Compiled by Carol Bell
Richard Vanstone was born in Broadwoodkelly in 1788, son of William Vanstone and Jane Vicary. He moved to Plymouth, where he worked as a sawyer in the naval shipyards, through the Napoleonic wars.
He married Elizabeth Smith from the Devonport/Plymouth area, and had at least 11 children, including Richard James, 1832 – 1900, and Francis, 1835-1914.
The mid 1800s saw the age of emigration. Close-packed steerage travel, which was the lot of most, could not be other than miserable. One of the numerous guides printed for intending emigrants gave a categoric piece of advice: “Men of large capital ought not to emigrate at all ... England is the paradise of the rich - a man with moderate capital can command many sufficiently profitable ways of applying it without subjecting himself to the barbarism of the bush”.
For most who went out steerage, the “barbarisms of the bush” at least offered prospects of better living conditions - home offered none. Prospects for the working classes were gloomy in Devonport - wages were poor, jobs scarce and accommodation left a lot to be desired.
Francis Vanstone appears to have been the first of the Vanstones to emigrate to New Zealand. Like his father, Francis was a sawyer and in 1859, when he was 23, he and his 21-year-old wife Susannah arrived at Lyttelton on the ship Cameo as assisted immigrants, having paid £10 cash and extended a promissory note for £14, leaving the remaining £9 to be paid by the Canterbury province. Francis and Susannah chose to make their home on the South Island’s Banks Peninsula which included 134,000 acres of woodland and ample work and opportunity for an ambitious sawyer, although in 1865 Francis is listed as manager of the Travellers Rest Hotel at Head of the Bay.
About this time Francis was joined by his older brother Richard, and when, on 29 October 1867, Francis was granted land blocks 9739, 9574 and 9575 at Le Bons Bay, Richard also took a financial interest.
They built a timber mill on the headland in partnership with a Mr Savage who had been engineer for Mr John Smith, another mill owner in the bay, and there worked the black and white pine of the flat land and the immense totaras that grew on the sides of the valley. The timber was sent to the sea by means of a large chute, then punted or rafted to ketches waiting out in the bay, and ferried around to Lyttelton for sale. A trip to Akaroa was quite an expedition: it was not until 1870 that a proper road was formed.
Butcher’s meat was a luxury little known to the early settlers of the bay, but wild pigeons and kakas abounded, and the creek swarmed with large eels, specimens of 40 and 50lbs not being uncommon. As the bush was cleared the land was sown down and cattle introduced, but the destruction of the bush was also the destruction of the game.
The greatest event in the early days of Le Bons Bay took place during Richard and Francis Vanstone’s time there - the tidal wave of 1868. It came at one o’clock, and caused much terror. A house was carried up the bay and deposited on the tops of the trees on the flat, there was three feet of water through another house, and all day the waves kept coming up. A whaleboat was carried out of the river and placed on a bridge. The bridge was loosened and carried out to sea, and again the boat
and bridge were brought back.
Following the tidal wave came the gold fever, started when a woman found a piece of quartz well impregnated with gold close to her house, which, it was supposed, had been washed up by the tidal wave. The news spread like wildfire, and became known in Christchurch, where a company was formed. Two men were sent down to examine the bays, but no signs of gold were found.
Francis also owned 20 acres of bush land (section 1755) at the head of Akaroa harbour, and he became active in the affairs of the area, acting as secretary to the Duvauchelles Bay Boxing Day Races in 1868 and secretary for the Banks Peninsula A & P Association in 1870 and 1881. He sold the Le Bons Bay mill in 1869.
Francis and Richard moved to Barrys Bay and worked the timber there for Henry Piper, an early landowner. They bought an interest in a pastoral run in the bay (No.15813) and were still there in 1878 when Richard married a young domestic servant from Head of the Bay, Harriet Ellen Williams. Harriet was 17 and had been born at Akaroa. Richard, although he gave his age as 30, was 46, 29 years older than his bride, and one wonders how convincing his appearance was. Harriet’s father, Richard Williams, was living at Pigeon Bay, but his written consent was forthcoming and the couple were married by licence at Barry’s Bay by the minister of Akaroa’s Bon Accord Presbyterian Church on 11 September 1878.
