I have been quiet on here for some time, as life events and health challenges have got in the way, but I have been quietly working on the family history front too.
I have just completed writing my second family and local history book, Work of Heart. As I write, the book is in the process of being set-up and shortly I will have the final quotes and then the book will be in print and ready for distribution! This project has taken many years, and has been a ‘work of heart’ for myself to see it finally completed.
Meet Jane Norgate, later Preshaw (1839-1926); my 3 x great grandmother:
Jane Preshaw(née Norgate) 1839 – 1926
For those of you who have followed my blog for some time, Jane was the grandmother of Henry David Evans (1886-1922) of Reefton, who married Eva Lillian Lawn (1887-1976) of Blacks Point in 1907.
Eva Evans (née Lawn) and Henry David (‘Harry’) Evans with their three eldest children, Edith, Jennifer and Henry jnr.
Jane was born in a tiny village in Norfolk, went to Norwich as a child and on to London. She travelled to Australia (alone) while still in her teens, and several years later arrived on the West Coast of New Zealand with her young daughter Alice.
But Jane, a stalwart of the Reefton community as the first Matron of the Reefton Hospital, had some secrets that she never revealed during her life, just as the men in her life had past lives that were not all that they seemed, and which are now uncovered and told in my story spanning several generations and following connected family lines.
Work of Heart
A Life of courage, determination and compassion
Jane Preshaw née Norgate 1839-1926
Her family, the men in her life and her
legacy as matron for the first thirty years at Reefton Hospital.
This book builds on my earlier (much smaller) 2013 booklet called Jane Norgate: a life revealed. Since then I have made a lot of discoveries, corrected errors and completed further research, helped by many connections we have made, including my DNA cousins. I couldn’t have done this without your support!
Work of Heartfollows the true story of Jane Preshaw as the central unifying character and brings together her relationships with other key individuals:
The life of Jane’s father Henry Norgate of Norfolk and his first family born in Norfolk and his second family born in London.
Jane’s years in Melbourne, her marriages and relationships there and the birth of her daughter Alice Smith.
The life of Alice’s father Henry Smith and the Smith family from Derbyshire to the Hunter Valley NSW and then his final years in Sydney, including the lives of his illegitimate daughters born in the UK.
Jane and Alice’s arrival in New Zealand and coming to Reefton, along with David Preshaw‘s previous life and family,
How Jane and David Preshaw together ran the Reefton Hospital from its beginnings, its organisation and development
Other people involved in Reefton Hospital either as nurses and doctors and how the town of Reefton grew at the same time.
Henry Evans, his real name and life in Brighton, Sussex, his parents and sisters and Henry’s time in New Zealand before meeting Alice Smith.
Following Alice and Henry Evans marriage in 1877, Henry Evans working life prospecting, gold mining and timber, as well as their farm at Burkes Creek and raising a family.
The Evans children through into the 20th century just prior to WWII, including memories of grandchildren.
Finally the second part of the book gives some genealogies of the Norgate, Smith, Hole and Preshaw families and some unexpected relatives: the Shardlow, Stubbins and Secretan families.
Like my 2016 book To Live a Long and Prosperous Life, on the life of Dinah Hart and the Lawn family, I have woven these stories with the social and historical contexts of the times and illustrated them with maps, diagrams and lots of photographs.
At this point Work of Heart is looking like it will be close to 400 pages once images and the index are added and will be a single print run. As with my previous book there will also be copies in libraries, so will be available to future researchers; do let me know if you have a local library you think would be interested in a copy.
For expressions of interest please use the form found here: Contact
Make sure that you subscribe to my blog [see end of the post] in order to hear first about new posts and updates on Work of Heart or follow the page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/inkandstonewriting
Over the coming weeks I will be adding family trees and other information about the families covered in this new book.
As a follow-on from my last post, where I wrote about my investigation into my own home, I would like you to consider what you might leave behind.
I don’t mean the precious objects you bequeath to family: perhaps artworks, jewellery or photographs but the everyday objects you misplace and forget; the marks and symbols that you leave in your house and property that give clues to who and what you are.
I was inspired to create this post by the random discovery we had yesterday while gardening; as I weeded and hoed, my husband was shoveling nicely matured compost from the bin to be layered under pea straw. I looked up when he called – had I lost an egg-cup? There, discarded into the compost was a stainless steel egg-cup, accidentally scooped up and scraped into the compost bin with the egg-shells after a lunch last year. We had a laugh – I hadn’t missed it at all. And isn’t that often the case when you lose something – trying to remember where you last had it? Sometimes its years later and you are thinking I used to have such-and-such – whatever happened to that?
As adults with things occupying our minds and distractions that we lose stuff: I have lost more earrings than I care to remember, and even precious rings, but that is another story. Particularly as children we leave things behind and lose things we shouldn’t – (a new jersey left down at the swings, our homework book left at school – who hasn’t?). Some time ago my mother reminisced back to her early childhood and how she had lost some favourite dollies:
Noeline’s lost dolls
Down [the] track which went past the back of the house – it went down beside the fence-line (which was barberries and further along was covered with blackberries) and on the other side of the track were the broom bushes that used to come up. I used to love it to go and sit in under there when the sun was hot and I would play there. As I got a bit older I sort of would play round further and further. Oh it was lovely – there were bits of moss and lichen and it smelled all nice and sort of that mossy sort of a smell that you get. There was little ferns growing here and there. The broom must have been growing there uncut for years because some of it was quite tall – you could just walk in (or crawl in ) around under it.
I found a stump – a stump of a tree that had been cut down and it was in sort of a grassy bit and it had all the little lichen , the one that we used to call the ‘match-stick lichen’ because the fruiting bodies came up like a little wax match-head. There was an opening in one side (probably just where it had rotted a bit) and I would put my little bits and pieces that I was playing with there. I used to take my dolls (I had all sorts of little dolls that various members [of family] had given me) I’d go down there and play, then Mum would call out that dinner was ready and I would have to gather up my stuff and come back.
When I had just got over whooping cough and one thing and another Dad went off to Christchurch and he came home and he brought me a beautiful black rabbit and he brought me a pair of Mabel Lucie Atwell dollies. He said they were ‘dollies’ and I always called them ‘The Dollies’. One was red, and one was blue – they were celluloid dolls. They had articulated arms and legs and they were like baby dolls with these round pink Mabel Lucy Atwell faces and in little hooded suits, like simulated knitted suits.
I loved those two little dolls! They were only about that big – I suppose about 10 inches at the most – and I could hold them so nicely and I used to play with them down there [at the stump]. They went missing – I missed them when we went to Kumara: I didn’t have the dolls. I wondered, I always wondered what had happened to them. It wasn’t until years later, I dreamt about playing down by the stump with these dolls and I can recall that I tucked them inside there and I must have left them there. Being a kid, you forget things for a time and go and play with other things and never sort of thought of them again.
NR McCaughan 2010
artefact noun an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest.
So where do these things turn up? It is quite common to find old newspapers in drawers or cupboards, or even ceilings. Mantelpieces hide hold photographs, tickets, invitations and letters that have slipped down the gap between the back and the wall. Gaps in the floorboard can hide buttons, beads, hairpins or hatpins. Under houses; either the crawl-space or basement were where people put stuff and forgot about it, kids crawl under houses, decks and verandahs to play. Shrubbery hides balls and toys. Garden sheds and garages typically acquire over several generations of inhabitants a number of odd things; bottles, jars, tins and tools stored up high but forgotten. More rarely, something is deliberately hidden; to be retrieved later, or for someone else to find.
In earlier, less environmentally conscious times, people discarded their rubbish that could not be recycled into middens: pits (or old wells or long-drop toilets) which they threw broken crockery, tins, bones and bottles. If you find a midden it can be possible to date it by the markings on china and glass. If your house or land is quite old and the midden has a lot of intact items, it is worth contacting your local museum or historical society for advice before disturbing too much. Up until the 1970s many people happily burnt their rubbish at home, either in a destructor, a little coal fired stove in the kitchen, or outside in the back yard in an incinerator.
One thing to look out for in an old house where there was a growing family is evidence of children’s heights being recorded on a doorpost, that and the odd bit of subversive (or blatant) graffiti. I marked my children’s heights at my two previous houses – I even transferred the results to a long sheet of paper when we moved. At one of my former homes, the previous owner was projectionist at the Majestic Theatre – when we demolished the outside toilet, we discovered the inside was lined with the long banner movie posters printed on heavy card that used to be displayed over the entrance doors at the Movie Theatre.
The most common thing to find in the garden of a house is lost toys; the very first find I have is from a house we lived in in Pleasant Point in the mid-1960s. I often wondered about the rest of the tea set and if a little girl mourned the loss of her jug.
c1940s toy china milk jug with transfer print approx 1 cm high. Probably part of a dolls’ tea-set. Found: Dug up in garden, Pleasant Point c1966
The next items are from the first home I owned, an Edwardian villa in Church Street, Timaru from 1983-1996. The first, a tiny dolls head was from an area in the back lawn that had a lot of broken crockery and glass; probably the site of the household midden. Very cheaply mass produced, probably using an old mould which has lost detail. These heads were sold in a range of sizes to be made up at home with a cloth body. This one would be for a dolls house.
c1900-1910 glazed china doll’s head, hand painted. Approx 1.5cm high. Found: dug up in back lawn, c1985
Not associated with a house but I cant help including this little beauty. Not long after I found the head (above) I found another tiny doll, this time on a grassy area by the beach on Caroline Bay. These dolls were produced for over 60 years, the hairstyle suggests towards the end of the second decade of the 20th Century. These would likely have been sold on the Bay along with other toys to holidaymakers during the summer. No doubt somebody’s day turned to tears when it was discovered to have slipped from a little hand.
c1920s “Frozen Charlotte” Glazed china doll. Hand painted. 2cm high. Found grass area above beach. c1985.
Sometimes precious objects are broken and discarded, but how this broken vase ended up in the hedge at Church Street is a mystery; perhaps it was knocked from a windowsill (only a couple of metres away?).
c1950s-1970s. Blown glass controlled bubble ball, base of a bud vase (stem broken off). Approx 6 cm diameter. Found: inside hedge on boundary.
