Polish History New Zealand

UNDER THE MOUNTAIN

LAYERS IN THE MILLE-FEUILLE OF TARANAKI HISTORY

First meetings with descendants of Polish settlers in Taranaki tend to include the words, “It’s complicated.” They are right.

The Poles in Taranaki made up the largest single group of early Polish settlers in New Zealand. Many arrived on the same ship, the fritz reuter, but they did not arrive in the area at the same time. They often married other Poles—and why wouldn’t they? Marriages happen among people who know one another and, especially in the early years, the Poles worked and socialised with those they knew and understood.

As time passed, the lengthening lists of marriages upon marriages, births upon births, and deaths upon deaths would have blurred the connections into a muddled weave—had it not been for one of the ration books held at the Taranaki Research Centre at Puke Ariki in New Plymouth. That book contains the names of those who stayed at the immigration barracks on Marsland Hill in 1876, including the eight Polish families who walked north up Devon Street out of New Plymouth, and then inland and southwest into Inglewood. Many more Poles later settled in and around Inglewood, Tariki, Ratipiko, Midhirst, and Stratford, but these eight were the first.

The research centre also holds the 11 volumes of newspaper clippings and transcriptions collected by the late Florinda Lambert, a granddaughter of Pole Felix Voitrekovsky (Feliks Wojciechowski), who arrived in Wellington aboard the lammershagen in 1875. Florinda wrote an article about her grandfather in the first newsletter produced by the Polish Genealogical Society of New Zealand in 1993, which emerged after Jerzy Pobóg-Jaworowski published his thesis, History of the Polish Settlers in New Zealand, 1776–1987. After she retired from school teaching, and moved with her husband from the family farm in Tarata into Inglewood, Florinda became one of the first members of the society. When she visited her son Ron—then director of the Puke Ariki research centre—at his place of work, she decided it was an ideal place from where she could trawl through newspapers for articles that mentioned Inglewood, its environs, or its inhabitants, and build up a picture of the settlement’s earliest days.

Her collection includes the 1991 story Exotic Tongues in the Taranaki Bush, which recalled 150 years since the arrival of the first settlers from Devon and Cornwall, and listed the names and ages of the Polish arrivals in 1876.

Newspapers digitised through Papers Past revealed the new colony’s sluggish attitude towards helping continental European settlers such as the Poles, and its voracity in embracing English ones. Florrie, as Florinda was known, accumulated 11 volumes of clippings, including those from Taranaki newspapers not yet digitised, like the budget (1875–1877) and the budget and taranaki weekly herald (1877–1932).

Official documents of the time spelt Polish names in many random ways. Some germanised Polish names evolved into anglicised versions, and some names disappeared into the quicksand of New Zealand’s Births, Marriages, and Deaths (BDM).¹ I followed spellings most often used by families.

Through their illiteracy and original lack of the English language, the early Polish settlers in Taranaki missed the tensions between Māori and the British colonists that lingered in the area after the 1860s Taranaki Wars and its illegal confiscations of Māori land. By the time the Poles’ New Zealand-born sons joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces during the Boer War and WWI, however, they well understood discrimination.

This is the bite I have taken out of the mille-feuille of Polish history in Taranaki. I know I have left bits of pastry and crumbs on the plate. I will pick them up later.

Thanks again to Ray Watembach, who pored over the ration books with me, gave me his transcribed list of Joseph Fabish’s early Polish births, deaths and marriages, and who guided me on aspects of the 1996 Waitangi tribunal on Taranaki; to Sr Mary St Martha Szymanska, who, rightly, insisted on the headings, which created the visual layers; to Joan Dickson, for being one of the first people to trust me with me a copy of her Uhlenberg family book in 2013, and allowing me to use it; to Paul Klemick for doggedly finding Lucia Myszewska; and to the librarians at Puke Ariki and Inglewood.

The image above of Inglewood in 1874 is captioned “5 months after surveyors and advance party arrived.” Smoke is hiding the huts in the background.²

—Barbara Scrivens

THE FIRST EIGHT POLISH FAMILIES

On 6 September 1876, seven married couples with eight children, a 26-year-old man, and a 13-year-old classified as a statute adult, took their first steps towards Inglewood and what was to become the largest and most enduring settlement of Poles in New Zealand.

They walked out of the immigration barracks on New Plymouth’s Marsland Hill, down the hill that led to the beach and the main township, and turned up the coast towards Waitara. They carried their bundled possessions, and no doubt the youngest of their children, aged between 18 months and nine years. Barbara Dusieński was seven months’ pregnant. Fresh from receiving rations at the immigration barracks, it is unlikely that they had money to spend on hiring a horse and dray for those first several kilometres—the only part of the Taranaki coast then that had something resembling a proper road.

They were used to walking. Knowing that they had no future in their homeland, most had walked much of the 600 to 800 kilometres to the port of Hamburg. In April 1876, they had boarded the fritz reuter, the last ship to bring a substantial number of immigrants from continental Europe to New Zealand.

Their first steps in Taranaki must have been buoyed by the promise of employment at their destinations—at least one family stopped at Bell Block—and the relief of having escaped from the increasing persecution they suffered for their nationality and religion after the French lost the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War, and Otto von Bismarck grew in power in northwest Poland, then already partitioned by the Prussians for nearly 80 years. Bismarck—as Chancellor for German Emperor William I, who established a new monarchy in 1871—forbade any practice of Catholicism, or Polish teachings.

Poles like those off the fritz reuter had been labourers at the mercy of German employers who felt no obligation towards them. Before Poland’s third partitioning by the Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires in 1795, most had been serfs attached to noble families, or worked for wealthy landowners.

Birth records from different villages in northwestern Poland confirm that Polish families moved from town to town to seek work, so they would have been completely capable of following instructions by New Zealand immigration agents to get to a certain place at a certain time.

After the dispute settled regarding their legality as immigrants, authorities allowed the fritz reuter passengers into the Wellington immigration barracks, where many of the single men, single women, and childless couples quickly found employment. A former immigration agent, Arthur Halcombe, requested immigrants for the Mānawatu-Rangitikei region, and 89 of the passengers, mostly protestant Germans, went with him to what was known as the Manchester Block near Fielding. Immigration officials sent another group to Hokitika and Jackson’s Bay (now Jackson Bay), on the South Island’s remote west coast.

Those who landed in New Plymouth on 16 August 1876, moved into the town’s refurbished immigration barracks on Marsland Hill. The buildings were formerly military barracks used in the 1860s Taranaki Wars, and overlooked the town and sea, and—when the clouds parted—had a direct view of the mountain.

BEFORE 1876

Surveyor Edwin Stanley Brookes, who arrived in New Plymouth in 1874, wrote that the shops and buildings in New Plymouth reminded him of an “essentially English” rural town, and that “mementoes of the war between the races [met] one at every turn.”³

British troops had first arrived in New Plymouth in 1855, as protection for its settlers, who the colonial government deemed vulnerable to Māori attack following its questionable land deals. During the Taranaki Wars, initiated over the sale and confiscation of land, at least 20 new military settlements, stockades, redoubts, and outposts scattered the Taranaki coastline—a sign that civilian Pākehā settlement in Taranaki existed for strategic military purposes.

The rumours of Māori attack were just that—rumours. British politicians running the colony needed  to create a war, to fabricate a reason for confiscating Māori land as punishment for rebellion against the Crown. The ploy had its precedent in feudal times, and the English also used it in the 1700s in Scotland and Ireland. The New Zealand Government legalised its actions through three 1863 pieces of legislation: the New Zealand Loan Act, which allowed the “profitable sale of confiscated land to pay the costs of colonisation,” the New Zealand Settlements Act, which provided for the confiscation of Māori land, and the Suppression of Rebellion Act.⁴

In 1996, the Waitangi Tribunal, in its Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi, declared that the confiscations were unlawful on several grounds: They did not comply with the New Zealand Settlements Act; they were carried out without sufficient evidence of Māori rebellion; and there was no “proper regard for the statutory purpose of achieving peace.”⁵

Brookes did not describe the war “mementoes” he wrote of, and it is not clear whether the Poles noticed any. They would have passed close by the marble tablet erected at the Wesleyan Church in Liardet Street to the memory of the Reverend Whiteley, who was murdered by Māori at White Cliffs in 1869, and might even have seen in the northern distance the obelisk that was erected at the site.

The Poles were familiar with the Prussian army. Its conscription and reservist system had secretly accumulated enough men to overpower the French in 1871. A century earlier, after its first partition of Poland in 1772, the Prussian occupiers started to extend its military garrisons into the former Polish province of Pomerania—which spanned from northeastern Germany to northern Poland—and by 1806, at least 30 had been spaced at regular geographical locations.⁶ Few Poles could escape conscription, but when married soldiers were not at war, their wives and families lived with them at their places of service, which is why so many Polish children had their births registered near towns with military garrisons.

AUGUST 1876

The taranaki herald published a story on 16 August 1876 about 52 “German [sic] immigrants” who were expected to land in New Plymouth off the ss taupo from Wellington.⁷

The beauty of the Return of the Free Rations Issued Daily to Immigrants at Immigration Depot New Plymouth at the Puke Ariki research centre is that it holds a more accurate record of the people who stayed there: their names, the dates they arrived and left, the number of rations given, and for whom. It shows, for instance, that on 16 August, 56 people arrived at the barracks—16 single men, three single women, 11 married couples, one father and daughter, the 13-year-old who walked to Inglewood, five boys, six girls, and a baby boy.

The immigration depot’s return confirmed that three infants who embarked with their families on the fritz reuter in Hamburg were not at Marsland Hill. It was as much of a death notice as they were going to get.

The Poles in the barracks were:

—Paul (34) and Marianna (37) (née Krygel) Biesiek , whose 22-month-old daughter, Maria, died at sea;

—Mathias (31) and Apolonia (26) (née Drozkowska) Doduński, with their children Franciszka (6) and Franciszek (2);

—Joseph (25) and Barbara (22) (née Drozdowska) Dusieński (22);

—Johann (41) and Carolina (22) (née Funk) Myszewski, with Johann’s children, Julianna (15), Jacob (13) Catharine (9) and Josef (6). Their 18-month-old daughter, Franciszka, died at sea;

—Lucia (24) and Johanna (19) Myszewski;

—August (26) and Apolonia (26) (née Potroz) Neustrowski, and their children Marianna (4) and Johan (2). Their seven-month-old son, August, died at sea;

—Anton (24) and Josephina (25) (née Funk) Potroz, with two-year-old Jakob;

—Frederyk (29) and Wilhelmina (30) (née Harmel) Trebes (Polish spelling is Trebisz) with two-year-old Anna and Otto, born at sea:

—Franz Uhlenberg (26, but 33 on the passenger list);

—August (25) and Emilie Marie (22) (née Eichstadt) Volzke, and their 18-month-old son, Carl Frederick Albert (the ship’s passenger list named him Auguste).

Among the first “engaged” were the single, orphaned sisters Lucia and Johanna Myszewski, and their cousin Julianna. The return shows that Johanna and Julianna were offered jobs on 19 August, and Lucia three days later. Three of the single men were also employed within days, as were a father and daughter, and two married couples, each with a child. The return does not say who employed them, or where they went. It is not clear where they came from, but the ration book listed the single men as Heinrich Woison, Lorenz Heimmers, and Jans Clemens Huwilo; the father and daughter as Augustine (54) and Anna (16) Fischer; and the married couples as Carl and Catharina Huber (with seven-year-old Franz) and Carl and Paulina Schultz (with year-old Anna).

Eight married couples, the remaining 12 single men, and 13-year-old Jacob Myszewski were employed on 5 September 1876. Rations stopped for them and the 10 children on 4 September, the day that the taranaki herald wrote that 17 of the immigrants “started for Inglewood” to work on “logging and otherwise preparing the Mountain Road for the extension of the railroad beyond Inglewood.”⁸

A farmer Rundle employed August Neustrowski, to clear his land of furze (aruhe) in the Bell Block. The family was still living there when Agnes Neustrowski was born at the Hua village in April 1877. Rundle would probably have employed more than one person to do the work, so it is feasible that others joined the Neustrowskis.

One Polish family was left behind. Frederyk Trebes was admitted to the provincial hospital on 31 August 1876. His wife remained at the barracks with Anna and baby Otto. Frederyk returned on 15 September but, according to the ration book, was readmitted to the hospital on 9 October.

A note in the return’s Remarks  column written by the Depot Master, G H Herbert, states: “Wife & family struck off rations after the 31st [October].”

Striking off a mother with an infant daughter and baby supposes that Herbert told them to leave the barracks. The lack of a note in the ration book of a forwarding address, or assurance of their future welfare, suggests that he held a callous disregard for immigrants whom he decided had overstayed their welcome.

One cannot imagine what a woman with such young dependants, and unable to speak English, would have done once the barrack doors closed behind her. The hospital at that time was on Mangorei Road, about three kilometres northwest of Marsland Hill. Did Wilhelmina know where it was? Had she previously entrusted her children to other Poles while they were still at the barracks, and visited her husband in its cold wards? Did she arrive at her husband’s bedside with the news that they no longer had a roof?

It is not clear exactly when the Trebes family arrived in Inglewood, but Frederyk was working there on Saturday 27 January 1877, because the taranaki herald reported a week later that he had been “lifted up by a wild bullock which had been driven up the road, and was carried several yards on the animal’s horns.” The reporter wrote that “Frederick Trebisz [was] in Government employment” and assumed that he had either been absorbed in his work “or dreaming of his fatherland.”⁹

The reporter seemed to have made his assumption on the fact that the bull’s victim was not a British settler. If he had investigated the man’s circumstances, he may have wondered whether the Trebes family’s eviction from the immigration barracks may have forced Frederyck to leave his sickbed too soon, and that there may have been a medical reason for the Pole’s not paying attention to what was happening around him.

Later court records show that Frederyck and Wilhelmina—who became known as Fred and Mina—had a tempestuous relationship, but they had four more children in New Zealand: sons Albert, Charles and George, and a daughter Maggie, who died aged eight months when their Denbigh Road, Midhirst, house caught fire in 1887. Their elder daughter, Anna, married Thomas Sargeson and had at least three children, and Otto married Frances Potroz and had at least 10.

In 1902, Fred was charged with deserting his wife. According to the new zealand police gazette, he had sold his farm and stock, was last seen in Hawera, and had intended to return to Europe.¹⁰ Instead, he moved to Hokitika, where he died in 1925. Mina disappeared. There seems to be no record of her death, or her burial under the Trebes name.

The Poles’ introduction to New Plymouth was in stark contrast to the welcome given to passengers who arrived the year before off the halcione from Gravesend:

On arrival all the immigrants were given a royal reception and well looked after until they left for Inglewood.¹¹

The stormy seas off the New Plymouth coast often made it dangerous to transfer passengers, but in 1875, 21 single women, and 14 families, including one from Switzerland, made it off the halcione at first attempt despite the inclement conditions. Four of the families went to friends and the rest to Marsland Hill.¹² The other 189 passengers returned to Wellington and came back a few days later, when New Plymouth dignitaries led by the Archdeacon Govett treated them all to a public tea. The speeches, readings, songs, and piano and accordion renditions lasted into the evening.¹³

The Poles who walked out of the Marsland Hill barracks in 1876 would have have crossed Devon Road’s wooden bridge over the Huatoki Stream. The road, just wide enough for a horse and dray, had been metalled “a few feet wide” along the centre.¹⁴ They may not have paid much attention to war memorials or plaques they could not read, but the new settlers could not have failed to notice that the quality of the road fell far short of what they were used to in central Europe.

Taken in 1875, this photograph shows Devon Street in the foreground looking towards Marsland Hill barracks. The large structure at the base of the hill is St Mary’s Anglican Church, now the Taranaki Cathedral Church of St Mary. (Photo: Puke Ariki –1)

At that time, Mountain Road was still the only inland route that the colonists used, accessed from Sentry Hill about 12 kilometres north of New Plymouth. (A more direct route was created later, through Egmont Village along what became Junction Road.) Even if the group had hired a horse and dray to help them, once they turned inland at Sentry Hill, that transport would have soon bogged down in the moist, early spring.

More of an aspirational road than a useful track, Mountain Road had been cut at a chain’s width (20 metres) through dense bush that blocked out sunlight.¹⁵ The road also took much of the runoff from Mount Taranaki (then Mount Egmont). As a result, for at least half the year, horses and carts became stuck in its mud, or slipped down its gullies, and people tended to walk holding their possessions or purchases.