Richard and Harriet (nee Williams) Vanstone settled in Barry’s Bay in a little cottage on 20 acres of mainly bush land, Richard taking work at the Tarawera Mill over the hill at Little River after Mr L.C. Latter bought the timbered land at Barry’s Bay.
Francis, though, did not feel his future was on the peninsula and he set sail with his wife to Devonport, retaining 125 acres (sections 31781, 31749, 31750) that he had bought at Puaha, Little River, valued at 373 pounds. Sadly his wife Susannah died during the return trip, and was buried at sea in the Red Sea.
Little River was one of the latest settled portions of the peninsula, although in later years it became one of the most important. As the outlet from the peninsula to the plains, all roads converge on it. The settlement, consisting of large valleys and fertile, well watered plains, was covered in dense bush and in those days it was a lively and prosperous place. Little River was famous for its birds, and was said to be a place of enchantment with the ceaseless song of a great variety of native birds. The river and nearby Lake Forsyth swarmed with eels and other native fish, and some of the largest trees on the peninsula grew there, in a setting said to be among the prettiest in Canterbury.
Six children were born to Richard and Harriet Vanstone while they were at Barry’s Bay, each in its turn being taken to Akaroa for baptism. They were Francis Richard (1879), Daisy Lina (1881), Millicent Emma (1883), Herbert James (1885), Rupert Ernest (1887), and Harriet Hanna (1889).
In May 1888 Francis, still in Devonport, leased his 125 acres at Little River to Richard for an annual rental of £45 and in 1890, returning to wind up his affairs in New Zealand, Francis, described in legal documents as a gentleman temporarily residing at Little River, leased two of his sections totalling 78 acres to Richard with the right of purchase. Francis had prospered in Plymouth, and was by now an agent for Mr Hudson Kearley, Liberal Member of Parliament for Devonport. He had remarried to Hannah Elizabeth Wood, although he still had no children.
In 1892 Francis went to New Zealand for a third time to look for businesses which might export goods to the UK. A letter held by the family from Hudson Kearley, MP, who was senior partner of Kearley and Tonge, tea shippers and merchants of London, Calcutta and Colombo, later 1st Viscount Devonport, thanks him for his “arduous work ... which have been and will be of the greatest service to us commercially”.
When Francis returned to England he appears to have had some involvement with the first shipment of butter for which he received a silver medal, later sent to Richard’s family in New Zealand. A photo of this medal is held at the Canterbury Museum. It is recorded in Gordon Ogilvie’s “The Port Hills of Christchurch” that the Tai Tapu butter factory was the first New Zealand factory to send butter overseas so it seems likely Francis had a hand in the arrangements for this during his visit to his brother.
Francis’s second wife Hannah died in December 1903 and seven months later Francis married their companion/housekeeper, the 27-year-old Constance Violet Plane. Francis was by this time 69 years old and the couple continued to live at his home in Plymouth, 12 South View Terrace. Three years later his only child was born, a son Francis Cyprian.
Francis died on 11 Feb 1914 aged 79. The cemetery where he was buried no longer exists but photographs were taken of some graves before the land was bought by the Plymouth Transport Board for their bus depot at Milehouse, so at least a photo of his grave can still be seen. He left an estate valued at £1473, a large amount for the time, which included houses at 30a and 31a Kent Road Ford, Devonport and 13 Hampton St, Plymouth and the leasehold of 7 Queen St, Devonport.
Back in New Zealand Richard and Harriet moved to Little River after the 1890 land transfer and there, over the next 10 years, produced another five daughters -Alice May (1891), Lucy Louisa (1893), Florence Ethel (1895), Ellen Evelyn Ruth (1898), and Hazel Pearl (1900) - who were each baptised in St Andrews Church at Little River.