Everyday items were sometimes kept for further use – storage of anything from screws to pieces of string were kept in a handy wee jar:
c1920-1950 White glass, metal and paper. English made Marmite Jar. 6 cm high. Found: on floor beam in basement under the house with other jars and beer bottles.
c1920s Pack of playing cards. Lithographed. Found: crawl space under the house scattered on the ground
Perhaps surplice to requirements, stored then forgotten, these lightweight chairs were very popular for many years. The styling went out-of-date after the 1920s when angular lines, uncluttered detail and cream and green painted furniture became more favoured in the kitchen.
c 1890-1910 One of two Bentwood kitchen chairs. Oak with stamped laminated seat. Evidence that the seat originally had holes for a rush seat, possibly replaced with laminated seat from another chair. Found: basement under the house.
Now into the 20th Century. All of the following items (plus some others: marbles, plastic dolls’ cup, untold tennis and bouncy balls) we have found in the last few years at our Grants Road house, and all but one are toys: this points to the young occupants encouraged to use the garden and woodland extensively as their playground (their tree house was featured in my last post).
The first item is a piece of tableware but may have been used as a toy – it is a very old fashioned style for the 1970s and 80s and may have been given to a child to dig with. However, it may also have a remnant of the earlier occupants of the site, perhaps an accidental addition to a midden?
c1900-1920 EPNS (Electro plated nickle silver) dessert spoon. Found buried deep in soil under deck when a drain was dug, 2018.
The next three items all date from around the same era and after 30 odd years in the undergrowth after a wash are remarkably intact. Children in the 1980s owned a lot more toys than previous generations, with quality falling in favour of cheap production methods. Many branded toys were marketed to promote films, as spin offs from television shows, and “collections” including for fast food companies.
c1989 Plastic Batman mask, with loops for elastic. 15cm wide. This very lightweight mask for a small child was either a party favour or a promotional give-away. Found: in back garden undergrowth, 2016.
1980s Moulded soft plastic toy army truck. Wire axles. Hand painted in camouflage colours, probably by the owner. Of very lightweight construction, cheaply mass-produced, often bought in a bag of several. Found in back garden undergrowth, 2017.
1980s Orange plastic Frisbee with paper label of chicken character. Possibly a promotional give-away, 25 cm. Found: in back garden undergrowth, 2015
1980s Moulded plastic baseball “Stars” character face with painted features. Found: in back garden undergrowth, 2015.
So, what have you lost? and what have you found? What do the objects tell you about the people who lived in your house?
Take any of these humble objects and you could write a story of what they started life as and what they became, their trajectory from precious to mundane. Who owned them, when they were bought, what they were used for and how they became lost. Who forgot about them, who mourned their loss? And how long did they remain hidden before being found again?
Do you know anything more about the objects I found? If so leave me a message!
I have lived in Timaru most of my life. I worked in education for over 25 years and have been interested history since a young child, particularly the ordinary and everyday lives of people and their communities.
My first Timaru Project aged 12
I learned a lot about local history during my time working as the first Heritage Educator at South Canterbury Museum, where I had to research and create and teach programmes and resources for students of all ages.
Dressing up and telling stories at the Museum
I was asked recently to contribute to a local website that encourages people find fun locally, the latest theme to research their own home. As many people at time of writing are in lock-down due to the Covid -19 virus pandemic, I thought that sharing my research might inspire you to do similar for your own home. While the information here is how I researched specific to where I live, I am sure that similar sites are available wherever you are; start with your local District or City Council. Use Facebook to find local interest groups. Connect with local historians. Have fun! I would be interested to hear from those who manage to research their own house or want some help, either in comments here or on my Facebook page!
Much of my research involves starting with individuals and trying to find where they lived, although starting with a house and working backwards follows a similar process. Many of the places I have researched no-longer exist; some seem to disappear before we realize. This is what happened in the Christchurch earthquakes; when vacant spaces appeared it was hard to remember what had been there before. So a lot of wider background reading and research is needed to understand the context of history and the community to keep memory alive: we don’t know what we have lost until it is gone.
In order to build a picture it is vital to understand the historic and cultural reasons people lived and worked where they did, although we must not assume people always had choice. Those who are well-off have better choices, while some people, like today, make-do with what they can afford in their circumstances. Houses are not always owned; people live with family, others rent, some are even homeless.
Places, houses and buildings are assigned meaning by the people who live and work in them. These places can come to life when we learn about the intersection of people, their homes and local history. Few ‘ordinary’ houses are thoroughly documented; just like ‘ordinary’ people, they tend to slip under the radar of official history, all the more reason that we should record and celebrate the commonplace.
Our place
We bought 74 Grants Road, Timaru in 2004. This is the third property in Timaru I have owned, but I have lived in seven houses altogether in Timaru since 1966 when we came to town[1].
Our home is an unremarkable bungalow, coloured concrete block, iron roof, over a basement and garage at the back. The windows are aluminium, and it has a wooden deck, and on the east side, a wooden and glass conservatory.
The house rarely features in photographs, occasionally we see glimpses behind family gatherings.
Because it is built over a slope, the east and south sides of the house are elevated. Originally we could see the sea but that only happens in winter when the leaves on the trees are gone, but I love looking out directly into the branches of huge trees.
SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA
This house is built on a large back section with mature trees, sloping to the south and backs onto Dunkirk Street. The trees, in what we call our woodland, are mature oaks, ash, lime, walnut and plums with also a totara, lacebark and several cabbage trees and pittosporums. These attract a lot of bird life; fantails, waxeyes, grey warbler, thrush, blackbirds, swallows, the odd bell bird, kingfisher while white heron, paradise ducks, black back and grey gulls, geese and ducks often fly over. We have free range chickens which enjoy the undergrowth too. The trees were one reason we bought the house, however, they date well before the 1970s.
Looking south over Marchwiel from our back door
Our house was built 1975 by builder Dave DeJoux [2] for his young family: three children grew up here (and left their mark!). Dave and his daughters visited last year just before he passed away and I learnt a bit more about our house.
Graffiti in the basement from the Dejoux children when they were moving out.
There is a tree house in the garden that Dave built which is still standing.
The Tree Hut on our 10th Wedding Anniversary, with Alex (and Pickle the cat flying in)
Dave had a carpentry workshop under the house which has since been divided into two rooms which we use as art studios. The house inside has changed a little; a hallway and front door were removed to enlarge the lounge, the door to one of the bedrooms also moved. Inside the built-in wardrobes are the remains of the original funky 70s wallpaper.
1970s wallpaper inside a wardrobe
The bluestone wall in our front garden was built with stone salvaged from the widening of the bridge on Old North Road, and the wooden beams which the back garden is terraced with were from another bridge on Taitarakihi creek at Smithfield.
Bluestone blocks were once part of a bridge on old North Road
Finding out more about our place
When we bought our house, information that came with the report from the council included a plan of when the section was first sub-divided, dated 1955 which included the big house at 82 Grants Road, called “Wichenford”. Who owned this land?
74 Grants Road – Pt Lot 9.5
I decided to follow some research about this estate, to confirm what I had investigated when I worked at SC Museum. Following my usual approach of searching ‘wide’ then narrowing my focus, I decided I wanted to find more about the area before my house was built. Just like researching families, it pays to look at what the neighbours are up to and to understand the local community.
Firstly I checked out the local area of Grantlea / Marchwiel and Grants Road. I looked up my copy of The Streets of Timaru (1975, reprinted 2011), and also searched for (Grants Road+Timaru) on-line. This area was associated with the Grant family of Elloughton Grange, there is a lot about them on-line. South Canterbury Genweb has interesting local information. This site has a large number of pictures including aerial shots of the general area including the big house Wichenford on Grants Road.
Elloughton Grange in the foreground, looking east over Marchwiel state houses, taken by Whites Aviation c1956. Wichenford is in the group of trees among houses on far top left.
Most of the area on the south of our property was built as state housing after WWII while houses to the north are from the late 1950s-1970s. Many of these families had young children, so Grantlea School was built in 1959. A large local employer was the Smithfield Freezing works, within walking or cycle distance. There were grocery and butcher shops at the bottom of Grants Road and at Marchwiel Park. Houses had large sections for growing vegetables. State houses didn’t have garages as buses were plentiful.
Googling (Wichenford) I found that it is a town in Worcestershire and the Washbourne family have been written about in a book. Googling (Wichenford +Timaru) gave me a real estate page which described the setting for the house as Hidden in a woodland […] boasting mature natives and exotic trees, including a kauri, totara, oaks – so this indicated that perhaps the original Wichenford owner also planted the trees on our section. Further down the same page of Google results was a link to Papers Past which showed a marriage: of Harry Waine, elder son of .Mr and. Mrs F. I. Washbourn, “Wichenford’, Timaru.
I then went directly to Papers Past to search. I started with Newspapers, view date 1900- 1950, unchecked the tick box ‘select all’ then selected the region (Canterbury) and toggled so I could sort by date, 100 items per page and show preview. Searching for both Wichenford and FI Washbourn gave me most of the information on the Washbourn family and Wichenford that I needed. (Remember starting ‘wide’ and then narrowing your search will give best results).
I still didn’t have Mr Washbourn’s full name so I hopped onto New Zealand Births Deaths and Marriages on-line and searched for the name, I quickly found that he was Francis Irvine Washbourn (1877-1951). Francis (Frank) married Lucy in 1905 and had three children, a daughter Mary (Molly) and two sons, Gordon and Harry, these are the names on the original subdivision in 1955!
I then went to Ancestry.com to search for more information, checking the box ‘collection focus’ to New Zealand. I have a sub and can search family trees, so was able to find a tree with a picture of Frank and his parents. (Without a sub you can also search Ancestry Library Edition with your library card during lock-down. You usually have to go into the library to do so). I found postal directories and electoral rolls for Frank and his family that helped pinpoint where he lived and when (you can normally search these at the Museum Archives reading room too).
Dentist, milkman and farmer
Frank Washbourn 1877-1951
Frank and Lucy Washbourn married in Nelson; where they both grew up. They came to Timaru not long afterwards. About 1906 Frank Washbourn set up a dentistry practice in Bruce’s buildings in Beswick Street. They lived at Beverley Road up until the late 1920s. Possibly around 1912, Washbourn had purchased farm land that ran along Grants Road[3].
Map c1912 showing land on the lower half of Grants Road offered for sale by auction.
Here were planted apple trees (as well as the many other trees, some of which still grace our property) and a herd of pedigree Jersey cattle produced milk.