TARANAKI BEFORE THE POLES ARRIVED

In January 1875, surveyor Brookes, armed with a plan of the Moa Block, led a group of British immigrants along Mountain Road to Inglewood. They left their dray at a house at the end of the felled track, and transferred their portable belongings into swags:

Brookes: “It was hard work for the immigrants to carry their loads, as they were not used to rough bush roads, which, to tell the truth, were almost impassable for travellers.” One member of the party became lost, and had “… at intervals dropped various parts of his clothing which, when found, proved he had been walking in a circle within a short distance of the road.”¹⁶

Brookes described Mountain Road as running in the direction of “General Chute’s track,” but more directly and with a “better line.” In late January 1866, General Trevor Chute, fresh from bloody skirmishes with Māori in south Taranaki, decided he would penetrate the forest below Mount Taranaki by following the Māori Whakaahurangi trail from Normanby to New Plymouth. Chute estimated his more than 400 soldiers—including 54 forest rangers, 68 members of the so-called Native Contingent, 67 pack horses with drivers, and 24 saddled horses—could break through in three days. Each man carried a waterproof sheet, a blanket, a greatcoat, and two days’ supply of biscuits.¹⁷

Chute missed the trail, misjudged the terrain, and underestimated the weather. Despite their numbers, equipment, and pack horses, the general and his men took 10 “tortuous” days to get to the other side.¹⁸

On the first day, the soldiers “crossed four gullies, two considerable streams, and made about 9½ miles.” (A mile is 1.6 kilometres.) On the second day, they cut their way through 13 miles of forest, and scrambled through 13 gullies. Tangles of supplejacks (Ripogonum scandens) early in the day turned into “underwood still more dense” and gullies “more numerous and deep” as they neared the Patea River, which they crossed at noon.

They started day three with “time for a good breakfast” for both men and horses. The forest rangers went ahead to ensure the animals would be able to get through. They cut passages around the “fallen monarchs of the forest” and used the trunks of the plentiful tree ferns, lain side-by-side, to create “a firm footing” for them all over the swampy sections. The six miles they covered that day involved passing “one of the worst gullies yet met with and six rivers.”

Their rations ran out on the fourth day, but they crossed another 15 gullies and seven rivers and put 11 more miles behind them. Rain fell “in torrents” on a party sent ahead to procure more provisions for the men left behind, who had “divided their last biscuit” and who, without tents or provisions, had “bivouacked in the forest during that wet and dismal night.” The next day, the rest of the men could only manage four miles, but they crossed another 15 gullies and four rivers. “[D]riven by want of food” the Native Contingent and some of the rangers had absconded from the “foodless forest.”

The General who had exerted himself all day in bringing up the rear, did not reach the camp till 9 p.m. This evening one of the horses was killed for a meat ration. By the prudent foresight of Mr. Strickland, the men received a half ration of rum in the morning, and still had a little biscuit left. They stowed themselves away under trees and brushwood as best they could, but during the night it rained so heavily that refreshing sleep was out of the question.²³

The soldiers woke on day six to “a quagmire” beneath them and “a constant shower of rain” above them. It became a rest day, with another horse killed for food, its heart reserved for General Chute. That evening, Captain Leach and his party returned from Mataitawa with supplies of biscuits and groceries.

The men started day seven—the third of rain—with another “comfortable” breakfast. The news that two fat bullocks, biscuits, rum and groceries were travelling with them may have encouraged the troops as they covered six miles in eight hours “wading deeply in mud” and crossing 21 gullies and three rivers. That night they ate the fresh rations.

They tramped four miles over ground still “soft and wet” on a “gloomy” day eight, but on day nine, they emerged from the forest after “five miles without a gully” and camped at Waiwahiko. They marched into New Plymouth on day 10.²⁰

On 27 January 1866, Taranaki’s superintendent, Henry Robert Richmond, greeted the general and his troops. Richmond seemed to think that Māori would be impressed that “British courage and British arms can penetrate wherever man can hide… and that the only course open for the hostile natives is frank submission to the just and equal law which the empire and the colony hold out for their acceptance.”²¹

Apart from demonstrating that 400 soldiers and 90 horses could thrash through nearly 80 kilometres of bush behind a purpose-built track and with a reinforcement of rations, it is unclear what General Chute’s march accomplished for Taranaki. On his return to Wellington, however, he was a guest of honour at a banquet given by Governor George Grey, attended by the city’s elite, where the governor tributed the general with the “restoration of peace and tranquillity in a previously dangerous district.”²²

Eight years later, surveyor Brookes arrived from Auckland on the steamer lady bird, aware that Taranaki was “was considered the hot-bed of the Māori rebellion, and the great difficulty of landing there made travellers inclined to give it a wide berth.”²³

The tarnishing of Taranaki’s reputation was unfairly blamed on Māori, but it was Governor Thomas Gore Browne who in 1860 initiated military action against the local indigenous people. He “assumed his own authority must prevail and that [the authority] of Māori be stamped out”²⁴

A “stiff wind” was blowing off New Plymouth when the lady bird arrived with the surveyor Brookes. Her captain had been doubtful whether they would be able to land but early the next morning he let the anchor go and blew his whistle to wake up the boatmen on shore.

Brookes: “The surf was making a terrific noise at the time—a white line of rollers could be seen chasing one another to the beach, where they would break in one mass of white foam. It was for a time doubtful whether the surf-boat would be able to get off from the shore…

“Very little of the town could be seen from the deck [of the lady bird]—only a few houses dotted here and there with the Marsland Hill barracks on the highest point of the town. The first sight of the place would give the impression of its being rural, as so many trees were interspersed among the houses… There was a dull grey look all around—the mountain was enveloped with clouds but the Sugar Loaf Islands were visible about two miles distant; while the waves were lashing with terrible force against the base of these rocks, sending up spray a great height…

“The passengers were handed into the boat… you had to make a spring and a jump in when the boat rose on top of a huge wave… the rope was cast off… Then the men tugged at their oars and the boat swept along, riding the seas in a fair manner until coming to the breakers, when the spray gave us all a thorough drenching.”²⁵

Brooks ascribed the English nature of the town—founded by the Plymouth Company in 1841, and laid out by Frederic Alonzo Carrington—to its more than 800 colonists from Devon and Cornwall.

The Poles arrived in Taranaki at a time when Carrington was its provincial superintendent. He had left New Zealand in 1843—after the New Zealand Company absorbed the Plymouth Company, which employed him, then cut his survey contracts, his materials, his wages, and finally, his job—but he never lost his love for that part of New Zealand, and returned with his family in 1857.

In 1841, Carrington had briefly toyed with laying out the town in Waitara, but the Waitara River’s shallow bar and rough seas changed his mind in favour of building a future harbour in the shelter of the Ngā Motu/ Sugar Loaf Islands off the New Plymouth coast. He knew that completing the transport link between the Taranaki south coast and a yet-to-be-built harbour was the only way to Taranaki’s prosperity. Desperate for immigrants, he requested 150 early in 1873 but by 31 May 1874 had received only 27, which brought Taranaki’s total number of immigrants under the Vogel scheme to 42.²⁶

New Plymouth’s inability at that time to receive larger ships, and the New Zealand Company’s refusal to send its ships there, allowed Wellington to filter its immigrants. Few got through to Taranaki, and fewer stayed.

Despite Carrington’s championing for a harbour, it took until 1881 before he was able to lay the foundation stone for the New Plymouth breakwater, and the town waited another five years before overseas ships berthed alongside a finished structure.

Taranaki remained a largely unknown part of the colony. It was the last province to gain “substantial benefits from Vogel’s 1870 Public Works and Immigration Scheme.”²⁷

THE MOA BLOCK BEFORE THE POLES ARRIVED…

Carrington managed to convince Sir Harry Atkinson, who had a reputation for not being able to resist a political fight,²⁸ to take on the position as Taranaki’s provincial secretary for a few crucial months from May 1874. Atkinson convinced the colonial government to give Taranaki 110,000 acres of “new” land along Mountain Road for two townships.

By September 1874, Atkinson had joined Vogel’s cabinet as Secretary for the Crown, and Minister for Immigration, but the promise of the new land was enough for Carrington to travel to Wellington in July 1874 and persuade 119 immigrants off the waikato to join him in New Plymouth. Two groups of men from the waikato reached the Moa Block after a “weary passage of four days,” made camp, and started felling. They joked about leaving England for such rough country, and most moved on to places where it was easier to make a living.²⁹

New Plymouth residents seemed interested in Inglewood’s progress, and visitors inland kept the seaside townsfolk updated.

The writing on this photograph says, “Inglewood from recreation ground.” If the writer of te moa—100 years of inglewood history 1875–1975 is correct in suggesting it might have been taken from Trimble Park in 1875, this road would have been what was then known as the Junction Road, and later Rata Street. The double storey structure to the left of the background was probably the hotel, built by April 1875, and closer to what would have been Mountain Road and the railway line. (Photo: Puke Ariki –2)

On 13 Jan 1875, a Mr Kenworthy and a friend of his visited the Moa Block with the purpose of buying some rural land. The friend knew Brooks, whom they found in a hut at the far end of the township. Brooks offered to show them any kind of land they wanted—undulating, flat, or timbered lightly or heavily—and told them that in his 12 years’ experience in surveying, he had not seen land that was “in any degree equal to the Moa Block.” Unlike in other parts of the colony, the Moa Block soil was, he said, “uniformly good.” Brooks took them east, towards the Ngatoro Stream where Kenworthy seemed particularly impressed by the offering: “No mistake could be made by anyone purchasing, if anxious to get level and good agricultural land. The bush on it is light, with here and there large trees… one rata was pointed out nearly 12 feet in diameter”³⁰

The trees in the background of the photograph show how dense and tall the raw bush was. By the time the Poles who arrived in 1876 had saved enough for deposits, the level land on the eastern side of Mountain Road had been taken up and the land on offer on the other side—between the road and the mountain—was exactly that type of dense bush.

Felling cleared the first 100 acres of the Moa Block around where Mountain and Junction roads crossed, “although these roads hardly existed except in name.”³¹

A “party of gentlemen,” including 16 from the provincial council, rode to the Moa Block on 22 January 1875 to christen Inglewood with champagne, and rode out again the same day. Superintendent Carrington missed the occasion as he was meeting the avalanche due in New Plymouth.³²

Until then, the township had had several names, from Who’d a Thou’t It? and New Found Out, to Moa Town and Milton, the latter before the administrators found out that a Milton already existed in Otago.³³

On the day of its christening, Inglewood’s only proper structure was a store. By April, another visitor counted about 20 inhabited “huts” and saw about 10 buildings, either erected or being built, including a two-storey hotel. There must have been several families, because the Taranaki Education Board called for tenders for a school. By October 1875, 60 children waited to attend the still-unbuilt facility.

No matter how good the land was, or how much work had been done clearing it, access remained a problem. Although a trip to Inglewood could take two hours on horseback in fine weather, in the wet, the Waiongana river was unfordable, and the road impassable.

The visitor Kenworthy was likely James Kenworthy, who launched the daily budget newspaper in New Plymouth in 1875, which covered Inglewood’s christening. He edited and wrote for it until he moved to Patea in February 1877 to take up the editorship of the patea mail, and later in the year the ownership of a stationery store in Patea.

The budget regularly reported on the muddy roads. In June 1875, it told of a man who drowned in the Maketawa River after his horse became entangled in tree roots. The river washed his body downstream to Waitara. And on 27 November 1875:

A traveller from Inglewood complains about the dreadful state of the roads between there and Town and the apathy shown by the authorities in regard to the matter. A horse which was being ridden along got stuck in the muddy road and he was near being drowned for want of assistance to extricate him.³⁴

The ford at Maketawa River, circa 1875.³⁵

… AND IN 1876

The Taranaki County Council took over the Inglewood settlement in 1876, and Colonel Robert Trimble formed the first board in 1877. Even before he arrived in New Zealand in 1875, his name began appearing in Taranaki newspapers. The Taranaki Provincial Government had apparently been negotiating with him to settle in Inglewood—and offered him land through special settlement clauses of the Waste Lands Act that were supposed to “aid in the occupation of the forest country along the Waitara–Wanganui line of railway.”³⁶

At his farewell dinner in Liverpool, Trimble was described as “a gentleman universally respected and esteemed.”³⁷ He sailed with his family into Auckland on the dunedin on 18 May 1875 and bought his first piece of land in Moa Block on his first visit to Inglewood a few weeks later.

Even before he had arrived in Inglewood, the taranaki herald mentioned that “the Government and Provincial Agent had been in communication [with him and had reserved for him] a block of a few thousand acres.”³⁸ On 24 January 1876, Colonel Trimble was president and judge of The First Inglewood Anniversary Sports, where events such as “putting the shot,” “throwing the hammer,” and a “Siamese race” took place among the high jump, pole vaulting and wrestling.³⁹ On that day, someone apparently climbed a hill now known as Trimble’s Walkway, and counted more than 120 buildings.

It is not clear through newspaper reports exactly how much land Colonel Trimble bought, but in March 1876, the taranaki herald told of 2,100 acres “recently surveyed” for Colonel Trimble “that was ready to take over.”⁴⁰

Two extracts from the budget in 1876:

On the Inglewood Road this week, an owner of Moa Block sections was seen hauling himself along the muddy roads beside a horse on which was a pack-saddle, on which was packed and strapped an almost innumerable variety of articles. There was tucker and cabbage plants, fruit trees and flowering plants. There were seeds of all descriptions, from peas to potatoes, and innumerable nick-nacks. To crown the lot, a young calf had been strapped on top of the load. It looked as if some people have faith in the future of the Inglewood district. Such perseverance and pertinacity in overcoming difficulties deserved a rich reward. Doing something is better than growling. (26 August 1876)

One day last week, four or five men went into a store at Inglewood for some pipes. While the storekeeper was away for change, the men saw some biscuits handy, and being tempted, partook. The biscuits, being tasty, were eaten with relish. All these men were much troubled during the night. They had but little rest. In fact they were in great pain. The biscuits of which they had so freely partaken, were worm biscuits, and were only intended to be eaten bits at a time by children. (2 October 1876)⁴⁴

In 1876, the first Poles crossed the Waiongana Stream over a bridge built for Inglewood’s first anniversary. Those Poles and their children built many more bridges. Mathias and Apolonia Dodunski’s ninth child, Martha (who married Albert Schimanski in 1907), regaled her daughter Sister Mary St Martha Szymanska with her father’s decades of taking on bridge contracts, and later including his growing sons:

Sister St Martha: “At the completion of a bridge, they had their photograph taken. My mother had some lovely ones of her father and brothers in their waistcoats and hats and holding shovels. No one seems to have those photographs now.”

Even with today’s drainage, a current topographical map shows nine visible streams crossing Mountain Road between its northern junction with Devon Road and the township of Inglewood.⁴²

This photograph, with the same handwriting as the earlier photograph of the Inglewood settlement, seems to have been taken to the right of the vantage on Trimble Hill. If so, the two rows of huts on the right may well be the beginnings of Elliot Street, which runs parallel to what became James Street, behind and to the left. Again, there is no sign of the railway that would have marked Mountain Road, but the ditch and tree roots in front of the house closest to the photographer, and the tree stumps still in the ‘road’ and elsewhere, show how this township was wrested from a substantial piece of bush. (Photo: Puke Ariki –3)

It is not clear exactly who first employed those early Poles, but they would have been paying rent to someone. Family stories indicate that they built their first shelters near Jubilee Park, and took their water from the nearby stream that still runs along the east of Inglewood Cemetery. For years, the illiterate Poles were unaware that one of the roads along where many of them lived was named German Street.

Sister St Martha: “Grandfather and his family lived in that street for 10 years. The Poles found out about the name when someone who could read told them. They made such a fuss that they renamed it James Street.”

the taranaki herald had announced on 26 August 1876 a directive from an unnamed Deputy Superintendent to put all unemployed immigrants to “bush felling and clearing the line of railway in Inglewood” so this may have been the catalyst for the Poles’ move inland.⁴³

Back in October 1875, the budget correspondent noted that in Inglewood “affairs looked exceedingly brisk”⁴⁴ and saw carpenters from New Plymouth working on large private residences and buildings such as the town’s store and hotel. Without the ability to communicate in English, it is doubtful whether the Poles would have been employed in the town itself. Like Mathias Dodunski, most worked on clearing a desperately needed supply route to New Plymouth that did not rely on dry weather. Descendants of the early Polish settlers repeat stories of their relatives felling the bush, and building railway lines, roads, and bridges.

