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!
A short post to bring you the news that my book To Live a Long and Prosperous Life has won an award!
As a member of New Zealand Society of Genealogists I wanted to make sure that any future researcher has access to my book, so last year I donated a copy to the NZSG library. This meant I was eligible for an annual award which was announced at the NZSG Conference held in Auckland over Queens Birthday weekend at the beginning of June. I learnt of the award a few weeks ago, but I have just now got the certificate and official letter so I can now share with you.
“This book would have to be the best and the most comprehensive family history I have come across” – judge’s comment
As a family historian I have always realised that my book would perhaps have a limited audience and subsequently I have been a little surprised when people without any family connection have asked to buy my book. I was also a little wary of the fact that by self-publishing I ran risk of falling into the ‘vanity’ publication category where puffery and ‘hollow ego-tripping’.
I agonised over endless edits (when is too much information too much? should I have included the Lawn family stories? was adding small fictionalised passages a bit over the top?), and lost a lot of sleep on the indexing, map making, diagrams and laying out, not to mention the photo editing – all things that sensible authors pass over to qualified experts.
My main motivation was (apart from just getting the darn thing finally FINISHED) was to make as much of my research available to future researchers and family who had contributed to the book at a reasonable price – hence the DIY of the layout, publishing and promotion. I just about had heart-failure when I realised the publishers had mistakenly sent me the wrong quote, and the actual cost of the printing and binding was going to be just under the selling price I had set. After last-minute negotiations I was able to ensure that I did not need to ask all the people who had kindly pre-purchased to stump up more cash, however the end result has been a book largely created as a labour of love and with my costs only just covered.
Now, a year on since I published I am humbled and astounded to find that I have copies of my book in the UK, USA and Australia, as well as across New Zealand. Copies have been purchased and are available in Christchurch City Libraries, Timaru District Libraries, Grey District Library, Nelson Public Library, University of Otago, Hocken Collection, Alexander Turnbull library – National Library of New Zealand, National Library of New Zealand, Auckland Libraries and of course the New Zealand Society of Genealogists.
This award recognises not only the research and writing that I put into it, but the combined knowledge of several generations of extended family, the selfless work carried out by other researchers who I have only met on the internet, friends for reading the drafts and offering advise and last, but not least, the continued support of my own family and my husband Steve, who has stood by with strong coffee and chocolate at the ready, listened to my endless stories of my long-gone forebears, and the constant pounding of the keyboard, who has driven countless miles to archives and family sites, trudged around overgrown cemeteries with me, gazed at memorials and plaques and turned a blind eye to the cost of certificates and subscriptions that enlightened and confirmed the stories as I brought them to life.
Now with just a few copies from the original print-run left I am still getting queries about my book from interested people. Once these are gone I will still be able to order copies from the printer but these will be at an increased price. If you have been meaning to buy a copy, now is the time to do it! Full details are under the menu at the top right of this blog, or for purchasers from outside New Zealand the PayPal order option is at the bottom left (scroll down).
A year on from that second deadly quake I stood amongst the earthquake ruins of central Christchurch on the edge of the red ‘no-go’ zone. Dust and gravel filled empty spaces, where wildflowers straggled and bloomed. Wire-netting barricades and orange road cones were everywhere, hemming me in. The army had come to town and guard the empty destruction.
Gone were the long shadows cast by the big buildings I knew so well: the bold, modernist architecture of the banks, cheek-by-jowl with Edwardian shops elaborately built with detailed masonry and brick, ornamented with Corinthian, Doric, and Neo Gothic.
Gone, or rather, badly damaged, was the Cathedral. Cathedral Square is the heart of Christchurch, the cathedral spire, to which all eyes were drawn to in this flat landscape and around which the city had always revolved seemed somewhat . . . pointless. The spire lay in ruins, but the Neil Dawson sculpture ‘Chalice’; an inverted cone of pierced metal leaves, still stood nearby: defiant; just as beautiful. In fact, most of the city art-works still stood. Art triumphing over architecture and religion, in spite of nature’s upheaval.
The wedge shaped section on the corner of High Street and Hereford Street, known for over 100 years as Fishers Corner was empty, bulldozed, and demolition workers parked their cars and utes in its space.
Gone.
A single cast-iron veranda support—easily 130 years old—still stood. From its broken top a plant now sprouted, defiant and green in the sun.
I realised you could see so much further into the distance now, without the big buildings. I got a small feel for what it must have been like to live there, all those years ago. I could see the Port Hills, as they must have been then; although there had been rock falls in the earthquakes and some of the taller pinnacles have succumbed.
