Albertlanders ( NZ) background (General)

by jhopkins , Monday, January 11, 2010, 20:51 (5514 days ago) @ unknown

Kia ora ano, Kylie!

Glad to know that was useful for you. Seven Lives on Salt River is available in our local library (Rangiora), so if you get stuck, let me know and I will get it out and see if there is any coverage of your family in it. I checked availability at Whitcoulls (out of stock) and on abebooks, where there are several copies but the prices are horrendous.

I note on the Albertland and Districts Museum website that they have lists of other ships on which the settlers arrived (not the official ships). I wonder if they checked those lists for you? If you know which ship they came on, it may be possible to locate them on the freely available shipping lists - even if you know the year they arrived and the port they entered we may be able to confirm that part of their journey. Let me know if I can help on that (so often us Antipodeans rely on people like Slowhands and can't do much to help others because we are so far away - this may be an opportunity to pay back FoD Family History favours I have received!).

Bledisloe seems to have been one of the few useful Gov Gen's we have inherited from Britain. At least he understood that he wasn't in some "Little England in the South Pacific", and worked accordingly. In addition to what is covered in the NZDB (thanks Slowhands), he seems to have been very interested in sailing. I haven't been to it for a long time, but I seem to recall that the NZ Maritime Museum in Auckland contains references to a yachting competition he sponsored, and one of his sailing dinghies is (or was) on display.

And as for the Bledisloe Cup, that seems to have been a truly enduring rivalry, though sadly one leg was played in Japan this year - the respective Oz and NZ rugby unions have been prostituting the cup in order to drum up dollars overseas.

Incidentally, my ggf William Hopkins, came from Bream (though the Hopkins family seems to have come from Brockweir and Llandogo), and my ggm Sarah Ann Joseph came from Coalway Lane in Coleford - we were lucky enough to see the Joseph house in 2004. They were married in St James Church in Bream in 1858, and came here in 1860. Oddly we have ended up living a few hundred metres from the last house he lived in (he died in 1918).

Noho ora mai
John