Richard did purchase the land on which he lived in February 1893, paying £493.12.7. The Vanstone family settled comfortably into the community, Richard farming the land and Harriet busy with her ever-increasing family. She was later to tell her grandchildren that she would “pop inside the house, have a baby, bathe and wrap it and go back to milk the cows”. While this description might (or might not!) be a
little extreme, no doubt Harriet was a very busy woman.
The house was high on the side of a steep hill, reached by a mile-long winding track lined with sweetly-scented mignonette, sweet william, granny bonnets and snapdragons. The garden surrounding the house also included primroses and roses. A trip to the site of the house in the early 1980s resulted in several members of the family taking cuttings of a hybrid musk rose called Francesca, released in 1922,
which now flourish in several gardens.
Water for the house was collected by a funnel-shaped wooden structure in the creek further up the hill behind the house. It was channelled into barrels outside the back door and carried from there to the dairy, washhouse or scullery. Baths were taken in the kitchen in a large two-handled tub. The lavatory was some distance from the house, down a gully and across a creek. It included two seats -one for adults and a smaller one for children - but it could only be used when the weather was favourable. Too much rain would swell the creek until it became impassable. A large vegetable garden, orchard and berry-fruit plot were maintained and jams and preserves lined the shelves of a large walk-in pantry
The school was about five miles from the house on the coach road to Akaroa on the other side of the valley. If the horse was free three children would ride him while the others walked alongside, but in the shorter winter days it was dark when they left home and dark again by the time they got back.
Richard Vanstone died on 13 April 1900 aged 68, of cancer of the liver, leaving 10 children and a pregnant 38-year-old wife. He was buried in the cemetery at Little River.
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Harriet continued working the farm. The older children were there to help her and life continued as before. Richard had not left a will, but Harriet did not make application for letters of administration of the estate, assuming that the property would automatically pass to her. She carried on as before improving the property with subdividing and fencing, extending the orchard and plantations, laying on water, electric light, and eventually the telephone.
The following year, 1901, the first of the children to marry - Daisy -wed Frank Hubbard at Little River and went to live in Levin. Just over a year later Daisy was dead, leaving a small son. She was mourned by her family, and her sister Alice May later named one of her daughters after Daisy, describing her sister as “an angel”.
1902 was a sad year for Harriet, because also in that year her house burnt down but, undaunted, she rebuilt. The second house was large - four bedrooms, a large living room, farmhouse-sized kitchen and a lean-to washhouse-woodshed. Decorative wrought iron laced the eaves and next to the house was a dairy where Harriet made butter and cheese which were stored in the loft.
The oldest son, Frank, also went to the North Island, working first in the King Country and later moving to Auckland, where he married in 1921. The two younger sons, Herbert James and Rupert Ernest, joined him for a time but returned to Banks Peninsula, both marrying in 1916 and continuing to help on the family farm as well as working their own properties.
The growth and export of cocksfoot played a large part in the expansion and prosperity of the peninsula and, in several ways, was significant in the lives of the Vanstone family. Cocksfoot seed was introduced in Pigeon Bay in 1853, and by the turn of the century the industry had reached its height and the cocks-foot was of such excellent quality that the Government granted permission to certify the seed. Excellent prices were paid, and the average yield was four to five 80lb sacks per acre. The cocksfoot was reaped by hand with a sickle, tied in bundles and threshed with a flail.
The men of the peninsula worked long and hard in the hot summer days, harvesting their crops, but large gangs of itinerant labourers were needed to help gather it all before the autumn. A young lad called the billy boy would supply the men with a drink every hour, but owing to complaints of heartburn, the traditional ships lime juice was replaced by “burgoo”, a mixture of oatmeal and water. Towards the end
of a hard day, half a mug of oatmeal from the bottom of the billy was regarded as a pick-me-up. The Vanstone farm had a two-roomed whare where the grass seeders slept during their stint there, and the women of the house supplied their meals.