In his book, the researcher and historian Jerzy Pobóg-Jaworowski published an excerpt from the taranaki herald dated 23 December 1876 that showed early tensions:

INGLEWOOD—The Germans [sic] held an indignation meeting last Sunday re the present rate of wages. I hear that they decided to ask the Government for an increase, as they cannot under the present scale earn more than three shillings per day. Forest work is quite new to most of them, and while learning the business they cannot reasonably expect to earn as much as experts.⁴⁵

The early Poles could communicate in German—they had lived under Prussian partitioning—so may well have met and been guided by some of the German and Danish settlers off the humboldt who bought sections in Inglewood in February 1875. Apparently, seven or eight languages could be heard on the veranda of the first hotel, built at the southern end of Moa Street.⁴⁶

The caption to this photograph in te moa⁴⁷ says: Logging, Brown’s hauler. It does not elaborate on what the wood was, or how long it took the eight men in this photograph to bring down the trees. The horses harnessed to the logs on the right, and the man, second from right, standing on what could be a wheel on a flatbed suggests that they hauled logs from various places towards the main logging railway line.

By October 1876, “first class red pine [rimu] sleepers” were being delivered regularly to Inglewood from New Plymouth, and by that December, Colonel Trimble had announced that he was building Inglewood its own sawmill. Sawmiller Henry Brown junior also saw the potential in Ingelewood, and moved his New Plymouth mill to a section beside the railway line on Mountain Road.

The new passenger train on the Inglewood line made its first trip on 10 September 1877. Curious New Plymouth residents snapped up the half-price return fares and left the town’s streets deserted.

By January 1878, the bush had been cleared almost five kilometres north of Inglewood to the Waiongana bridge on Mountain Road, and by May 1879, Junction Road leading west towards New Plymouth, “formerly one of the worst miles between Inglewood and New Plymouth [had been] very neatly metalled.”⁴⁸

THE BIESIEK FAMILY

Paul and Marianna Biesiek married in 1864 in Garczyn, part of the Kociewian region of Prussian-partitioned Poland. Their Polish names were Paweł Bieszk and Marianna Krygel. For a time in Taranaki, Paul’s name was spelt the same as it had been on the fritz reuter passenger list—Bies—but the family soon became known as Biesiek.

Their daughter, Maria, died at sea aged 20 months, but the Biesieks had at least three more children in New Zealand: Paul Adam, born in 1878; Joseph, born in 1881;⁴⁹ and Thomas, born in 1888.

The 1882 return of the freeholders of new zealand⁵⁰ shows that Paul Biesiek, settler, owned 60 acres in Inglewood, valued at £110. In 1897, he bought 143 acres at Huiroa.⁵¹

Early Polish farmers helped one another build their haystacks. They shared their equipment and labour and turned the arduous work of collecting hay into shared community occasions. The man on the far left of this haystack is unnamed, but the ones next to him are, from left: Jacob Kuklinski, Thomas Potroz, Francis Potroz, Joseph Biesiek, and Thomas Biesiek. It is not clear what year this photograph was taken, but it has appeared in several family stories.⁵²

Paul Adam Biesiek married Mary Dravitzki in 1906. He served on the 1908 Ratapiko School committee with his brother-in-law Vincent Dravitzki, and fellow Pole John Stachurski.⁵³

An item in the taranaki daily news in June 1918 illustrated the depth of New Zealand’s distrust of Polish heritage during times of war. Thomas, the youngest Biesiek brother, had appealed to the WWI Military Board for an exemption on the grounds that he needed to care for his then widowed 78-year-old father. The brief article was headed A Question of Parentage:

In the case of Thomas Biesick [sic] dairy farmer, Ratapiko, evidence was given that the appellant’s brother Joseph, after being trained, had been turned out of camp some 12 months ago, on account of his parentage, but as the outcome of his continued representation to Sir James Allen he had again been ordered into camp. Appellant would be willing to go into camp also, but that he had to look after his father…⁵⁴

Sir James was at the time New Zealand’s acting prime minister and war leader.⁵⁵

In 1918, Joseph Biesiek married Mary Ann Potroz, born in Inglewood in 1895, and a niece of Anton Potroz. Joseph later worked for the Taranaki Electric Power Board, and made the newspapers again in 1932, when he was electrocuted by a live wire in a water-race at the Maungatea swamp at Ratapiko. He and a fellow employee, unable to let go, were rescued by a neighbour, a Mr Scurr, who had heard their cries for help and had cut the wire with an axe. Joseph was burnt, but his companion collapsed back into the race, “through which the whole of the Maunganui River was running” and Mr Scurr went into the water again to save him from drowning.⁵⁶

Joseph and Mary Biesiek junior had no children, both lived to 85, and are buried together at Inglewood Cemetery. Mary Biesiek senior died in 1916, aged 76. Paul Biesiek senior died in 1920, aged 80, and was buried with his wife at Inglewood Cemetery. They lie near Thomas, who did not marry, and who died in 1971.

The senior Paul and Mary Biesiek’s grave at Inglewood cemetery.

Paul Adam and Mary (née Dravitzki) Biesiek Dravitzki’s headstone at Inglewood Cemetery.

Left, Thomas Biesiek’s headstone at Inglewood Cemetery stands near other relatives, and next to his brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Mary Ann (née Potroz) Biesiek, below.

THE DODUŃSKI FAMILY

Mathias and Apolonia (Paulina) Doduński married in 1869 in Greblin, in the heart of the Kociewian region in northwest Poland.

Their mis-spelt name on the fritz reuter, Duschienski, probably came about because fellow passenger Barbara Duschenski (Polish spelling is Duszyński) was Apolonia’s younger sister. According to family story, a Doduński infant died at sea but, as there is no mention of one on the passenger list, the fatality may have happened earlier. The Pomeranian birth index has a record of Augusta Paulina born to Mathias Doduński and Paulina Drozdowska in Tczew in 1876, but no death record under her name, which suggests she may have died on the way to Hamburg, or soon fter.⁵⁷

Doduński-Duszyński—in the hubbub of embarking on a full immigration ship, keeping an eye on a seven-year-old daughter, a two-year-old son, and coping with the sadness of a baby’s recent death, no doubt pregnant Barbara hovered over her sister. The name exchange was a mistake easily made.

Apolonia and Barbara were full older sisters to Franz Drozdowski, who arrived in New Zealand aged 24 in 1883 with his wife, Marianna (27) (née Kowalewska), his stepdaughter, Rosalie Szkoła (6), his son, Franz Thomas (1), and the siblings’ then 20-year-old sister, Julianna (who married Devonshire-born Matthew John Salisbury in 1887). They sailed from London on the british king with Mathias Dodunski’s older brother Michael, and his family—the only other Poles on that ship.

Apolonia Doduński’s husband, Mathias, was the eighth and youngest child of Mathias and Catherina (née Lipieńska) Doduński. He was born in 1845 in Gręblin, which came under the parish of Wielki Garc. Apolonia Drozdowska was born five years later in Radostowo, a neighbouring village. They married four months before Mathias’ widowed mother died. According to family story, after Mathias emigrated, he wrote glowingly to his older brother Michael about his new life, and convinced him to follow.

Michael Doduński was already 45 and had inflated expectations of the new colony when he arrived off the british king with his wife Katarzyna (41) (née Liper) and six children: Barbara (19), Joseph (17), Franciszka (12), Agnieszka (10), Theophilus (6) and Johan (18 months). He was not impressed with what he considered the backward nature of the colony. Despite the problems for Catholic Poles at their birthplace, it had an established infrastructure.

Four years earlier, the Doduński brothers’ only living sister, Barbara Potroz (54), her husband, Martin (59) and children Maria (18), Thomas (16) and Barbara (9), had arrived in Wellington via the hudson. As “Colonial Nominated Emigrants” they did not have to suffer the ignominy of not being allowed to disembark, as happened to the Doduński and Potroz families on the fritz reuter.

The Dodunski surname—which lost its diacritic mark on ships’ passenger lists—is prolific in Taranaki, and the family well known for farming on Durham Road. When Mathias died in 1938, aged 93, a descendant listed his 67 grandchildren and 76 great-grandchildren.⁵⁸

Apolonia and Mathias Dodunski, shortly before Apolonia died, aged 77, in 1928.

Mathias and Apolonia had nine more children in New Zealand: John in 1877; Thelka in 1880; Albert in 1881; Joseph Felix in 1882; Paul in 1884; Catherine (Kate), in 1886; Martha Mary in 1888; Anton Felix in 1890, and Mathias junior in 1893.

Mathias and Apolonia Dodunski with their family, about 1895. The children are: back, from left: Franciszka, Thelka, John, Franz and Albert and front: Martha, Mathias junior, Anton, Paul, and Joseph.

Kate had died aged three in 1889, and Paul died in a farming accident in 1904. He was 20 and had been working on either his father’s or his brother Albert’s farms when he apparently poked at the fire in a large tree stump, which dislodged a piece from higher in the tree. The piece fell and broke Paul’s neck. the taranaki herald reported his death in two separate articles:

The funeral of Mr Paul Dodunski took place on Wednesday, and was one of the largest seen here for some considerable time, which shows the esteem in which the young man was held by his fellow settlers.⁵⁹

Great sympathy is felt for the bereaved parents of Paul Dodunski, killed while bushfelling. They were very old settlers on the Durham Road.⁶⁰

There were joyous celebrations too.

Dodunski brothers Albert and Joseph married a month apart, in July and August 1905. Both occasions saw a packed Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Inglewood.

Albert’s bride, Frances Schrider, was born in New Zealand in 1884. Her Kociewian father, Martin, who brought his family to New Zealand in 1880, had died in 1895, so her brother Robert gave her away. Around 200 people attended the wedding reception, held at the Dodunski farm on Durham Road. The Moa Farmers’ Union bakery made the cake and “provided the necessary sweetstuffs.” The newspaper described the “event of the evening”—the bride’s dance:

One lady takes her stand at one end of the room, with a plate held over her bunched up apron, the groom leads the bride out, and dances a few turns with her, then both his and her immediate relatives take their turns, after which the single men, and so till everyone in the room has danced a few steps. Each person is expected to deposit some money in the plate at the conclusion of their turn. I understand that the idea is a substitute to the practice (as with the Britisher) of giving presents, and when one learns that the sum collected totalled £37 15s 3d one cannot but admit that it has points over the present giving system. …valuable presents were also sent by those who could not be present and by those whose other duties prevented their staying for the evening’s amusement, which continued with unabated vigour up to 7am the next day.⁶¹

The unnamed reporter noted that every Polish family in the district was represented at the gathering, “and they are not a few.”

The large attendance, they said, testified to the popularity of the bride and bridegroom, and to the respect in which Mathias Dodunski was held:

…a pioneer of the Moa Block, and having in common with many others of the same nationality suffered the unavoidable hardships attendant to opening a new country, was still able to take his part with vigour in the activities, which were carried out in real Polish style.⁶²

The wedding party of Frances Schrider and Albert Dodunski on 4 July 1905: From left, Paulina and Mathias Dodunski; bridesmaid Barbara Schrider seated in front of Joseph Dodunski; the bridegroom and bride; second bridesmaid Martha Dodunski seated in front of Reverend Father Long; and the bride's widowed mother, Bertha Schrider, seated in front of her son Robert Maraval, who was born on the maraval three weeks before she sailed into Wellington Harbour in January 1880.

Martha Dodunski was bridesmaid at both weddings. Joseph Dodunski married Joanna Wisniewski, daughter of Andrew and Barbara Wisniewski, who had also travelled with the Dodunskis on the fritz reuter. This time, the festivities were held at the bride’s home, around the corner in Rugby Road, which had a “large convenient barn (30 x 14) erected for dancing etc.”⁶³

That reporter noted that, “Mr Wisnewski, who is another pioneer of the Moa Block, provided in liberal manner for the wants of the visitors.”

Durham Road had its own correspondent at the taranaki herald and the poor state of the road was a regular topic in the newspaper. Nearly 30 years after those first Poles walked into the Inglewood area and started working on its infrastructure, their own roads out of town remained ignored. In June 1905, a month before Albert Dodunski’s wedding, the Moa Road Board had made £400 “available” for its metalling:

A considerable amount of time, and good time, too, has been frittered away, and no one seems to be answerable for such. It is a great injustice to the settlers on the mud road that this delay has been occasioned and it is evident that they will have to struggle through the slush for another season.⁶⁴

There is no doubt that for the upcoming nuptials, Mathias Dodunski organised a dry path to his farm on Upper Durham Road, the third from Mountain Road.

In the 1870s and 1880s, when they left their neighbouring huts in Inglewood proper, the Poles still tended to live near one another, often between Mountain Road and the mountain, which contained some of the last available sections for sale. Unlike in the Inglewood township, the land they bought farther out was not pre-felled by others. The first eight Polish families—and the Poles who joined them from Jackson’s Bay and Hokitika—moved from their temporary accommodation in Inglewood in stages.

Money and time dictated their progress. It was not practical for the men to commute to work that involved tree-felling, or bridge and road building some distance away. They left their wives and families in Inglewood for days, and often weeks, at a time. Once a man had saved enough for a deposit, and had bought some of his own land, he still needed to find the time clear enough space on that land for a dwelling—and at least a small garden, and maybe a cow, or chickens—before he could move his family out of Inglewood. Wives with children who had been left to fend for themselves in the township while the men worked elsewhere were often again left alone in the bush until their farm was able to support them, and the external wage-earner could remain on the land. Neighbours were an important support for these women.

Taranaki seven years after the first fritz reuter Poles arrived might have been more rural than Michael Dodunski expected, but its Polish community soon became the largest in New Zealand, and began to attract young Polish men from places like Marshland who were looking for Polish brides.

Previous bridesmaid Martha Dodunski became one in 1907, when she married Albert Schimanski, the youngest child of Christopher and Louisa Schimanski of Marshland Road in Christchurch. Martha moved with Albert to his farm around the corner from his parents’ in Preston Road, Marshland—her first impressions pleasant after she discovered that his farm on flat land had been cleared of the trees, stumps and debris that were still part of the hilly Taranaki landscape where she had lived with her parents. Eight of their 10 children were born in Marshland, but when Apolonia Dodunski became ill, Albert sold the farm and moved his family to Durham Road—then still home of several Dodunski relatives—so that Martha could support her mother before she died in 1928. They remained in Taranaki and farmed on Block 2, Upper Durham Road where their youngest children were born—Thelma Mary, (Sister St Martha Szymanska RMDM) on 1 August 1929, and Clifford on 22 January 1933.

Thelma loved the farm but hated to run barefoot, and always wore gumboots to escape the mud. She found a path where she could jump from what she thought was one conveniently spaced log to the next, and discovered later that the ‘logs’ were part of a tramline that used to take felled trees out from their property to what was known as Mr Brown’s mill in Inglewood.

When Henry Brown junior opened the mill in 1877, he became the largest employer in the area. The mill had its own tramline, which ran parallel to the railway along Mountain Road, and its own railway siding. Other, temporary tramlines fed the main one. A former employee of the mill, a PH Harding:

“Tramlines used to be laid up to an area of bush and when that was cut, the lines would be moved to the next stand of millable timber. In the country around Inglewood there are many small streams flowing down from the mountain and these had to be bridged for the tramlines. The bushmen did not worry about complex constructions. They simply felled a couple of rimus to fall across the stream, and these were used as stringers for the bridge.”⁶⁵

By 1 June 1878, Brown’s mill had a tramway over the Waiongana Stream into the standing bush that pulled out an average of 1,000 metres of timber daily. This photograph in te moa gives no year, place, or names, but the locomotive was clearly integral in moving the massive logs considerable distances. It is captioned In the Bush.⁶⁶

Mill employees named the “not particularly powerful” Puffing Billy locomotive Victoria.

Harding: “With the lie of the land sloping down from Mt. Egmont toward the mill, the main thing needed on the way in was a powerful braking system to hold back the laden train. When the cargo of logs had been dropped at the mill, the engine had to struggle mightily to pull the unladen rake of trucks back uphill to the bush.”⁶⁷

Apolonia and Mathais Dodunski are buried together at Inglewood Cemetery.

In 1888, their eldest daughter, Franceszka (Frances) Dodunska married Joseph Mischewski. They had both been aged six on the fritz reuter. They also lived on Durham Road, and had 17 children. Those in the following list who have years attached to their names are recorded in the BDM under recognisable surnames: Pauline Juliana, born in 1889, died at seven months; Joseph William, born in 1890, died at 10 months; Ivy Catherine born in 1892; Felix; Agnes; Mary Jane born in 1897; Frederick John born in 1898; Albert James born in 1899; a second son named Joseph William, born in 1901; Andrew Frank born in 1902; Dorothy born in 1904; Paul born in 1905; Kathleen; John, known as Jack, born in 1906; James born in 1909; Helen Frances born in 1911; and Monica.⁶⁸

Frances Barbara (née Dodunska) Mischewski died in 1956 aged 86, and is buried at the Inglewood cemetery with her husband, Joseph, who died in 1961 aged 91. (More on Joseph and the Myszewski/ Mischewski family later.)