January 10, 2013 – intersection of Colombo Street & Hereford Street – east view.
I strained to hear, to get a feel. The sound of children, of customers shopping. People going about their business, never expecting the ground to open up and swallow them all. Many, many, feet passing down through the years. How many times had I walked past here without realising the connection I had to this piece of Christchurch? But they were gone.
Rather, he was gone. I couldn’t feel him there—if he had been there much at all. I picked up a river stone—dusty, tear-drop shaped—from the cleared section-now-car park and tucked it in my pocket.
When I got home I saw that the piece of sandstone had a tiny mica inclusion, or a bit of fools gold glinting through the dust.
I was divining ghosts.
(excerpt p145, Chapter 6, To Live a Long & Prosperous Life)
The bird song of a volume and brilliance not heard in England arose in a continuous, fluid melody. Deep within the dense, damp bush came the soft sound of falling water—a secretive stream making its musical way through the impenetrable undergrowth.
Ferns, moss and leaf-mold gave way to flax, tussock and snow grass as the traveller climbed higher. Mountain tops gleaming with snow and ice, rock scree and shingle fans tumbled rocks into glacier gouged valleys and gorges.
Canterbury high country
Snow and rain fed braided rivers disgorging countless tons of stones across the broad plains. Rivers tumbled seaward with treacherous turns and undercurrents many times more powerful than English streams and their languid glide, proving to the inexperienced when they came tramping over the mountains hauling their swag and shovel that death came simply by a miss-placed foot slipping beneath the surface or over a bluff in this raw, wild new world.
Upper Waimakariri River and the Main Divide
Arthurs Pass
In the west, beaches roared with the relentless pulse of waves raking and rearranging great cobbles and boulders into polished pebbles. The bleached bones of dead trees piled haphazardly on black sands that flashed with bright fine gold.
Gold also fissured the quartz rocks deep within the mountains, lying in wait for men with time and money, iron machines and toxic mercury to set it free. An ‘empty’ country, rich for the pickings lay in wait for its newest inhabitants. Shotguns and ships, pick and shovel, axe and saw, shepherds crook and bullock whip, ploughshare and barbed wire. The land would be changed forever in a few short decades.
Slab Hut Creek
Over the deepest and wildest seas known to man, lay this group of mountainous, green islands in the South Pacific. Bound on one side by the tempestuous Tasman Sea and the misnamed Pacific Ocean on the other, New Zealand had been ‘discovered’ and named by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642. Tasman mapped part of the coastline and had a brief but violent encounter with the local Maori. It was the last place in the world to be found by western civilization and the last land to be settled by Europeans.
Looking south towards the Southern Alps, Greymouth
Beached at Hokitika
[excerpt Chapter 2 pg 57 – To Live a long & Prosperous Life]
I was thinking about that old adage: ‘it’s not the destination but the journey’ last week, when I set out in the early morning for a trip from my hometown 160km (100 miles) north to the city of Christchurch. It was freezing and the sun was just rising. I wasn’t looking forward to the four-hour round trip.
Those of us who live at the southern end of the Canterbury Plains often complain about the boring, two-hour journey of relatively straight roads interspersed with sections of passing lanes. The milk tankers and trucks don’t seem to take notice that they are supposed to travel at 90kph if towing a trailer, and can whizz past you and leave you in their dust. We sometimes forget to look at the breathtaking snow-clad southern alps gleaming to the west as we mutter in the slip-stream of yet another truck.
Yet this was an important milestone in my journey: for I was collecting my book To Live a Long & Prosperous Life from the printer, and this day would become publication day; 13 July 2016.
The whole thing about the journey versus destination hit home to me when I was reading about Out of Eden, an epic project currently underway somewhere in asia, near Xanadu. The personal quest of adventurer Paul Salopek, I was boggled to see he was taking seven years of his life to walk the route of human DNA migration from Africa to South America. Seven years! What an undertaking! And then I realised that my own journey (sat mostly behind my keyboard and via the global digital network of the world wide web) had actually taken close on that amount of time: seven years. I particularly like that he is doing what I was tracing within my book: seeking the quieter, hidden stories of people who rarely make the news while at the same time engaging with the major stories of our time. My journey is not quite so epic, but I can empathise with the reasons and the motivation behind it.
Exactly a year ago I had ‘completed’ the writing of my book (in reality it got tweaked all the way to printing), and I posted this on my facebook status:
16 July 2015
update on the BOOK. Just about got to the I’ve-finished-the-damn-thing stage. But now comes the bibliography, the illustrations and then the printing/publishing. Whose idea was this any way?