In the summer of 1911-12 a young labourer from Rakaia in the Canterbury plains joined the grass-seeders at the Vanstone farm - Robert Taylor. Harriet had four daughters of marriageable age by then, although the oldest, Millie, was working in Christchurch. However, it was to the 20-year-old May that Robert was attracted. Harriet had acknowledged the difficulties that would arise trying to stage weddings
for seven daughters, and she had decided that the first of the girls to marry would have the grandest wedding, with subsequent marriages making use of the gown and accessories already provided. Aware of this, there was some competition among the sisters to be first to the altar, and it was May who won. She was married to Robert Taylor at Little River that October and went to live in Rakaia.
By the early 1920s all but one of Harriet’s children had either married or left home, and Harriet and her daughter Harriet Hanna, known as Fairy, remained together at the farm. It was about this time that the problems began for Harriet which were to haunt her for the rest of her life.
It was later to be Harriet’s contention that: “...some Little River people connected with the domain ground through jealousy set abroad the rumour that myself and my daughter (Fairy) were suffering from delusions. This was spread abroad and the people were set against us causing me great pain and inconvenience in the management of my farm”.
Harriet decided to sell the farm and leave the district and to this end consulted a solicitor. It was then that she learned the law concerning the full distribution of Richard’s intestate estate - that the property was held in trust for the children and that she, although not owning the farm, could reside there and continue farming until her death. This news was to set the scene for a chain of events which blighted Harriet’s
life. She became obsessed with the belief that she was entitled, morally if not legally, to be registered as the absolute owner of the property. In January 1926 she made application of letters of administration to Richard’s estate, which was subject to a mortgage of £450, and her children were asked to sign a consent to her administration. All complied with the exception of Rupert.
Shortly after her application Harriet was beset by another difficulty. The Christchurch Press of 26 February 1926 reported: “A two-roomed whare, owned by Mrs H. Vanstone, Puaha, Little River, was destroyed by fire early on Tuesday afternoon. It had been occupied by grass-seeders up to noon. The origin of the fire is unknown. The building was insured for £80 in the NZ Farmers”.
Harriet was granted letters of administration to the estate on 23 June 1926, but it would seem that she did not fully understand what the office of administrix entailed. She appeared to have expected that following the granting of letters of administration, the land would be vested in her and that she would have sole rights over it. When her lawyers failed to furnish her with the deeds to the property she accused them of withholding her “rights”.
She strongly maintained the belief that the ownership of the farm should have passed to her and decided that as the property did not belong to her there was no obligation upon her to work or maintain it, neither did she feel under any obligation to make mortgage payments.
Herbert and Rupert with their brothers-in-law Fred Reed, Stan Stanbury and Wynn Stanbury, who all lived in the area, did what they could, sowing cocksfoot and arranging for its harvest, but the lack of day-to-day maintenance and care took its toll and the farm fell into disrepair.
Mortgagees’ payment demands in March 1932 prompted Harriet to appeal to the Supreme Court, in a letter addressed to the judge and jury, for her deeds “unjustly withheld”. This letter was accompanied by a statement of disbursements and accounts including an account against the estate for £7326 for the rearing and educating of her 11 children.
A further letter in February 1933 again maintained that her solicitors were withholding her rights and also claimed that Harriet’s life had been attempted by poisoning and shooting. She accused “Little River conspirators” of making lying statements about her delusions, and stated that she had been subjected to “the most brutal, inhuman and fiendish attack that could ever be launched at a human being under the British Crown”.
By August 1933 the mortgagees’ patience was at an end and they called up their mortgage, advertising the property for sale and placing it in the hands of a firm of auctioneers in Christchurch. However, application was made to them on behalf of the beneficiaries of the estate, namely the Vanstone children, and they subsequently withdrew the property. The Great Depression of the 1930s was in full swing at this
time, so it is likely that the mortgagees decided a bird in the hand was worth two on the property market.