Joseph and Frances (née Dodunska) Mischewski lie with their sons Paul and Jack in Inglewood Cemetery.

Franciszek Dodunski, like his older sister, was born in Radostowo. He became known as Francis and married Apolonia Lehrke in 1895. His bride had arrived in Wellington as an infant with her family, off the terpsichore, four months before her future husband. Immigration officials sent Johann and Marianna Lehrke and their four children to Jackson’s Bay, on the South Island’s west coast. Their name had been germanised from Learka. They stayed at the controversial “Special Settlement” until December 1878 and were among the last Polish families to leave.

Francis and Apolonia Dodunski had seven children: Andrew John in 1896; Monica Vera in 1900; Francis Mathias in 1902; Leo Valentine in 1904; Getrude Paulina in 1905; Rita Mary in 1911; and Constance Maggie in 1913. Francis Dodunski senior died 1959 aged 85, 11 years after his wife, who died aged 73. Both are buried at Te Henui Cemetery in New Plymouth.

THE DUSIENSKI FAMILY

After the prime pieces of land in Taranaki had been sold, the Waste Lands Board stepped in to dispose of the rest. The word “Waste” in the board’s title was not strictly descriptive, because it was land holding good trees. It was “waste” in the sense that it was still unsold and not the kind of land that Kenworthy spoke of in 1875 when he praised the area’s “good agricultural land.” Waste land tended to describe sections outlined along paper roads, on maps of uncleared land where the buyer had little idea what lay within.

By 1882, Joseph Dusienski—as his surname was then spelt—had bought 59 acres in Inglewood valued at £88.⁶⁹ In 1886, he was paying off the last instalment to the Waste Lands Board on section 195, Moa (Norfolk Road) and had set in motion his purchase of the neighbouring section.⁷⁰ His naturalisation in 1887 as a farmer of Inglewood points to his being content with his new home and life.

He was another Kociewian Pole, born in Waćmierz in 1851, about five kilometres from his wife, who was born in Radostowo in 1854. Joseph Duszyński and Barbara Drozdowska were married in Subkowy in 1874.

The couple’s first child, Maria Augusta, died 11 days after she was born in Inglewood on 14 November 1876, barely two months after the first Poles walked into the new township. Her death certificate suggests the inadequacy of their early living conditions. It states that she died of “gradual decline” with no medical attendant, or even a religious minister. The “informant” was the Inglewood postmaster, whose signature is illegible. Besides baby’s father, the certificate states that witnesses to her burial at Inglewood Cemetery were Maties Dodunski, Anton Potroz, and August Neustrowski.

Joseph and Barbara had six more children—five registered as Duschenski: Paulina Juliana in 1878, Joseph in 1883, Teckla in 1885, Lucy in 1888, and Jack in 1889—and Agnes as Durchanski in 1880. Jack was 10 months old when their father died in June 1890, aged 39.

Paulina and Agnes Duschenski had brought their father his breakfast to where he was clearing bush about 800 metres from their house, and started playing nearby. They heard a tree fall, and his calls to them to fetch their mother, and saw that the tree he had been felling had trapped him against another. According to the taranaki herald, Duschenski neighbours Messrs Dyer, Burkett and Buckley managed to release him, but the doctor Christie, who had to be summoned from New Plymouth, found Joseph’s injuries “very serious” and stayed two hours. Both of Joseph’s legs were broken and several of his ribs had been “smashed.” The newspaper report says that Joseph was “sensible till almost the last” but died that evening.⁷¹ BDM spelt his name Josef Duschench and Inglewood Cemetery records him has Mr Duchenski.

The community rallied around the family. Someone applied on their behalf for aid through the Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, which that October confirmed an allowance for the family.⁷² Others organised a fundraiser that included entertainment by “all our favourite local amateurs.”⁷³ On one Friday evening in November, the Midhirst hall was:

… crammed to suffocation. an imposing array of good things for the comfort of the inner man (and woman) had been provided by the ladies of the neighbourhood, and were done full justice. Dancing was kept up until daylight.⁷⁴

Barbara married again, to Christian Christensen, and had two more children with him—Maria and Martha. She died in Decemebr 1918 and has her own plot in Inglewood Cemetery, near her husbands’ who are buried next to each other in Plot 7, and for whom she had a joint memorial plaque made.

THE EXTENDED MYSZEWSKI FAMILY

The Myszewski family was one of the largest to disembark from the fritz reuter. Johann Myszewski had with him his new wife, Karolina, two nieces, and four children aged between six and 15. His nieces and his 15-year-old daughter, Julianna, were the single women mentioned earlier, who were among the first of the Marsland Hill immigrants to be employed in August 1876.

The original passenger manifest for the fritz reuter listed the family in order as: Johann (41), Carolina (22), Johanna [sic, she was Julianna] (15), Jacob (13), Catharina (9), Franziska (1), Joseph (6), Lucia (24) and Johanna (19). They all had the same “passport” number—322—so any number of assumptions could have been made regarding the relationships within the group.

A transcription of passengers who left Hamburg in 1876 confused matters by making Lucia aged three and Johanna aged two.⁷⁵ They were not Johann Myszewski’s daughters, but probably his orphaned nieces. Lucia seemed to disappear, until she married an Alexander Leis in Sydney in 1884. She died as Lucy Leis, a week before her 89th birthday, and is buried at Quirindi General cemetery in New South Wales.⁷⁶

Johanna married Anton Szczodrowski (25) on 30 September 1876. Their names on their marriage certificate are spelt Johanna Meszenska and Anton Shawdrowski. Other records for that marriage used the spellings Miszeuska and Showdrowski, and Miszrenska and Thondrowski. Johanna Myszewska was the same age as Anton’s first wife, Julianna (née Krakowska), who had arrived with him off the shakespeare seven months earlier. It is not clear whether the pregnant Julianna Szczodrowska was spared contact with the fumigation process that followed the ship’s being sent to Matiu/ Soames Island for quarantine, but she died with her day-old unnamed baby seven days after she arrived in Wellington Harbour. The two are remembered with others on a plaque on the island as Juliane Kakrowsky Seodrowsky and baby Seodrowsky.

The principal immigrant in the Myszewski family—Johann—married Marianna Dytmer in 1859, and lived in Kokoszkowy. Marianna died in February 1872, and Johann married Carolina Funk in 1873. Marsland Hill immigration barrack’s lack of a rations allocation for their daughter Franciszka, born in September 1874, confirms that she did not survive the voyage.

Johann Myszewski became John Mischewski in New Zealand. Other branches of the family used the spelling Mischefski. He and Caroline (as she became known in New Zealand) had another eight children: Francis in 1877; Maria in 1878; Martha in 1880; John in 1885; Bernhardt in 1887; Anton in 1889; Thomas in 1892; and Agnes in 1893.

Caroline died aged 45 in 1899, and is buried in Midhirst Old cemetery. Although the official birth records of his children born in New Zealand name him John, he was buried as Johann Mischewski, aged 86 in 1918. There are no Mischewski names still visible among the mostly broken headstones in the cemetery, but the memorial wall at the entrance shows Johann and Caroline, and three other Mischewski infants: Joseph William who died aged 10 months in 1891, George Thomas who died aged eight months in 1894, and George Nelson who died aged two months in 1901.

All three infants were Johann Mischewski’s grandsons—but had different parents: Joseph William’s were Joseph and Frances (née Dodunska); George Thomas’s were Jacob and Mary (née Jakobowska, who was aged nine when she arrived with her parents and three sisters off the fritz reuter); and George Norman’s were Frank and Pauline (née Fabish, who was born in New Zealand).

The memorial entrance wall at Midhirst Old Cemetery on Beaconsfield Road in Stratford.

In 1877, Julianna Myszewski married Frank Uhlenberg, the single man in the group that walked to Inglewood the year before. BDM named them Juliana Myzzenski and Franz Ulenberk. (More about them later.)

Jacob Michewski married Mary Jacobowski in 1885 (BDM spellings). Jacob and his father were both naturalised as farmers of Midhirst on 25 October 1890. They appear together in the 1882 freeholders record as Johan and Jacob Myyenski. At the time, Johann owned 40 acres valued at £206, and Jacob 42 acres valued at £180.⁷⁷

Jacob and Mary Mischewski had 11 children: Katherine Anne in 1886; Leo Michael in 1887; Agnes in 1889; James Francis in 1892; George Thomas in 1894; Mary in 1895; Joseph Augustine in 1897; Barbara in 1899; Peter Paul in 1901; Anna Magdalen (Annie) in 1903; and Stephen John (Jack) in 1906. Jacob died in 1952, aged 90, and is buried at Kopuatama Cemetery in Stratford with Mary, who died aged 80 in 1945.

Johann Mischewski’s daughter Catharina on the passenger list became known as Katherine, and married William Todd in 1900. She died in 1944, aged 77, and is buried with her husband at Waikumete Cemetery in Auckland.

In 1916, Joseph Mischewski, Vincent Dravitzki (who had been aged three on the fritz reuter), and Joseph Stachurski (who had been aged two on the shakespeare) represented Inglewood’s Polish community in a protest to Members of Parliament Henry Okey and William Jennings regarding the enemy alien classification that they received earlier that year.

The Poles had been told that they had to report weekly to the Inglewood police station, and that they had to carry a police permit if they travelled beyond 20 miles.⁸⁰

The taranaki daily news, under the upper-cased heading THE POLES OF INGLEWOOD CLASSED AS “ENEMY ALIENS” and subheading A STRONG PROTEST reported on the Poles’ objection:

The deputation… represented that although not naturalised British subjects, being Poles by birth, they had no sympathy whatever with the Germans in the present war. Indeed, their fathers left Poland because of the tyranny of the Germans. Most of them arrived in Taranaki almost forty years ago, and had been loyal subjects ever since. They pointed out that they were under the impression until the war broke out that they were naturalised British subjects on account of their being here for over twenty-five years.⁷⁹

At the time, Joseph (Joe) Mischewski had 14 children and had been living on Durham Road for 20 years, 14 of which he had spent as a school committee member. Vincent Dravitzki had 10 children and had been a farmer in Ratapiko for “many years.” Joseph Stachurski was a director of the Moa Dairy Company, a member of the school committee, and was active in the district’s public affairs. He told the MPs that:

… the Poles knew only too well the methods of the Germans. They had cruelly treated their fathers in Poland for many, many years. It was only now that outsiders could appreciate the dreadful cruelty that inspired the Germans’ actions in regard to subject people. For a Pole under British rule to wish them well or sympathise with them in any degree was unthinkable. The Poles of the Inglewood district felt humiliated at being classed “alien enemy subjects.”⁸⁰

MP Jennings said he knew the Poles for their “loyalty and industry” and work in the district. Although the MPs said they would “strongly recommend” to the Minister for Internal Affairs that he “remove the restriction upon the liberty of the Polish settlers,” Polish names remained on the 1917 Enemy Alien register.

The sensitive topic of aliens raised itself again in 1919, after Robert Masters won the Stratford general election by 61 votes from incumbent Captain John Bird Hine, who petitioned against the result. Although Hine’s petition revolved around Masters allegedly bribing voters with free “music and pictures,”⁸¹ several Poles became embroiled in the March 1920 petition proceedings because they had had the temerity to vote.

If the Taranaki Poles had thought their protest just three years earlier about being considered enemy aliens had amended their status, they soon discovered that nothing had changed and that they still had no right to vote. Instead of being able to send delegates to speak to MPs on behalf of them all, individual Poles had to defend their characters in a public court.

Joseph and Franceska Mischefski’s names joined those of Barbara and John Burkett, Rose and Vincent Dravitzki, Joseph Stackurski, Barbara and Frank Bilski, Joseph and Mary Dodunski, Polly and Vincent Kowalwski, Frederick and Martha Mary Voltzke, Mary Groshieneski, Augusta Dombriski, and Annie Habowski. (These spellings from the newspaper article.)⁸²

Justice Chapman heard Paul Biesick [sic], Jacob and Mary Kuklinski, Frances and Anthony Wisniewski, Michael Bieloski [sic], Augusta Dombroski, and Valentine Bilski, and concluded that their “impression [of being eligible to vote] seemed general.” In his lengthy judgement that declared the election void, Justice Chapman did not mention the Poles or voter eligibility.

After he lost, Hine and two others took a petition to the Election Court, which included a specific allegation about…

… a large number of people who were registered as electors and voted in favor [ sic] of the said Robert Masters… were not entitled to be registered as electors, or to vote and had been disqualified by legal incapacity and whose names were illegally placed or retained on the roll and your petitioners say that all such votes ought now to be struck off the poll.⁸³

Votes for Hine versus Masters showed that in 1919, the politicians’ popularity varied in some of the places where Poles lived: Inglewood, 394 (Hine) vs 315 (Masters); Durham Road, 34 vs 28; Midhirst, 73 vs 128; Norfolk Road, 68 vs 67; Ratapiko, 19 vs 30, which brought the totals for those areas to 588 for Hine and 568 for Masters. The 1919 Stratford election had been tight, but Hine’s including easy targets like the Poles in the blame for his loss seems unfounded.⁸⁶

The by-election held in May 1920 increased Masters’ majority to 148. In 1922, he retained his seat by a majority of 363 over Hine.

THE NEUSTROWSKI FAMILY

August and Apolonia (née Potroc) Neustrowski were another example of the close familial relationships among the Poles who first landed in Taranaki.

Apolonia was a full sister to Anton Potroc, whose parents were the Martin and Barbara (née Dodunska) Potroz who arrived in 1879 off the hudson, and whose wife, Josephine (née Funk), was a full sister to Johann Myszewski’s second wife, Carolina. When 18-month-old Franciszka Myszewska developed the same heat exhaustion as seven-month-old August Neustrowski on the fritz reuter, and both died, their family ties may have eased their shared grief.

Marianna Neustrowski—who had been aged five in 1876—told her grandson Ray Watembach that heat exhaustion affected many of the youngest children on that ship.

Born in the Mątowy Wielkie parish, August Nejstrowski senior was orphaned as a young child and taken across the Vistula River (Wisła) to Wielki Garc where the Potroc family cared for him. Ray has traced the original family name, Nesterowski, to 1773 parish marriage records in Klonówka. August married under the name Nejstrowski in 1870, the same name recorded for Marianna and her brother Johan. The surname of his second son, however—August, born in 1875—appeared on the record as Neistrowski. All the children were born in Kociewian Gręblin.

After their daughter Agnes was born in Bell Block, the Neustrowskis moved to the new Inglewood settlement, and first lived with Anton and Josephina Potroz near the other Poles in the Jubilee Park area.

Ray: “My grandmother described it as ‘one room, with a lean-to at the back for washing and drying clothes.’ The room had a dirt floor and they made dried fern mattresses. The parents slept on the floor and the children in the rafters. The fireplace was about two metres wide and about a metre deep. It didn’t have a brick chimney, so they lined it with corrugated iron supported by green timber. Once they had a bit of money, they bought pork and started making Polish sausage, curing hams, bacon, or even fish, by hanging it all in the chimney.”

Marianna (who became known as Martha Watemburg after she married) and her brother Johann (who became John, or Jack Neustrowski) attended classes at a private school in Inglewood until the first official school was opened, but left aged 10 to help care for her younger siblings: After Agnes, came Paul in 1880, Joseph (Joe) in 1882, Bernard (Ben) in 1884, Apolonia in 1886, and Isidor (Sid) in 1888.

Between 1877 and 1880, the Waste Lands Board offered 50- to 100-acre sections between Tariki and Midhirst, sight unseen, at £1 to £1 10 shillings an acre and by then August had managed to gather a deposit. The 1882 freeholders register showed that he owned 85 acres in Midhirst, valued at £131.⁸⁵

The section was packed with tangled vines, ferns, and trees as tall as 30 to 40 metres—impossible to immediately occupy. On paper, it was on York Road, but there was no road then, and many unbridged streams lay between it and Inglewood proper, so the family remained in Inglewood for several years after the sale. If General Chute’s 400 soldiers did not pass directly through it, they would have been close by.

Having their own piece of land again was important to the Poles who arrived in colonial New Zealand. Most had descended from peasants who had lost their farms through the gradual introduction of serfdom—entrenched in 1501—that had turned them into forced labourers for the nobility. Ray discovered through a 1773 marriage certificate that August Neistrowski’s grandfather was a free man from impoverished gentry, and therefore not tied to a specific estate, but still had to find work to survive. The three partitionings of Poland led to the eventual abolition of serfdom, which released the peasant farming Poles who had been tied to a certain estate. They again had the right to move, but they did not get any of their historic land returned, and by the 1870s, their livelihoods had grown even more dire under decades of Prussian rule.

