I now find it most difficult to portray my grandmother,  Jane.  She was talented,  wise,  kind and sometimes stern.  I do not remember that she smiled a great deal and no one would write of her,  as Gustavus von Tempsky did of her mother,  Martha Smith,  as “a cheerful wife”;     so perhaps she favoured her father,  Benjamin,  sometimes referred to as “Old Smith”,  although he died aged only fifty-four years,  in 1867.

Jane was the youngest child of Ben and Martha,  having five brothers and two sisters,  and she was a very small child indeed at the time of the Waikato War of 1863-64.  She was born in 1857 at  The Travellers’ Rest,  Wairoa South (Ardmore),  and spent all her childhood there.  It was to be her home until her marriage some years after the death of her father.  Jane’s recollections form the basis to this story of the Smith family,  and supplied the avenues for seeking the confirmatory evidence covering the many activities of her parents,  before they finally settled in the Papakura Valley.

By the time Jane was ready to leave St Peter’s Church School at Wairoa South,  her mother was reasonably affluent – mainly due to the spending by the soldiers during the War period and to the Government contracts for the support of the military units domiciled on the property.  Jane was sent to Auckland to a “finishing” or “Dame” school;  she then returned home and with her sister,  Priscilla,  assisted her mother with the running of the store,  which was attached to the Inn.  This early training was to stand her in good stead when she had a large family of their own,  and when economic conditions toward the end of the century became difficult.

In 1872 the school teacher at the Wairoa School (now Clevedon) was Frederick Bluck,  who had arrived in New Zealand with his parents,  Timothy and Elizabeth Bluck,  on board the Ida Zeigler in October 1866.  His sister had married Mr. Thomas Hyde,  of Clevedon,  and a few years later his younger brother,  Edgar,  was to propose marriage to Jane Smith under the peach trees at Laughton Farm,  the Bluck home at Tuakau.  The marriage took place at St Matthew’s Church,  Auckland,  on 30 April 1881.  By this time,  the five sons of Benjamin and Martha Smith – William Benjamin,  Peter John Lewin,  Ezra,  Walter,  and John – had all married,  as had the eldest of the three daughters,  Mary Anne.  Priscilla,  the second daughter,  was to remain a spinster.

As Mary Anne Smith and her husband,  William Henderson,  had no family,  the grandchildren of Benjamin and Martha all bore the Smith surname,  with the exception of  the children of Jane Bluck,  and Jane’s descendants still reside in northern Hawkes Bay.

The Smith sons – apart from Ezra,  who eventually settled in Gisborne – remained in the Auckland district,  and today their descendants,  some of whom can claim to be the sixth generation to be born in this country,  are mainly in that area.  They are represented in every strata of our society;  in the professions,  the Public Services,  the business world and in the trades.

The following chapters are about parents of this family,  Martha and Benjamin Smith,  and,  of necessity,  about the wider historical context of their lives;  for their lives and those of their friends and neighbours were affected by the decisions of Governments,  of wise and unwise Governors,  and of the Land Settlement Companies.