In January 1934 an argument arose between Harriet and her son Rupert over a ripe crop of cocksfoot. It was later Rupert’s contention that Harriet refused to harvest the crop, and Harriet claimed that she was trying to sell the standing crop to firms in Christchurch. Rupert entered the land on legal advice and harvested the crop, paying half of the proceeds to harvesting expenses and paying the other half to the
mortgagees.
After another argument in April 1935 over ownership of a harvested crop of cocksfoot Harriet and Fairy moved the sacks into a spare bedroom, but the seed proved to be not completely dry and combustion
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This time the insurance company declined payment and Harriet and Fairy moved into the brick dairy, sleeping on bags of seed and cooking in a small camp oven. The wooden floor became almost white with its daily scrubbing with cold water and sandsoap, and years of use caused tracks to be worn in the wood. Water was channelled from the creek up the hill into a barrel outside the dairy’s door and washing was done on a makeshift bench beside the barrel.
Harriet had a sledge that could be hitched to the old horse and on this she gathered wood for the stove and delivered cream to the Little River collection point for the Tai Tapu Dairy. However, as the years wore on the horse got too old to climb the last part of the hill to the site of the house. He was tethered in a grassy bay halfway up the track and Harriet herself pulled the sledge to gather wood. She still maintained
a large orchard and in the season would load raspberries into buckets which were suspended from a yoke across her shoulders and taken into Little River - a distance of several miles. She refused all offers of help from her family and seems to have taken a delight in her self-sufficiency.
In December 1935, by order of the Supreme Court at Christchurch, Harriet was removed from the office of administrix and the Public Trustee appointed. In 1937 the Public Trustee prepared a deed of assignment with the intention that nine of the 10 surviving children should assign their interests in the estate to their mother, and that Rupert, who would not agree to such a course, should be paid his share in cash. In the meantime the value of the farm had increased to about £2000. Eight of the children signed this deed, but Fairy refused. It was retained by the Public Trustee undated and unstamped. In 1940, after Harriet threatened a visiting policeman with a gun, she and Fairy were committed to Sunnyside Mental Hospital in Christchurch. They remained there for only a short period and were discharged “unrecovered”
.
Harriet died peacefully on her bed of seed sacks one morning in September 1948, just five days before her 87th birthday. In her will she bequeathed the whole of her estate to Fairy. A court order in 1951 directed that the land be sold, but a claim against the estate by Fairy for £10,000 necessitated another court case in 1954, at which it was held that the land should be sold. Harvey McKay of Little River bought the property in July 1958 for £3100.
FRANCIS RICHARD (Frank): Born 12 August 1879 in Akaroa. Frank moved to the North Island as a young man and married Gladys Winifred Martin, a tailoress from Lower Hutt, in the Manse, Taumarunui, King Country, on 22 Oct 1921 when he was 42. He took up a renewable lease on 800 acres in Kaitieke. The 1922 electoral roll for Waimarino electorate in the King Country shows him as a farmer of Kaitieke, Raurimu. Frank and Gladys had three children: Jean Patricia born 1922, died in splenic anaemia Oct 1924 in the Public Hospital, Christchurch; Shirley Gladys born 1926, married 1947 David McGorrery and had four sons and two daughters; and Francis James (Albie) born 1936 who did not marry. Frank’s brothers Bert and Rupe worked with him on his land at Kaitieke, probably in the ‘20s, but later returned to Canterbury. Frank gave up the lease on his farm in 1949 when he was 70. He died in Auckland in 1955.
DAISY LINA: Born 30 Sep 1881 in Akaroa, Daisy married Francis William Ward (Frank) Hubbard on 23 April 1901 at St Andrews Church, Little River and went to live in Levin. Just over a year later Daisy died in childbirth, leaving a small son, Frank Reginald Beeman Hubbard. This young son was himself to die prematurely aged 23 in a motorbike accident on 16 Aug 1925 in Christchurch.