In 1881, August had a job at Henry Brown’s mill in Inglewood. Without an army to help, it took him until the early summer of 1886 to clear enough of his land to grow grass for a few cows, and build a dwelling for the family. Agnes remained at the Inglewood school, and John transferred to the Waipuku district school near Mountain Road.

According to school records, Agnes (9) and John (12) transferred to the Waipuku District School near Mountain Road in February and March 1886, but a year later, August again registered Agnes into Inglewood School. By then, her older sister, Marianna (Martha Watemburg) was 15 and had long left the family home to go into service, so as the next daughter, 10-year-old Agnes may have been needed to help her mother with her younger brothers, or with her sister Pauline, born in 1886, or—if her mother and siblings had already moved to York Road—she may have been sent to Inglewood to help another family, who would then be responsible for feeding and clothing her.

Records show that John left school in April 1887, which suggests that his parents needed him more on the new farm than in the schoolhouse.

August created a safe over a drain of running water to keep the milk and butter cool. In winter, the family cows foraged in the bush. Martha sold the butter in Stratford, walking the 11 kilometres and returning with provisions. On Sundays, the entire family walked to Mass in Inglewood. The building of the Catholic church in Stratford cut that journey considerably.

As with all the Polish settler families, children helped where they could, and the Neustrowski children scoured fallen logs for fungus to dry and sell to local businessman Chew Chong, who had found a ready market for the product in China. He paid them three pence a pound.⁸⁶

Ray: “He was well known, and saved many a Polish family from starvation. He had a house in Eltham, and then moved to New Plymouth, where it was better for him to run his export business. People knew he’d be on the train on certain days.

“Every road that crossed the railway line had a little station. The children waited for the train to come through the station—and not just the children, the adults too. The train did deliveries and stopped at each road. The farmers got things dropped off, from bags of cement to a dress ordered.”

The tradition of stopping where needed continued until at least 1947. Ray remembers his grandmother, who had by then moved to Waitara, deciding to visit her son Leo on his Norfolk Road farm. Ray and his older sister, Shirley, accompanied her, and the train duly stopped at the bottom of Norfolk Road. Ray had hoped his uncle would meet them to help them carry their bundles up the road, and was disgruntled when his mother said he “was busy” on the farm.

August Neustrowski continued to add to his York Road farm. A Land Board notice in the hawera & normanby star on 17 February 1897 declared that “A Neustrowski” had applied for the freehold on section 228 Moa, a neighbouring property to the one he had leased next to his brother-in-law Anton Potroz in 1890.⁸⁷

August’s sons Joe and Ben—like other Polish sons— became so adept at bush-felling, that in the early 1900s they provided fierce competition at sports meetings and shows such as Eltham’s annual Axemen’s Carnival.

Entries in January 1908 for the Inglewood Caledonian sports day 18-inch Open Handicap included the Polish teams of Bielawski and Roguski [sic], the Dravitzki Bros, JP Bilsk [sic] and Dravitzki, and the Newstroski [sic] Bros, names repeated elsewhere in the programme.⁸⁸

In 1905, Ben Neustrowski won the most prominent of the three New Zealand contests—the 18-inch Underhand World Championship—but only after August Voltzke senior, another of the first Poles off the fritz reuter, proved the result with a photograph. Split-second decisions regularly went against the Poles. At a show in 1912, the judges conceded that:

… there is a possibility that a mistake could have been made: and whilst the club cannot honour the win to Neistrowski, who disputed the decision, the members have generously subscribed the amount of the prize money, and handed it over to him.⁸⁹

August Neustrowski became naturalised in Inglewood in 1887. His sons Joe and Paul joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1914, and both served in western Europe for more than two years. Ben, who was then farming in Stratford, and Sid were called up in 1917—yet after 40 years in New Zealand, the New Zealand Government still considered their 68-year-old parents enemy aliens. The soldiers’ siblings Martha and John received the same treatment.

This 1914 Neustrowski family photograph was taken as a memento before brothers Joseph (Joe) and Paul left Taranaki with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Seated from left is Martha, Isadore (Sid), Apolonia senior, August, Apolonia junior (Polly), who married Ben Dombrowski, and Agnes, who married Herman Schultz. Ben is standing behind Martha and John is standing on the far right.

Six of the Neustrowski siblings in 1919—from left, Sid, Ben, Joe, Paul, Agnes, seated with her children Joe, Margaret and Helen, and Polly on the far right—outside Ben Neustrowski’s house in Aotuhia, adjacent to what is today Whanganui National Park. He received the land as a soldier returning from WWI, and built a duplicate of his parents’ house in York Road. Their formal attire suggests that the siblsings had made the 80-kilometre trip inland as a special visit to Ben, wearing his military uniform, for the occasion.

Ray: “The war clothes were good quality, hard wearing. Uncle Ben would not have thrown them out. At the left-rear of the house, there would have been a Polish food cellar for storing things like root vegetables. Aotuhia was awful, hill country. They did a lot of burning, but not all the trees fell, as you can see from the stumps. They were also plagued with wild pigs—so much so that the country paid a shilling a snout.”

Martha married Joseph Watemburg in 1897, and moved to Marshland in Christchurch, where several of the Poles who arrived off the friedeburg in Lyttelton in 1872 were making a name for themselves as market gardeners. Martha returned to Taranaki with her sons after Joseph died from a heart attack in 1915, and lived in Waitara until her death in 1960.

John, who had taken over the York Road farm, was widowed on 30 March 1922, when his wife, Rosalie (Rose, née Meller), died during the labour of their stillborn 12th child, a boy. It is not clear how many of their children—on Rose’s death certificate aged from one- to 19-years-old—were still living at the farm. Their eldest, Kathleen Polly, had married August Dodunski in 1920, but there were six children younger than 10. Milk fever among his cows destroyed John’s farming career two years later, and he moved next door to the Potroz farm while his parents took over his mortgage and returned to the property. John found work at the Waipuku Quarry, retired to Ōpunakē, and died there aged 85.

Ray: “Laurence Dombrowski [John’s nephew through his sister Polly] and my father [William Watemburg, John’s nephew through his sister Martha] got all dressed up and picked me up from Waitara, about a 45- to 55-minute drive away. It started off a beautifully clear, sunny morning but as we got to Ōpunakē, the clouds came over and we reached the church in a gentle drizzle. By the time the Requiem Mass had finished, light rain had begun to fall, and the closer we got to the cemetery, the heavier the rain became. As his grandchildren carried his casket to the waiting hole, the heavens opened, and the priest said his few words in a torrential downpour. As his casket hit the bottom, the rain stopped, and before we got out of the cemetery, the sun was shining.”

Sid Neustrowski died on 31 August 1926, aged 38, of meningitis he caught during a bout of influenza. He never married. His father died six months later, and his mother seven months after that. August and Apolonia Neustrowski are buried together at Midhirst Old Cemetery, near Sid.

THE POTROZ FAMILY

Anton Potroz and August Neustrowski paid 9d an acre in 1890 for adjoining leased sections on York Road.

Born in Gręblin as Anton Potroc, he lived about three kilometres south, in Rudno. In 1873, he and Josefina Funk were married at the Catholic church in nearby Wielki Garc. They boarded the fritz reuter with their son, Jacob Franz, born in 1874. Their first daughter, Julianna, died in January 1876. The Rudno parish registered her as Julianna Potrotz, who lived for eight days and the Wielki Garc parish registered her as Julianna Potroc, who lived for 12 days. Both parishes recorded her christening.

Anton and Josefina had another 10 children in Taranaki: Jane in 1877; Mary Agnes in 1878; Franciska in 1880; Anthony in 1881; John in 1882; Augustus in 1885; Barbara in 1887; Leo Joseph in 1888; Louis Thomas in 1890; and Martin Dominik in 1892. Apart from Augustus, who died in WWI, the children all married into the wider Taranaki Polish community—families such as Christensen, Crofskey, Dodunski, Dombroski, Fabish, Schrider, Stachursksi, and Trebes.⁹⁰

Jacob Frank Potroz married Mary Schrider in 1899. They settled on York Road near the senior Potrozes, and brought up their own large family. Their first and fourth babies, John Adam and Mary, both lived for two months, and their second son, Frank, died aged seven, but their youngest, Evelyn Eileen Braggins, lived to 92, four of their children—Annie Fabish, Thomas Henry Potroz, Rose Rayner and Leonard Robert Potroz—lived well into their eighties, and the other two, Joseph James and Paul William died aged 71 and 73 respectively.

In the spirit of Polish hospitality, Jacob and Mary Potroz, whose children at the time attended the York Road School, offered their paddock for the school picnic in April 1918. The weather was “beautiful” and the function “proved to be the greatest affair of its kind ever held on the road.” Games, food, and residents’ donations of silver coins for prizes kept the children happy, and WWI at bay.⁹¹

The war brought worry, sadness, and relief when soldiers came come.. Josefina Potroz died in 1903, aged 53, so was spared from mourning the loss of her son Augustus, who died on 17 September 1916, aged 31, of wounds sustained in battle only six months after he left New Zealand. A private from the 2nd Battalion, Wellington Regiment, NZED, he lies with other World War casualties in the Étaples Military Cemetery at Pas de Calais in France.⁹⁵

The auckland weekly news published this photograph of Augustus Potroz in 1916. Before WWI, Augustus farmed in Waitara.

For the 75th and 100th anniversaries of the start of WWI, Ray Watembach travelled to the Catholic churches in Wielki Garc and Kokoszkowy, which held Potroz, Dodunski and Neustrowski records, and arranged to have Masses said there for New Zealand Polish descendants who were killed in both World Wars.

Josefina was spared the demeaning irony of being branded an “enemy alien” of New Zealand while her sons went to war with the NZEF in western Europe. Besides Augustus, Martin served for nearly three years and Louis Thomas for more than two.

The New Zealand Government treated the widowed father of those soldiers exactly the same as they did his sister and brother-in-law, Apolonia and August Neustrowski, and so many other early Polish settlers: it put 64-year-old Anton Potroz of Waitara—someone who had lived in New Zealand for 40 years—on its enemy alien register. Yet the Étaples Cemetery in France records Augustus as “Son of Anton and Josephine Potroz, of Poland.”

WWI soldiers unwittingly returned to New Zealand with the influenza virus, which killed about 9,000 people in New Zealand between October and December 1918. Illness and deaths dominated the personal columns of newspapers, and on 21 November 1918, the taranaki daily news listed Augustus’s older brother John among those who had died of pneumonia the previous day.⁹³

John Potroz had married his sister-in-law Julia Schrider in 1908 and was farming nearly 200 acres in Kaimata. Their first child, Rose, drowned when she was two in February 1912. Four months later, Lewis John was born, followed by Lawrence William in 1913, and John James in 1915. Without John, it was inevitable that the farm had to go.

Barely three weeks after his death, the first of John Potroz’s stock and plant went up for sale.⁹⁴ Another auction was held at the Inglewood Yards in January 1919,⁹⁵ and the land was auctioned in May 1919.⁹⁶

Thanks to newspapers’ habits at that time of using a general “Mrs” for the several women who married into the family, it is difficult to identify what Julia did, or where she went after her husband’s death, but it is clear that she remained independent. She appeared before an Inglewood magistrate in June 1922 for riding a bicycle without lights. The two men who appeared at the same time on the same charge—a Fred Mundy and a Robert Darlow—were each fined 10s and 7s in costs, but Julia—mother of three sons then aged 10, nine and seven—was convicted and discharged.⁹⁷

In 1926, when a man she had borrowed money to did not repay it, she sued him, and was partially successful. She told the court that while she had been “keeping house” for an unnamed brother (she had four), she had become friendly with the man, who persuaded her to give him the £80 she had borrowed from her brother to repay her debt to the Taranaki Hospital Board. She recovered £45.⁹⁸ A year later, at a meeting of 40 householders in Kaimiro who were trying to get the Education Department to provide a school playground, she was elected onto the committee charged with sorting out the problem.⁹⁹

Mrs Julia Potroz was enough of a personality to warrant the Dudley Road correspondent for the taranaki daily news to comment in 1928 that she had “returned on Friday from a holiday in Waverley” and she again made the District News column in the stratford evening post when she hosted her son Laurie’s 21st birthday party at her residence.¹⁰⁰ Julia died in September 1958, nearly 40 years after her husband, and is buried with him in Inglewood Cemetery.

Mourners again packed the Inglewood Catholic Church for Julia’s father-in-law Anton Potroz’s funeral in July 1926. He had died, aged 74, at the home of his daughter Mary Agnes Stachurski. He was remembered in the stratford evening post for buying his farm on the York Road more than 50 years prior, when “the road was only survey and all in standing bush,” and for the “considerable amount of contracting” that he did before the road was formed, which allowed him to take up dairying.¹⁰¹

Anton Potroz joined his wife in Midhirst Old Cemetery. Near them, and also buried together, are their son Jacob Frank (known as Frank), who died in 1932, and his wife, Mary (née Schrider, Julia Potroz’s sister), who died in 1952. Also in the same cemetery are Anton’s parents, Martin, who died in 1895 aged 74, and Barbara, who died in 1910 aged 85.

Besides the direct Potroz connections to the Dodunski, Funk, and Neustrowski families at the time at the time they arrived in Taranaki—and the weddings to the Schrider (Shrader) sisters—Potroz first-generatopm descendants up until 1930, married into the Polish families of Biesiek, Burkett, Crofskey (Kurowski), Dodunski, Dombrowski, Fabish, Jans, Kuklinski, Miller (Meller), Stachurski, Trebes and Zimmerman.

THE UHLENBERG FAMILY

Frank Uhlenberg had a job to do when he landed in New Plymouth in 1876: pave the way for his parents, Jan (John) and Rosalia, and younger siblings Joseph, then 23; Julia, then 20; Anna, then 17; Maria, then 16; Matilde, then 13; and August, nine. Frank was apparently one of the few literate Poles on the fritz reuter. His father married under the Latin-Polish spelling of his name, Johannes Ulenberg, which also appeared on his children’s christening records.¹⁰²

Frank was young, single, and exactly the kind of immigrant that the New Zealand colony needed, and recruited, under the Vogel scheme—what former Taranaki provincial councillor James Crowe Richmond called “bone and sinew” that could work the land; different from the earlier Wakefield notion of transferring “full blown” British society into the new colony.¹⁰³

Once Frank had established himself, he was to send for the rest of his family. Like his brother Joseph, he was born in Grabowo Kościerskie, west of Tczew, in northwest Prussian-partitioned Poland. Judging by the birthplaces of the youngest three siblings—Sikorzyno, Trzepowo, and Lubieszyn—the Uhlenbergs had joined the hundreds of Poles who moved from village to village to find work.

Frank and fellow fritz reuter passenger, Julianna Mischewski (Johan Myszewski’s eldest daughter, the one mis-named Johanna on the passenger list) married at the Catholic church in New Plymouth in August 1877. It is not clear what happened to Julianna when she was first employed out of the Marsland barracks, but she must have kept in contact with her father and siblings in Inglewood.

Little more than two years later, Frank had saved enough to sponsor his parents and siblings as nominated immigrants to New Zealand. They arrived in Wellington Harbour off the orari in July 1879. The colony only accepted able-bodied labourers younger than 50, so Jan and Rosalia—who married in 1846 aged 35 and 29—fudged their ages to 46 and 44. From Wellington, they took a coastal steamer to New Plymouth, and reached the shore in the same two stages described by the surveyor Browne: boatmen in a dinghy met the steamer, helped the passengers jump on with their luggage, and rowed them across to the town.

Frank’s great-niece Joan Dickson, who wrote a family story: “Frank and Julianna had prepared for the new arrivals. They had built a new ponga house for themselves a little distant from their original home. The old home was vacated, its ponga walls hung with fresh drapes, the mud floor swept clean, fresh bracken gathered for their beds, slabs of tree trunk cut lengthways to be used for table and seats, and a window fitted. The day before their arrival, Franz travelled on horseback to New Plymouth and bought a pane of glass, which he put into the house, the first on the York Road to have a window.”¹⁰⁴

One has to accept that Frank knew when his family was arriving, and that he met them: there is no way they would have been able to get from the New Plymouth waterfront to his farm in the bush without a guide. Frank, by that time familiar with the town, would have wanted to escort his parents and siblings, and possibly show off—just a bit.