1906
1923
1931
Washbourn belonged to the A & P association, the North End Ratepayers and was at one time president of the Rotary Club. At the end of the 1920s the double-storied brick house Wichenford was built and the family, then quite wealthy, often entertained guests and even rented their house out for the summer while they ‘motored’ to Nelson[4].
Your research:
To find out more about your property Google: go to maps, and then satellite. By looking at satellite view you can see other large properties nearby, of which your section may be one part of a sub-division, like mine. You can also identify natural features such as where streams may have been; many are now culverted in Timaru. On Google maps you can put a destination in directions so you can see how far it is to places you know; friends’ houses, work, school, the park or beach. Check the date on the bottom of the image to see how recent it was. Google Street View is good if you are on a street, but our house is down a driveway hidden from view. In Street View your property number shows in a black box. At the bottom of the box is a clock symbol with an arrow, click on that and you can see the street images at earlier dates. However, Timaru District Council Property Search is much clearer for satellite and aerial views, with a step back through time along the bottom. I got back to the 1930s with mine, just after Wichenford was built and before Dunkirk and Forth Streets and Goulds Road and Grantlea Drive existed.
Grants Road with Wichenford at the centre, c1935, 20 years before number 74 was sub-divided
Numbering is a little ‘out’ on this map, red out line is 74
Recent aerial view of our house – this is a couple of years old as I can see a tree on our driveway that we have removed
If you want to know details about when your house was last bought or sold and for how much, you can also see a bit for free on QV, the national property valuation website. You also to see when other nearby properties were built. You can see historical values from 1927-2020 by using an on-line tool.
Googling your address will bring up real estate pages of houses for sale which are quite interesting as you get to nosy in other houses to see if your house is similar. Sometimes several houses were built in similar style, often by the same builder.
Speak to older neighbours and family. Ask them what they know and remember. Record your findings and don’t forget to add the name and date of your informant.
REMEMBER: Act like an historian!
Always make a note of where and when you find information.
Just a few on-line resources for Timaru/ South Canterbury Research:
Make a plan of your house. Are there additions or extensions? Can you discover old paint colours or paper? (look inside cupboards and wardrobes). What do you love about your house? What would you change if you could?
Map your garden. Personalise it by adding things like sheds, the chicken run or dog kennel, best spot for sun, special trees or plants, swings, hidey holes, where the cat likes to sleep.
Map your neighbourhood. Draw things that interest you. Measure how many paces to favourite features, eg crooked tree, funny letterbox, bridge where you see the ducks, playground, school. Mark where things happened (“Fell off my bike here”): See similar maps online (Google these: Wind in the Willows map, Milly Molly Mandy Village)[5].
I created this version of Wind in the Willows map for a school project c1974
Create a timeline for your house. What was happening in local, national and global history at the same time?
Research the original owner and write up a history folder, or share a post on-line (eg Face Book group, Timaru History and Memories). If your house has been in the family a long time, you might want to start a page or group on Facebook for other family members to contribute to.
Frame photos of your house or the original owner and display in your home:
Make a painting or drawing of your house
Make a time capsule and hide it (under the floor, in a cupboard or in the ceiling for future owners)
Paint (build or add to) your letterbox to reflect your house and its occupants.
A neighbour’s letterbox recently restored
Footnotes:
[1] I was born in Wyndham, Southland, moved to Tripp Settlement Road, Geraldine in 1963, then to Pleasant Point in 1965. Both my other houses were character Bay Villas. How did I end up in a block box? It is private, warm, and full of light, plus room for studio space. I do miss having a wide hallway and wall-space to display art though.
In December 2017 I spotted a request from Sherri Murphy of Shantytown on the popular Facebook group West Coast South Island history. “I’m am after any information on Albert Lawn” Sherri asked “he had a Barbers shop in Reefton then Hokitika. I especially would like to know the name of his Barbers in Hoki.” Sherri is in the process of re-creating Albert Lawn’s barber shop at Shantytown and the following information we have gathered includes excerpts from To Live a Long and Prosperous Life, West Coast Recollect (sister site to West Coast South Island history), Shantytown and Hokitika Museum archives and descendants of Albert. Perhaps this post will jog a few more memories and bring more information to light.
Albert Harold Lawn was born on 9 June 1878, probably at Blacks Point. He was the second son of Thomas Henry and Sarah Esther (nee Hart) Lawn. Thomas and Sarah Lawn had married in Greymouth in 1876 and began married life in Blacks Point, a short distance out of Reefton; Sarah’s precious piano made the journey up the Grey river on a boat, then over the Reefton saddle to the Inangahua river, and again by boat to Black’s Point. Thomas and Sarah soon had their first child, Samuel, who was born the following year in January 1877. He was soon followed by Albert born in June 1878, followed by Norman in 1880.
By the end of 1885 the Lawns were all living in Greymouth again: Thomas and Sarah had moved back from Reefton in 1882 in time for the birth of their son Frank on the first of February, Ernest arrived two years later and Victor in 1887.
Lawn brothers, Greymouth c1891: Left to Right standing: Albert, Samuel, Norman. Sitting; Victor, Ernest, Frank. HLR collection
Thomas and Sarah and their family returned to live in Reefton in December 1890. Esther was born in 1895 and Ida was born in 1897. The home of Sarah and Thomas, and their six boys and two girls sat up on the Terrace with a wide verandah at the front. Even though the older boys had left school it seems Sam and Albert both shifted to Reefton as well. Norman was still at school when they came to Reefton, he later attended Nelson College on a scholarship and began work in the Consolidated Goldfields Company, first assisting and then running the assay office. The older boys seemed quite at home in Reefton. . .
. . . In the years to come social and sporting events in the Inangahua Times invariably had at least one Lawn listed as a team member, player or singer contributing. Sarah Lawn continued to fit teaching piano and singing around her growing family, who all learned music as they got older. . . Thomas and Sarah’s eldest sons Sam and Albert Lawn appeared in concerts, Albert playing the auto-harp and Sam the euphonium.
Albert Lawn, c1897
In June 1898 Sarah’s son Albert went into business on his own account when he took over a tobacco shop and hairdressing business ‘The Leading Hair-dressing Saloon’ on Broadway, Reefton where among other things, he ‘made up ladies own combings’ as well as false moustaches and wigs. His profile and a dashing photograph were published in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand (Nelson Marlborough & Westland Provincial Districts) in 1906 (page 251-252) The entries in these were paid for by the contributors, so could arguably called ‘Vanity’ publications, and not always accurate. Albert’s description of his ‘Toilet Club’ has lead to much mirth in modern audiences, although the term ‘toilet’ at the time meant the same as personal grooming.
Albert married Harriet Noble on the 13 November 1901. This event and the extended family photograph has been covered in an earlier post, see Lawn Cousins. In 1902 Thomas Lawn died. Sarah and Thomas’s sons Albert and Norman Lawn both remained in Reefton when their mother and sisters shifted back to Greymouth.
Another photograph survives from this period probably taken mid- to late-1903. It is a four generation photograph, of Albert with his first-born daughter Dorothy (born in December 1902), his mother Sarah and grandmother, Dinah Hansen.
Albert Lawn with his daughter Dorothy, Flanked by his grandmother Dinah Hansen and mother Sarah Lawn courtesy I. Messenger
Albert and Harriet Lawn had their second of two children in 1904; family stories recall young Harold visiting his grandmother Sarah and great-grandmother Dinah in Greymouth and taking afternoon tea. The little boy asked if he could have a piece of cake that was on table, and Dinah told him she would tell him when he could have it. Again the little boy asked, and again came the answer ‘I will tell you when you can have it’. To the mortification of his parents, and the astonishment of all others present, in a fit of great daring Harold suddenly snatched the cake off the plate and threw it at Dinah, hitting her in the eye. His father mildly remarked: ‘he was always a good shot’.
Albert Lawn 1906 Cyclopedia
LAWN, ALBERT H., Hairdresser and Tobacconist, Broadway, Reefton.
This business was established by Mr. R. J. Simpson and taken over by the present proprietor in June, 1898.
The hairdressing saloon is handsomely equipped with three up-to-date chairs, and every necessary comfort has been provided at considerable expense. Mr. Lawn subscribes to, and places in his saloon, all the West Coast papers and Canterbury weeklies. The shop is well stocked with the leading brands of tobacco, pipes, cigars and cigarettes. The show window is one of the best in the town, and is at all times tastefully dressed. A feature of Mr. Lawn’s business is a toilet Club, with a membership of thirty-five, including some of the principal residents of Reefton. There is a complete tobacco-cutting plant on the premises. Mr. Lawn was born and educated in Greymouth. He served his apprenticeship in Wellington with Mr. L. P. Christenson, a well-known hairdresser and tobacconist of that city.
In 1913, Albert and Harriet moved to Hokitika, where they had a house on the corner of Hampton and Bealey Streets, and Albert opened a shop in Revell Street. One year later was the 1914 outbreak of WWI. Albert was 36 and with two children was graded C in the Reserve Roll. In September 1918 he was reported as seriously ill in the local newspaper and confined to bed for several weeks. His ill health could have passed him as unfit if he was called up, which he was in the ballot drawn in September 1918, published in the newspaper. No official army file exists for Albert, therefore it is likely that he was not actually processed for service.
Grandson Keith Stopforth described what he knew of his grandparents:
In 1913 he moved to Hokitika and opened a barbers shop that he ran with his wife – she sold the tobacco and newspapers at the front of the shop. The shop was always busy with lots of men seated on the long wooden seats down either side of the walls. Some I think were only there to talk. He had 3 or 4 chairs and 2 other barbers helping him. There was an open fire at the end of the shop where men would pass the time of day while they waited for a haircut, a shave or their whiskers trimmed. My grandmother worked in the front of the shop, tobacco sales and cigarettes kept her busy. . .
. . . He could play anything to fit the occasion.He had his own band called the Black Hand Band that comprised of two pianists and eight other musicians. He establishedthe ‘BlackHand Society‘which was a group of friends that gathered together for social evenings. It was exclusive and the yellow badge with the black outspread hand was keenly sort after. [an example of the tin badge in Hokitika Museum (“Beware we never fail”) is red and black]
(Keith Stopforth, 2003 to J. Bradshaw, Shantytown.)
