When and how did our ancestors arrive?
Thomas Brown Craig came with his wife, Elizabeth Stokell, whom he’d married the previous October, in London. Their daughter was born on the ship during their voyage from London to Lyttelton.
Proving that I had found the correct Craig couple was interesting.
There was no available passenger list, so I had to rely on the newspaper listings as they were published in each place the ship was expected or sailed on from on the next leg of its journey up the country.
I ordered the birth certificate for Emma Kate Craig, to see what other details it might provide.
She was born in July, so definitely before the Lord Worsley arrived in New Zealand. The birth was registered in Otago, and not until the 6th of October, weeks after a birth should have been registered by law and in line with the arrival date of the Lord Worsley at Port Chalmers.
The papers reported two births aboard during the passage.
Through a long process of making lists and doing look-ups in the Birth Deaths and Marriages index, I discovered the identity of the other birth on board:
The other child was born to Captain Robert Johnson and his wife, Ellen!
I ordered Marian Johnson’s birth registration as well and was able, at last, to see what the little mark in the last column of the Craig registration meant: ditto. They were both “Born at sea on board the S.S. Lord Worsley”
It took me about four years to figure that out. I later found the obituary of Robert Johnson, who became a shipping official in New Zealand and died many years later, which included the detail of his first daughter’s birth on board the Lord Worsley in the first week of the voyage. Ellen Johnson must have been a brave woman to go to sea so in late in her pregnancy!
She was probably a great comfort to Elizabeth Craig as Elizabeth’s pregnancy progressed.
Frances Eliza Dover
I discovered Frances Eliza when I looked up our great Grandmother Margaret Ellen’s birth. She was Thomas Brown Craig’s second wife, after the death, during childbirth, of his first wife, Elizabeth Stokell.
Frances Eliza’s first married surname was Padwick, and she came as Matron to the single women on board the Victory, arriving in January 1869.
Frances Eliza was a widow, her husband had died a few years beforehand and I think she may have remained in England to care for her step-daughter, until she was old enough to take care of herself. I have not discovered why Frances came here but she is another of the independent young women of our family who chose to do so.
The Jorgensen Family
Jens and Henriette Jorgensen came with their four surviving sons from Denmark to Wellington, on the Halcione, in 1872. Sons Albert and Victor were born in Wellington after they arrived.
Frederick & Friederika Renner
Karl Renner concluded that the Renners had sailed from London to Wellington, arriving on 5 November 1877 but I think it most likely they arrived in Port Chalmers on the Pareora at the end of October and found passage north from there.
The Pareora was photographed at the Port Chalmers wharf in 1877, so those men on board are the sailors who brought our Renner forebears to Aotearoa.
Frederick Renner acquired a Masters certificate (held by ArchivesNZ) on the 5th of November, so we know he was in Wellington by then and the ship Karl suggested would not quite have brought him to land in time.
Friederika was pregnant at the time, giving birth to their first child, our great grandfather, the following February, in Wellington.
Kate Dickson
Kate arrived at Port Chalmers on the Victory in August 1863. The ship was quarantined but reports say the cabin passengers remained on board, while the steerage passengers were accommodated in tents on Quarantine Island, Kamau Taurua, in Otago harbour.
Kate was able to afford the price of a cabin because she’d been left money by the woman she said had been involved in her care as a child, and with whom she was living as a young adult in Glasgow.
She either travelled with Eleanor Robertson or became her friend during the voyage and when Kate married in March 1864, Eleanor was a witness.
The Kirk Family
The Kirk family from Dunfermline in Fife, Scotland, went first to Victoria in Australia in 1858. It is probable that Robert Kirk went first, to set things up for the family and his wife, Christian (later Christina) and their surviving nine children came a few months later on the Ellen Stuart.
They spent at least two years in Sandhurst/Bendigo, Robert the owner of the Black Forest Hotel, on the road to the gold fields. The hotel burnt down in 1861, so they must have moved on by then. Daughter Alison had died in tragic circumstances in 1860 and they may have moved somewhere else to escape public scrutiny.
I have not found a record of them coming from Victoria to New Zealand but David married Kate in March 1864 and his death certificate stated he’d been in the country since approximately 1863.
Jill Swanne
Jill arrived in Auckland on 23 August 1962, aboard the Wonosobo.
Jill was one of nine passengers on the freighter, which took five and a half weeks to travel from Rotterdam to Auckland.
The Wonosobo in Otago Harbour, 1963
Jill disembarked in Auckland and was met by Kay, a teacher at Samuel Marsden College, who was getting married two days later and had been asked by Miss Ogle, the headmistress in Wellington, to collect Jill and have her as a guest at the wedding before Jill continued to Wellington. Kay and Hallam Cresswell figured in our lives as young children and now live in a retirement village in Raumati.
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