After a night at Marsland Hill, they caught a train carrying ballast towards the railway still being constructed south of Inglewood. They sat on planks laid across the trucks as the train made its way through the walls of trees. They stopped at what was then the end of the track, known as the Manganui Railway Station, and scrambled up York Road, through and over supplejacks, bush lawyer vines, trees, and logs, to Frank’s section.¹⁰⁵ Five months later, the railway extended to Patea. In 1883 a proposal to officially change its name to York Road Station was dismissed, although that is what locals called it. The station was closed in 1897.¹⁰⁶

Julianna Uhlenberg met her new in-laws and introduced them to their first grandchild and niece, Barbara Franciska, born in June 1878.

Family story has it that, like so many other Poles writing to family still in Poland, Frank worded his letters carefully. He glossed over the hardships, and the reality of his life in the new land, so no matter how meticulously he and Julianna prepared the new home, it must have been a shock for the continental Europeans to discover that Frank lived in the dense forest in such primitive conditions. Julia and Anna left the next day, and quickly found work at the White Hart Hotel in New Plymouth. It is not clear when Maria left for Auckland, but she married coalminer-flax grower Sam Neill in 1884 (BDM spelt her name Mair Uplenberg) and settled with him in Kawakawa, where she died aged 88 in 1951.

It may seem odd that young women—new arrivals in a far-flung colony who could not speak its predominate language—would be prepared to immediately return to a town they did not know, but Julia and Anna fitted exactly the demographic that employers wanted in those days.

At the time, a William Cottier happened to be promoting his Masonic Hotel, situated on the corner of Devon and Brougham Streets. (The Uhlenbergs would have seen it as they had to walk up Brougham Street to get to Marsland Hill.) William took out numerous advertisements offering private rooms and bathrooms for families, and telling potential customers about his newly extended public rooms.¹⁰⁷ Family story says that Julia looked after the Cottier children—by 1879 William and his wife, Mary Jane, had eight—and met one of the hotel’s many regular visitors, the charismatic Swiss-born, Italian-educated Nicholaus Schumacher.

Julia Uhlenberg married Nicholaus (then 24) at St Joseph’s Church in New Plymouth in September 1882. Her husband became a popular leader in the Midhirst community, held positions as an engineer and on boards, and in 1892, became a Justice of the Peace. In 1893, he moved pregnant Julia and their six children to a farm near his parents in Midhirst, and left New Plymouth bound for San Francisco and an “extended tour” in North America.¹⁰⁸ The last Julia heard from him was that he was looking for opportunities at the Mexican border.

The woman who was brave enough to return to New Plymouth the day after she arrived at York Road in 1879, got on with the job of running the farm and bringing up her children. Until her son George was old enough to help her, her younger brother August delivered her milk to the dairy factory.

Julia made sure that all her children received an education, and settled George and Felix on their own farms nearby, which the family felled, stumped, and grassed.

The Te Topo Rver made a loop through the original farm. In 1914, Julia objected to the council’s paying her 3d a cubic yard for stone it removed, when it paid her neighbour, a Mrs Baker, 4d. She had also heard that the council was “contemplating” reducing her payment to only 2d. She complained through her solicitor, Mr TC Fookes. Midhirst councillors discussed rivers, streams, boundaries, and payments for two hours before resolving to pay Julia the standard price for her stone—6d a cube.¹⁰⁹

Julia gave the original farm to her youngest son, Joseph, when he married Agnes Breen in 1916, and moved in with her daughter Annie Habowska who lived in Hamlet Street, Stratford, her decision sweetened by a shorter walk to Mass on Sundays.

Julia’s sister and companion on the return trip to New Plymouth in 1879, Anna Uhlenberg, remained single. After WWI, aged 60, she made it her mission to become naturalised—as her mother had been in 1911 and brother August, in 1900. She initiated the process through an official memorial declaration and a certificate of character from Justice of the Peace Joseph McCluggage, who had known the family for 15 years, and who was also her solicitor.

In a letter dated 18 November 1919 and starting with the words, “I have the honour by direction of the Minister of Internal Affairs…” an Under Secretary J Hislop told her that New Zealand restrictions on naturalisation had been removed for alien “friends” only, and that she did not fall under such a category.

Anna sent in another application. By January 1920, she had instructed McCluggage to enquire why she had received no reply. Hislop reiterated that Anna and a “Mesdame Groshinski” were technically still alien “enemies” and needed to wait for the issue of a Proclamation of Peace.

Polish Anna was having none of that, and approached her local MP, Robert Masters, who wrote to then Minister of Internal Affairs William Downie Stewart junior in August 1921, telling him that the Uhlenberg family was of Polish descent and “bitterly opposed” to the Prussians involved in WWI. A few days later, MP Stewart wrote to MP Masters to say that if Anna could prove that any blood relative had served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, he would consider granting her naturalisation.

The signatures on a Department of Internal Affairs letterhead are illegible, but on 8 September 1921, Minister Stewart received a memorandum which stated Anna’s father was naturalised in 1899, her brother in 1900, and that three of her nephews had served with the NZEF.

The Stratford Magistrate wrote to the Under Secretary for the Department of Internal Affairs—probably still Hislop, as his signature appears in a later letter—to say that he was recommending Anna’s naturalisation, and that of a John Jacobowski.

Anna Uhlenberg received her naturalisation on 27 October 1921.

Hislop sent her the papers on 1 November 1921, but it was not the last he heard from the family: Anna’s nephew-in-law and neighbour in Stratford, Michael Kowalewski, continued to petition for John Jacobowski, “as the old Gentleman is feeling uneasy at the long delay.” The Jacobowski family had arrived on the fritz reuter with Franz Uhlenberg, and had been among the Poles sent to Hokitika. (John’s daughter Mary was the one who married Jacob Mischewski.) John Jacobowski’s naturalisation came through on 9 December 1921, when he was 87. He died in October 1923, and is buried with his wife in Kopuatama Cemetery.

In 1879, after Frank Uhlenberg taught his brother Joseph the art of bush felling, the 26-year-old was soon employed and also moved on, but Mathilde and August remained with their parents for a time.¹¹³

Joseph was as diligent as his older brother. Within a year, he had bought two adjoining sections on York Road, one of them for his parents. Joseph married Joanna Fabish in 1886, and had four children who grew to adulthood, but he died of cancer in 1897. He made special mention in his will that for the rest of their lives his parents were to retain full use of nine acres of his land, rent and charge free.

Jan Uhlenberg became known as John. Their grandchildren decided to call him and Rosalia Lul and Lulka rather than the Kaszubian Stark and Starka or the Polish Dziadek and Babcia.

Rosalia Uhlenberg holds her arm around her eldest granddaughter, Barbara Franciska Uhlenberg, as they pose for this studio photograph around 1885.

The state of York Road improved over the years, and the bush was eventually tamed, but the family story recalls the children being sent shopping and coming home hours later than expected and in tears, after being ambushed by vines, thorns, logs, and muddy ditches.

John and Rosalia built two small cottages side-by-side, slept in one, and used the other for work and living quarters. They planted a large orchard, mostly apples, and kept bees. Above the open fireplace, they hung hooks for their iron cooking pots. Another pot, free-standing and three-legged, they half-filled with ashes, then hot rata embers, which warmed the room, or cooked potatoes.

They owned a few cows, set the milk in pans, skimmed it, and churned the cream into butter, which they exchanged at the local store for clothing or food. Skim-milk went into one of the pots over the open fireplace; the whey went to their pigs; the curds became cheese.

John’s grandchildren remembered him for reciting his rosary as he attended his trees, and always having a pot of honey or some fruit for them. Rosalia was an equally doting grandmother, who delighted in taking her grandchildren to the apple pantry and giving them an apronful each to take home.

John Uhlenberg died in 1902, and Rosalia in 1916. According to their Polish marriage records, they would have been 91 and 98. They are buried together at the Midhirst Old Cemetery.

Julianna née Myszewski Uhlenberg with seven of her eight youngest children circa 1900. Standing at the back, from left are Clara, Anna and Rosalia. In front, seated, are Martha, and Julia on the left of their mother, and Mary and Joseph to the right.

Frank was a conscientious farmer, regularly auctioning his dairy stock, and hand-milking one of the largest herds in the district.¹¹¹ According to the BDM, he and Julianna had 10 more children after Barbara : Johan Franz in 1879; Francis junior in 1881; Osmund Augustus in 1883; Clara Agnes in 1885; Anne in 1886; Mary Frances in 1888; twins Rosalie and Joseph in 1889; Martha in 1891; and Julia Helena in 1895.

Francis Uhlenberg junior died in a horse-riding accident 1901, aged 19, and his mother died in 1908, aged 48. Frank senior appeared to give up dairying four years later, when the following advertisement appeared in the hawera & normanby star:¹¹²

The Newton King advertisement in 1912, declaring Frank Uhlenberg’s intention to retire from dairying.

Frank senior withdrew his farm from sale, and was still working on the morning of his death in December 1915, when he and his son John took their milk to the Midhirst factory. His inquest showed that he often visited his daughters, and Julia in Midhirst assumed he was with her unnamed sister in Waitara until she visited at Christmas, and realised he was missing.¹¹³

Frank, then 64, was found dead, down a slope off Mountain Road, by a dog belonging to a Fritz Kleeman, the manager of the Midhirst Dairy Company. The inquest jury could not find sufficient evidence as to what caused his death. He is buried at Midhirst Old Cemetery with Julianna, and their son Frank.

Members of the newly formed Polish Genealogical Society based in Taranaki discovered Midhirst Old Cemetery in 1993, hardly visible from the road, overgrown with bushes and blackberries, its graves and headstones vandalised by cattle feeding among its graves. When members saw a notice that November that the Stratford District Council planned to close the cemetery, they decided to lobby for its restoration.

The evening of the next council meeting, descendants of the Polish settlers in Taranaki far outnumbered the chairs set out:

The Council had not anticipated the number of people interested in the overgrown, dilapidated, old cemetery or how loud these people could be in condemning the actions of the council.¹¹⁷

Their actions spurred the council to repair paths and clear the undergrowth, and in 1997 it erected a memorial wall, without which there would be little chance of confirming who lies there.

Frank and Julianne Uhlenberg’s gravestone on the ground at the Midhirst Old cemetery. They share their grave with their 19-year-old second son, also called Frank, who predeceased his parents in 1901.

Remnants from a grave, or possibly several, have been arranged near the entrance to the Midhirst cemetery. In 2013, below, sheep still roamed the graveyard behind the memorial wall.

Anna Uhlenberg was the 15th and last of the Uhlenbergs buried at the Midhirst Old Cemetery. She enjoyed her naturalisation for barely six years. The scenario at her house on 17 July 1927 suggested that she had prepared the fire for lighting, placed bacon in a frying pan ready for breakfast, and gone to her room to dress for Sunday Mass when she collapsed and died.

In the cemetery with Anna are her parents; her brother Frank and sister-in-law Julianna; their sons Frank junior, who died in a horse accident in 1901, and Joseph, who died aged 28 during the 1918 influenza epidemic; and their granddaughter Catherine, who died after a short illness aged 13 in 1922. It also holds Anna’s brother Joseph, who died aged 42 in 1897 and his son Leo, who died aged two months in 1894; Anna’s brother August’s first wife, Mary Kowalewska, who died in 1891 aged 23, three days after giving birth to their son John, who lived for two hours; August’s twin girls Rosa and Franciska, who died at two and five months in 1904; and his son Sydney, who died aged seven in 1905.

Through marriages within the first generation, the Uhlenbergs were related to the Mischewski, Fabish, Schumacher, Neill, Jans, and Kowalewski families.

Through marriages within the second generation, they became related to the Aubrey, Bates, Betts, Breen, Carey, Cooper, Dwyer, Fischer, Grady, Gray, Habowski, Kerrisk, Kowalewski, McDonald, Mears, Mischewski (again), Moosman, O’Neill, Patten, Phelan, Rowe, Schrider, Stevens, Stewart, Tapp, and Wheatly families.

Joseph Uhlenberg’s daughter Matilda became a nun, Sister Vivienne INDM, and died in Australia aged 36. August Uhlenberg’s son Michael became a priest, died aged 71, and is buried in Kopuatama Cemetery, the same cemetery that holds August’s daughter Elenor, who became Sister Stanislaus and lived to 97.

THE VOLZKE FAMILY

The Volzke family also lived on York Road. Newspaper comments on the matriarch Emilie Maria Volzke’s death on 7 May 1930 summarised the family:

Mrs Volzke was one of the earliest settlers on York Road, and the name was very well known throughout Taranaki by reason of her sons in the chopping and sawing world. Mrs Volzke was a fine old lady of the old school, beloved by all her acquaintances, and very large circle of friends…¹¹⁵

She died, aged 76, 15 months after her husband, August senior, who died aged 80.

They were Lutheran Poles. Their oldest son, Charles Frederick Albert, was born in 1875 in the same village as his father —Sulikowo in Prussian-partitioned northwest Poland. His first sibling, Anna Maria, was born on 30 September 1876, a few weeks after he and his parents arrived in Inglewood. After Charles and Anna, the eight subsequent Volzke births in New Zealand were: Paulina Franciska (Fanny) in 1878; a second Charles Frederick in 1880; August Gustoff in 1883; Christian Emil in 1884; Charles Henry in 1889; Amelia Augusta in 1890; Ruby Bertha in 1897; and Arthur William in 1911.

Charles Frederick Albert Volzke learnt his chopping and sawing craft through helping his father clear the standing bush. In 1902, the hawera & normanby star correctly predicted that Charles—also known as CFA Vokzke of Midhirst—was “another improving axeman… to be reckoned with in the future, if he continues to make the same improvement as he has done during the past year.”¹¹⁶

The following year, CFA Volzke “asserted his superiority over the chopping competition at the Tariki Caledonian Society’s sports day when his log “toppled over amidst loud applause with several seconds to spare.”¹¹⁷

In 1902, newspapers wrote of three Volzke brothers who had competed in axemen’s events in the previous four years, as well as in cycling races and wrestling matches.¹¹⁸

Charles’ younger brothers had joined him in competing for the significant prize money offered at the various sports gatherings, and in the intense encounters, the judges decisions were critical. At one event, the hawera & normanby star used a “reproduction of a snap-shot of the logs in the double-handed sawing championship” to prove that the Volzke brothers had been robbed of first place: “… the severed portion of Volzke Bros’ log is just about to touch the ground, while Casey and Pretty’s has just left the log.”¹¹⁹

August Voltzke senior often recorded the last seconds of competitions that involved his family and other Polish neighbours, as well as many other social events.

August Voltzke’s photograph showing the final stages of the 1905 Axemen’s 24-inch championship at Taumata Park in Eltham, which proved that the declared ‘winner’ had finished after Ben Neustrowski.

The brothers shared many initials, making it difficult to pinpoint who won which competition. They had such a reputation that August junior (the one who appeared in the York Road photograph with the Neustrowskis), while holding the world record for double-hand and single-hand sawing in 1904, used an assumed name when bush-felling in Gisborne. He and a friend, later known to be a Schnell, had hoped that hiding their identities would help them “get matches on with local bushmen.” Before that could happen, 21-year-old August died from an accidental gunshot.

August had assumed the name George King, and was working in the Te Arai Valley. Schnell said that the two had “tramped 50 miles cattle hunting” and had been so tired that they put the gun down still loaded. Another version of the story says that the gun was hanging to a ridge pole, but it still fired in August’s direction while the two were shifting camp the next day.¹²⁰

Charles Frederick Albert Volzke married Martha Mary Askew in 1903, and died in 1941, aged 66. He is buried at Kopuatama Cemetery with his wife, who outlived him by 32 years.

PARALLEL LIVES

Inglewood in early 1879 seemed to be a genteel place. Sawmill proprietor and landowner Colonel Trimble, as chairman of the Town Board, declared at a meeting that February:

I have acted as a Magistrate for many years, and I never saw a place at home or abroad where there was less trouble from drunkenness or riotous disposition than in the township of Inglewood.¹²⁴

More Poles arrived in Taranaki. Some, like Franz Uhlenberg’s extended family, were nominated immigrants. Others, originally dispersed by immigration officials to elsewhere in the colony, found their own way.

With more than 260 Poles aboard the fritz reuter arriving into a highly anglicised colonial society, it was inevitable that the ones who abandoned the harsh west coast of the South Island, for example, would be drawn to join Polish-speaking friends and families who had been able to hold down jobs in a place like Taranaki.

