bellfield for his schooling, and
acted as cowboy.
The Allan brothers do not seem to have been very successful in
Goldfield Experiences and the Younger Sons
101
their digging experiences, and soon took up the steadier business of
supplying the needs of the miners, starting a store at Waitahuna,
and becoming buyers of gold dust. When the Dunstan rush set in in
1862, consequent on Hartley and Reilly’s sensational finds, John
Allan soon started a store there (in Clyde), and after establishing it,
left it in charge of George Matheson, a former employee at Bellfield.
At that time bullock teams were used for farm work and carting
to the diggings, the only horse team in the Taieri belonging to James
Cullen, of Owhiro, who was previously a carter in Dunedin. John and
one of his brothers, probably Joseph, went to Melbourne and
brought back a cargo of draught horses for use on their respective
farms, and for occasional carting to the diggings.
One eventful trip was taken with several drays, Joseph Allan
being in charge, to sell goods at a new rush on the Nokomai, in the
upper reaches of the Mataura River. The roads were very bad, with
creeks high and snow on the ground. After selling their goods, they
fared badly on the return journey. Horse feed ran out, and horse
covers, not being then in vogue, one mare (mother of the well-
known and favourite Bellfield light harness mare Susie) died of cold
and starvation. The Mataura River, at the Long Ford (Gore), being
too high to cross, they went on to Mataura Bridge, where John
MacGibbon and Sons carried on an hotel and store. No horse feed,
however, was procurable, and Joseph Allan had to buy flour from
MacGibbon, at Is a pannikin, to feed the horses.
JOHN ALLAN, JUNIOR, OF BELLFIELD
After his father’s death in August, 1863, John Allan succeeded to
Bellfield, where his mother remained till her death in 1891. In 1864
he laid out a township on a section that at that time formed a part of
Bellfield. This township, fronting the Main South Road, was named
by his mother, Riccarton, after a place in Ayrshire. Immediately
after, he built a store, to which he removed, leaving his mother in
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The Taieri Allans
charge of Bellfield, and lived for a time in the store, until he bought
out Mrs Robert Somerville, formerly Mrs William Oliver, who had a
small store there for some years. This place he turned into a
dwelling house and removed to live in it.
In January, 1866, John, his mother, and his brother William,
drove out to Kelvingrove for the purpose of looking at some crown
land that was open for sale. The following morning, after inspecting
the land, John rode down to catch the early coach from Balclutha to
Dunedin, and applied for all the open low land from Kelvingrove to
the Waiwera River in the direction of Clinton. The area, including a
few subsequent purchases, amounted to about 3,000 acres. A couple
of days later his mother and brother left Kelvingrove for the Taieri,
Joseph Anderson, on horseback, accompanying them to Balclutha.
Although it was fine weather, when they got in sight of Balclutha,
they found it to be under flood water, and families being driven in
drays to higher ground. Joseph Anderson rode in on his horse and
met a boat being pulled up the main street. William and his mother
had to return and stay another week at Waiwera, and when leaving
the latter said to her daughter, Mrs Anderson : “I am never coming
back to see you again until there is a bridge put over that river, and
that will never be.” However, two years later, a traffic bridge was
erected, which stood for ten years, when the great flood of 1878,
that followed after Otago’s record snowstorm, swept away every
bridge on the river, except for the Inch Clutha one at Stirling, where
the river was not confined and instead spread out over many miles
of flat country.
In conjunction with Amos McKegg, then a storekeeper at Otokia,
John Allan secured, by tender, the mail contract for 1868, to carry
the mails for the south, from Dunedin to Milton. For this work they
started a passenger coach in opposition to Cobb and Co., whose
coaches ran all over Otago, and who also had a monopoly of the mail
contracts. For 1869 Cobb and Co. secured the mail contract, and
McKegg sold out his interest in the partnership. During the winter
months of that year the roads became very bad, and without the
mail subsidy, the passenger traffic was barely paying, so John Allan
Goldfield Experiences and the Younger Sons
103
decided to pull off for the winter and start a more efficient service
in the spring; consequently, he sent a mob of thirty coach horses to
winter on the Waiwera estate. This step gave Cobb and Co. a fright,
and they then bought the plant and horses at very full value.
It may be mentioned that the sole partner in Cobb and Co. at
that time in the Otago branch was John Chaplin, who ten years
before was employed at the wool table rolling up the fleeces at the
Allan’s sheep shearing on Glenkenich Station, and also of John
Anderson’s Dalvey Station. The same John Chaplin was a cousin to
Lord Chaplin, later on a British Cabinet Minister, a great sport, who
won the English Derby with “Hermit,” and by doing so ruined the
Marquis of Hastings, who formerly had won for his wife Chaplin’s
engaged sweetheart.
William Allan having died about ten months after the land
purchase at Waiwera, his trustees agreed to set aside about 400 acres
of the property for his estate, and the remainder, with all liabilities,
was placed solely injohn’s name.
About the middle of the seventies, the Riccarton store was sold
to John Williams, a storekeeper then at Adam’s Flat.
In 1881 John Allan had the great misfortune to lose his wife
somewhat suddenly, at the early age of thirty-eight years, leaving a
family of nine children. One daughter, Katie, had died very young.
His wife was a bright and cheerful woman, who proved a great
assistance in carrying on the store, and was a general favourite of all
who knew her. Misfortunes often follow each other, and a few
months later his eldest son, John, a youth of eighteen years,
employed in a draper’s shop in Dunedin, accidentally fell through an
open skylight from the upper floor onto some brass rods standing
upright on the lower floor, and was killed.
Early in the eighties John Allan again invested in land, this time
in Strath Taieri , near to Middlemarch - about 600 acres in all. For
the most of the time he held this land his second son, William
Blackie Allan, managed and also had it leased for a time. When the
latter was at the Boer War, he cut up and sold the property.
Towards the end of the eighties, John Allan became the financial
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The Taieri Allans
partner in the new firm of Thomson, Bridger, and Co. This firm
bought from the Bank of New Zealand the large iron, woodware, and
furnishing business formerly carried on by Guthrie and Larnach. His
third son, James, who entered the business of Guthrie and Larnach
when a boy, is now the Managing Director of the Company, and in
addition to the Dunedin branch, there is also an Invercargill branch
of the business.
In December, 1893, his eldest daughter, Jeannie Blackie, who had
charge of the house from the time of her mother’s death, also
passed away suddenly from heart failure, caused by former
rheumatic fever. After an illness of some duration, John himself died
in January, 1901, at the age of sixty-nine years.
Joseph Anderson, who was at different periods for many years
intimately connected with his Uncle John, first as a schoolboy living
at Bellfield, then as a youth assisting in the Riccarton store and with
the coaching business, and later as the manager of the Waiwera
property, writes the following tribute:
“I always admired his deep and thoughtful mind
and his broad outlook on business and other
matters. He was a good churchman, an office-bearer
for forty years in the East Taieri Church, was
thoroughly upright in character, and had an utter
abhorrence of any underhand work or sharp
practise in business. He was very fond of outdoor
sports, in his younger days taking an active part in
the primitive cricket of the early Taieri, and in his
later years being exceedingly fond of a game of
bowls.”
