I now find it most difficult to portray my grandmother,\u00a0 Jane.\u00a0 She was talented,\u00a0 wise,\u00a0 kind and sometimes stern.\u00a0 I do not remember that she smiled a great deal and no one would write of her,\u00a0 as Gustavus von Tempsky did of her mother,\u00a0 Martha Smith,\u00a0 as \u201ca cheerful wife\u201d;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 so perhaps she favoured her father,\u00a0 Benjamin,\u00a0 sometimes referred to as \u201cOld Smith\u201d,\u00a0 although he died aged only fifty-four years,\u00a0 in 1867.<\/p>\n
Jane was the youngest child of Ben and Martha,\u00a0 having five brothers and two sisters,\u00a0 and she was a very small child indeed at the time of the Waikato War of 1863-64.\u00a0 She was born in 1857 at\u00a0 The Travellers\u2019 Rest,\u00a0 Wairoa South (Ardmore),\u00a0 and spent all her childhood there.\u00a0 It was to be her home until her marriage some years after the death of her father.\u00a0 Jane\u2019s recollections form the basis to this story of the Smith family,\u00a0 and supplied the avenues for seeking the confirmatory evidence covering the many activities of her parents,\u00a0 before they finally settled in the Papakura Valley.<\/p>\n
By the time Jane was ready to leave St Peter\u2019s Church School at Wairoa South,\u00a0 her mother was reasonably affluent \u2013 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.\u00a0 Jane was sent to Auckland to a \u201cfinishing\u201d or \u201cDame\u201d school;\u00a0 she then returned home and with her sister,\u00a0 Priscilla,\u00a0 assisted her mother with the running of the store,\u00a0 which was attached to the Inn.\u00a0 This early training was to stand her in good stead when she had a large family of their own,\u00a0 and when economic conditions toward the end of the century became difficult.<\/p>\n
In 1872 the school teacher at the Wairoa School (now Clevedon) was Frederick Bluck,\u00a0 who had arrived in New Zealand with his parents,\u00a0 Timothy and Elizabeth Bluck,\u00a0 on board the Ida Zeigler<\/i> in October 1866.\u00a0 His sister had married Mr. Thomas Hyde,\u00a0 of Clevedon,\u00a0 and a few years later his younger brother,\u00a0 Edgar,\u00a0 was to propose marriage to Jane Smith under the peach trees at Laughton Farm,\u00a0 the Bluck home at Tuakau.\u00a0 The marriage took place at St Matthew\u2019s Church,\u00a0 Auckland,\u00a0 on 30 April 1881.\u00a0 By this time,\u00a0 the five sons of Benjamin and Martha Smith \u2013 William Benjamin,\u00a0 Peter John Lewin,\u00a0 Ezra,\u00a0 Walter,\u00a0 and John \u2013 had all married,\u00a0 as had the eldest of the three daughters,\u00a0 Mary Anne.\u00a0 Priscilla,\u00a0 the second daughter,\u00a0 was to remain a spinster.<\/p>\n
As Mary Anne Smith and her husband,\u00a0 William Henderson,\u00a0 had no family,\u00a0 the grandchildren of Benjamin and Martha all bore the Smith surname,\u00a0 with the exception of\u00a0 the children of Jane Bluck,\u00a0 and Jane\u2019s descendants still reside in northern Hawkes Bay.<\/p>\n
The Smith sons \u2013 apart from Ezra,\u00a0 who eventually settled in Gisborne \u2013 remained in the Auckland district,\u00a0 and today their descendants,\u00a0 some of whom can claim to be the sixth generation to be born in this country,\u00a0 are mainly in that area.\u00a0 They are represented in every strata of our society;\u00a0 in the professions,\u00a0 the Public Services,\u00a0 the business world and in the trades.<\/p>\n
The following chapters are about parents of this family,\u00a0 Martha and Benjamin Smith,\u00a0 and,\u00a0 of necessity,\u00a0 about the wider historical context of their lives;\u00a0 for their lives and those of their friends and neighbours were affected by the decisions of Governments,\u00a0 of wise and unwise Governors,\u00a0 and of the Land Settlement Companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I now find it most difficult to portray my grandmother,\u00a0 Jane.\u00a0 She was talented,\u00a0 wise,\u00a0 kind and sometimes stern.\u00a0 I do not remember that she smiled a great deal and no one would write of her,\u00a0 as Gustavus von Tempsky did of her mother,\u00a0 Martha Smith,\u00a0 as \u201ca cheerful wife\u201d;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 so perhaps she favoured her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}