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 …