WILLIAM ALLAN, OF HELENSLEA
As his widow and children are all passed away, few recollections
of William Brown Allan, who died in 1867, at the age of forty years,
can now be recorded. His marriage to Helen Speid, settlement at
Goldfield Experiences and the Younger Sons
105
Helenslea, goldfields experiences, and subsequent interest with his
brother John in a property at Waiwera has already been recorded.
His widow survived him till 1919, living with her daughter, Mrs
Hugh Inglis, for many years in Mosgiel, and for a few years before
her death in Balclutha.
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The Taieri Allans
Chapter VII
THE SUTCLIFFE FAMILY
Owing to the marriage of James and Joseph Allan to Jane and
Henrietta Sutcliffe respectively, more than half of the descendants
of John and Agnes Allan are also descended from Richard Sutcliffe.
It will not, therefore, be out of place to devote a chapter to the
latter’s family.
Sutcliffe is a rather localised family name in England, being
found mainly in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and especially in and
around the upland township of Heptonstall. The name frequently
occurs in the early wills of the parish, dating back to 1465, and in
the parish registers, which date back to 1593, being spelt Sutcliffe,
Sutclyff, or Sutclyffe. Mr Arthur Ogden, the historian of Heptonstall,
writes:
“Among the first twenty-five burials recorded are
Thomas Sutcliffe, of Heptonstall, a Michael Sutcliffe,
Thomas Sutcliffe, of Wadsworth, and a Thomas
Sutcliffe, of Erringden. The establishment of
woollen manufacture at Heptonstall took place at a
very early period, and the Sutcliffes of this district
are doubtless descended from one Gamel de
Zoetcliffe, a (Flemish) clothier, whose two sons, Jan
and Peter, erected fulling mills near to Colne, in
Lancashire, and Rastrick, in Yorkshire, in 1311. A
manuscript in the family Bible of a Thomas
The Sutcliffe Family
107
Sutcliffe, of Burnley, who lived in the latter part of
the sixteenth century, states that Gamaliel de
Zoetcliffe married Ann Radcliffe, of Stansfield, and
transferred his family and craft to Wadsworth in
1339. The descendants of this enterprising
manufacturer, who probably set up the first fulling
mills in Wadsworth, in course of time became the
most numerous of those who farmed their own land
in the district, and of the clothiers who sold their
pieces in the old Heptonstall Cloth Hall, which stood
on the north side of the Churchyard. In Gamel de
Zoetcliffe and Gamaliel de Zoetcliffe we have names
which have been repeated in the same family until
modern times, the latter name being still
represented in the person of Mr Gamaliel Sutcliffe,
of Stoneshey-gate, a lineal descendant of one great
branch of the family. Besides Stoneshey-gate Farm,
there are still Sutcliffes farming at Cliff Hill, Lumb
Bank, and Warlay Farms, and other families at
Sandal House, and in Heptonstall and Halifax.”
The following abstracts of old wills relating to the Heptonstall
Church are of interest: 21
“John Sutcliffe, of Heptonstall, August 8th, 1465,
willed that his body should be buried in the
churchyard of the chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr,
of Heptonstall.”
“Thomas Sutcliffe, in 1467, left 6s 8d for the fabric
of the chapel.”
“Robert Sutcliffe, of Heptonstall, 1520, left 3s 4d
for his burial, and his will also contains bequests to
priests for masses to be sung at Heptonstall.”
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The Taieri Allans
Another will of the same year, that of William Sutcliffe, contains
the item:
“I bequeath to the buying of an antiphonarium for
the said chapel 6s 8d”
Here we have an instance of the bequest of money for a book of
anthems. Testator also left 6s 8d for a trental for his soul.
The first page of the oldest Church Register includes the following
entries of marriages:
April 3rd, 1594. Christopher Sutclyffe and Joanna
P’ter (?).
May 7th, 1594. Robert Sutclyffe and Mary Michel.
June 20th, 1594. Richard Sutcliffe and Isobel
Gibson.
The Sutcliffes became much intermarried with the local
families, particularly the Greenwoods, Parkers, and Shackeltons, so
that the West Riding presents an amazing tangle of family
relationships. Elizabeth Slater, whose mother was a Sutcliffe, and
who is a cousin of Jane and Henrietta Sutcliffe, married first
Sutcliffe Parker and second Sutcliffe Greenwood, neither of whom
she knew as relatives, although they must have got their Christian
names from Sutcliffe ancestors.
In Richard Sutcliffe’s branch of the family, the Christian name
Richard had been favoured for many generations, so that the Mr
Gamaliel Sutcliffe, of Stoneshey-gate, above referred to, remarked to
one of the Allans “I come from the ‘Gams’ and you from the ‘Dickies’
(Richards).” One of the best-known of the direct ancestors of
Richard Sutcliffe was Matthew Sutcliffe, who became Dean of Exeter
in the sixteenth century. His brass may still be seen in the new
The Sutcliffe Family
109
Heptonstall Church, along with that of many others of the family.
In this history we need not go further back than the Richard
Sutcliffe who was born in 1772 and died in 1843, leaving quite a
large family. One son, William, was Vicar of Bosley for thirty years;
Henry was Vicar of Keele for forty years; while James went out to
Calcutta, and before his retirement from Indian life, became
Director-General of Instruction in Bengal. They were a highly
educated family.
The eldest son, also Richard Sutcliffe, was a banker in Cheshire.
His first wife’s name was Nancy Tomlinson (born 1799, died 1836),
and she had four children - Jane, born in 1829, who married James
Allan of Hopehill; Emma, 1831, who became Mrs Fred Jenkins, of
Christchurch, and ultimately of Sydney, where she died; Richard,
born in 1833, who lived and died in Christchurch; and Henrietta,
1834, who married Joseph Allan, of the Holmes.
After his first wife’s death Richard Sutcliffe married again, and
had six children by his second wife. He emigrated from England in
the ship 'Ajax', which arrived in Dunedin in January, 1849, and the
eldest son of the second family, James, was born during the voyage
out, shortly before their arrival in New Zealand. On the arrival of
the immigrants who formed the start of the Canterbury settlement
in 1850, Richard Sutcliffe and his family moved up to Christchurch,
but his daughters, Jane and Henrietta, remained in Otago and
married the brothers Allan. It is of interest to not that Jane Allan’s
living descendants today (in 1928) number 109, and Henrietta’s 125.