According to Keith, his grandfather had never been taught to play the piano – however this is most likely incorrect, given that his mother Sarah was a music teacher from before her marriage, and almost certainly taught all her children to play along with the many students she tutored throughout her life.
Writing his reminiscences of Hokitika, local man Henry Pierson recalled that Albert’s shop on Revell Street . . . was next door to an old watchmaker called Clark. . . next to that a small lolly shop occupied by . . . Winnie Westbrook. . . Next to Winnie’s was James King Bookseller and Stationer. Pierson continues:
“Albert Lawn, the barber and tobacconist next door to Winnies, used to give us short back and sides for threepence. He was well known for his musical talent and his dance band, the Black Hand, was immensely popular in the 1930s. It gained quite a reputation throughout the West Coast. Because of his great sense of humour, his salon was often the centre of outrageous stories and much hilarity. Some of the town’s local characters came in only to tell a yarn or exchange some tit bit of local scandal to which Albert would respond by adding his own version of the subject.”
(pp 13-15, Pierson, H. (2004) The Crooked Mile: Revell Street as I knew it. Silverfox: Christchurch.)
Great grandson Mike Stopforth adds: The family lived out the back. Nana told me once that they weren’t allowed to go out to the front of the shop and they had to come and go the back way. It was located where the old Supermarket used to be when it was just a four square.
Arguably one of Albert’s ‘proudest’ occasions came in May 1920 with the visit to New Zealand of Edward, Prince of Wales. Arriving on the HMS Renown, in Auckland in late April, he departed Lyttelton, New Zealand at the end of May, enroute for Australia and India.
Preparations for the Prince’s visit to various locations around New Zealand were met with an astonishing frenzy of patriotic excitement, with civic events, triumphal arches (involving large quantities of fern fronds), and hordes of school children and obligatory pretty young ladies positioned to catch the playboy Prince’s eye. Bunting and flags were strung everywhere, children wrote essays and holidays declared. The newly formed RSA were hopeful to have their building officially opened, and returned servicemen were lined up to be presented with medals. In Greymouth, a young man Mr. R. G. Caigou of the Public Works Department spent hours laboriously painted an illuminated address to be presented to HRH by the Mayor on behalf of the citizens (see bottom of this post for an image of the address). This young man became Albert’s brother-in-law when his sister Esther married Russell Caigou in Greymouth, in January 1921.
The visit of the Prince to the Coast was somewhat fleeting: he came by train as far as he could from Nelson, motored to Westport, then back to Reefton in a motorcade of 30 cars that included being ‘filmed for the cinema’ passing through fern arch on the Buller. (The press car ended up upside down in a ditch full of blackberries before it reached Reefton). On the 12 May the Prince went by train from Reefton to Hokitika, where he spent the night and then to Greymouth the next day before heading to Christchurch. Details of events of the tour were reported in newspapers all over New Zealand (and overseas).
“We Revere You As Our Prince” Welcome to Hokitika – Prince of Wales visit 1920. Contributed to West Coast Recollect by Tom Hartill
In Hokitika on the night of the 12 May a grand ball was held in his honour. The Black Hand Band played and after the event the members were greeted by the Prince and shook his hand. According to Keith Stopforth the Prince was so intrigued by the name [of the band] that he enrolled as an honorary member of the Black Hand Society.
The following was originally published in the Melbourne Age:
“PROMENADE YOUR PARTNERS”
AND THE PRINCE DOES SO. A HUMOROUS PICTURE A delightfully humorous picture of the ball given at Hokitika in honour of the Prince of Wales was cabled to the Melbourne Age by one of the correspondents with the Royal party. He said: “The ball at Hokitika was an enormous popular success. After a public reception the Prince, attended by his staff, proceeded to the ball, which began at 10 o’clock. Most of the young men attending wore tweed suits. One old gentleman wandered through the happy throng wearing a long overcoat dating back to the period when “Bully” Hayes used to make Hokitika a favourite port of call when returning from his predatory expeditions among the islands. Another elderly dancer appeared in tweed trousers and a Cardigan jacket buttoned tightly around the throat. The ladies devoted more attention to dress than the Hokitika men. Many were accomplished dancers, and the Prince danced vigorously with a succession of Hokitika girls. In the official set, which opened the ball, Mrs R. J. Seddon, widow of the late democratic Imperialist, took part. The Prince danced in the set with Miss Perry, the Mayor’s daughter. A dance or two later the master of ceremonies, taking the middle of the floor, issued in a loud word of command, ‘Promenade your partners for circular waltz.’ The Prince does not care about waltzing as a general rule at balls which he attends, and he frequently exercises the Royal prerogative of cutting waltzes out of the programme, substituting one-steps or fox trots. At Hokitika, however, he promenaded his partner, according to directions, with the rest. Supper was an immense success. Rising early, a cool breeze from the snowclad mountains refreshed overnight revellers. From the hotel windows one could see Mount Cook, covered with snow apparently overlooking Hokitika, but in reality many scores of miles away.
Black Hand Band at the “Marquis of Lawn Hotel” (Lawn residence) – Collection of Hokitika MuseumAlbert and Harriet Lawn in the 1920s courtesy Kath Stopforth
In later years Albert became a radio announcer and had his own children’s session once a week from Hokitika on Thursday nights. Known as Uncle Albert he was obviously very popular as he had a studio photograph that was given out to his listeners. A copy of this photo, cropped without the inscription is in the HLR collection – it wasn’t until Sherri shared this image that I realised that this was Albert Lawn in later life.
“Uncle Albert” Mike Stopforth
“In Weld Street , Hokitika, was the studio . . . “Uncle Albert” was the man children came to love. Uncle Albert was gifted with his hands – not just for his daily job of haircutting, but as a pianist who had learnt to play by ear. One of his proudest occasions would be when the Duke of Windsor [sic] visited Hokitika in the 1920s – Uncle Albert being the official pianist as a member of the Black Hands [sic] Orchestra.
He was often heard on Mickey Spier’s 3ZR Greymouth radio station conducting sessions with Donald McLeod, a well known identity who possessed a phenomenal memory. Within the space of seconds Donald would answer any questions, including trick ones, relating to events and dates, he was seldom wrong. Also joining “Uncle Albert” as he was known to radio listeners was ‘Aunt Dorothy’ (Jock Robinson) a talented pianist of Hokitika.
Bill Dwan served his apprenticeship with Albert Lawn, until he left to open his own business in Weld Street. Ron Brown, another of Albert’s apprentices, opened his own shop in the Regent Theatre corner shop.
After Lawn’s barber and tobacconist shop had closed down, Don Ramsey conducted a radio and records business in it for some years.”
pg 26 Looking at the West Coast, August 1965
A staunch Labour party supporter, he represented the Blind institute on the West Coast for many years. After suffering from diabetes for some time, Albert lost his left arm to the disease.
Albert Lawn courtesy Kath Stopforth
Understandably this was devastating for him as it meant he was no-longer able to work or play the piano, although there is one account of him wearing a prosthetic limb so he could play chords on the piano. However, family reported he sunk into a deep depression, from which he never truly recovered.
Albert Harold Lawn died in Hokitika on 22 April 1952, aged 72. Harriet lived until the age of 82, until she died in 1961. They are buried together in Hokitika.
Update September 2020:
A photograph of Russell Caigou’s illuminated address presented to the Prince of Wales. Kindly supplied by P. Caigou
‘Do not think your single vote does not matter much. The rain that refreshes the parched ground is made up of single drops” Kate Sheppard
The phrase The ‘Whakatū Wāhine’ phrase represents women — and all people — standing for the rights of women. It was central to the Suffrage Centenary celebrations in 1993 and remains relevant today as we continue to take a stand for gender equality. The symbol The Suffrage 125 symbol draws on historical colours and icons adopted by women’s suffrage petitioners and presents them in a contemporary form. Violet represented dignity and self-respect and the white camellia was worn by people supporting women’s right to vote in New Zealand. The ‘125’ contains a koru as a link to our distinct New Zealand culture.
This week on the 19 September 2018 marks a special occasion in New Zealand and World history: it will be 125 years since Women’s Suffrage was granted. This was to change the face of politics in New Zealand, and paved the way for further emancipation around the world.
In honour of the three women from our family: Dinah Hansen, Rachel Lawn and Ida Hart who were signatories on the Suffrage Petition I have submitted short biographies on-line that can be viewed here:
To see if any of your family signed the petition, search here.
Dinah Hansen née Nathan, wearing her Temperance white ribbon c1892 (courtesy P. Caignou)
Rachel Lawn née Hart c. 1902 (courtesy Owen Lawn)
Ida Lillian Hart née Ball, c. 1910 (courtesy Grace Hanley)
Viewing women’s signatures on the long scrolls what stands out is the wide variety of handwriting: some neat and with a flourish, others scrawl and stab at the paper, leaving ink blotches. Most are written in black ink, some blue and even a few are in red ink. The signatories include Dinah Hansen, who was the second woman to sign the first Greymouth sheet 246 (WCTU president F. Brooke was the first), Dinah’s daughter-in-law Ida Hart later signed the same sheet in Greymouth, and Rachel Lawn signed sheet number 251 along with her friends at the little Methodist Church at Black’s Point, just out of Reefton. Interestingly, Sarah Lawn, who was also involved in the Methodist Church for many years and the WCTU almost certainly supported the cause did not sign the petition.
Progressive, or another agenda?
It is interesting to study the political and social background to this momentous event. Although on the face of it New Zealand could be seen as progressive, the motivation behind granting the Women’s Franchise was because of the unique nature of New Zealand politics at the time. Traditionally political power had been held in the hands of the wealthy few – in order to vote, you had to be white, male, upper-class landowners. The balance of power was threatened by universal male suffrage; there was concern from the traditional, conservative men that their influence would be weakened by having a large number of ‘uneducated’ working-class men casting votes. Despite being the vast majority of voters in New Zealand, men who laboured in farming, fishing, freezing works, railways, factories and mines were seen as a threat to the established order.