MILLICENT EMMA: Millie worked in Christchurch as a young woman and married Fred Reed, a carpenter/painter in 1915 when she was 32. They lived variously on the West Coast; at Little River; Woodside, Gapes Valley, Geraldine; 6 Seaview Terrace, Timaru; and at Motueka. Millie was a lady of great enthusiasms - naturopathy, religion, technology. She was at one stage very enthusiastic about a petrol saver that was mounted between the carburettor and manifold which was supposed to do wonders inenhancing fuel vapourisation.
Fred and Millie had three children: Doris (1916), Esma (1924), and Aubrey. They were in Gapes Valley in 1921 when Doris started school. She was taken on her first day by her cousin Daisy Taylor who was a few months older. They went to school on a pony -if they could catch it - or they walked. Doris remembered that the pony was prone to nipping the children. It preferred to spend its day grazing the paddock. The Reed and Taylor families spent a lot of time in one another’s company at Gapes Valley and the children were close companions. Daisy and Doris were often in trouble for their exploits- on one famous occasion they preserved the 10 dozen eggs that Millie planned to sell fresh at the market. Doris and Daisy were flower girls for Nellie and Wynne Stanbury in 1920.
The house at 6 Seaview Terrace, Timaru, is now in flats and it was Fred Reed who
began the process of converting it to flats in the ‘20s. Although it was a large house the family slept in one room while the building alterations were in progress.
The couple parted in the 30s when they were living in Motueka - Millie stayed in Motueka and Fred lived near Kaiteriteri. He died of cancer when he was 64. Millie was still working in Motueka when she was in her eighties, picking raspberries and blackcurrants. She well known in the family for her herb beer which contained seven herbs. Millie maintained she had to stop drinking it when she was in her mid eighties because, she said, it was making her frisky. It contained white clover, red clover, laurel leaves, comfrey, dandelion, hops and barley. Millie died in Motueka in 1980 aged 96 – perhaps she was right about the herb beer.
HERBERT JAMES: Bert was first employed by W. Montgomery as a farm labourer and later got some property of his own. He married Nellie Manson in 1916 when he was 30. The couple lived in a small house on Western Rd, just to the east of Little River township. The house was enlarged as the family grew. They had the first valve wireless in the district.The couple never owned a motor vehicle of any kind.
Bert was a very keen sportsman, he shot ducks, rabbits etc and was a keen fisherman andenthused about the perch that could be caught in the stream across the road from the LittleRiver Hotel.
Nellie & Bert had six children: Pearl (1918), Mavis (1919), Allan (1921), Rona (1923), Cliff (1928) and Daphne (1931). Daphne died aged six months and was buried at Little River. Bert died in 1969 aged 84, but Nellie lived until 1995 and died aged 106. She was frequently interviewed in her later years as the oldest person in Canterbury and became quite a celebrity.
RUPERT ERNEST: Rupert was a handsome young man and he and his first wife Isobel Agnes Carston were an excellent match. He was a contractor and did various seasonal work like fencing, painting, wool pressing, wool classing, opossum trapping in winter, a bit of navvying (pick and shovel work), and cocksfooting.
The North Island affair: Before the First World war Francis, Herbert (Bert) and Rupert Vanstone probably each put in an equal amount of money to purchase 900 acres of land at Kaitieki Valley near Taumarunui. They lived very primitively, possibly even in a tent while clearing the land for themselves. Their clothing would have been pretty rough - woollen long-johns and singlets. To survive they would have lived off the land by catching rabbits and wood pigeons. Times were hard. It would have taken three brothers two to three years working in very rough conditions, and at the end of this time Bert and Rupert expected to each have 300 acres of land for their own, but Francis wanted it all to himself - the whole 900 acres. The two brothers, not wanting to sue Francis or take him to court returned home to the South Island penniless because Francis had kept the books in his name only, so the other two couldn’t prove their rightful ownership.
Rupert built a rabbit fence between Lake Forsyth and the Prices. The task was not an easy one as he had to put the fence posts into the shingle bed beside the lake. He worked for the local council putting in lampposts for the power/telephone lines to be erected in the outer suburbs of Christchurch. The trouble was though, that whilst he would dig a post hole in a morning the other workmen would take a whole day to do the same work. Rupert and Isobel (Dolly) left Little around the Second World War. They moved to the public works down south below Methven.