CHAPTER NOTES
21 The Heptonstall Church Registers. - Paper read by Mr Arthur Ogden
before the Halifax Antiquarian Society, June 25th , 1908. Reprinted by
Kershaw and Ashworth, printers, Hebden Bridge, 1909. Probably other
information about the Sutcliffe family may be found in a series of articles
contributed by Mr Ogden’s father to the “Halifax Guardian” about 1882,
under the nom-de-plume of “Graptolite.” These have not been accessible.
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The Taieri Allans
Appendix
THE AYRSHIRE ALLANS
[The information contained in this section of the appendix was originally
incorporated in the historical narrative, but as still-living representatives
of the Taieri Allans are doubtful as to whether the branch of the family
referred to here was closely allied to them or not, it has been thought
advisable to print it separately. Mrs John Allan, Sen., claimed relationship
with the Ayrshire Allans and the Burns family, but neither her husband
nor the Rev. Dr Thomas Burns, with whom he was associated in church
work, appear to have referred to this connection.]
William Burnes or Burns, father of Robert Burns, began his
Ayrshire life as a gardener at the Fairlie Estate, north of Kilmarnock,
Ayrshire, and there probably he met his wife, who was a Brown, of
Craigieton, and a sister or half-sister of the wife of one James Allan,
a carpenter, holding a responsible position on the same estate.
James Allan resided at a hamlet known as Auld Rim (Old Rome
Forest), near Dundonald, a few miles from Irvine, and much nearer
Kilmarnock. When Robert Burns went into hiding from fear of
arrest by the Armours, in 1776, he took refuge at Auld Rim.
“The poet’s reference to the ‘Fairlie lamb’ in the
suppressed stanza of ‘Poor Mailie’,
‘She was nae get o’ runted rams
Wi’ woo like gait’s, and legs like trams;
She was the flow’r o’ Fairlie lambs-
The Ayrshire Allans
111
A famous breed!
Now Robin, greeting, chows the hans,
O’ Mailie dead.’
betokens a familiarity begotten of youthful visits
to his relatives at Fairlie, and justifies the surmise
that William Burns made the acquaintance of his
wife, Agnes Brown, when employed there.” 22
One of the poet’s Fairlie kinsmen ( Allan) took to a
seafaring life, and became the founder of the Allan Line of Steamers,
one of their first boats having been built in Irvine (the ‘Jean’), on the
site of the present Ayrshire Dockyard Company.
According to Provost Hogg, a branch of the same Allan family
resided in Irvine, and one of them, John Allan, was the foster-father
of Edgar Allan Poe, the well-known American poet and author. Until
recently, the biographers of Poe, following accusations by the poet
himself, have been unanimous in abusing this John Allan as the
author or occasion of the vices that made of Poe “the saddest and
strangest figure in American literary history.” It was he, we are told,
who spoiled Edgar Poe as a boy, sowed in him the seeds of
drunkenness, taught him to spend thousands without teaching him
to earn a dollar, and by stern relentless treatment deprived him in
young manhood of that fatherly love for which he craved. But the
recent publication in America of a series of Poe’s letters 23 has
thrown a new light on the matter, and has vindicated John Allan’s
character. The subject is fully discussed in an article entitled ‘Poe’s
Scottish Foster-Father,’ byj. Liddel Geddie, in ‘Chamber’s Journal’ for
March 1926, from which the following extracts have been taken. It
was John Allan, according to Mr Geddie:
“who rescued the barely three-year-old orphan
from destitution, gave him a home of luxury, a good
schooling, put him to the university, forgave his
dissipation, his deceit, his passionate outbursts, his
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The Taieri Allans
moodiness, his ungratefulness, and even supplied
the prodigal he had disowned with the money for
which he continued to cry out . . . Who and what
was John Allan, who thus adopted and abjured
Edgar Poe? He came of an Ayrshire stock, and was
connect by blood or by marriage with two families
whose names rank high in the country’s roll of
honour - Galt and Fowlds. Born in or around 1780,
he emigrated in his youth to America, and settled in
Virginia. There he prospered as a tobacco exporter,
and married Frances Keeling Valentine, who
belonged to a well-known family in Richmond. They
must have made a handsome pair, to judge from
their portraits (finely reproduced in the volume of
‘Edgar Allan Poe Fetters’); John Allan, dark, serious,
long-headed, with well-cut features, large nose and
mouth, high forehead, firm rounded chin - an
impressive rather than a genial face; Frances
Valentine, his wife, sweet, gentle, wistful-looking,
mignonne, oval-faced, with dark ringlets - a
Southern belle of delicate mould.”
This couple adopted Edgar Poe in 1811, when scarcely three
years old, and in 1815, took him with them on a visit to Scotland,
which apparently lasted until 1820.
“In Greenock and Kilmarnock the boy of six was
introduced to his new Scottish kinsfolk - his foster
father’s cousins, the Gaits and the Fowlds (Allan’s
sister and her husband), who had a farm at
Kilmarnock. Did the returned Ayrshireman, one
wonders, tell little Ed anything of Robert Burns and
the Kilmarnock edition of his poems? Or of that
other Ayrshire writer, John Galt, the friend, fellow
traveller, and biographer of Byron?”
The Ayrshire Allans
113
It is not the place here to follow in detail Poe’s subsequent
career, and his quarrel with his foster-father, which are fully
discussed in the article above referred to. John Allan died in the
prime of life in his fifty-fourth year, and Mr Geddie concludes his
article with these words:
“But if Poe, the opium dreamer, shortened as well
as saddened the tobacco merchant’s days - as he
undoubtedly curtailed his own feverish career - at
least, in return, he conferred immortality on his
name, for America’s farthest-famed poet and tale-
writer always called himself, and will be called to
the end, Edgar Allan Poe.”
Of the Ayrshire families under discussion, it is to be noted that
representatives of not only the Allan but also of the Burns and
Fowlds families came subsequently to New Zealand. The Rev.
Thomas Burns, son of Gilbert Burns, brother of the poet, has already
been mentioned. The Aaron of the Otago settlement, as Dr Hocken
aptly calls him, came to Dunedin in 1848 with the main body of
settlers in the ‘Philip Laing’, and until his death in 1871, was one of
the leaders of the young community. The Hon. Mr George Fowlds, of
Auckland, who was Minister of Education and Public Health in the
Ward Government, 1906-1911, was born at Fenwick, Ayrshire, in
1860. The New Zealand Post Office Directory gives the name of five
Gaits, all in humble positions, but of their ancestry we have learnt
nothing.
For a picture of life in Ayrshire in the latter part of the
eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, we have
rich material in the poems of Robert Burns and the novels of John
Galt. The latter are not so well known as they deserve to be from
their intrinsic merit, and may be commended to all readers of this
book.
John Galt was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, in 1779, but shortly
after went to reside at Greenock, where after many travels, he died
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The Taieri Allans
in 1839. His best-known work, ‘The Annals of the Parish’, deals with
the imaginary village of Dalmailing, in Ayrshire, from the years 1760
to 1810, and gives a vivid picture of social life and the changes
brought by the passing years as seen through the eyes of a minister
of the Established Kirk. His other chief novels are: ‘The Entail’, ‘The
Provost’, ‘Sir Andrew Wylie’ and ‘The Ayrshire Legatees’.