Personal and political
Women like Dinah Hansen who had struggled when her husband had left her virtually destitute with a young family, and who had fought to gain and hold onto her little piece of land in Greymouth, also wanted greater economic independence; to be recognised as equal in marriage and their opinions valued and heard in political life. For Dinah, behind the motivation for change in society was a personal reason: the abhorrence of hard drink. Family anecdote suggests that this had something to do with Nathaniel Hart and perhaps his disappearance in Australia. Whether this was just because he got into trouble in their early days in Christchurch by selling alcohol to the gold diggers, or whether he himself liked to drink and it affected the family, is unknown. By the time of the late 1880s it was clear that Dinah and her family, now deeply involved with the Methodist faith, decided to seek a temperate lifestyle and even to push for prohibition.
Bills for Women’s Franchise were introduced to the New Zealand Parliament in 1880 and 1881. A major vehicle for change was spear-headed in New Zealand by the Womens Christian Temperance Union, a movement that had begun in America but soon spread in popularity. By the beginning of 1886 there were 15 branches of the WCTU in New Zealand. Their first convention, held later that year, decided that they would work for women’s suffrage. In 1887 Kate Sheppard, of Christchurch was appointed the national WCTU superintendent for franchise and legislation. Under her steerage the Union worked with intense determination to achieve their goal. By May 1892 Greymouth had formed its own chapter of the WCTU with members pledging to work for “For God, for home and humanity” and Dinah Hansen was the first secretary.
A meeting of the newly organised Women’s Christian Temperance Union was held in the Town Hall, Gresson street, on Wednesday afternoon, 18th inst. There were present 17 members, all of whom signed the Women’s Christian Temperance pledge. After the minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed, the election of officers took place, with the following result Mrs Brooke, president, Mrs Calders, vice-president Mrs Hansen, secretary pro term Mrs Whall treasurer pro term. Communications were read from the Town Clerk re using the Town Hall for the meetings, and from the secretary of the WCTU Christchurch, giving all information for carrying on the work. The meetings will be held on alternate Wednesday afternoons, when all who are interested in the work will be heartily welcome.∗
The first two petitions for franchise of 350 signatures were presented in 1887 and the Jewish parliamentarian Julius Vogel introduced a Woman’s Suffrage Bill which was withdrawn at committee stage. In May 1888 the WCTU stepped up their campaign, ensuring that every parliamentarian understood their reasoning by sending each member of the house of representatives a leaflet Ten reasons why the women of New Zealand should vote, which outlined how women were discriminated and why women deserved full suffrage.
In 1890 long serving Conservative MP Sir John Hall introduced another Women’s Franchise Bill which failed on a technicality. An amendment also failed as supporters were not present when the vote was cast. The following year 9000 women’s signatures on eight separate petitions were not enough to sway Parliament despite the premier John Ballance giving his support. The parliamentarians arguing against Franchise were supporting the lucrative liquor lobby. It was to be a few more years before this battle was won, yet the women and men of New Zealand were not about to give up the fight for their moral and political revolution. It was no longer if, but when.
Winning the Vote
Roused by 600 members of WCTU around New Zealand, women gathered in churches, schools and halls to sign the petitions: in 1892 over 19,000 women contributed to six petitions and then in 1893 thirteen petitions signed by 32,000 women were presented at parliament.
The campaigners had little time to celebrate: their next task was to ensure women were enrolled in the next two months when the rolls closed before the New Zealand general election scheduled for Tuesday 28 November. By Election Day there were 84 percent of the eligible women registered, of those two out of three women voted.[2] The Liberals won nearly 58 percent of the vote and Richard Seddon became Prime Minister for the next 13 years.
Many of the parliamentarians who had voted for women’s suffrage were not entirely altruistic. Hall, a long time support of Women’s Suffrage and a conservative politician, thought women would be conservative voters. Some also believed that women would vote according to the wishes of their husbands and fathers.
So often the stories recorded are of men and their accomplishments. These three suffragists deserve to shine as well. Once they had won the right to vote, they did not sit back, but continued to forge what they thought would be a better society, by following their beliefs with a passionate conviction.
Dinah Hansen (front row, seventh from left in dark dress and hands folded in her lap) and her daughter Rachel Lawn (behind Dinah’s left shoulder, wearing a large white hat tilted forward) in Greymouth, 1906, alongside Kate Sheppard (large white collar, no hat) and others. Auckland Weekly News. Image: AWNS-19060412-10-7 Used with permission. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries.
For further background on the work Dinah and her daughters contributed to the Methodist Church, WCTU and Women’s Suffrage see Chapter 13 – Fighting the Good Fight in my book To Live a Long and Prosperous Life.
Following on from my previous post about the Lawns in Dalton in Furness, is the story of James Gunson Lawn b 4 January 1868 , the only surviving son of John Webster and Eleanor née Gunson Lawn.
James Gunson Lawn was by all accounts a brilliant young man, but he had his share of sadness in his private life which is glossed over in biographies of his professional life. His first wife, Mary Searle, who he married in 1892, was a young school teacher and daughter of an Iron Miner. Together they had four children before Mary died aged about 35, not long after their youngest was born¹:
Marjorie, b 1893, in Whitehall, Cumberland
‘Jack’ John Gunson b 1894, Wandsworth, Surrey
‘Laurie’ Laurence b 1898 in Kimberley, South Africa, and
Brian Gunson b 1905 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
During this time (1899-1902) there was a lot of conflict in South Africa; and James was under siege from the Boers in Kimberley. In letters to his parents, now held by Bristol University he gives an account of conditions, including diet and weapons used. He sent his family to Stellenbosch to avoid the fighting during the Second Boer War.
James Gunson Lawn’s career has been documented in the Database of Southern African Science. The following is an excerpt from their website:
James G. Lawn, mining engineer, educationist and company director, was the son of John Webster Lawn, a mine manager, and his wife Eleanor. After completing his schooling he worked under his father in the iron ore mines of northern England for six years before entering the Royal School of Mines, London, in 1888. Here he distinguished himself by winning the Tyndall Prize for physics and a Royal scholarship (1889), the Murchison prize for geology (1890), the Mining prize of the Department of Science and Art, and the Dela Beche mining medal (1891). Upon completing his studies he became a mine surveyor at the mines of the Barrow Hematite Steel Company in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, in 1891. The next year he was appointed lecturer in mining by the Cumberland county council, and in 1893 became lecturer in mine surveying at the Royal School of Mines. He was an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a Fellow of the Geological Society of London.
In May 1896 Lawn came to South Africa as the country’s first professor of mining, to establish the Kimberley branch of the South African School of Mines. It opened in August that year, supervised by a local committee under Gardner F. Williams*, general manager of De Beers. At the age of 28 Lawn became its principal and sole teacher until John Orr* arrived the next year. The institution provided theoretical and practical training to students who had passed the two-year mining course at the South African College’s School of Mines in Cape Town. After a year’s training students proceeded to Johannesburg for their fourth and final year before graduating with a diploma in mining engineering. In July 1897 Lawn took his first five students to Johannesburg, where he was elected an honorary member of the South African Association of Engineers and Architects. In January the next year he addressed a special general meeting of the association in Johannesburg on “A South African School of Mines”, explaining the functioning of the institution and requesting support for the training programme in Johannesburg, which had not yet been developed. His address aroused much interest and was published in the association’s Proceedings (Vol. 4, pp. 112-134). Training at the Kimberley School of Mines was suspended late in 1899 owing to the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), and after the war, in 1903, the training was transferred to the Transvaal Technical Institute in Johannesburg.
Lawn resigned from his post in 1902 to join the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company (JCI) as an assistant consulting engineer from the beginning of 1903 to the end of 1906. He returned to Britain in 1907 when he was appointed head of the Mining Department at the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall, but came back to South Africa in July 1909 as principal and professor of mining at the Johannesburg branch of the Transvaal University College. This institution became the South African School of Mines and Technology in 1910, and later developed into the University of the Witwatersrand. Meanwhile Lawn resigned his post in August 1910 to rejoin JCI as consulting engineer. In 1913 he was a member of the Miners’ Phthysis Prevention Committee and wrote its Interim report… (Cape Town, 1913). During World War I (1914-1918), in May 1915, he was released from his duties for service in the explosives department of the British Ministry of Munitions, for which he was honoured as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1920. Returning to JCI towards the end of 1919 he became its consulting engineer and joint managing director. From July 1924 to his retirement in February 1947 he represented the company in England as a director and consulting engineer, residing in Shamley Green, Surrey. He then returned to South Africa and settled at Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, where he took up plant collecting. Some 2000 specimens collected by him went to the Natal Herbarium.
Lawn played an active role in scientific and educational matters during his career. Shortly after his first arrival in South Africa he published Mine accounts and mining book-keeping (London, 1897), a manual for students and mine managers. The seventh edition of this useful work appeared in 1911. He was an examiner in chemical technology, metallurgy, engineering, mine descriptions and economics of mining for the mining examinations of the University of the Cape of Good Hope at various times during 1897-1906, and served on the university’s council from 1897 to 1903. From 1900 to 1907 he was a member of the South African Philosophical Society. In 1902 he became a foundation member of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science and served on its council from 1902 to 1905. In 1903 he became a member of the Geological Society of South Africa, serving as its president in 1923. From 1911 to 1949 he was a member of the Witwatersrand Council of Education. In 1912 he represented the mining industry on South Africa’s first National Advisory Council on Technical Education. When the University of the Witwatersrand was established in 1922 he served on its first council, and in 1933 the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in Engineering for his contributions to mining and mining education. He was president of the (British) Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1930-1931, and an associate of the Royal School of Mines.
Reference: Compiled by C. Plug, S2A3 biographical Database of Southern Africa Science;click here to see the page.
James married for the second time to Mary Beatrice Good around July – September 1908 in Bromley, Kent. Mary, born in 1874 in Stamford Hill, London, was the daughter of a Rope Manufacturer. In 1881, Mary, age seven is living with her father, siblings and an aunt, her father was widowed. By the time of the next census, Mary aged about 17, had left home. She is possibly the Mary Good recorded en route to Natal in 1902, so perhaps met the Lawn family in South Africa.
Majorie, Jack, Brian and Laurie with possibly Mary née Good², James Gunson’s second wife c1911. Photograph taken in Cornwall. [HLR]
The daughter of James Gunson and Mary née Good, Genifer Coniston Lawn was born 7 Sept 1912 in Johannesburg. Mary died a couple of weeks later on 24 September from complications following the birth. A note I have remarks “As her mother died when she was born she was sent back to England aged six weeks to live with an aunt until her father remarried six years later”
This next photograph appears to be taken several years after the one above, yet still does not include the youngest daughter Genifer. The photograph was taken in Dalton in Furness.[HLR]
James married his third wife, Grace Thomas in Nottingham in 1918. Grace, born in 14 Dec 1872, was 45, and there were no children of this marriage. They were living at 52 Temple Fortune Hill, Hendon, Barnett, London the following year.