The Marsland Hill 1876 ration book gave a clear indication of the first eight Polish families, but apart from a few passenger lists leaving Jackson’s Bay and Hokitika for New Plymouth, dates for when other families arrived are murky. Passenger lists on sea routes within the colony tended to print out only English names, or those in cabin class. Passenger lists in newspapers seldom included the names of those in steerage, or names that may have sounded foreign to reporters and therefore difficult to spell.

the taranaki herald may have decided that Pole John Stellar (original Polish spelling is Sztela) was British, because it recorded his name, along with the names of 34 “British immigrants” who arrived in New Plymouth on the ss stella from Jackson’s Bay and Hokitika on 20 December 1878, and said that he had a wife and five children. In contrast, all the newspaper said about the “sixty foreign immigrants” on the same vessel was that they comprised 20 adults and 40 children. Other Polish families known to have been on the government steamer were Bielecki, Crofskey, Learka, and Zimmerman.¹²² The most common New Zealand spelling for the Sztela surname was Stiller, but it was also spelt Stella, Stellar, Steller, and Stieller.

As the Taranaki Poles worked to gather deposits for “waste” land between Mountain Road and Mount Taranaki, some English settlers who had earlier bought land that had been illegally confiscated from the Māori on the other side of the road were being challenged by its former owners. Unhappy about losing their productive land, some Māori protested through the “comparatively harmless occupation of ploughing our fields.”¹²⁶³ the taranaki herald correspondent correspondent began on 6 June 1879 with a reassurance:

The wide-spread alarm which prevailed in the earlier part of this week in consequence of the aggressive acts of the native agents of Te Whiti has, to a considerable extent, calmed down owing to the Government taking prompt steps for securing the safety of the district…

… If the natives will be satisfied to pursue the comparatively harmless occupation of ploughing our fields, and do not attempt any personal molestation of individuals, it would be perhaps the wiser course to leave them to their work until the Government is in a position to deal with them thoroughly.

Peaceful resistance from followers of the pacifist Te Whiti-o-Rongomai did not sit well with some settlers’ sense of entitlement. Albert Fookes, then mayor of New Plymouth, had sent a telegram to Colonel George Whitmore—a veteran of the Taranaki Wars who at the time held the position of Colonial Secretary and was also Commissioner of the Armed Constabulary—regarding:¹²⁴

… a strong feeling here that settlers should be at once armed, owing to the threatening attitude of Te Whiti, who might send Maoris [sic] who could easily destroy the settlement.¹²⁵

A “large and influential meeting of citizens and settlers” gathered in the Taranaki Borough Council Chamber on the Saturday afternoon of 31 May 1879 to “consider the affairs of the district with regard to the native difficulty” and to bring their concerns about the “present emergency” to the attention to Premier Sir George Grey and other government ministers who happened to be in New Plymouth at the time.¹²⁶

The meeting concluded with an agreement to send a personal deputation to Premier Grey, who was then with Colonel Whitmore in the nearby County Engineer’s office.¹²⁷

That deputation told the Grey and Whitmore that:

The district was surrounded, or nearly so, by fanatical natives who own allegiance to Te Whiti…

The ploughing that was going on at Oakura was by [Te Whiti’s] authority…

The natives believed that by some action of Te Whiti’s they would be put in possession of properties held by settlers from the Crown…

They… had come to ask the Government to extend to them that protection of law which they considered, as settlers owing allegiance to Her Majesty, they had a right to demand from the Government.¹²⁸

Grey listened, but his suggestion of a private deputation for further discussion and information was not what the deputation had wanted to hear. After saying that he “apprehended no danger [to the settlers] at present” the meeting became a “semi-private conference” that the journalist did not report on.¹²⁹ The journalist did, however, expand on the earlier proceedings in another story the next day.

Harry Atkinson (who held the rank of major in the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers, and who was at the time Egmont’s Member of Parliament) had pressed the premier on whether the government would “protect” the settlers, or “is the responsibility thrown upon the out-settlers to look to their own defence?” Despite reassurance from Colonel Whitmore and Premier Grey, the settlers repeated that they felt they were “living in a condition of constant menace” that could be their ruin.¹³⁰

Trimble underlined the anxiety “floating in the minds of settlers” and their expectation of an increased government constabulary:

… a man may take the law into his own hands. I confess that if I saw a man coming and doing what the Maoris [sic] have done on Mr. Courtney's land [they ploughed it] I would be very much inclined to shoot him (applause), and that might lead to difficulties. There are men who would do it. A feeling of exasperation is spreading in the district, which I am afraid you don't quite comprehend. It is with that view these gentlemen have come to you. The general impression is that the force in the district is not large enough; the arms in the district are not nearly numerous enough; and the ammunition in the district is not nearly sufficient even for the arms we have.¹³¹

Later in the meeting Trimble seemed to dither. He said that he regretted the “frequently indulged” comments about Te Whiti, which “very grossly misrepresented” the man, that when he [Trimble] had taken his wife and family “right into the bush” he personally did not feel “alarmed.” He then said that the settlers “may drift into difficulties unless [they] are satisfied that there is something that they can depend on.”

That gathering, and further newspaper reports of so-called Māori aggression, seemed to add to the groundwork for the raid in 1881 by the Armed Constabulary on Te Whiti’s Parihaka community in south Taranaki.¹³²

A panoramic view of the Parihaka settlement south of Mt Taranaki, during the invasion by 1,600 Armed Constabulary on 5 November 1881. (Photo: Puke Ariki –4 & 5)

One cannot speculate how much the early Polish settlers in Taranaki knew of the earlier armed occupation by British troops, or the British-sanctioned illegal confiscation of Māori land that began in earnest in 1860 under Governor Thomas Gore Browne and that was entrenched by his successor Grey.

What is clear is that the Poles who arrived in New Zealand in the 1870s had in their homeland, gone out of their way to avoid becoming enmeshed in armed conflict on behalf of foreign occupiers.

Although they were living in the Inglewood area at the time, it is doubtful whether they understood enough of the English language to be aware of how the land they lived on had been procured.

Three days after that meeting, Trimble presided over the swearing in of volunteers for the Inglewood Rangers, despite no reports of “anyone being in any way molested by the Maoris [sic] in our immediate neighbourhood”¹³³ The evening before, 56 had volunteered, and the next day’s process brought the total number to 121.¹³⁴

Trimble told the meeting that “there was no need for panic among the settlers as regard Maori [sic] unrest” thanks to the 32 miles of metalled road south of Waitara, “as many miles” between Inglewood and New Plymouth, the railway to Stratford, and their reliable telegraph system, all of which could be used “for military purposes.”¹³⁵

_______________

Four weeks later, the taranaki herald continued its intense coverage of the impasse among the Māori, the settlers, and the government.

On 4 July 1879, the four-page, six-column edition, which cost one penny, had its usual format—page one: classified advertisements; page two: information on shipping, stock markets, a smattering of advertisements, and a total of four editorial columns; page three: general notices, tenders, longer advertisements, and an obituary of a Lord Lawrence; page four: more general notices, train timetables, a prospectus for the Taranaki Land Company, and more advertisements, including special offers for newspaper subscriptions.

On page two’s editorial columns, the first story was an opinionated, fear-mongering piece about Te Whiti and his so-called agents. The second, headlined the native bother, wrote of the 34 Māori prisoners who had arrived “in town” from Waitara. A third focused on a split in the cabinet.

The newspaper gave its “Own Correspondent” in Inglewood a fraction of the column inches of those stories. In just three paragraphs on page two, the unnamed correspondent summed up the situation and took a gentle stab at Inglewood’s newly armed residents:¹³⁶

INGLEWOOD

[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT]

JULY 2 [1879]— It is some time since I sent you any account of the doings of our little community. Up to the present date we have escaped the polite attention of the ubiquitous Maori. He manifests no interest in our agricultural operations, and has not ploughed a single acre for any settler in the Moa Block. Perhaps this may be due to the fact that we are not on confiscated laud, or perhaps we have a few stumps and logs lying about our lovely pastures that might prove impediments even to Ransome and Sims’, or Howard’s strongest ploughs.

Our noble volunteers attend rigorously to the duties of their new vocation, much to the detriment, however, of bush-felling and agricultural work. The bad weather has stopped the contract work on roads, and the prospect of war has stopped building and many improvements contemplated by settlers, and the result, is that hands are beginning to seek around for work—a thing unusual here, as hitherto the difficulty has been to get hands to do any contemplated job, and I am very much pleased to see that Government intend to push the Mou[n]tain Road through at a vigorous pace, or hands might have left the district at a time when they were much wanted for more reasons than one—an exodus from here at the present time of sturdy working men, would, of course, be little short of a calamity.

I have not, since my last communication heard of any settler coming in from the outdistricts to live in this town on account of the prospect of war, or sending in their families, though we had one family who some time ago got so alarmed by the cry of ”The Maoris are coming, oh dear, oh dear!” that they packed up everything one evening, deserted cows, pigs, &c, appeared on your beach early next morning, and took a steamer “anywhere, anywhere out of—Taranaki.”

_______________

In early 1880, Inglewood’s peaceful veneer perched above the scaremongering. On 10 January 1880, Notes on Progress in Inglewood  had written:

We have not up to the present day troubled the Magistracy with the trial of a single case of highway robbery, burgling, incendiarism or murder…¹³⁷

By 21 August 1880, one could be forgiven for thinking that the townships along Mountain Road were settled as military pockets to ease out Māori who remained in Taranaki, and some settlers seemed to find comfort in being armed.

Captain Walter Bewley of the No. 2  Company Inglewood Rangers announced through the budget that any members “having Arms Accoutrements or Ammunition in their possession” should hand them in to a Mr Allibone, Inglewood, before 4 September 1880 “otherwise legal proceeding will be taken for their recovery.”¹³⁸

The veneer seemed intact in March 1881, when Alfred Anton Fromm, aged 22,¹³⁹ arrived looking for work, and visited a family friend from the same Swiss region. He kept a diary:¹⁴⁰

“Inglewood is a little town with approximately 200 dwellings… in this type of town there live mostly only business people and tradesmen. The farmers’ houses are outside the town. Outside Inglewood the road was very bad. The farmers have to fetch everything in with horses. On both sides of the road there is still thick bush, through which the rays of the sun can get only seldom, and therefore the road is appalling after it rains, for quite some time.”

Johannes Allemann (50), his wife, Elizabeth (36) and their children, then 12, 10, and nine, met Fromm with warm European hospitality and Buendtner food. They were the Swiss family off the halcione that had been met so warmly in 1875. Perhaps Allemann decided to test Fromm before he recommended him for a job, because the next day he took the younger man pig-hunting, and the two spent the entire day after that sawing through a tree trunk that Fromm judged was nine feet in diameter. The day after that, Allerman accompanied Fromm to Thomas Marnes’ sawmill on Mountain Road—a nearly 15-kilometre trek through “fairly well-cultivated farms” with streams “every few minutes.” Fromm got the job, and moved into a nearby hut that he shared with two others.

By the time he visited the Allemanns two weeks later, Fromm knew the value of the railway line:

“Here in NZ, one doesn’t need to walk to a railway station. Anywhere along the line, one waits for the train, and as soon as it appears, one signals. The train stops, and one can board it.

“The night was quite dark, and when I got into the bush, I couldn’t see my hand before my eyes… Groping with my hands and feet, I managed not too badly for the first mile, but suddenly I sank up to my neck in muddy water! … The more I tried to get out, the deeper I sank in. The water reached already to my mouth. At last I managed to grab hold of an overhanging branch and pulled myself slowly up.”

By June 1881, the precarious nature of working in a sawmill became clear to Fromm: almost constant rain meant few trees arrived for processing. The three sharing the hut earned “just enough” for food. In August 1881, Fromm wrote about how rumours of a war with Māori worried the Inglewood settlers. A five-month gap in diary entries after that is explained by his joining the Armed Constabulary, which invaded the peaceful Parihaka settlement in November 1881. Fromm described his contribution to the British forced colonisation in Taranaki as “our brilliant victory without a swordstroke.”

This photograph of approximately 250 members of the Armed Constabulary (AC), which had been gathering in New Plymouth for a year, was taken shortly before their invasion of Parihaka on 5 November 1881. (Photo: Puke Ariki – 6)

Singing Māori children greeted Minister of Native Affairs John Bryce as he led 1,600 troops into Parihaka on 5 November 1881. Māori adults did not engage them as the Armed Constabulary carried out Bryce’s orders to destroy the village, disperse the inhabitants, and arrest Te Whiti and another leader, Tohu Kākahi, who both spent 16 months detained without trial.¹⁴¹

Bryce had apparently banned the Press, which explains why these photographs seem to have been taken from afar. The government’s delay in the publication of official documents relating to the episode also suggests an attempt to conceal the operation.

A close-up of the centre-left section of the earlier panoramic view of Parihaka shows rows of men among the houses, the uniform nature of their clothes suggesting that they were the moving AC. There appears to be a caged section on the left. In the middle and scattered in the shot are Parihaka inhabitants. The whare in the middle, face-on to the photographer, is marked with a cross.
The photographer in both the Parihaka images, and that of the constabulary, was William Andrews Collis.
(Photo: Puke Ariki – 4)

Although the sawmill offered Fromm his old job back, he wrote that the government paid him too well for him to consider leaving the constabulary. When it disbanded in 1886, he did return to Inglewood, to work at Brown’s sawmill.

_______________

One wonders what the well-paid men of the Armed Constabulary, who overwhelmed civilian Māori in places such as at Parihaka, were told about the original occupiers of that land.

A report from the House of Representatives’ Native Affairs committee in 1879, shows the government was already enmeshed in land claims. That report alone dealt with more than 80 principal claimants who were attached to people grouped together as “and Others.”¹⁴²

For example, Rawiri Te Rangikaurua wanted compensation for the 80 kilometres of Waikato-Taranaki railway than ran through his land. The committee said it did “[n]ot think it necessary to report an opinion on the subject-matter of this petition.”¹⁴³

In the same report, Hoterene Tawatawa complained that his land, called Parihaka but near Whangaruru, was wrongfully taken from him. Two Pākehā had bought 2,174 acres at “five shillings an acre” but had paid him a mere £40. The committee referred his petition to the government.¹⁴⁴

Tamati Te Ito, a descendant of the Puketapu hapu of Ngatiawa iwi, was still living in the clearing his ancestors had made when the colonists cut the Mountain Road through it in 1872 and 1873. The area is marked on early maps as “Tamati’s Clearing.” Tamati explained why another clearing was named Moa or Te Moa: As a young boy he attended a meeting of north and south Taranaki iwi and remembered one of the delicacies offered was preserved moa flesh.¹⁴⁵

The Tawatawa land issue continued to be disputed through government departments, and it is unclear what happened to the balance of £5,395.¹⁴⁶ The Poles had better luck with their disputes through the Supreme Court:

In 1908, “T” Dodunski “and others” (three of August Neustrowski’s sons and two Potrozes) looked to the court for the balance of a bushfelling contract completed for a Samuel Turkington the year before. This was not the first time Poles had used the court to get paid—August Neustrowski learnt early on that English-speaking landowners underestimated the Poles ability to calculate acreage.

As in any society made up of different nationalities, it took time to create trust. And, as in all societies, there were scoundrels and saints on all sides. Anything less would have made life incredibly boring.

© Barbara Scrivens, May 2021.
Updated July 2025

DETAILS OF PHOTOGRAPHS PURCHASED FROM THE PUKE ARIKI LIBRARY IN NEW PLYMOUTH:

• PA -1:   Unknown photographer, View of Devon Street and Marsland Hill (c1875). Accession number: PHO2002-601
• PA -2:   Collis, William Andrews, Inglewood from Recreation Ground [Part One of Panorama] (c1876-78). Accession number: PHO2007-046
• PA -3:   Collis, William Andrews, Inglewood [Part Two of Panorama] (c 1876-78). Accession number: PHO2001-581
• PA -4 & 5:Collis, William Andrews, Parihaha Panorama -Part 1 (1881) on the left land side joined to Parihaka Panorama (1881). Assession numbers: A64.092 & A64.076
• PA -6:   Collis, William Andrews, Parihaka, November 1881. Assession number: A64.032

ENDNOTES:

Note: All the Papers Past and AJHR (Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives) references are through the National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa.

