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| John Cornwall McGaveston Born at Rathgar, Co. Dublin, Ireland, 1 January 1844 Died at Ngatimoti, Tasman, New Zealand, 13 May 1925 |
On 20 September 1850 the ship "Mariner" arrived in Nelson, having sailed to New Zealand from London on 4 April 1850 with 172 passengers on board. Among them was Irish widow Margaret McGaveston nee Page with her two young sons, John Cornwall, aged 7, and 5 year old Charles Wynn. It was not the first sea voyage for the two little boys, who had accompanied their mother in 1848 when she sailed to India to sort out her late husband John Wynn McGaveston's affairs there - he had been a medical officer with the Hon. East India Company serving with the 2nd Bengal Artillery in India, but had died at Rathgar in 1846, not long after his retirement. Having qualified as a surgeon in Ireland in 1823 he had joined the army at Rangoon by the time war with Burma broke out in 1824.
Margaret McGaveston had travelled on the "Mariner" under the protection of the Rev. Robert John Lloyd from New Ross, Co. Wexford. Although posing as a married couple, they did not in fact get married until soon after their arrival in Nelson - their marriage taking place in Wakefield at the Wakefield Church on 19 November 1850. Both her own family and her McGaveston in-laws had had their doubts about the Rev. Lloyd, but Margaret McGaveston could not be dissuaded from the relationship and cut off any communication with them. Unfortunately, they were right to be concerned. It soon became clear that the Rev. Lloyd had found Margaret's inheritance from her first husband to be her most attractive feature and it appears that her life with him became an increasingly unhappy one.
The couple started farming in Riwaka, and John andhis brother Charles soon acquired a half-brother, Bartholomew, born at Riwaka on 19 June 1851. Known as Barty, he inherited "Sandy Cove" after his father's death in 1875, and was the oldest of the 3 surviving children born to the Rev. Lloyd and the former Margaret McGaveston. In January 1877 John McGaveston would go to the Motueka wharf with Barty to greet another Irish family who had just arrived - William & Ann Brereton, their children, and Mrs Brereton's sisters Letitia and Lizzie Bridge. They were taken to Barty Lloyd's Pangatotara home, where they were very nearly drowned during the ferocious storm which hit the Motueka Valley between the 6th and 7th of February, 1877, resulting in a benchmark inundation which became known locally as the "Old Man Flood". Another of Ann Brereton's sisters, Matilda (Tilly) Whelan nee Bridge, later came out from Ireland with her children to join them at Ngatimoti after being widowed in 1889. The Rev. Robert Lloyd was Mrs Brereton's maternal uncle, and in 1880 his son Barty Lloyd married his cousin Letitia Bridge. Cyprian Brereton would later write about the Breretons, Lloyds, Whelans and McGavestons in his book "No Roll of Drums", the stories of Ngatimoti's pioneers.
John's younger brother Charles was killed in 1855 after being gored by a bull, and his mother died at Riwaka in 1859, leaving John the only remaining member of the small family which had emigrated to New Zealand. He had been witness to this mother's mistreatment and did not get on with either his step-father or half-brother, Barty, so this was a lonely and difficult time for him, An unconfirmed family story has it that after his mother's death he was so unhappy that he ran away to sea for a time.
It's likely that the turning point for John McGaveston came when he met Ngatimoti settler John Park Salisbury, who around the same time that John was building a house at Pangatotara was also building a home in the same area for his wife, Clara Deck. Clara was a daughter of Plymouth Brethren evangelist James George Deck, who had settled on a farm in the Waiwhero Valley between Lower Moutere and Ngatimoti (still in existence and now known as. The Lodge at Paratiho Farms) James Deck had soon became an influential force in the area and converted a number of settlers to the Brethren cause, including John Salisbury. It's very likely that it was through a connection with John Salisbury that John McGaveston also joined the Plymouth Brethren, a move which brought new purpose to his life.
Over the years John married twice and with 18 children to his credit, became patriarch of his own McGaveston clan. John was married firstly to Mary Ann White, daughter of Riwaka settlers David White and his wife Sarah (nee Jenkins), originally from Alton, Hampshire, in England, by the Registrar at Moueka on 23 December, 1862. He may well have met Mary Ann through her brothers, George and David White Jnr, with whom he is known to have served in the No 5 Company of the Motueka Militia in 1860, Mary Ann's older sister, Elizabeth White, had married in 1862 to sawyer Joseph Dale Knowles, whose Pangatotara property (still owned by his descendants today) adjoined "Sandy Cove". Mary Ann had 9 children but on 8 September 1876 she died giving birth to a 10th baby, which didn't survive. She was buried at the nearby Pangatotara Cemetery, which was washed away the following year by the "Old Man Flood".