James, Grace and daughter Genifer lived in Surrey for some time; in the 1939 register they can be found at Long Acre, Shamley Green, Wonersh, Guildford, Surrey, with James Gunson Lawn listed as ‘Mining Engineer and Director of Companies’. A few years earlier a report in New Zealand newspaper showed his work was held in wide regard throughout the British Empire:
Professor J. G. Lawn, chairman of the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co., Johannesburg, speaking at the annual meeting of the company, said: “The most notable event of the year, and, indeed, the most important event that has ever happened in the history of the gold industry of South Africa, was the increase in the price of gold which occurred towards the end of December last, owing to South Africa being forced to abandon the old gold standard. Special reference was made to the Rand mines, but Professor Lawn’s remarks on them will be read no doubt with interest by those having confidence in mining development and possibilities in New Zealand.
18th December 1933, Evening Post.
The couple returned to South Africa in the late 1940s, and it was there that James Gunson Lawn died on 21 Oct 1952. Grace died three months after James Gunson in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on 22 January 1953.
His book Mine accounts and mining book-keeping: A manual for the use of students, managers of metalliferous mines and collieries, and others interested in mining, first published in 1901 is still available as second-hand copies and digital versions on-line.
This image of James Gunson Lawn is in the National Portrait Gallery Collection and has been shared by richendasc on 08 Jun 2016 (Ancestry.com)
James Gunson’s children, like their father, were educated and well-travelled; they attended boarding school and university in England. Marjorie never married, Jack studied medicine and became a medical practitioner, as did Laurie and Brian. Brian also had an interest in translating medieval manuscripts and was a published author: ‘Notes on a seventeenth century almanack originally belonging to Richard Corbett Esq of Elton Herefordshire’ published in Woolhope Club Transactions 1939 and ‘Auctores britannici medii aevi V’. 1979 ( edited) Oxford University Press were part of his legacy. When Ross and Helen Lawn visited the UK they visited Brian Lawn in 1992 and his daughter Shirley. When Brian died in 2001 his books and manuscripts were left to the Bodelian Library, Oxford. Genifer was working as a secretary prior to WWII, then enlisted and served as a WREN from 1941-1944.
Ross Lawn with Brian Lawn on their visit to London in 1992 [HLR]
¹ Presumably Mary (née Searle) Lawn died sometime between 1906 and 1908 in South Africa; so far I have yet to identify a death or burial record; most South African records are not searchable on-line.
² These photographs are unnamed and undated, however the approximate age of the children is a guide to their date. Compared to the earlier photo (see previous post) of the John Webster Lawn family, the woman appears to have a different nose and eyebrows. Very little is known about James’ wives, except for marriage records, and the probate files for his second and third wife which also gives their dates of death.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to my cousin Peter Walker for providing the impetus for researching both James Gunson Lawn and his father John Webster Lawn (albiet several months from the original suggestion!) and special thanks for providing newspaper transcripts.
Of the Lawn family who I wrote of in my book and in previous posts, regular followers of this blog may recall that there were two sets of brothers – Cornish cousins, who came to New Zealand: James, John and Henry Lawn (I am a descendant of James) and Thomas and Edmund Lawn. These cousins were ‘double’ cousins – their mothers were sisters and their fathers were brothers.
Thomas and Edmund Lawn were the sons of John Lawn (b 1813) and Ann Webster (b 1815), both from the Gwennap area in Cornwall who married in 1836. Like the rest of the Lawn family, John was a miner, and his sons after him. There were nine children in the family, but not all of them made old bones:
Joseph Webster Lawn, b 1837, died in Melbourne, Australia in 1891,
John Webster Lawn, b 1837, died in Dalton in Furness, Lancashire in 1906,
Thomas Henry Lawn, b 1842, died in Reefton, New Zealand in 1902,
Emily Lawn, b 1844, died in Ulverston, Lancashire in 1873,
Richard Lawn, b 1847, died in Redruth, Cornwall in 1857,
Edmund Henry Lawn, b 1850, died in Reefton, New Zealand in 1894,
Samuel Lawn, b 1852, died in Ulverston, Lancashire in 1871,
Alfred Lawn, b 1855, died in Ulverston, Lancashire in 1871,
Richard Lawn, b 1857, died in Redruth in 1861,
This photograph of Lawn brothers and cousins was probably taken about 1868, and includes three of John Webster’s sons: Edmund, Alfred and Sam. It may have been taken at the time that Henry Lawn was married∗. For a long time this photograph, copies of which are in various descendants families, was labelled as ‘unknown Lawns’, until I found a named copy in Dunedin. Given two of the boys picture died just a few months apart in 1871, was this why the photograph was kept within the family? Where is the original of this photograph?
Back: David Lawn, cousins Edmund, Sam and Alfred Lawn (brothers of Thomas Lawn), Front: Benjamin (later Rev.) Lawn, Tom Cowley (another cousin) Henry Lawn. Edmund also came to New Zealand, while both Sam and Alfred died within months of each other in Dalton in Furness in 1871 aged 18 and 16 years. [Update: taken in Barrow in Furness. An original copy was given to Bob Lawn of Reefton by Florrie Bishop, nee James (1888-1986)]
John Webster Lawn
John Webster, the second son of John and Ann, began working life in the copper mines in Lanner just like his father, uncles brothers and cousins, but by the late 1850s he had left the area for the more stable iron mining district of Dalton in Furness, Lancashire. In 1861 census, age 21, he was recorded as lodging with another Gwennap man; Iron Ore Agent William Job and his wife in St Anne Street, Dalton. A few years later in 1864 he married a local girl, Eleanor Gunson. He soon worked his way up and became mining captain in the Barrow Hematite Steel Company, working in Park mine around 1863, a position he had held for 16 years when he gave lengthy evidence during the inquest of the death of two miners killed in a collapse of ore (see: Ulverston Mirror and Furness Reflector June 21, 1879).
From 1871 John was described in census as Iron Ore Agent, the family living firstly in Ulverston Road, then by 1891 their address was given as Fair View, with John now listed as Assistant Manager at Iron Mine.John contributed to his local community; standing for local board elections, eventually becoming Chairman of Dalton District Council. He was closely involved with the local Methodist church and laid a memorial stone to commemorate the building of the Methodist Sunday school in Dalton.
John Webster and Eleanor Gunson Lawn’s family consisted of seven children, but only two daughters and a son survived childhood.
Mary, b 1866, died in 1879 aged 13. James Gunson Lawn b 1868 was the only child of John Webster and Eleanor Lawn to marry and have children. More about him later. Annie, b 1870, died aged 3 in 1873. Her sisters Ada and Emily were born in 1872 and 1874. Both girls remained single, but like their brother James Gunson, were well-educated at boarding school and became teachers. Emily Lawn was also a researcher in the record office of the British Museum and Somerset House in London. The youngest children of John Webster and Eleanor Lawn were Joseph, born in 1876, died 1877 aged 9 months and Eleanor born 1878, died 1879 aged 3 months.
John Webster Lawn Family c 1899: Ada and Emily (not sure which is which), James Gunson Lawn with their parents John Webster Lawn and Eleanor née Gunson, James Gunson’s first wife Mary née Searle (far right) and from left their children John Gunson ‘Jack’ Lawn b 1894, Marjorie Lawn b 1893 and Laurence ‘Laurie’ b 1898 [image from HLR]28th April 1906, Greymouth Evening Star.
“Death of a Gwennap man in Lancashire. Another of the old familiar faces at Dalton has disappeared. Among all of the people of the town none was better known none could have been more respected than Mr John Webster Lawn, of Fair View; and it was with regret that the announcement was heard on Friday, that he had passed away at seven o’clock that morning. He had been in failing health for two or three years, and as a result was compelled to relinquish the important position of mine manager under the Barrow Hematite Steel Company. Mr Lawn was born in the parish of Gwennap, Cornwall, 66 years ago, and came to the North of England 47 or 48 years ago. By his diligence and perseverance, he rose from the lowest position in the Park Mines to the highest. He was appointed mining captain in the days of the mines when they were owned by Messrs Selmeider and Hannay, and he continued his connection when they were taken over by the Barrow Hematite Company. After the retirement of the late Mr Richard Hosking, the managership of the mines was vested in Mr William Kellett, J. P., of Southport, and Mr Lawn was appointed resident manager. That position was held up to the time of Mr Kellett’s death, when he was chosen general mine manager. He held the office to January, 1904, when his health gave way, and he was given six months’ rest. His health did not improve, however, and he felt compelled to resign the position.
As a public man, Mr Lawn’s services were often sought. He was elected to the Local Board in 1885, and continued to be a member of that body and the Urban Council up to 1904 – a period of nearly 20 years. He held the post of chairman in 1889 and 1890, and was again elected to that seat in 1893, continuing till 1898. As chairman of the Urban Council, he sat a magistrate (the first working man J. P.) on the Ulverston Bench for four years. The flag at the Council offices in Station Road flew at half-mast. He was also connected with the old Burial Board, and the Gas Committee, and was an overseer. At public meetings, concerts, and the like, his services were freely and generously given. In politics he was a Liberal, but took ne active part except on the temperance question, being a strong Abstinence man. To say that he was respected by his fellow townsmen is to freely express the feelings of those who knew him best. He adorned every position he occupied, wether in public, social, or religious life, and was a very valuable person. Mr Lawn was an earnest Wesleyan Methodist, a class leader, and a local preacher for many years. He spent his leisure in preparation for his pulpit work, and for religious engagements. His services were much appreciated wherever he went and especially in the Barrow, Ulverston and Millom circuits. He knew Methodism in these parts from the earliest days, and took an active part in its rise and progress throughout the towns and villages of the district. Mr Lawn leaves a widow and three children, including Professor James G. Lawn, mining expert, of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Every shade of politics, every shade of religious belief, almost every profession and trade were represented at the funeral at the Dalton cemetery on Sunday afternoon. An addition to the chief mourners, others present were Mrs Lawn, Miss Ada E. Lawn, Miss Emily Law and Mr David Lawn. The remains were enclosed in a plain oak coffin bearing a plate with the words “John Webster Lawn, died March 2nd, 1906, aged 66 years”. Following the hearse and mourning coaches was the horse and trap which Mr Lawn had used for many years in his daily round of the different mining properties worked by the Barrow Hematite Steel Company.