I set out on this mission to write and publish not knowing how long it would take – in fact I think if I had known I might never have started. But along the way I was learning, which is so much part of the journey towards the unknown. Learning many things about my family and the heritage my ancestors had left for us, but also a great deal about the process of researching and writing a book, then about formatting, indexing, layout for printing, publishing and all the other bits along the way that you scarcely think about when you pick up a book.
Discussing family history writing in Family Tree Magazine (May, 2016), Cherry Gilchrist has this to say:
Start by embracing three truths, and triumph over the word ‘never’ in each of them:
It will never be the right time to write it, so just do it anyway.
Your research will never be complete; but what’s wrong with leaving something for future generations to follow up?
What you produce will never be perfect. Does it really matter, if it’s full of interest for others?
By this time I had cut out huge chunks of interesting (to me) but irrelevant information, and given the draft to an editor for their advice and direction. I tried to follow admonishments from various sources: eliminate exclamation marks, don’t use two words where one will suffice, try not to be ‘clever’ with fancy-pants words and various other self criticisms that made me super-vigilant on my own writing to the point where I scarcely knew if what I had written was actually any good any more. I checked and rechecked all my facts, sources and references not once but many times. My perfectionist tendencies almost prevented me from ever getting to a ‘finished’ point as I constantly discovered errors, typos and glitches in my ‘final’ drafts. Despite constant proofreading the nature of having such a large number of words (over 230,000) makes it almost certain that there will be still errors in the final book. Some days Gilchrist’s ‘never’ seemed to be winning.
There are many helpful websites and books that can steer the newbie author and indie publisher in the right direction, although many are geared up for the fiction writers. One piece of advice I had found I printed out and stuck above my lap-top as a sort of check list. I must say when I first looked at it in September 2015 I could only tick off the first Write Book which up until then was the goal of my journey. Here I was, newly arrived with a finished book and I still had all this to do!
Publishing Resources
So my trip to Christchurch was an ending in a way – the finished product was finally done. The final few weeks were not without drama, including a huge mistake on the part of the printers who had initially quoted me the wrong price: the ‘new’ quote came in at over $2000 more than the original, which was a shock to put it mildly. With just a couple of weeks before production and having pre-sold and marketed based on their original quote I was not happy. But then I channelled Dinah’s spirit and negotiated a solution. Once this print run has been exhausted any further copies are going to be considerably more expensive to produce. In the meanwhile there are still some copies available at the original price of NZ $49.99.
Finally I had the brand new shiny books in my possession, and was able to deliver some to Christchurch recipients. I also called into my favourite bookstore Smith’s Bookshop at the Tannery and dropped of some copies that they have kindly agreed to stock. The highlight of my trip was to see that they almost immediately put a copy in the shop window. Now that was exciting!
Smith’s Bookshop
After a long drive home, the next day was spent packaging and boxing up the orders, then delivering them to the post office and courier to make their way to their new homes and into libraries: New Zealand, Australia, UK and USA. Farewell books!
By this time exhaustion has more or less overtaken me and a huge cold threatens to overwhelm my sinuses. All I want to do is sleep. People say to me I must be excited. But I am just glad I have got to the end of this part of the journey and survived. One task before the weekend was to create and distribute press releases including posing for a cheesy author-with-book photo.
Finally, I took four copies of the book and opened each one. I carefully took up my favourite pen with purple ink (Dinah wrote with purple ink, too!). On the first page I wrote a personal dedication to each of my four children, for it was for them that I wrote and officially dedicated this book:
For my children, with love: Rachael, Emily, Philip and Alexander May you, too, live long and prosperous lives.
When I set off to record and write my family story it was easy at first: find some facts – write them down in an interesting fashion. But soon I found that having a large, complex family makes a linear narrative difficult. At some point, you have to stop, back track in time, and take up another person’s tale, sometimes crossing again the same dates in history, sometimes even the same places. I am sure, despite my best efforts, that I have had to repeat some information in order to orientate the reader.
After my first early draft was completed I decided that I would take the family matriarch, Dinah as a central unifying character, around whom the rest of the stories revolve. She became the pivotal force within the book, just as she had been in her family and community on the West Coast of New Zealand.
Dinah Hansen c1915.
