William Flower Blatchford (pictured on the right)arrived in Canterbury on the 1st March 1851 aboard the ‘Isabella Hercus’, the Canterbury Association’s 6th emigrant ship. From all accounts and from where he put down his roots, he seemed very fond of Lyttelton Harbour. The bay of Te Rapu – named after a stream that flows through …
It always stops you in your tracks when you come across a grave of a child. It’s hard to comprehend a young life finished and when by accident, it’s even worse. William Dixon Jnr was only 8 years and 7 months when he accidentally drowned in the family home on the 23rd October 1869. He …
As the ‘Charlotte Jane’ sailed into Lyttelton Harbour that fine morning of the 16th December 1850, William and Jane McCormack were ready to leave their steerage voyage behind them and make a go at a new life in a new land. There is very little about the pair, I don’t know if they were married …
‘Excessive drinking—a vice which marred the pioneering community from the outset—growing lawlessness and larrikinism among the younger generation and widespread squalor and ignorance among the masses, aggravated by the arrival of poor immigrant types, called for urgent corrective action.’ – A Contest of Spirits – The Salvation Army. Had to smile to myself after the …
The naming of Taylor’s Mistake has and will continue to baffle Cantab’s historians. Unbelievably, three persons by the name Taylor passed through Vincent’s Bay (as it was called during the early 1850’s) in the small space of 9 years. The name of Vincent’s Bay came from Captain John Vincent who wrecked his schooner there sometime …
“Thus the work of the Canterbury Association will be at a end. And whatever our own feelings may be, who have struggled hard and, some at all events, suffered much, in planting towns and villages in this desert…yet, will there come after us, inhabiting a cultivated, rich and populous district, the seat of manufactures, the …
Henry John Tancred had a career that would make anyone’s head spin!!! Born in the Isle of Wight in 1814, Henry became an officer in the Austrian Army. In 1848, he had a nasty fall from his horse which left him mildly handicapped. He took his sick leave in England and it was there that …
James Edward Fitzgerald (1818 – 1896) Died of old age Place of Death: Wellington Was Canterbury’s first Superintendent, the first to step ashore from the Charlotte Jane, founded the Lyttelton Times and The Press, Lincoln and Springston was his farmland which was known as The Springs. Buried at Bolten Street Cemetery, Wellington. The …
When our First Four Ships arrived in Lyttelton late 1850, the area that was to become known as Shirley attracted the settlers immediately. It was land rich with streams and sand dunes. In fact, one of the first big farms established there was named Sand Dune Station. By 1863, after most of the marsh had …
