Feet Up; Time to Think

Twenty minutes walk away from home in the Motueka Cemetery is the grave of my 3x great grandfather, Ben Lovell. As I walk along Thorp Street, up Old Wharf Road and down Motueka Quay, I often wonder what Ben would think of the town he helped build. A lot has changed since his arrival here in 1842, over 175 years ago. The "bones" of Motueka are still the same. The major roads across the plain remain laid out in the grid pattern from the 1842 survey by Samuel Stephens. The roads themselves would have been paid for, then built by labourers like Ben and his sons, Ben and Alfred. His son, Thomas, born here in 1845, definitely helped as he is recorded as a contractor for the Motueka Roads Board in the 1870s. Most of the native forest, sadly, is gone and Ben would have been part of that. As a sawyer, he would have cut down those rimu, matai and totara for export, firewood, fencing and building materials. The fertile land, where Maori had grown tons of potatoes in clearings under th...

A couple of weeks ago, the top part of the South Island of New Zealand was inundated by Ex-Tropical Cyclone Gita. The Takaka Hill Road was washed out leaving Golden Bay isolated from the rest of New Zealand. The only way out was by air or by sea for some days, and food and fuel had to be barged in. To my 4x great aunt, Ann Lovell, the sister-in-law of Hester, this situation would have been normal. As one of the first European women in Golden Bay, Ann was no stranger to isolation or adversity. Ann arrived at Nelson, New Zealand on the Lord Auckland in February 1842. The five month voyage from the West India Docks had taken a toll on the Lovell family. Their younger daughter, Mercy, had tragically died. Ann was bitter as Captain Jardine had refused to supply potatoes for her sick child who craved them. She refused to donate to the silver snuff box presented by other grateful passengers to thank the captain for their safe arrival. Life did not get any easier once dry land was reache...

This morning I walked through the living room of my 3x great grandmother, Hester. Well, if I'm honest, it may not have been her living room, it may just have been her garden. Around me the stall holders of the Motueka Sunday Market, held on Deck's Reserve, were selling everything from blueberries to second hand hoes. It wasn't until I found Hester's will and newspaper advertisements related to her estate, that I realised the connection. Hester passed away in Motueka in 1898 aged 85 and after her death, the property she and her husband Ben had cleared of forest and where they had run a store, was auctioned. It was bought by Dr. Deck, one of the witnesses to her will "signed" with a very shaky cross the previous year. In the 1950s, these three acres were gifted by Dr. Deck's daughters to the people of Motueka and are now the Deck's Reserve. Half of the area is a carpark during the week but a market on Sundays, and half is parkland where the local histo...

Sometimes you see a name and it creates a picture of the life that person might have had. I always thought that my 3x great aunt Angelina Bliss would have had a wonderful life. However, when I started looking, frankly, I was shocked by uncovering things that hint at a life that belies her name. Angelina Lovell, the youngest surviving child of Benjamin and Hester, was born in 1852 in Motueka, New Zealand, probably in the middle of the town where I now live. Just behind her likely birthplace is Wilkinson Street. I assumed Angelina had married Mr. Bliss, he had passed away and she had married Mr. Wilkinson, who may or may not have been the local dignitary after whom the street was named. Angelina's parents had arrived as assisted immigrants and first settlers to Nelson in 1842 and within a few months had moved to what is now Golden Bay. They quickly moved back to Motueka where there were more Europeans because Hester did not feel safe and, unlike her sister in law Ann, struggled t...