APPENDIX NOTES
22 D. McNaught, “The Truth About Burns,” Glasgow, 1921. See also C. S.
Dougall, “The Burns Country.”
23 “Edgar Allan Poe, letters till now unpublished,” Lippincott Co.,
Philadelphia and London.
In Memoriam
115
Appendix II
IN MEMORIAM
James Allan Thomson, the author of this brief history of his
mother’s family, was a grandson of James Allan, of Hopehill, East
Taieri. He was born in the High School Rectory, Dunedin, on 29th
July, 1881. His father, George M. Thomson (now a Member of the
Legislative Council), was at that time Science Master in the Otago
High Schools. His mother, Emma Allan, who was the eldest daughter
of the Hopehill family, was a woman of singularly fine character,
gentle but firm, and of sweet disposition. Her son inherited many of
his attractive traits from her. Unfortunately, she died in 1894, at the
comparatively young age of forty-one years, just when a mother’s
influence was needed by her young family..
Allan, in his early boyhood, was a quiet undemonstrative lad,
but with a very strong will of his own; he was termed “the Judge”
among the members of the family, on account of his staid and
equable temperament, a characteristic which remained with him to
the end. He was entered a pupil of the Kaikorai District School in
1888, and passed through all the standards. Though not showing any
special brilliance, he was a favourite with the headmaster and
teaching staff on account of his exemplary conduct and steady
progress. He joined the High School in 1894 as a Governor’s Scholar;
in 1896 gained a senior scholarship, and in 1899 was a prizeman in
science. Here he first developed his athletic powers in Rugby
football, becoming deputy-captain of the Junior Fifteen of the
school, and captain of the First Fifteen in 1899. He was also Colour-
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The Taieri Allans
Sergeant in the Cadets, and a member of the Cadet Shooting Team
in 1897-99. At the close of his High School career he was awarded
the Lee Smith Scholarship, one given for the pupil of the school,
who, in the opinion of the rector and his staff, had shown the most
consistent and faithful work during his school career, who was
prominent in both athletic and scholastic attainments, and was of
high moral character. The next four years were spent at the
University of Otago, where Allan specialised at the School of Mines,
taking a high place in his classes, and spending two long vacations
at practical mining work - coal mining at Kaitangata and gold
mining at Opitonui, in the Coromandel Peninsula. It was at the
former station that he met Miss Gertrude Alice Ream, his future
wife, who was at that time mistress in the school there, and who was
contemplating a career as a missionary in the foreign fields. Miss
Ream was a pure-minded woman of a very loveable type. With a
very sweet and gentle disposition, she possessed a strong earnest
character, and the friendship between the two passed into a bond of
the deepest affection. Though she was a handsome and fine-looking
girl, her physical strength was not equal to her looks, and her
application to be trained as a missionary by the Presbyterian Church
of New Zealand was not accepted, because the medical opinion was
that she was not strong enough to stand the strain of life in a
tropical country. Had she been able to follow out this line it is quite
possible that Allan would also have entered on a missionary career,
a course which for a time he contemplated. His thoughts had often
turned that way since he joined the membership of Rnox Church
when he was about sixteen years of age. Throughout his life he
retained a deep and earnest Christian outlook, broadened by his
strong, clear reason and his scientific training.
Allan entered very fully into the athletic and social side of
university life. He was president of the Christian Union, represented
the University of New Zealand at a Student’s Conference in New
South Wales, and was also a member of the University Fifteen in
Rugby football. Taking a double first in science and mining, out of 27
classes in which he passed in the four years, he gained first-class
In Memoriam
117
certificates in fifteen, and first place on the list in four. He
graduated B.Sc. in 1903, and in the following year took the degree of
First Class Honours in Science (Geology), equivalent to the later
degree of M.Sc.
In 1904 he was elected the first Rhodes Scholar for New Zealand,
and in the same year was bracketed equal with Mr A. R. Andrew for
the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship. This latter, however, he resigned.
Before leaving New Zealand to enter on his Oxford career, he was
the recipient of a very fine testimonial from the citizens of Dunedin.
This took the form of a crowded gathering in the Town Hall on July
30th, where he received the congratulations of the Mayor of the City
and of the education authorities, along with a cheque for £222. His
reply on that occasion was a testimony to the teachers and friends
who had helped to shape his career.
Allan entered St John’s College, Oxford, in October, 1904, and
quickly took part in the academic, athletic, and social life of the
university, ably filling the role of an all-round scholar as laid down
by Cecil Rhodes. He graduated B.A., with first-class honours, and
later M.A. In 1906 he gained the valuable Burdett-Coutts
Scholarship, in the following year was appointed Lecturer in
Geology in his college, and in 1908 became Demonstrator in
Petrology in the University of Oxford, a position which was created
for him in order to retain him in the university. In athletics he first
entered as a boating man, and won his sculls early in his career, but
he found that it made too many demands on his time and soon he
turned his energies into other fields. In Rugby football he gained a
prominent position, being captain of his college team, and a
member of the University First Fifteen. He was also a member of the
London Scottish First Fifteen. In athletic sports he represented his
college as a mile runner.
During his stay of over four years in Oxford he took every
opportunity of extending his knowledge and experience, travelling
to the Continent and making himself familiar with French and
German. As a representative of the University of New Zealand he
attended Christian Union Congresses in Holland and at
118
The Taieri Allans
Wernigerode, in the Hartz; later making a long stay at Weimar,
where he acquired familiarity with the German tongue. He attended
two courses of lectures at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and travelled with
Professor Lacroix to the Puy de Dome on a mineralogical excursion,
and later made a walking tour of the Pyrenees with other Rhodes
scholars. In the latter case, however, he walked them off their feet,
and they had to finish their tour on wheels. In 1907 he travelled up
the Rhone Valley with a party of geological students from Lausanne,
and from thence over to Lucerne. After visiting other parts of
Switzerland, he came back to England by the Rhine and through the
Ardennes. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Geological
Society.