On 3 October 1877 John married secondly at Wakefield to Penelope Dean Wallis, whom he possibly met through his connection to the Daniell brothers who at the time appear to have also been members of the Plymouth Brethren. Penelope was singularly well qualified to take on a large family of step-children, added to over time by her own brood of eight. As a daughter of Richard Wallis and Mary Ann Lake Wallis, who ran orphanages at both "The Gables" on Thorp Street in Motueka and then at "Hulmers" on Chamberlain Street, Lower Moutere, Penelope had grown up looking after many younger children.
"Wallingford House", Rathgar, Co Dublin",John Cornwall McGaveston's birthplace
John Cornwall McGaveston was born in Ireland at "Wallingford House, Rathgar, County Dublin, Ireland, on 1 January 1844, being the first child of Dr John Wynn McGaveston and his wife Margaret nee Page. Dr McGaveston was a surgeon in the service of the Honourable East India Company's military branch, attached to various regiments in India, Afghanistan and Burma (now Myanmar), but he retired a year after his marriage in 1842 and returned to live permanently at his home in Ireland. Although established in Ireland by the 18th century, the McGaveston surname is thought to have its roots in Gascony, and is linked by family legend to Piers de Gaveston, an English nobleman of Gascon origin who came to a sticky end at the hands of jealous rivals after becoming a favourite of King Edward II of England. Gaveston did spend time between 1308-1309 in Ireland after being appointed the King's Lieutenant in that country and was rumoured to have had an illegitimate son from whom the present McGaveston line descended. Although this connection seems likely, it has not as yet been definitively proven. John's second name was a nod to Gaveston's title, the 1st Duke of Cornwall, and "Piers" is another name which often appeared in the McGaveston line.
Before his marriage, Dr McGaveston was already living at "Wallingford House" a rented home situated on Rathgar Road in Rathgar, then a small village on the outskirts of Dublin, but now a suburb of Dublin City. He shared it with his brother Nicholas McGaveston and Nicholas' wife Catherine, a good arrangement as until 1842 he was often away in India. After their wedding in 1842, Dr McGaveston's bride Margaret joined the household, and this is where their two sons were born. Dr John Wynn McGaveston retired from service with the Indian Army at the time of his marriage and died at his Rathgar home in 1846.
"Rathgar" No 1, Pokororo, West Bank, Motueka Valley (later known as "Riversdale")
John Edward Salisbury, son of John Salisbury and Clara nee Deck,
neighbour and good friend of the McGaveston family, showing
his trademark intials, J.E.S.
After his marriage to his first wife, Mary Ann nee White, John McGaveston moved with her and their first child, Henry, to Pangatotara where he had built a house on a section from the "Sandy Cove" block, first leased, then bought from his step-father, however he had moved away well before the catastrophic "Old Man Flood" in February 1877 which devastated many Pangatotara farms. When he came of age in 1865, John inherited a substantial sum of money, including his deceased brother's portion, which had been willed to his two sons by their father. This came from investments made by Dr McGaveston in Bengal Government Securities in India, and had fortunately been held safely in trust for him by his uncle Nicholas McGaveston in Dublin. This windfall enabled John McGaveston to buy several sections around the Big Pokororo River on the west bank of the Motueka River. These formed the homestead block with which his family would be associated for many years. He developed a substantial mixed farm there carrying sheep and cattle as well as crops, and when pastoral leases on the Mount Arthur Tableland were made available in the 1870s, took up a run in the Cobb Valley. The Breretons were farming neighbours and recalled the McGavestons with their large blended family as being "wonderfully hospitable".
Lt-rt: John McGaveston, Anne, Penelope and Ralph (seated), Theo, Dora & Arthur
In memory, his father's Irish home was John McGaveston's happy place, a reminder of his early years growing up within a loving family circle long since lost, and so he named his Pokororo farm '"Rathgar" after the place where he was born. This property, along with its original homestead, was in more recent times owned by Yorkshireman Dave Gorrill, followed by his son Martin. John McGaveston had built this two-storeyed home on the river flats in 1878, but the threat posed by ongoing floods led him to successfully move the house up onto the terrace in 1891.This was a major mission, as the piles had to be removed and the building shifted in one piece, using logs beneath as rollers and a team of horses. The timing was good - in 1894 another flood washed right over the flats where the house had previously stood. Until the Peninsula Bridge was opened in 1913, getting across the Motueka River involved using a canoe or the aerial cage set up by John McGaveston which crossed almost opposite the site of the Whelan home on the east bank. When first built, this aerial cage gave access across the river to settlers on the West Bank of the Motueka River and diggers from the Tableland would use it to reach Alf Daniell's store on the opposite side of the river when they needed supplies.