HARRIET HANNAH (FAIRY): Fairy was born in 1889. She is said to have had both breasts removed because of cancer when she was 20. Always very quiet and reserved, she seldom joined in conversations, but had very firm and fixed opinions. She was a tower of strength and a close companion for her mother for just on 60 years, although it is said to be hard to paint her personality because she didn’t show it to anyone.
Fairy did not marry and was committed to Sunnyside Mental Hospital with her mother in 1940,also discharged “unrecovered” - whether this was due to unreasonable behaviour on her part or whether she allowed herself to be included out of loyalty is not known.
After her mother’s death she went to live with her sister Millie in Motueka. She was a tall, thin, angular woman in old age and ended her days in an old people’s home in Nelson in 1983 aged93.
ALICE MAY: May was the first of the Vanstone children to be born at Little River after their shift from Barry’s Bay. In 1912 she married Bob Taylor from Rakaia. The couple met when Bob took a team of workers to Banks Peninsula cocksfooting. She was 21 and he was 31.
They first made their home on a small farm at Rakaia on the western end of the town. They built a house for £200, paying £10 extra for a water tank. In the early days May boiled the washing in a copper in the back yard, but later Bob tacked a three-sided tin shed onto the back ofthe house as a primitive laundry. The couple’s first three children were born during their time atRakaia: Iris Valery (1913), Daisy Levina (1916, named for her deceased Aunt Daisy from Levin), and Richard Claude (1919).
About 1920 the family moved from Rakaia to Gapes Valley near Timaru where they bought another smallholding. This move was prompted at least in part by May’s inability to get on withBob’s sister Emily who lived close by. In Gapes Valley the family lived close to two of May’s sisters - Nellie and Wynn Stanbury at Pleasant Valley, and Millie and Fred Reed at Woodside.
The Gapes Valley property was sold in the early ‘20s when money ran short and the family moved to Ashwick Flat to stay with the O’Reillys. Dan O’Reilly and Bob Taylor had worked together in Rakaia digging potatoes under contract.
From Ashwick Flat the family moved to Timaru where Bob took up a town milk run with a horse and cart. The Reeds were in Timaru by then at 6 Seaview Terrace and the Taylors moved to Sefton St on the York St corner. The family’s fourth child, Gordon Vanstone Taylor was born in Timaru in 1925.
May is remembered as a gay, flighty young woman, fond of parties and dancing, while Bob was a serious, stolid farming type, kindly but probably unexciting. As the years progressed it became increasingly obvious that the couple were sadly ill-matched. In 1927 May left home, initially taking Gordon, to take up a housekeeping position, but she found Gordon too difficult to manage and returned him to his father not long after.
It must have also been about this time that May became pregnant again, this time not to her husband - probably to a dancing partner Charlie Foster. Although undoubtedly her husband was aware of this, her children never knew, and the baby girl was adopted by May’s childless sister and her husband, Hettie and Stan Stanbury, and brought up as her siblings’ cousin.
May returned to her husband and elder children in Timaru and the family moved from Sefton St to Marchwiel St, then to the corner of Wai-iti Rd and Selwyn St where May left again, then to Evans St where Bob’s sister Emily came and took the children to Rakaia while Daisy went toanother sister of Bob’s - Lizzie in Masterton. When May again returned they all lived in LukeysLane, then bought a house in Woodlands Road. They had a mortgage but couldn’t keep it up in those hard Depression years and lost the house. They then moved to William St, but the rent was too high so they moved to a building called Ettrick Bank in High St, where May left again, then the others went to a flat on the corner of Queen and High St.
From there Daisy went back to Masterton, Iris went to Hazelburn cooking for two Miss LeCrens, Claude went to Gillinghams up Fairlie way labouring, and Bob and Gordon lived with a family called Wakefield in Butler St.