Returning to New Zealand in 1909, Allan and Miss Ream were
married, and went over to West Australia, were he worked, in
conjunction with Dr Maclaren, on a scientific survey of the
Kalgoorlie Goldfields, carried out on behalf of several large mining
companies. The valuable results of the survey were published in
several papers, and it was largely on his work on that survey that
the University of New Zealand awarded him the degree of D.Sc in
1912. It was while at Kalgoorlie that he volunteered and was
accepted as a geologist for Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition. In
order to prepare for this work he went to Sydney and studied
Antarctic conditions and problems under Professor T. Edgeworth
David. Whether it was in Kalgoorlie or in Sydney we do not know,
but he contracted phthisis, and was never able to throw it off. On his
arrival in New Zealand in 1910 the trouble had got such a grip on
him that neither Captain Scott nor Dr Wilson would accept the
responsibility of taking him with them. This was the greatest
disappointment of his life, but he faced it with the quiet resignation
and determination which characterised the rest of his life. When
one avenue was closed he turned at once to another, and wasted no
unavailing regrets on the past. After a period of rest and
recuperation in Otago, he received the appointment of
Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey in 1911, a position which
he held till 1914, when he became Director of the Dominion Museum
In Memoriam
119
in succession to the late Mr Augustus Hamilton. This position he
occupied till his death in 1928. As scientific adviser to the
Government, his opinion and services were sought by Ministers on
many questions, and his handling of difficult problems was always
characterised by common sense and great acumen. He suffered a
great loss at the end of 1915 in the death of his devoted wife, who
left a very young daughter and son. His own health, too, suffered
greatly, and time and again he had to retire to a sanatorium to
recuperate. But he never uttered a moan or complaint. He was
always cheerful and hopeful, even though he early realised how
feeble his hold on life was. Up to the limit of his strength he worked
steadily and unremittingly on scientific problems and on many
social questions. His relations with Ministers and Government
officials, and especially with his subordinates on the Museum staff,
were always of the happiest. Working hard himself, he always
demanded good work from others, but he was most helpful to all
who required help or advice, and he was rewarded by a measure of
esteem and affection which helped him over many a period of
difficulty and weak health.
This is not the place to record Allan’s scientific work. That has
been done well by Mr W. R. B. Oliver, his successor in the
Directorship of the Dominion Museum, in a very fine memorial
notice published in the ‘New Zealand Journal of Science and
Technology’ (vol. X., No. 2) in 1928, and by many scientific
publications in Britain and elsewhere. His scientific papers, which
date from 1906 to 1927, number 67, and were published in New
Zealand, Australia, and Britain. His magnum opus on ‘Brachiopod
Morphology and Genera’ was completed and published in
Wellington in 1927. This work, on account of its full and clear
exposition of a very difficult subject, has at once taken a high place
as a scientific classic. But a few of his activities may be mentioned.
He was elected a member of the Wellington Philosophical Society in
1911, and was its president for the year 1923. In 1914 the New
Zealand Government appointed him as one of its four
representatives on the Board of Governors of the New Zealand
120
The Taieri Allans
Institute. From 1914 till 1922 he was honorary librarian to the
Institute. He was one of twenty original Fellows of the New Zealand
Institute, elected in 1919, his father being the senior Fellow. For his
researches in geology and palaeontology the Institute, in 1923,
awarded him the Hutton Medal. In January, 1928, he was elected
President of the New Zealand Institute.
He was Secretary of the Board of Science and Art from its
inception in 1916, and editor of the ‘New Zealand Journal of Science
and Technology’, issued by the Board, from its first number,
published in 1918, until 1921, when his ill health forced him to leave
it to others. He was, in fact, the founder of the journal.
He took a prominent part in scientific congresses. He was a
representative of the New Zealand Government at the first Pan-
Pacific Science Congress, held in Honolulu in 1920, and also
attended the second Congress held in Australia in 1923. He was Vice-
president of the General Section of the first New Zealand Institute
Science Congress, held in Christchurch in February, 1919, and
secretary to the Geological Section at the second Congress, held in
Palmerston North, injanuary, 1921.
Prior to the opening of the Pan-Pacific Congress in 1920, Allan
spent a month at Kilauea in company with Dr Jaggar, studying
volcanic phenomena, and also visited the great extinct volcano at
Haleakala, on the Island of Maui. On the return voyage from
Honolulu he stayed at Samoa and investigated the active volcano
and the great lava flow on the Island of Savaii. On another occasion
he visited Fiji and crossed the Island of Viti Levu on foot from Ba to
the Rewa River. Still later he made a close examination of the line of
volcanic activity between Ngaurohoe and White Island, visiting and
reporting on Mayor Island, and ascending Mt Tarawera. All these
investigations were made at the request of the New Zealand
Government, which was considering the advisability of establishing
a seismic observatory in the North Island in view of the earthquake
disturbances at Taupo. There is little doubt that these strenuous
excursions were too severe a strain on Allan’s system, for the last-
named was followed by a serious haemorrhage, which laid him aside
In Memoriam
121
from all active work for some months. This was the first of several
attacks, to one of which he succumbed on 6th May, 1928. His end
was very peaceful and painless.
His death was followed by a very general and unanimous tribute
of mingled sorrow and admiration. A general regret was expressed
that such a useful life should be cut short at a comparatively early
age. But it is what a man is and does that is the important thing, not
the length of time he takes to do it.
Allan Thomson’s life was founded on high principle and noble
effort. To carry out his ideals, he never spared himself, but worked
steadily in sunshine, and more often in shade. His character was
many sided. He had a deep and wide interest in general literature,
and was a careful reader, not rushing through books which he
appreciated and studied, but keeping critical notes of what he read.
He thought and wrote on many subjects, though only his scientific
work has been published. He was very fond of music, and that of the
best type, but he could not devote the time to it which he would
have loved to give. With all his great fund of knowledge, he was
never pedantic, for he possessed a strong and saving sense of
humour. In all his family relations he was tender and true, and his
friends were strong, deep, and abiding.
He has left a record worthy to be followed by the younger
generation, and a blessed memory to those near and dear to him
whom he left behind. His last work, carried out mostly when laid
aside by illness, was to write this little history of his mother’s family.
BRANCHES OF THE ALLAN FAMILY.
122
The Taieri Allans
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Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
123
Appendix III
LIST AND DESCRIPTIVE INDEX OF THE DESCENDANTS
OF JOHN AND AGNES ALLAN
Owing to the number of persons involved, it has proved
impractical to print complete family trees of the descendants of
John and Agnes Allan, but the list which follows has been printed
and numbered in such a way as to give the same information as a
tree, and to show the relationships of any two members of the
family. Also, the numbering serves to identify the individuals in the
index which follows the list. John Allan’s sons and daughters are
numbered A, B, C, etc., and all A’s descendants follow before B is
given. The tree on the opposite page gives the complete list of the
first generation, with the distinguishing names by which their
families are generally known, these names coming from the old
homesteads. The sons and daughters of A, B, C, etc., are numbered
I., II., etc. - viz., AT, AIL, BI., BIT, etc., so that AI., Bill., and CII., are
each grandchildren of John Allan, and first cousins of each other.
This generation forms the elders of the clan at the present time.
Their children in turn are numbered a, b, c, etc., so that Ala, Blld,
and FVa, are each great-grandchildren of John Allan and second
cousins of one another, but Bla, Bllb, and BVa, having a common
grandparent, B, are first cousins. Their children in turn are
numbered 1, 2, 3, etc., this generation including first, second, and
third cousins, who are all great-great-grandchildren of John Allan.