The McGavestons' aerial cage, used to cross the Motueka River.
Arthur McGaveston in front, with his father John McGaveston behind.
Whelan home in the background is today sited at 1445 Motueka Valley Highway.
John McGaveston had a close connection with the storekeeping Daniell brothers, and became related by marriage - Alfred Daniell and his brother George both married sisters of McGaveston's second wife, Penelope Wallis. The Daniell brothers had early on become converts of charismatic Plymouth Brethren preacher James George Deck, then living at what is now the Paritiho Lodge Farm on Waiwhero Road between Lower Moutere and Ngatimoti, although both appear to have later ended up in the Anglican fold. John McGaveston, whose parents and step-father would have been members of the Church of Ireland, also joined the Plymouth Brethren, as did his family. He was very likely influenced to make this move by early Ngatimoti settler, John Park Salisbury, whom he may well have met while building his home at Pangatotara in 1862. John Salisbury, was also building a pit-sawn timber house which he called "Silverdale" at Pangatotara that same year, so to have a place suitable to bring his new bride, Clara, a daughter of James George Deck. Salisbury, who now became Deck's son-in-law, became a life-long and ardent evangelist for the Brethren cause, travelling widely around the country in his mission to bring more people into the Brethren fold. Ngatimoti's earliest European residents tended to have been either members of the Plymouth Brethren or the Church of England, though religious preferences don't appear in those earlier times to have been a cause for conflict.
It's quite likely that when John Park Salisbury and his family decided in 1872 to move to a farm at Pokororo, that they chose to take up land near congenial acquaintances like the Breretons and McGavestons. John Park's son John Edward Salisbury became a particularly good friend and often visited the McGaveston home. A keen photographer, he took several photos of the McGaveston family and their home, but unfortunately very few have survived.
"Rathgar" No 2, Greenhill Road, East Bank, Ngatimoti.
ca 1908-9
Lt-rt: Seated, Penelope McGaveston (nee Wallis), centre back her son Dean McGaveston.
Penelope's mother Mary Ann Wallis seated, holding one of Dean's children,
possibly Trixie McGaveston, born in 1908.
Acknowledgements
Sources
As time passed John McGaveston decided to retire and let his sons take care of the farm. Around the turn of the twentieth century a large local run known as the Johansen Estate was broken up and lots in the Greenhill area were auctioned off in 1906. Cyprian Brereton's aunt Matilda Whelan and her son William bought two of these blocks between them and sold a 5-acre piece to John McGaveston for a retirement home. He had a large house built there, and by 1908 had moved in with his wife Penelope, his 3 youngest daughters - Dora, Anna & Evelyn - and son Ralph, who daily crossed the river with a horse-drawn cart to work the lower part of the Pokororo farm on the West Bank of the Motueka River. Other members of the family also settled nearby and for some years Greenhill Road was McGaveston Central. Son Dean Wallis McGaveston, a well-known local drover, had a block at Greenhill called "Toko Ma" (White Rock), and an unmarried daughter from his first marriage, Amelia McGaveston (known as Millie), moved into a home on Greenhill Road right opposite the new McGaveston retirement homestead, where she raised her nephew Francis ((Frank) Piesse, the son of her sister Mary, who had died in 1912 after giving birth to him. John McGaveston's son Nicholas Arthur, who in 1909 married Ella Burrell, a daughter of early Orinoco settlers Edward Fearon and Emily (nee Bowden) Burrell, took over the old "Rathgar" homestead block at Pokororo. By mutual agreement, its name, "Rathgar", was transferred to the elder McGavestons' new home on Greenhill Road and Arthur renamed the Pokororo farm "Riversdale".
"Rathgar House", Ngatimoti School, Greenhill Road, Ngatimoti.