The couple finally parted for good in the mid 30s. May also had health difficulties in the 30s as a result of which she was given shock treatment at Timaru Hospital and later admitted to Seaview Hospital in Hokitika. From the 1950s May was employed by the hospital, while still a nominal resident, and she remained there until her death in 1982.
LUCY LOUISA: Lucy worked at the Rakaia Hotel as a young woman for Harry Taylor, brother to Bob Taylor, and there she met Bill Sheehan. They married in 1918 when Lucy was 24. They lived on a small farm at Eiffelton near Ashburton and had three children: Agnes (1918), Ruth (1920) and Bill (1922). Lucy was widowed in 1953 when she was 60. She continued to live on the farm at Eiffelton with her eldest daughter Agnes who did not marry, and with the help of Bill, who worked in the area and lived across the road, carried on farming the property. Lucy was a great favourite with many of her nieces and nephews, and their children. She was a ready source of tender, loving care and a popular destination for holidays. She died after a stroke in 1963 aged 69.
FLORENCE ETHEL: Hettie married Stan Stanbury in 1917 when she was 21. Hettie and Stan had a small scale farm at Brookside near Leeston. Stan is not remembered for his farm management skills. When farm returns left a shortfall of income he raised money by selling off his capital stock. The couple adopted a daughter in 1927 called Enid Joyce, but had no children of their own. Hettie has been described as a morose and depressed sort of person. After Stan’s death she lived for a time with Millie and Fairy in Motueka and died in Christchurch in 1963 aged 67.
ELLEN EVELYN RUTH: Nellie married Wynn Stanbury in 1920 when she was 21. Wynn was a brother to Hettie’s husband, Stan. The couple first lived on an agricultural farm in Ellesmere, The outstanding mortgage was to be paid off with the proceeds of a crop of wheat, but it was destroyed in a storm and Nellie and Wynn had to walk off the farm. They lost everything. They moved back to Little River and Wynn got a job with the Canterbury Central Dairy Co Ltd as a truck driver to collect all the cream produced on Banks Peninsula. A house went with the job.
Wynn had a solid-tyred International truck issued to him which he was able to use for other jobs like carting wool, cocksfoot, etc. The creamery round meant that three times a week he drove around all the bays picking up the 12 gallon and 22 gallon cans put out by farmers, although in some places there was a common collection point. Three more days covered the local area. The cream was delivered to catch the train from Little River to Christchurch every day. Nellie did sewing, knitting and gardening to help the family finances. The couple had one child - Arnold, born in 1924. In the early 1930s the family offered board to the local schoolteacher. This went on for many years and was a boost to the budget. When the old International truck had done about 250,000 miles it was replaced with a modern pneumatic-tyred one and the old truck was transferred to work on the plains. Her new driver must have been a more aggressive type, because in the first week the drive-shaft broke and drove itself through the desk and destroyed the truck. Wynn and Nellie rented a sheep run in Western Valley and later, after the truck job ceased, another farm in Okuti Valley was added and the family moved there. Nellie was very active in Country Women’s Institute and other committees, and gave Wynn a lot of help over the years with his service to the annual A&P Show. Wynn died in 1970. Arnold went to Christchurch Boys High School, and then to Canterbury College which was a subsidiary of the University of New Zealand. He was one of the first in the district to make it to tertiary qualifications, and after some years in the DSIR gained MSc as a part-time student.
HAZEL PEARL: Hazel married Syd Nicholas, a butcher of Temuka, in 1924 when she was 23. He died in 1927 and Hazel later married again to Bill Mullaly who was working on threshing mills around South Canterbury. The couple moved to Greymouth where Bill worked as a plumber and there they had five children: Dawn (1927), Gae(1929), Billee (1931), Barry (1933) and Bryan (1940). Bill also helped to build the hotel at Milford. He died in 1944 aged 49 and Hazel and her children moved back to Christchurch. Hazel had been widowed twice by the time she was 49 - she did not marry again. She stayed in Christchurch for the rest of her life and died there in 1996 aged 95.