The list contains slight repetitions, owing to the intermarriage
of the cousins James Allan (BVl) and Janet Oliver (FIV) of William
Allan (DVIl) and Agnes Oliver Allan (EV), and of John Chisholm
124
The Taieri Allans
Anderson (Clle) and Jane Christie Graham (Dllf), so that their
children appear twice on the list. Marriages of two brothers to two
sisters respectively, or of brother and sister to sister and brother,
occurred several times, as follows - James Allan (B) and Joseph Allan
(D) married Jane and Henrietta Sutcliffe; Emma Allan (BIl) and
Agnes Allan (Bill) married George and James Thomson; Richard
Allan (BIV) and Ann Jane Allan (BIX) married Annie and Edgar Burn;
Joseph Allan (BV) and William Allan (BVIl) married Margaret and
Constance Maitland, while their sister, Henrietta Allan (BX), married
George Woodhead, a cousin of the Maitland sisters.
The descriptive index which follows includes - besides the
names of the descendants of John Allan - those of their husbands
and wives, and in some cases of the parents of these, where they
were well-known early colonists. As the information given in the
index has been supplied by many different people, the treatment of
individuals is admittedly unequal, but an effort has been made to
gather as complete an account as possible of the eldest of the family.
TOHN ALLAN (1791-1863) M. AGNES ALLAN (1794-1891).
A. Janet Allan (1821-1899) m. Alexander McKay (1802-1879).
I. Hector McKay (1848-1882) m. Elizabeth Anderson Stewart
(1847).
a. Jessie Stewart McKay (1873-1905) m. John McDonald
(1873).
1. Ronald McDonald (1898).
2. Erie McDonald (1899).
3. Hector Stewart McDonald (1905-1921).
b. Agnes Allan McKay (1875-1876).
c. Jane Inglis McKay (1877) m. Maurice Torrance (1877).
1. Allan Torrance (1912).
2. Gilbert Torrance (1913).
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
125
d. Alexander Sutherland McKay (1879-1879).
e. Alexander Sutherland McKay (1880-1884).
f. Hector Stewart McKay (1881).
II. John Allan McKay(l850-1910).
III. Agnesjane McKay (1853-1886).
IV. Janet McKay (1855).
V. Isabella McKay (1857).
VI. Elizabeth McKay (1859).
B. James Allan (1824-1891) m. Jane Sutcliffe (1829-1923)
I. John Allan (1850-1897) m. (l) Elizabeth Reid (1859-1891).
a. Fanny Stewart Allan (1883).
b. Agnesjane Sutcliffe Allan (1885).
m. (2) Mary Reid (1862).
c. Dorothy Allan (1897) m. Frank Ernest Clapperton
(1896).
1. Denis Frank Clapperton (1924).
II. Emma Allan (1852-1893) m. George Malcolm Thomson
(1848).
a. William Malcolm Thomson (1878) m. Frances Florence
Glasgow (1884).
1. Florence Marion Thomson (1911).
2. Doris Emma Thomson (1912).
3. Frances Elizabeth Thomson (1914).
4. George Ian Thomson (1916).
5. Barbara Jean Thomson (1920).
6. Donald Malcolm Thomson (1923-1923).
7. Ann Shirley Thomson (1925).
b. James Allan Thomson (1881-1928) m. Gertrude Alice
126
The Taieri Allans
Ream (1877-1915).
1. Margaret Sutcliffe Thomson (1910).
2. Allan Priestley Thomson (1913).
c. George Stuart Thomson (1882) m. (l) Ellen Harriet
Killen (1881-1918).
1. John Gilbert Thomson (1911).
2. Annie Elizabeth Thomson (1913).
3. George Allan Thomson (1914).
4. Alice Gertrude Thomson (1916).
(2) Ansley Douglas (nee Thomson, 1882).
5. Cullen William Thomson (1927).
d. Florence Jane Thomson (1885-1886).
e. Elizabeth Anna Thomson (1887-1909).
f. John Henry Thomson (1892-1918).
IIL Agnes Allan (1854) m. James Cox Thomson (1846-1914).
a. Edward Allan Thomson (1880) m. Jane Shaw Blaikley
(1885).
1. William Allan Thomson (1914).
2. Kate Thomson (1915).
3. Edith Mary Thomson (1917).
4. Arthur James Thomson (1919).
5. Joan Elizabeth Thomson (1921).
b. Winifred Sutcliffe Thomson (1881).
c. Arthur Charles Thomson (1883) m. Leah Gordon Miller
(1885).
1. Agnes Helen Thomson (1914).
2. Lindsay Gordon Thomson (1916).
d. Harold William Thomson (1885) m. Ruth Isabel Nelson
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
127
(1885).
1. Edwinjames Thomson (1911).
2. Harold Maurice Thomson (1913).
3. John Allan Thomson (1916).
4. Stanley Malcolm Thomson (1918).
e. Agnes Hilda Thomson (1887) m. Charles Alfred Turner
(1877).
1. Cynthia Barlow Turner (1925).
f. Maurice James Thomson (1890) m. Cecilia Kirker
(1894).
1. Agnes Marion Thomson (1924).
2. Maurice Hugh Thomson (1926).
g. Edith Jean Thomson (1893) m. Benjamin David
Robertson (1895).
1. Jean Allan Robertson (1926).
2. Mary Elizabeth Robertson (1927).
h. Marjory Gordon Thomson (1898).
IV. Richard Sutcliffe Allan (1856) m. Annie McLeod Burn (1858-
1928).
a. Margaret Gordon Allan (1883) m. Alexander
Macdonald Allan (1876).
1. Margaret Gordon Allan (1913).
2. Robert Macdonald Allan (1919).
b. James Sutcliffe Allan (1885) m. Joan Furse (1895).
1. Richard John Allan (1921).
2. Doris Jean Allan (1922).
c. Doris Napier Allan (1888).
d. Gordon Hope Allan (1891) m. (l) Madeline Eleanor
Montgomery Harraway (1890-1918).
128
The Taieri Allans
1. Noel Hope Allan (1916).
m. (2) Vondar Daphne Bensemann.
V. Joseph Allan (1858-1915) m. (l) Margaret Annie Maitland
(1863-1895).
a. Charles Dalrymple Allan (l894).m. (2) Emily Salmond
(1864).
b. Robin Sutcliffe Allan (1900) m. Muriel Constance
Gifford (1903).
c. Marjoriejean Allan (1902).
d. William Stanley Allan (1904).
e. Donald Young Allan (1907).
VI. James Allan (i860) m. Janet Scott Oliver (F IV., 1862).
a. James Reginald Allan (1889).
b. Agnes Muriel Hope Allan (1891) m. Albert Charles
Nicol (1889).
c. Eric Oliver Allan (1893-1915).
d. Lindsay Allan (1895) m. Georgina Kirk (1898).