This ‘little old lady’ had once been a little girl and young woman; something I had to conjour for my readers. Here are some excerpts from page 56 of To Live a Long & Prosperous Life:
Dinah means ‘to be judged; vindicated’. The biblical Dinah was the eleventh child of Jacob and Leah. Dinah (Dina bat Isaachar) was the eleventh and youngest surviving child of Barnett and Julia Nathan: the baby of the extended family.
drawn from an image in Punch magazine
Born on 2 February 1835, Dinah was 26 years younger than her oldest sister Fanny, who had already been married for two years and had her first child. Dinah’s brother Solomon Lyon Nathan had started his family too, so by the time Dinah arrived she had two nieces and a nephew who were older than her. Her father Barnett was 53 and her mother Julia was 49. Even more remarkable was both Barnett’s elderly parents Mordecai aged 89 and Frances aged 98 were living with the family at 20 Snargate Street, making a three generation household.
When Dinah was six, the family, including Dinah’s grandmother Frances Nathan, (Independent means) Dinah’s parents Barnett (China dealer) and Julia Nathan and some of her siblings (and a family servant), were recorded at 20 Snargate Street, Dover on the evening of the 1841 census:
Nathan Family, Dover, Kent 1841 UK census
As we don’t have any photographs or even much direct information about Dinah as a child, we have to make do with building a picture of what was happening around her at the time:
Dinah was like any other little Victorian girl, perhaps the favoured ‘baby’ of the family, cosseted and petted, but also privileged to have a stable and secure upbringing. We can imagine her watching the comings and goings on the street below from the high windows, playing with her dolls and discouraged from boisterous games with her brother. Taking walks out along the beach front or to the parks on the Sabbath or visiting other shops with her mother during the week. Learning to count by naming how many oranges, lemons or figs her father was putting in the customer’s basket, and learning to reckon with a pencil on the corner of the wrapping paper. Applying herself to her lessons and learning about running a home at her mother’s side, knowing with certainty her future role as a wife and mother was likely already mapped out.
Navigating the life of Dinah, her children and her family has been an incredible adventure: discovering new places and faces along the way – pictures, stories and tales of events great and small. Creating a lasting document that brings all these to life has been another ‘adventure’ full of challenge and small triumphs too.
My research and writing have been based upon work of other family members who have been researching for far longer than I have. Not long after I became interested in Lawn family history I attended a workshop at Ferrymead Heritage Park in my then role as a Museum Educator at South Canterbury Museum. Looking across the room I saw another attendee who looked vaguely familiar, a man with a friendly smile, who, when I sidled around the room to glance at his name tag I saw he was a LAWN – Peter Lawn of Blacks Point Museum. Peter and I got talking and quickly established our family connections; he was the son of Bob and Betty Lawn of Reefton, descendants of John Lawn (1840-1905), brother to my James Lawn (1837-1928), making us third cousins once removed.
Peter alerted me to the fact that there was a book and family tree, compiled by Helen and the late Ross Lawn (descendant of Thomas Lawn and Sarah Hart) for a family reunion in the 1980s – a reunion that somehow my immediate family missed. Peter kindly sent me a copy of the tree and the booklet that explained a little of the history of the Lawn family. The tree I received had been revised in 1989 after the reunion (when more information had come forward). It was remarkable: beautiful calligraphy on seven A1 pages, it covered the many Lawns who were descended from the original Cornish family beginning with William Lawn (b Gwennap 1777). The six sheets of the tree covered: Continue reading “Indebted”→
Today I recieved the first proof copy of my book. (I am resisting the urge to splurge on at least a couple of exclamation marks here. Oh what the heck:!!) Last week, after I finally finished formatting and checking through my draft, made the PDF and pressed ‘send’ to email to the printer I was left feeling decidedly flat – what an anti-climax after over six years of work!
However, a courier arrived a short time ago with the first, pristine copy of the REAL book, and suddenly I felt overwhelmed: I have finally got there! It is printed, bound, shiny and new. A quick flick through and it looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself. Amazing that this part of the process is so quick, when the design, layout and graphics took over six months of hard graft on Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop (and my friend Google when I couldn’t fathom how to get the blessed thing to do what I wanted).
So much frustration and mutterings such as ‘why on earth did I ever think I could do this?’ ‘whose idea was this anyway’ and plaintive wails of ‘when will it ever be finished?’ not to mention late nights hunched over the keyboard, promising the ever patient spouse that I would ‘just finish off this page . . .’ , copious amounts of coffee and chocolate, and many many hours later, and here we are.
Now I will sit down and carefully proof-read it all, make adjustments and corrections ready for the actual print run. Once everything is in place and the final quote from the printer is in, I will be taking for orders, so watch this space. Exciting times!
"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 