• 1   -    Births, Deaths & Marriages Online, New Zealand Government Department of Internal Affairs, Te Tari Taiwhenua.
• 2   -    RW Brown, Te Moa, 100 Years History of the Inglewood Community, 1875–1975, p 55. Masterprint Press, New Plymouth. Image from p 210.
• 3   -    Brookes, Edwin Stanley, Frontier Life: Taranaki, New Zealand, p 7, published by H Brett, Shortland & Fort Streets, Auckland, 1892.
• 4   -    Waitangi Tribunal Report 1996, The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi, p 133.
• 5   -    Ibid, p 134.
• 6   -    Map thanks to Dunedin historian Paul Klemick.
• 7  -    The Taranaki Herald, Wednesday, August 16, 1876, p 2, The Taranaki Herald
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18760816.2.10
• 8  -    The Taranaki Herald, 6 September 1876, p 2, Untitled
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18760906.2.10
• 9  -    The Taranaki Herald, 3 Feb 1877, p7, not digitised, but information from JW Pobóg-Jaworowski, History of the Polish Settlers in New Zealand, 1776–1987, p 82, CHZ Ars Polonia, Warsaw, 1990.
• 10  -   New Zealand Police Gazette, 19 November 1902, p 269, Deserting Wives and Families, &c.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZPG19021119.2.5
• 11  -   Ibid, RW Brown, p 55.
• 12  -   Information from:
  http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~nzbound/genealogy/halcione.htm
• 13  -   The Taranaki Herald, 11 September 1875, p 2, ‘HALCIONE’ IMMIGRANTS, Papers Past,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18750911.2.11
• 14  -   Ibid, ES Brookes, p 6.
• 15  -   Ibid, RW Brown, p 48.
• 16  -   Ibid, RW Brown, p 47.
• 17  -   B. Wells, in his History of Taranaki, says on p 266 that General Chute marched from Ketemarae with 240 men, and on p 267 that 400 men had been left behind after an advance party left. Edmonson & Avery, New Plymouth, 1878.
• 18  -   Ibid, RW Brown, p 266–268.
• 19  -   This quote, and the previous paragraph, ibid B. Wells.
• 20  -   Ibid, p 268.
• 21  -   The Taranaki Herald, 27 January 1866, p 2, General Chute’s March from Whanganui to Taranaki
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18660127.2.5
• 22  -   The Taranaki Herald (Supplement), 10 March 1866, p1, THE BANQUET TO MAJOR-GENERAL CHUTE
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18660310.2.18
• 23  -   Ibid, ES Brookes, p 2.
• 24  -   Ibid, Waitangi Tribunal Report 1996, p 9.
• 25  -   Ibid, ES Brookes, p 4.
• 26  -   AJHR, 1874 D-6, NEW ZEALAND IMMIGRATION RETURNS, presented to both Houses of the General Assembly.
• 27  -   Ibid, RW Brown, p 39.
• 28  -   Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Harry Albert Atkinson biography
  https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1a10/atkinson-harry-albert
• 29  -   The Taranaki Herald, 4 March 1876, p 2, History of the Early Days of Inglewood.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18760304.2.8
• 30  -   Florinda Lambert, the Florinda Lambert Collection, A social history of Inglewood and District 1875 – Volume Three. This excerpt was headed Taranaki Budget and Weekly Herald – 50th anniversary of Inglewood – Notes on early Inglewood.
• 31  -   Ibid. This excerpt from the Taranaki Daily News, 21 January, 1925, was headed Notes from Taranaki Daily News. In Inglewood, Junction Road became Rata Street.
• 32  -   The Avalanche arrived on 21 January 1875, but it is not clear when the passengers disembarked.
• 33  -   Ibid, The Taranaki Herald 4 March 1876.
• 34  -   Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, Volume Three, p 16.
• 35  -   Image from Te Moa, p 211.
• 36  -   The Taranaki Herald 17 April 1875, p2, SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1875
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18750417.2.10
• 37  -   The Taranaki Herald, 9 June 1875, p 2, COLONEL TRIMBLE
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18750609.2.14
• 38  -   The Taranaki Herald14 April 1875, p 2, WASTE LANDS BOARD
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18750414.2.13
• 39  -   The Taranaki Herald,19 January 1876, p1, ADVERTISEMENTS COLUMN 7
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18760119.2.2.7
• 40  -   The Taranaki Herald, 22 March 1876, p 2, WASTE LANDS BOARD.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18760322.2.15
• 41  -   Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, Volume Three, p 18.
• 42  -   Find Mountain Road on https://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap/nz45698/Inglewood/ and make your way north to Devon Road.
• 43  -   The Taranaki Herald26 August 1876, p 2, CABLE TELEGRAMS etc.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18760826.2.12
• 44  -   Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, Volume Three, p 16. This excerpt was headed Brisk Building in Inglewood.
• 45  -   Ibid JW Pobóg-Jaworowski, p 82.
• 46  -   Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, Volume Three, p 146, which she extracted from the Taranaki Daily News, 21 January 1925, 50th Jubilee of Inglewood 1875–1925.
• 47  -   Ibid, RW Brown. This photograph is among others that follow p 128.
• 48  -   Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, Volume Three, p 24, 10 May 1879, Metalling Completed.
• 49  -   Although BDM has 1881, his military record gives his date of birth 16 April 1882.
• 50  -   Full name: A RETURN OF THE FREEHOLDERS OF NEW ZEALAND GIVING THE NAMES, ADDRESSES, AND OCCUPATIONS OF OWNERS OF LAND, TOGETHER WITH THE AREA AND VALUE IN COUNTIES AND THE VALUE IN BOROUGHS AND TOWN DISTRICTS. It was compiled from the assessment tolls of the Property Tax Department in Wellington and published by the Government printer in 1884.
• 51  -   The Taranaki Herald, 20 February 1897, p 3, MESSRS VICKERS & STEVENS’ REPORT
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18970220.2.26.2
• 52  -   This image appeared in the book compiled for the Schrider family reunion in Inglewood in 1991 by Marie Mulholland.
• 53  -   The Taranaki Herald, 30 April 1908, p 4, School Committees,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19080430.2.25
• 54  -   Taranaki Daily News, 11 June 1918, p 7, MILITARY APPEAL BOARD,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19180611.2.29
• 55  -   Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, James Allen biography,
  https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3a12/allen-james
• 56  -   Pahiatua Herald, 17 September 1932, p 2, LIVE WIRE HANDLED
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PAHH19320917.2.
• 57  -   The christenings index of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association is:
  https://www.ptg.gda.pl/language/en/database/vital-records/
• 58  -   Ibid JW Pobóg-Jaworowski, p 98.
• 59  -   The Taranaki Herald, 17 June 1904, p 2, Inglewood News
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19040617.2.7
• 60  -   The Taranaki Herald, 17 June 1904, p 3, Miro
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19040617.2.11
• 61  -   The Taranaki Herald, 10 July 1905, p 7, Durham Road
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19050710.2.
• 62  -   Ibid.
• 63  -   The Taranaki Herald, 16 August, p 3, Durham Road
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19050816.2.18
• 64  -   The Taranaki Herald, 9 June 1905, p 3. Durham Road
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19050609.2.19
• 65  -   Ibid, RW Brown. This photograph is among others that follow p 128.
• 66  -   Ibid, RW Brown, p 118.
• 67  -   Ibid.
• 68  -   List thanks to Sr St Martha Szymanska.
• 69  -   Ibid FREEHOLDERS’ RETURN, p 52, D Section.
• 70  -   The Taranaki Herald, 6 July 1886, p 2. LAND-BOARD
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18860706.2.21
  And
  Taranaki Herald, 5 November 1889, p 3. LAND-BOARD
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18891105.2.18
• 71  -   The Taranaki Herald, 23 August 1890, p 2, FATAL ACCIDENT AT NORFOLK ROAD
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18900823.2.16
• 72  -   The Taranaki Herald, 16 October 1890, p 2. HOSPITAL AND CHARITABLE AID BOARD,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18901016.2.12
• 73  -   The Taranaki Herald, 12 November 1890, p 2, STRATFORD,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18901112.2.24
• 74  -   The Taranaki Herald, 27 November 1890, p 2, STRATFORD,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18901127.2.17
• 75  -   I found the list on http://hamburgshipsnz.net/passallsur.htm, which seems no longer available.
• 76  -   Thanks to Polish genealogist Paul Klemick, who has built up an extensive list of early Polish settlers.
• 77  -   Ibid, FREEHOLDERS’ RETURN, p 80, M Section.
• 78  -   The Taranaki Daily News, 10 April 1916, p 6, THE POLES OF INGLEWOOD
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/taranaki-daily-news/1916/04/10/6
• 79  -   Ibid.
• 80  -   Ibid.
• 81  -   Hawera & Normanby Star, 19 March 1920, p 5, STRATFORD ELECTION PETITION,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19200319.2.41
• 82  -   Hawera & Normanby Star, 18 March 1920, p 5, STRATFORD ELECTION PETITION,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19200318.2.34
• 83  -   Stratford Evening Post, 24 Jan 1920, p 7, In the Election Court,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19200124.2.47
• 84  -   Taranaki Herald, 7 May 1920, p 2, STRATFORD BY-ELECTION, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19200507.2.15
• 85  -   Ibid, FREEHOLDERS' RETURN, p 6, N Section.
• 86  -   Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection. This excerpt from the Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1987, Chew Chong remembered for factory, p 129.
• 87  -   Hawera & Normanby Star, 17 February 1897, p 2, Land Board
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS18970217.2.16
  And
  The Taranaki Herald, 10 December 1890, p 2, EDUCATION RESERVES BOARD
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18901210.2.17
• 88  -   Hawera & Normanby Star, p 8, INGLEWOOD ATHLETIC CLUB
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19070126.2.55
• 89  -   Hawera & Normanby Star, 9 April 1912, p 6, TE KIRI
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19120409.2.48
• 90  -   Thanks to the work of Lyn Potroz.
• 91  -   Stratford Evening Post, 10 April 1918, p 7, YORK ROAD NOTES
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19180410.2.34
• 92  -   From the Commonwealth War Graves online records,
  https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/498174/AUGUSTUS%20POTROZ/
• 93  -   Taranaki Daily News, 21 November 1918, p 4, PERSONAL
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19181121.2.16
• 94  -   Taranaki Daily News, 11 December 1918, p 8, Advertisements Column 5
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19190128.2.72.4
• 95  -   Taranaki Daily News, 28 January 1919, p 8, Advertisements Column 4
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19190128.2.72.4
• 96  -   The Taranaki Herald, 10 May 1919, p 7, Advertisements Column 7
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19190510.2.79.5
• 97  -   Stratford Evening Post,13 June 1922, p 4, LOCAL AND GENERAL
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19220613.2.8
• 98  -   Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1926, p 9, A LOAN OR A GIFT?
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19260423.2.64
• 99  -   Taranaki Daily News, 4 May 1927, p 10, SCHOOL COMMITTEES
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19270504.2.85
• 100  - Taranaki Daily News, 26 July 1928, p 15, DISTRICT NEWS
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19280726.2.135
  And
  Stratford Evening Post, 30 October 1934, p 4, DISTRICT NEWS
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19341030.2.24
• 101  - Stratford Evening Post, 23 July, p 2, MIDHIRST NOTES
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19260723.2.4
• 102  - Ibid, Pomeranian Genealogical Association.
• 103  - Both quotes, ibid, RW Brown, p 37.
• 104  - Thanks to Joan Dickson for being one of the first to share her family story with me when we first met in 2013. This excerpt is from page 6 of Uhlenberg, which she had finished just two years prior.
• 105 - Ibid, JW Pobóg-Jaworowski, pp 85–86.
• 106 - Scoble, Juliet, for the Rail Heritage Trust of New Zealand, Names & Opening & Closing Dates of Railway Stations in New Zealand, 1863 to 2010, p 64.
• 107 - The Taranaki Herald, 11 September 1879, p 2, Casting at Vivian’s Foundry
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790911.2.6
• 108 - The Taranaki Herald, 3 November 1893, p 2, Heller’s Bonanza Coterie
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18931103.2.5
• 109 - Stratford Evening Post, 17 December 1914, p 8, MIDHIRST MATTERS, THE ROYALTY QUESTION
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19141217.2.56
• 110 - Ibid, Dickson, Joan, p 7.
• 111 - Ibid, Ibid, Pobóg-Jaworowski, p 86.
• 112 - Hawera & Normanby Star, 6 August 1912, p 8, Advertisements Column 7,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19120806.2.71.7
• 113 - Stratford Evening Post5 January 1916, p 5, MURDER OR WHAT?
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19160105.2.11
• 114 - Polish Genealogical Society of New Zealand, Newsletter no. 5, March 1995, pp 29–33.
• 115 - Stratford Evening Post, 9 May 1930, p 4, PERSONAL
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19300509.2.22
• 116- Hawera & Normanby Star, 7 November 1902, p 2, AXEMEN’S CARNIVAL,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19021031.2.8
• 117 - The Taranaki Herald, 27 February 1903, p 3, Tariki Caledonian Society
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH19030227.2.50
• 118 - Opunake Times, 5 December 1902, p 4, All-round Sport
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OPUNT19021205.2.16
• 119 - Hawera & Normanby Star, 30 December 1905, p 5, N.Z. AXEMEN’S CARNIVAL
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19051230.2.39
• 120 - While the newspapers mention the Te Arai Valley, his headstone at the Midhirst Old cemetery states he died at Paparatu Station.
  Patea Mail, 30 November 1904, p 2, LOCAL and GENERAL,
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PATM19041130.2.10
  And
  Hawera & Normanby Star, 1 December 1904, p 2, LOCAL AND GENERAL
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19041201.2.6
• 121 - The Taranaki Herald, 4 February 1879, p 2, THE MIDHIRST SETTLEMENT
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790204.2.9
• 122 - The Taranaki Herald, 20 December 1878, p 2, ARRIVAL OF IMMIGRANTS
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18781220.2.10
  For the full list of Polish settlers at Jackson’s Bay, see:
  https://polishhistorynewzealand.org/list-of-poles-in-jacksons-bay/
• 123 - The Taranaki Herald, 6 June 1879, p 2, PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 1879
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790606.2.6
• 124 - Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, George Stoddart biography,
  https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w21/whitmore-george-stoddart
• 125 - The Taranaki Herald, 2 June 1879, p 2, THE NATIVE DIFFICULTY
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790602.2.8
• 126 - Ibid.
• 127 - Belich, James, Whitmore, George Stoddart, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
  https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w21/whitmore-george-stoddart
• 128 - Ibid, The Taranaki Herald, 2 June 1879, p 2, DEPUTATION TO THE PREMIER
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790602.2.9
• 129 - Ibid.
• 130 - Taranaki Herald, 3 June 1879, p 2, THE NATIVE DIFFICULTY
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790603.2.10
• 131 - Ibid, The Taranaki Herald, 6 June 1879, p 2.
• 132 - Ibid, The Taranaki Herald, 3 June 1879, p 2.
• 133 - Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, p 24. This excerpt was headed INGLEWOOD RANGERS and dated 7 June 1879, but it is not clear which newspaper it came from.
• 134 - The Taranaki Herald, 7 June 1879, p 2, INGLEWOOD, THE VOLUNTEERS
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TH18790607.2.
• 135 - Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, p 24, repeated in the The Tananaki Herald, above.
• 136 - https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/taranaki-herald/1879/07/04/2
  The photograph is a section of one called View of Inglewood, No 1182E, and was taken from a hill known as Joe Gibbs reserve. It was presented to “the borough” by RW Brown, but it is not clear when. I have not been able to source its origins.
• 137 - Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, p 25. This extract from 10 January 1880 titled NOTES ON PROGRESS IN INGLEWOOD SIX YEARS AFTER THE CHRISTENING.
• 138 - Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, 21 August 1880, No 2 Company Inglewood Rangers.
• 139 - According to the BDM, Alfred Antoine Fromm died in 1931, aged 72.
• 140 - Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, pp 55–65.
  Puke Ariki also lists a copy of the diary:
  https://collection.pukeariki.com/objects/35612
• 141 - From New Zealand History, Nga korero a ipurangi o Ateoroa
  https://nzhistory.govt.nz/occupation-pacifist-settlement-at-parihaka
• 142 - AJHR, 1879 I – 2, NEW ZEALAND NATIVE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE (REPORT OF) NGA KUPU A TE KOMITI O TE RUNANGA MO NGA MEA MAORI, presented to the House of Representatives, Session II, 1879.
  https://atojs.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/atojs?a=d&cl=search&d=AJHR1879-II.2.1.10.2
• 143 - Ibid, p 2.
• 144 - Ibid, p 15.
• 145 - Ibid, the Florinda Lambert Collection, pp 3, 34, & 125 of year 1930.
• 146 - AJHR, 1882 I – 2 NATIVE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE (REPORTS OF) NGA KUPU A TE KOMITI O TE RUNANGA MO NGA MEA MAORI COLONEL TRIMBLE CHAIRMAN), Session I, 1882.
  https://atojs.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/atojs?a=d&cl=search&d=AJHR1882-I.2.2.5.6