The above are taken from the “North Western News and Mail,” and were written by a Cambornian on the staff of the above paper. Mr John Webster Lawn was the last surviving brother of the late Thomas Lawn, well known in Reefton and Greymouth, and cousin of John Lawn, of Reefton.”
(followed by a lengthy list of attendees and concludes below:)
Excerpts from Soulby’s Ulverston Advertiser and General IntelligencerMarch 8, 1906
∗ While the Lawn cousins who came to New Zealand eventually settled down and married, two brothers of James and John: George and Henry returned to England to marry. Henry returned for a couple of years: he married Harriet Richards in Gwennap in 1868, and then went to work in the mines in Dalton in Furness where his first son Charles was born. In May 1870 he left the UK and returned to New Zealand and in 1873 sponsored his wife and baby son as new immigrants. George married Sarah Barnett in Gwennap in 1874 and had several children; he died in 1879 before his youngest was born.
Earlier I have written about how my great great grandfather James Lawn and his brothers were double cousins with Thomas and Edmund Lawn – related through their mother and father. Here is the story of another cousin, a Lawn descendant who also became New Zealand immigrant in the 19th Century – but with a twist: she returned to England.
Timothy and Grace Lawn had at least 10 children, although not all survived to adulthood. Of Grace and Timothy’s children, not all are traceable with certainty. James Lawn, b 1812, (father of my great great grandfather James and his brothers John and Henry Lawn) and John Lawn, b 1813, (father of Thomas and Edmund Lawn), had a sister: Elizabeth Lawn, baptised in September 1818. Elizabeth had married Richard Hand, a miner, on the 14 January 1838 in Redruth, Cornwall. In 1851 Richard was described on the census as an Agent for a Copper Mine, and the family was living at South Down, Redruth.
A Cornish Cousin
Richard and Elizabeth Hand had seven children between 1840 and 1854 (Susan, Eliza, Elizabeth, John, Julia, Caroline and Alma), before Richard died in 1860. As a widow, Elizabeth was to become a servant and eventually shifted to Dalton in Furness where her youngest daughter and son-in-law lived. Not all of Elizabeth and Richard’s children have been traced, but their fifth child, Julia Hand, born 17 March 1849 was to come to New Zealand.
Julia Hand later Wills, another cousin to the Lawn brothers and cousins
Julia Hand was ten when her father died, and still at school on the 1861 census. Her mother was described as ‘Fund holder’ indicating that at least for a while there was some sort of annuity or pension for her after Richard’s death.
It is quite well-known that there was a huge number of people – a ‘diaspora’ – who left Cornwall following the fall in the price of Copper and the failure of mining – the principal employment for thousands and thousands of Cornish folk. Many young men, like the Lawn brothers and cousins sought mining work around the world – in gold and another metals, or even coal mining. Some went north into the iron mining industries, while others travelled to the colonies: Australia, New Zealand, Canada. What is also apparent is that many young women also left and looked for work too. Julia Hand was one of these, travelling to a position in service, nearly four hundred miles away from her birthplace.
By the 1871 census Julia, then aged 22, was working as a housemaid for a hotel keeper in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Harrogate was a lively and fashionable spa resort, with plenty of tourists coming to ‘take the waters’ (and suck on a Harrogate toffee to take away the horrid taste afterwards) so it is not surprising the there was opportunity for employment for a young woman, but one does wonder how it was she got all the way from Cornwall to Yorkshire. She wasn’t however, far from family: Her sister Eliza had married Samuel Clark, a carpenter and joiner in 1865. By 1871 Eliza and Samuel were living in Worksop, Nottinghamshire with their firstborn, Samuel junior. In Dalton on Furness was John Hand, age 24, living alone and working as an Iron ore miner.
Whatever the means for Julia journeying to Yorkshire, the reasons were to make a better life for herself, and it soon became apparent that she had ambitions for a better life on the other side of the world. Perhaps after a final trip home to farewell her mother and friends from home, Julia departed for New Zealand. She almost certainly knew of her cousins who had come out over a decade earlier, chasing the bright fine gold, but it is not known whether there were contact made before she came, or once she had settled.
The first record of Julia’s life in New Zealand is her marriage; which took place in Port Chalmers, near Dunedin. She married Robert John Wills, a blacksmith, on the 19 February 1876 at the residence of Mrs Attwood, Harrington Street, Port Chalmers. Julia was a month shy of 27, her husband was five years younger, aged 22. Julia was recorded as a general servant, and three witnesses were Annie Attwood, Rebecca Stone – and John Hand,Quarryman, Port Chalmers: it seems that Julia’s brother had also immigrated, although after this record I have yet to trace him with certainty in New Zealand.
Julia and Robert Wills
Robert Wills was from Portland, Dorset, the eldest of large family. In 1871 he was working as a Smith’s Striker for his father, a blacksmith. When he was 20 he had emigrated to New Zealand on the Assaye, leaving London on the 1 September 1874 and arrived on 26 December 1874 in Auckland.
A tall, slender young woman, Julia obviously had the same tenacity and hard-working ethic of her Cornish cousins, and applied that to her new life in the colony. Julia probably had not been long in New Zealand when she began her new life as a wife and, soon, mother to a growing brood of children. Robert’s trade as a blacksmith would find ready work. He was last recorded living up the hill in Maclaggan Street, Dunedin, in 1890. Now developed with retail warehouses, one building remains on this street from the late 19th Century close to where the Wills family lived: Wright Stephenson & Co Wool, Horse and Grain Sale Yard was an ideal place to situate a nearby blacksmithing business.
Maclaggan Street, Dunedin. ( image Google Street View)
Robert and Julia had nine children in quick succession: Robert 1877, Elizabeth (Bessie) 1878, William 1879, Thomas 1881 (who lived three weeks), twins Fanny and Harriet 1882, Jessie 1884, Mabel in 1887 and Richard in 1890. It seems that the last child was born in Wellington, so they may have left Dunedin around 1890.
But tragedy wasn’t far away – first one of the twins, Fanny, died aged just six months in January 1883, followed by their eldest child Robert Richard four months later, in May 1883, aged just six years old. Two years later the family mourned again as another infant daughter, Jessie, just over 15 months old, was buried in May 1885, almost two years to the day from when her eldest brother was laid to rest. The three siblings lie in a neatly concreted plot, but with no headstone in the Southern Cemetery, Dunedin.
Perhaps these tragedies, although not unusual for the times, made the distance from ‘home’ more acute. Perhaps it was the perishing cold Dunedin winters, or perhaps Julia’s health was not the best. Whatever the reason, something seems to have ended the family’s life in New Zealand and about 1895 they had returned to England, where they were found in 1901 at 26 Ventor Road, Portland, Dorset, with Robert working as a general labourer and just the youngest three children, Harriet, Mabel and Richard still at home. Bessie had married in 1900, and she was living not far away. William is harder to trace – some researchers believe he was in the Navy.
Her mother Elizabeth Hand, neé Lawn, died two years later, in January 1904. She was buried in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.
After Julia’s death, her husband Robert Wills remarried, and he ventured in a new career as a licensed victualler – he was now running the Sailor’s Return Inn in Castletown [street] on the seafront, Portland. (Portland is actually a tied island on the English Channel, and is sometimes refered to as the Isle of Portland, it is also very close to Weymouth). The Inn was just a couple of doors away from where Robert grew up and learned his trade.
Sailors Return, Castletown, Portland.
The 1911 census is the most interesting of UK census as the forms retained are not transcriptions but the individual household forms completed by head of house, so not only do we see their handwriting, but also the information as they wrote it. However it was not Robert, but an Edward Lillywhite who filled out the form. He got a bit carried away and had to cross out and re-record details. Robert’s age as 53, then amended to 57, his wife Mary (a widow, who brought two children to the marriage) was 52. Living in the blended household were three of Robert and Julia’s now adult children: Richard, 21, mariner employed by the Admiralty, (his birthplace was recorded as Wellington, New Zealand) Harriet aged 28 – single (no occupation recorded) and Mabel, 21 also single (no occupation recorded). All three are carefully recorded as British subjects by parents birth. Mary’s daughters Florence (20) and Alice (18) Turner, and a couple of boarders Thomas Perrin, 15, a boy mariner and James Male, a retired seaman completed the occupants.
A New Zealand cousin
Mabel Annie Wills was born at 25 Maclaggan Street, Dunedin on the 25 February 1887. She was the eight child of Robert and Julia Wills, but with the death of her five older siblings she became the third eldest. Not long after the 1911 census WWI loomed large on the horizon, especially for the port towns in the southern counties. As young men either signed up or were called up to do their bit, young women found themselves also drawn into the war effort, taking over the jobs young men did in the farms and factories, as well as becoming part of the war effort itself: working as nurses, mechanics, and drivers alongside the military in their many UK bases. Young women who weren’t otherwise gainfully employed also played a vital part in the moral of troops by manning tea and refreshment stalls and hosting dinners, dances and socials for those on leave or recuperating from wounds or illness. Pouring in from overseas to train in camps before being sent to the front, and then returning for rest and short amounts of leave were countless young, homesick lads, who welcomed the distraction of the company of young women; many forged friendships and relationships blossomed into proposals and marriage.
Thus it was that Mabel Wills married Robert Highet on December 12, 1918, in the Brackenbury Church, Fortuneswell, when she was 31 years old. Fourtuneswell is the neighbourhood where the Wills lived in 1901. Robert was a Kiwi soldier, who was serving in the New Zealand Army. He was born on the August 15, 1886, in Wellington, New Zealand. Robert had signed up in 1914 in the 12th (Nelson) Company, 1st Battalion, Canterbury Infantry Regiment.
Robert Highet during active service
Robert’s address at their marriage was given as ‘No. 1 Camp, Sling, Burford’ while Mabel listed her address as the Sailors Return Inn. Witnesses were F.W.G Dodd, R.J. Wills (Mabel’s father) and A. Turner (Alice; Mabel’s stepsister). Despite the armistice ending the war in November 1918 Robert was still on active duty, so Mabel was duly entered as next of kin on Robert’s army file with her address at the Sailors Inn and she went back home to await the end of the mopping up operations.
