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 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.
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.
Julia Wills née Lawn died at their Ventor Road home in February 1902 aged just 52 years, and was buried at St George’s Church of England cemetery in Portland, Dorset.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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