1. Eric James Allan (1919).
2. Maxwell Allan (1922).
VII. William Allan (1862-1920) m. Constance Eliza Susannah
Maitland ((1865-1921).
a. Elsie Sutcliffe Allan (1891) m. George Henry Gibb
(1887).
b. Margaret Ruth Allan (1892).
c. Constance Keen Allan (1895) m. Basil Browning.
d. Alice Jean Woodhead Allan (1898) m. Edward Little.
e. William Douglas Dalrymple Allan (1900) m. Nancyjane
Allan (B XI., 1903).
1. Patricia Joan Allan (1928).
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
129
VIII. Alexander McKay Allan (1864-1912).
IX. Annjane Allan (1866) m. Edgar Huie Burn (i860).
X. Henrietta Allan (1867) m. George Edmund Woodhead (1864).
a. Mona Sutcliffe Woodhead (1899).
b. Gilbert George Woodhead (1900) m. Emily Gertrude
Drinnan (1899).
c. Constance Jean Woodhead (1901).
d. Eileen Agnes Woodhead (1903)
e. James Henry Allan Woodhead (1905).
f. Alec Dalrymple Woodhead (1908).
XI. Henry Allan (1869) m. Margaret Inglis (1871).
a. Margaret Joyce Allan (1901).
b. Nancyjane Allan (1903) m. William Douglas Dalrymple
Allan (B VII. e., 1900).
1. Patricia Joan Allan (1928).
c. Irene Constance Allan (1908).
XII. Adam Oliver Allan (1871-1873).
C. Isabella Allan (1826-1905) m. John Anderson (1819-1873).
I. James Anderson (1844-1906).
II. John Anderson (1846-1923) m. Mary Ann Chisholm (1850).
a. Jane Grigor Anderson (1877-1887).
b. Isabella Allan Anderson (1879) m. Alexander McDonald
(1877-1911).
1. Ian Sinclair McDonald (1902).
2. Flora McDonald (1903-1919).
c. Agnes Catherine Anderson (1881).
d. Mary Wright Anderson (1883).
e. William Chisholm Anderson (1885) m. Jane Christie
Graham (D II. F., 1889).
130
The Taieri Allans
f. John Alexander Anderson (1887).
g. David Anderson (1889).
h. Elizabeth Josephine Anderson (1891-1904).
i. Oliver James Anderson (1894).
III. Joseph Allan Anderson (1849) m. Margaret Charteris
Paterson (1871).
a. Maryjosephine Anderson (1900).
b. Isobel Marguerite Anderson (1904) m. Frank Hartham
Wilkinson (1904).
IV. Ann Anderson (1851-1929).
V. David Anderson (1853-1882).
VI. Agnes Allan Anderson (1855).
VII. Catherine Anderson (1858-1880).
VIII. William Brown Anderson (1859) m. Lucy Roseveare.
IX. Janet Anderson (1851-1905).
X. Jane Sutcliffe Allan Anderson (1863).
XI. Isabella Anderson (1867).
D. Joseph Allan (1828-1878) m. Henrietta Sutcliffe (1834-1907).
I. James Allan (1856) m. Isabella Purvis (1858).
a. Joseph Allan (1880-1880).
b. Henry Charles Allan (1880-1918) m. Margaret Dickie
(1881).
1. James Lindsay Allan (1905).
2. Elizabeth Agnes Allan (1908).
3. Doris Isabel Allan (1910).
4. Marjory Constance Allan (1918).
c. Margaret Henrietta Allan (1881) m. Thomas Cuddie
Brash (1874).
1. Pearl Allan Brash (1902) m. Francis Oswald
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
131
Bennett (1898).
i. Margaret Allan Bennet (1928).
2. James William Brash (1904).
3. Margaret Isabellajean Brash (1910).
4. Allan Anderson brash (1913).
5. Colin Henry Brash (1919-1919).
d. Patience Newcombe Allan (1883) m. Joseph Shaw
(1880).
1. Isabella Purvis Shaw (1907) m. William Tilden
Brabyn (1877).
2. John Russell Shaw (1911).
3. Patience Newcombe Shaw (1914).
4. James Allan Sutcliffe Shaw (1918).
5. Joseph Henry Shaw (1920).
e. Agnes Jane Allan (1885).
f. Ethelwyn Love Allan (1888) m. Thomas Thomson
Wards (1885).
1. Henry Charles Allan Wards (1913).
2. Muriel Josephine Wards (1917).
3. James Douglas Wards (1919).
4. Ian McLean Wards (1920).
g. Josephine Sutcliffe Allan (1890) m. William John
Caldwell (1884).
1. Isabella Allan Caldwell (1912).
2. Margaret Elizabeth Caldwell (1913).
3. John Erancis Caldwell (1917).
4. Agnes Jean Caldwell (1918).
5. William Henry Caldwell (1921).
132
The Taieri Allans
6. Bruce Allan Caldwell (1924).
h. Sarah Isabella Purvis Allan (1897) m. James McMaster
(1890).
1. James Gordon McMaster (1921).
2. Andrew Melville McMaster (1922).
3. Ruth Maxwell McMaster (1928).
II. Agnes Tomlinson Allan (1858) m. John Graham (1847-1911).
a. John Graham (1880) m. (l) Mary Catherine Golder
(1880-1912).
m. (2) Margaret Ruth Ritchie
(1893).
1. Margaret Jean Graham (1919).
2. John Graham (1922).
b. Henrietta Sutclife Graham (1882).
c. Joseph Allan Graham (1883-1884).
d. Isabella Graham (1884) m. Albert Edward Howden
(1888).
1. Albert Howden (1922).
2. Edward Albert Howden (1924).
3. Muriel Agnes Howden (1925-1925).
4. Malcolm Graham Howden (1928)
e. Margaret Retching Graham (1887) m. Arthur Gray
(1882).
1. Hugh William Grey (1920).
f. Jane Christie Graham (1889) m. William Chisholm
Anderson (C II. E., 1885).
g. James Allan Graham (1891) m. Vera Alice Howden
(1898-1928).
1. Lesley Beryl Graham (1924)
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
133
h. Agnes Marion Graham (1893) m. Harold William
Howden.
i. Hugh William Graham (1895-1918).
j. Richard Sutcliffe Graham (1898) m. Margaret Elliot
Stirling (1902).
k. Winifred Frances McKay Graham (1901) m. James
Walter Fox (1896).
1. James Graham Fox (1926).
III. Jane Allan (i860) m. David Fyall Christie (1844-1916).
a. Allan Edmund Christie (1889-1900).
b. Francis Findsay Webster Christie (1891-1897).
c. Fawrence Feslie Gordon Christie (1893) m. Helen Muir
Thomson (1897).
d. Harold Henry David Christie (1898-1900).