Robert was discharged 20 Aug 1919 with the rank of Warrant Officer. He had served in Gallipoli, Egypt, and France, a total of 4 years and 281 days. Robert and Mabel returned to New Zealand to begin their new life, firstly living at Stoke, with Robert returning to farming and then becoming an orchardist and later moving into Nelson.
The couple had two children; Robert and Keith, born 1920 and 1921. By 1946 they had sold their orchard and were living at 15 Brougham Street, Nelson. Robert was working as a storeman at the Nelson Wharf, and was in the Home Guard during WWII.
15 Brougham Street, Nelson
Mabel Highet née Wills
Mabel died on September 22, 1957, in Nelson, at the age of 70, and Robert died in 1968. both are buried at Marsden Valley Cemetery – Plot 048, Block 02A.
Acknowledgements: The information and images in this post were kindly shared by Mabel’s grandson Wayne Highet of Auckland, from the Highet Family Tree on Ancestry. Wayne is my 4th cousin once removed as we share common 4th great grandparents Timothy Lawn and Grace Whitburn. Without Wayne’s work in recording and sharing family photographs and certificates I would not have discovered the new link of New Zealand Lawn descendants.
Photographs of family – we are fortunate to have them, but sometimes identifying them can be problematic as over time they get labelled, lost, re-labelled and mis-interpreted. I have already written about another photograph that was attributed to family member of the same name but a couple of generations apart. Can we say with exactitude exactly who these people are? Some of these pictures in this post I have doubts about. The historian in me means I tend to use ‘may’ ‘might’ and ‘possibly’ when describing who the subjects may be.
Another privately published book written about the Lawns (Copper to Quartz, 1999) included a photograph of a Lawn family friend – included because there was a name ‘James Lawn’ written on the back (p52). This photograph came from the collection of a descendant of John Lawn living in Australia. Ironically, as soon as I saw the portrait I immediately identified it as the step-son of my third great grandmother Jane Preshaw, who also lived in the small community of Reefton, New Zealand∗. The photograph – a wedding portrait of Charles Makinson Preshaw and his wife Maria Eliza Coombe (née Kittelty), taken in 1909 – was written on the back ‘James Lawn’ because that is who it was to be sent to. A lesson for amatuer genealogists (which I learnt from making a similar mistake in another family history) is to always research your images!
Friends – not family? Charlie Preshaw and Maria, Reefton 1909. Copper to Quartz incorrectly supposed that the gentleman, if not James Lawn was ‘George’ Preshaw. Photograph original from E. Torney.
Tempting though it is to see a resemblance, one must look for clues and balance with the documentary evidence to establish whether an image is possibly who it is supposed to be, and if it cannot be extablished with certainty, err on the side of caution.
James Lawn, my great great grandfather and his brothers John, George and Henry Lawn were the sons of James Lawn (1812 – 1884) and Jenifer Webster (1817- 1887). The brothers all came to New Zealand, although George returned to England. James senior and Jenifer married in 1836 in the mining township of Lanner, Cornwall. James (snr) was in turn the son of Timothy Lawn (c1780- 1835) and Grace Whitburn (1780-1852).
There are a couple of pictures supposedly of Grace and one of Timothy (and other family), which should be relatively straight forward to confirm – however, these images have passed to me through the hands of Helen Lawn who was given them by another family member, Ena Boyce. Ena was born Ena Gertrude Lawn, (1909-1977), the grandaughter of Henry Lawn. Ena gave several pictures to Helen and they remain in the Helen Lawn Research (HLR) archive which I digitised. They all appear to be reprints of earlier photographs, judging firstly by the death dates of the subjects, and also by the back-stamp of the photographer, which can be dated.
Photography was invented but not available to the general public mostly until after 1840, so this helps us date the images, which are actually later reprints onto the popular carte-de-visite, probably ordered by Henry Lawn before he left home. James was the first to leave home, to travel to Australian goldfields and then the New Zealand goldfields. He returned to Cornwall at least once, more than likely twice, and again came to New Zealand with his younger brothers and cousins. Henry was recorded at Gwennap in the 1861 census, and he married Harriet Richards in 1868. He then went to work in the mines in Dalton on Furness where his first son Charles was born.
Lawn researcher Andrew Saunders writes: “Henry (1845) arrived in Melbourne from Plymouth on 18 August, 1870 in the vessel “Hampshire”, and relocated to NZ in January, 1871 in the “Omeo”. On 14 July, 1873 his wife, Harriet E, and son, Charles H, arrived in Wellington, NZ in the vessel “Halcione” –their name shown as “Laun”. Harriet had been living with her brother in Cornwall in the 1871 English census: William Richards and his wife Rosina were also on the Halcione. Henry and Harriet lived at Blackspoint 1873, then Capelston before finally settling at Te Aroha in the North Island. The reprints of family photographs brought to New Zealand were therefore probably made sometime between 1867 and 1873.
The first image is of Timothy Lawn. Timothy was baptised in Gwennap in May 1780 (he may have been born before this) and was buried in November 1835. This is before civil registration, (July 1837) so all verifying documentation relies on parish records, or legal documents such wills or court records.
Is this “Timothy” Lawn or “William”?
Helen Lawn wrote the details on the back. You can see that someone originally labelled this ‘William’ in pencil. William Lawn was Timothy’s father, and died in 1811 so this cannot possibly be William Lawn. HLR
The next image is supposed to be Timothy’s wife, Grace Lawn née Whitburn (1780-1852). Unfortunately the large cloak swathing the woman in this and the next image obscures the most accurate dating device, her clothing: necklines, sleeves and waist-lines are quite useful to pin-point dates within a couple of years. The coal-scuttle bonnet with its tight frill inside the brim worn here is an old-fashioned style which was out of fashion in the big cities, but still favoured by women in Cornwall in the mid-19th Century. Certainly, in both images there are similar styles evident: bonnet, leather gloves, cloak, as well as the subject’s piercing blue eyes. But are they the same person?
“Grace Lawn” nee Whitburn taken after 1840 (original may have been a Daguerrotype). If this is Grace (who was born in 1780) she would have been aged around 60 years in 1840; this image looks to be of a younger woman. HLR
Rear of the early image of Grace, showing the backstamp dates after 1867, and Helen’s notes in ballpoint pen. Note the question mark – this photograph may not be who it seems.
“Grace Lawn” nee Whitburn 1780 – 1852. This image is more likely to be accurately labeled, although like the one above it has been reprinted as a carte-de-visite and dates from after 1867. The plinth looks to be similar – but not exactly the same as in the previous photograph. HLR
Identical backstamp shows these two images were almost certainly printed at the same time.
So if these two women are not the same, who might they be? Grace and Timothy had a daughter, also Grace, born in 1805, who married Benjamin Smith in 1828 so they may be mother and daughter – this does not explain why the younger version was reprinted and came to New Zealand in the 1870s.
The next image is supposed of James Lawn (senior) (1812-1884) – but even this is possibly not correct – note the pencil underneath Helen’s ballpoint, and compare to later images.
‘James Lawn’ 1812-1884. HLR
Note ‘Timothy’ written in pencil underneath ‘James Lawn’ HLR
Now we look at James’ wife, Jenifer Ann (1817-1877) (Baptised and in 1881 census as “Jenifer” but married and in all other census as “Jane”). Here we can date her photograph from her dress to about 1869-1870, although older women did not always wear up-to-date fashion.
‘Jennifer Ann Webster’. HLR
But then, let us compare this ‘James’ and ‘Jennifer’ with another photograph, this time from the collection of Peter Lawn in Reefton, son of the late Bob and Lawn and great-grandson of John Lawn (1840 – 1905). This is supposed to be a marriage portrait, but as the couple married in 1836, predating photography, it was taken later. This photograph is interesting for a couple of reasons: the long exposure time of the early photographs can be seen because James moved his hand and gave himself extra fingers! He also seems to be wearing an oddly fitting jacket, with the sleeves too long. Both seem to be wearing their ‘Sunday best’, if not new clothes. Although it is documented that photographers sometimes had a wardrobe of clothing for sitters to wear in the studio, there can be no knowing if this was the case in this isnstance.
James and Jenifer Lawn, c1840-1850. Original held by Peter Lawn
Here are the two James together: The ‘younger’ James, on the right has drooping eyelids, which the ‘older’ James on the left, does not and the younger James mouth seems to be wider – or perhaps it is just the lighting in the studio? Other features to compare/contrast in identifying portraits are: length of top lip, distance between irises, length and breadth of nose, size and shape of ears (obscured here), eyebrows, hairline, jawline. The nose and ears actually continue to grow over time, so must be considered carefully. These two are similar enough to be related, but maybe not enough to be the same person.
Another image, a family group, which was taken before 1879 is of James and Jenifer, and their two youngest children: Arthur (1857-1879) and Sarah Ann (1862-1951). Did James grow a long beard between 1879 and the photograph above left taken before his death in April 1884?
Lawn Family, before April 1879. HLR.
Looking, and the more you look the more you see. I always remember meeting a Lawn cousin for the first time – looking across a room and seeing a familiar face although we had never met, and that jolt of knowing long before I made my way around the room and read the name-tag. We search photographs for those same familiar traits and feel triumphant when we identify something we can call ‘ours’ – ‘family’.
But always be aware of what you want to see. It is a human trait to seek familiar recognition in the patterns around us, so much so that we see ‘human’ features in clouds and cracks in the pavement, even cast in stone!
And dont always believe what is written on the back of photographs, particularly in ballpoint pen!
∗There is a connection to the Lawn family of the people in this photograph in the convoluted nature of small West Coast communities where everyone knew, was related to, or married everyone else:
the grandson of Jane Preshaw, my great grandfather Henry David Evans married Eva Lillian Lawn in 1907, and
her brother Herbert Lawn married Maria’s niece, Alice Kittelty in 1915.
Maria Eliza Coombe, née Kittelty’s first husband Joseph Knight Coombe was the brother of Mary Elizabeth Coombe, who married John Lawn in Australia in 1873.
"1 Dish 4 The Road".. Fusing food writing with whatever else I find on the road - fiction, history, poetry, humour, diversity, family stories & London.
Written in Ink and Stone 