John McGaveston died in 1925 and his widow Penelope in 1932. They now lie next to each other at the old Waiwhero Cemetery next to the Paratiho Lodge Farm homestead block. Son Dean moved to Lower Moutere. Arthur died in 1937 and his oldest son, Keith, took over the "Riversdale" farm in turn. John and Penelope McGaveston's daughters Dora and Anna stayed on with their brother Ralph at the Greenhill "Rathgar" home. Evelyn had married in 1927 and Anna made a late marriage in 1947. Neither Dora nor her brother Ralph ever married, and were the last McGaveston family members to live at the Greenhill "Rathgar". About 1950 they moved together to a home in Richmond and "Rathgar" was put on the market.
The Ngatimoti school (the second one built) was at that time on Waiwhero Road near the current Memorial Hall on a site bought from the Daniell family, who had taken up land there and set up a new store after the Greenhill block was sold. The school had grown but couldn't expand because the site was too small. The easily accessible 5 acre "Rathgar", a relatively centrally located property at Greenhill, seemed like an ideal place to build a new school. The Nelson Education Board was at first reluctant but eventually persuaded that this was a good idea and around 1952 "Rathgar" was acquired for that purpose. The shift from the old school down the road took a while to complete, in fact the official opening did not take place till 1954. Some classes continued at the old school while others were held on the Greenhill site in the old "Rathgar" home, in a pre-fab building and also in a classroom block relocated from the other school until purpose-built schoolrooms were finished.
The old house eventually had to go to make space for classrooms, and a demolition squad of volunteers got together to do the job. It occurred to one of the parents involved that some rooms could easily be saved and made into a school hall. Others agreed and they set to work to make the conversion. This means that, unusually, Ngatimoti's school hall belongs to the school community rather than the Ministry of Education. Over the years it has often served as an extra classroom, been used by the cricket club, for Friday night folk dances, a weekly pre-schoolers' Playgroup, and hired out for events like birthday parties. A number of working bees have been held by members of the community over the years to help maintain and improve the hall. In 2018 the school's Board of Trustees decided to give the hall a major overhaul. The whole building was earthquake strengthened, insulated, re-piled, and a new deck and verandah were built. The Student Council felt tthat their new-look hall deserved a name of its own, and as a consequence when it was officially reopened in June 2019, it was formally dubbed "Rathgar House" in recognition of its connection with the McGaveston family.
The Ngatimoti school (the second one built) was at that time on Waiwhero Road near the current Memorial Hall on a site bought from the Daniell family, who had taken up land there and set up a new store after the Greenhill block was sold. The school had grown but couldn't expand because the site was too small. The easily accessible 5 acre "Rathgar", a relatively centrally located property at Greenhill, seemed like an ideal place to build a new school. The Nelson Education Board was at first reluctant but eventually persuaded that this was a good idea and around 1952 "Rathgar" was acquired for that purpose. The shift from the old school down the road took a while to complete, in fact the official opening did not take place till 1954. Some classes continued at the old school while others were held on the Greenhill site in the old "Rathgar" home, in a pre-fab building and also in a classroom block relocated from the other school until purpose-built schoolrooms were finished.
The old house eventually had to go to make space for classrooms, and a demolition squad of volunteers got together to do the job. It occurred to one of the parents involved that some rooms could easily be saved and made into a school hall. Others agreed and they set to work to make the conversion. This means that, unusually, Ngatimoti's school hall belongs to the school community rather than the Ministry of Education. Over the years it has often served as an extra classroom, been used by the cricket club, for Friday night folk dances, a weekly pre-schoolers' Playgroup, and hired out for events like birthday parties. A number of working bees have been held by members of the community over the years to help maintain and improve the hall. In 2018 the school's Board of Trustees decided to give the hall a major overhaul. The whole building was earthquake strengthened, insulated, re-piled, and a new deck and verandah were built. The Student Council felt tthat their new-look hall deserved a name of its own, and as a consequence when it was officially reopened in June 2019, it was formally dubbed "Rathgar House" in recognition of its connection with the McGaveston family.
Acknowledgements
For her extensive work, McGaveston family researcher Mrs Ruth Pahl, grand-daughter of Nicholas Arthur McGaveston & his wife Ella nee Burrell.
Mr Ed Stevens, Ngatimoti historian, always happy and willing to share his knowledge.
Sources
Brereton, Cyprian Bridge, No Roll of Drums. Pub 1947 by AH & AW Reed, Wellington.
An informal and engaging history of the settlement of Ngatimoti and its early European settlers.
Day, Cameron, writing as "Cerebuscoins", The McGaveston Family of Ireland: Family History Research.
This extensive blog post contains a goldmine of information and includes many interesting photographs.
Daniell Brothers, Alfred & George, Storekeepers at Ngatimoti and Brightwater.
Rustlings in the Wind blog