IV. John Allan (1862) m. Jane Blair Todd (1873).
a. Robert Todd Allan (1900).
b. Margaret Florence Allan (1901) m. Alexander Douglas.
c. Jane Paton Allan (1903).
d. Agnes Emma Allan (1906).
e. John Holmes Allan (1909).
f. Annie Sangster Allan (1911).
g. Andrew Todd Allan (1913).
V. Richard Sutcliffe Allan (1864) m. (l) Jean Findlay (1866-
1903).
a. Charles Findlay Allan (1896).
b. Joseph Henry Sutcliffe Allan (1900).
c. Edith Frances Allan (1901). m. (2) Janet Fleming
Stirling (1875).
d. Jennie Stirling Allan (1915).
134
The Taieri Allans
VI. Joseph Allan (1866) m. Mary Bruce (1870).
a. Jessie Anderson Allan (1894) m. David Alexander
Howden (1892).
1. Alice May Howden (1921).
2. Allan David Howden (1926).
b. Henrietta Sutcliffe Allan (1896) m. Andrew Thomson
(1880).
1. Lyall Bruce Thomson (1921).
2. Alexander Muir Thomson (1923).
c. Vera Irene Allan (1898) m. John Thomas Mitchell
(1897).
1. Rosemary Margaret Mitchell (1924).
2. John Graham Mitchell (1926).
d. Josephine Janet Allan (1900).
e. John Bruce Allan (1902-1902).
f. Mary Marguerita Allan (1904) m. John Douglas Smith
(1902).
g. Charlotte Jean Macauley Allan (1906) m. Alexander
Warden Hopkins (1903).
1. James Allan Hopkins (1927).
h. Graham Allan (1907).
i. Alison Lyall Allan (1910).
VII. William Allan (1869) m. Agnes Oliver Allan (E V., 1870).
a. Merial Josephine Allan (1899-1902).
b. Frances Marion Allan (1903) m. Charles S. Marshall.
c. Olive Agnes Allan (1904).
d. Jean Blackie Allan (1906).
e. Margaret Sutcliffe Allan (1914-1916).
George Allan (1871) m. Mary Ann Smail Stirling
VIII.
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
135
(1871).
a. Amelia Margarita Allan (1900) m. Thomas Edwin
Hudspith (1885).
b. Joseph Allan (1902).
c. William Stirling Allan (1904-1905).
IX. Janet McKay Allan (1873) m. Donald McColl.
a. Elsie Lammond McColl (1909).
b. Jean Allan McColl (1914).
X. Isabella Margaret Allan (1875-1877).
XI. Henrietta Emma Allan (1877).
E. John Allan (1831 -1907) m. Mary Jane Blackie (1843-1881).
I. John Allan (1862-1882).
II. Jane Blackie Allan (1864-1893).
III. William Allan (1866).
IV. James Allan (1868) m. Agnes Finnie Barr (1867).
a. Elizabeth Stuart Allan (1895).
b. Winifred Jean Allan (1897) m. David Hamilton
Cameron.
1. Colin Findlay Cameron (1926).
c. Robert John Barr Allan (1899).
d. William Cargill Allan (1901).
e. Josephine Allan (1903).
V. Agnes Oliver Allan (1870) m. William Allan (D VII., 1869).
a. Meriel Josephine Allan (1899-1902)
b. Frances Marion Allan (1903) m. Charles S. Marshall.
c. Olive Agnes Allan (1904).
d. Jean Blackie Allan (1906).
e. Margaret Sutcliffe Allan (1914-1916).
136
The Taieri Allans
VI. Jessie Johnston Allan (1872) m.John Miller (1859).
a. Minajean Miller (1901).
b. John Allan Miller (1903).
c. Alexander McKay Miller (1905).
d. Kenneth Miller (1908).
VII. Catherine Wilson Allan (1874-1875).
VIII. Janet Alexander Allan (1876) m.John Kirkland (1879-1929).
a. William Stuart Kirkland (1908).
IX. Josephine Mary Allan (1878) m.John Sutherland (1877).
X. Isabella Annie Allan (1879) m. Robert Hurst (1870).
a. Mary Agnes Hurst (1904).
b. John Allan Hurst (1905).
c. Josephine Sutherland Hurst (1906).
d. Margaret Isabel Hurst (1909).
e. Edith Marion Hurst (1910).
f. Robert Brook Hurst (1914).
g. Ruth Hurst (1916).
h. Winifred Jean Hurst (1917).
i. Constance Cruikshank Hurst (1919).
j. Frances Hurst (1924).
XI. Walter Blackie Allan (1880) m. Isabella Goodall.
F. Agnes Allan (1833-1922) m. Adam Oliver (1824-1911).
I. William Oliver (1856-1895).
II. Agnes Allan Oliver (1859) m. James Alexander Will (1859-
1904).
a. George Wishart Will (1885) m. Josephine Muirhead
(1891).
b. William Melville Oliver Will (1889) m. Hinepara
Index of Descendants of John and Agnes Allan
137
Johnson (1898).
1. Graham Melville Will (1927).
c. James Leslie Allan Will (1894) m. Alma Helen Cox.
III. John Allan Oliver (i860) m. Adelaide Philipps (1869).
IV. Janet Scott Oliver (1862) m. James Allan (B VI., I860).
a. James Reginald Allan (1889).
b. Agnes Muriel Hope Allan (1891) m. Albert Charles
Nicol (1889).
c. Eric Oliver Allan (1893-1915).
d. Lindsay Allan (1895) m. Georgina Kirk (1898).
1. Eric James Allan (1919).
2. Maxwell Allan (1922).
V. Isabella Oliver (1864) m. Arthur Johnson (1872).
a. Frederick Arthur Johnson (1908).
VI. Beatrice Oliver (1866) m. Arthur Petrie Gibson (1866).
a. Robert Stanley Gibson (1892) m. Ethel May McNab.
b. Alice Oliver Gibson (1895).
c. Adam Oliver Gibson (1899) m. Jessie McFadyen.
d. Margaret Petrie Gibson (1904).
e. Arthur Petrie Gibson (1907).
VII. Adam Oliver (1869) m. Florence Mabel Matthews (1882).
a. Allan Oliver (1913)
b. Eric Rupert Oliver (1914).
c. Mabel Tui Oliver (1916).
d. Joan Isobel Oliver (1919).
e. John Scott Oliver (1922).
James Oliver (1870-1895).
VIII.
138
The Taieri Allans
G. William Brown Allan (1837-1866) m. Helen Webster Speid (1840-
1919).
I. John Alexander Allan (1861-1904?) m. Nellie Brown.
II. William Brown Allan (1863-1864).
III. William Allan (1864-1921) m. Sophia Garland Shury (1867).
a. Helen Grace Allan (1891-1910).
IV. Agnes Allan (1866-1922) m. Hugh Hutchinson Inglis (1866).
a. Hunter Macgregor Inglis (1895).
b. Kathleen Webster Inglis (1897).
c. Hugh Patrick Inglis (1907).
