By Rhonda Bartle

Deep in the Puke Ariki Collection Room, in special boxes and racks, in a specially dimmed and cooled environment, an assortment of Māori artefacts, pioneer clothing and World War I memorabilia known as the Watson Collection waited around to be sorted.

It was the job of Canadian intern, Andrea Melvin, to catalogue the 78 items, donated by Miss I. Watson in 1979, and add further details if she could find them. Because of the mixed heritage and nature of the goods, she came to think there was probably a good story behind them.

She was right. Not only did the Watson collection link three significant Taranaki families, it also told a more personal story that anyone might have expected.

The Flights

In 1841, Josiah Flight packed up his family, boarded the Timandra at Plymouth, England and headed for a country unknown. He arrived in New Plymouth with wife Sarah Anne (nee Devenish and called Anne) and two-year old daughter Annie, on Tuesday, 23rd February, 1842. The Flight family's immigration had been prompted by an advertisement appearing in London and Plymouth papers:

"New Plymouth, New Zealand. The Court of Directors of the New Zealand Company do hereby give notice that the new ship Timandra, 430 tons burden, is chartered for the conveyance of cabin Passengers and free emigrants to the settlement of New Plymouth, to sail from London on the 10th and from Plymouth on the 20th October. The settlement, to which about 500 persons have already emigrated from the West of England, has been located in the district of Taranaki near the Sugar Loaf Islands."

Josiah Flight was born in Devonshire in 1800, son of Joseph and Hephzibah Flight. He and Anne would have two more children in the new land; Sarah Gill in 1843 and Martha Kate in 1845.

Both these daughters would remain unmarried and childless. But it's Annie, the eldest, named for her mother, who is important to this story.

Josiah Flight  

Josiah Flight climbed steadily through the New Plymouth settler ranks - from being one of the earliest farmers at Bell Block, to become a Justice of the Peace, Resident Magistrate, Coroner of the District and Sheriff of the Supreme Court.

Puke Ariki holds Flight's detailed diary from his trip on the Timandra which, still today, provides valuable knowledge and insight into conditions onboard the ship. A medicine chest brought with him is on display.

Sarah Anne died in 1884 at the age of 69 but Josiah lived to be 83. They are both buried at New Plymouth's Te Henui cemetery, along with Sarah Gill who died in 1885, aged 42, and Martha Kate who died in 1931, aged 85.

Anne Flight

Perhaps the Flight girls, growing up on the Bell Block farm close to the Mangoraka stream, lived somewhat isolated, sheltered lives. Men should have been abundant and in dire need of wives, but somehow Sarah Gill and Martha Kate remained unattached. Some say it could have been due to their pious natures.

In 1866, Annie married John Kelly when she was almost an old maid. Like Anne, he too, had sailed here with his parents - Thomas and Leonora, and siblings William, Thomas and Margaret - on the Cresswell to arrive here in 1855. The couple farmed at Lepperton.

Annie died aged 86 on 29 May, 1925, outliving her husband by eight years. She was buried on a Sunday and her funeral procession left from 'The Pines' on Gill Street east.

The Kellys

Thomas Kelly - John's elder brother - was destined to leave more of a stamp on the new town than even Anne's father Josiah Flight did. The Kelly name crops up often in early New Plymouth records.

Born in the Isle of Man in 1830, when Thomas died in 1921 he had been a member of the Provincial Council, provincial secretary and a tireless advocate for the construction of local railways and roads. He was responsible for much of New Plymouth's roading as well as the section of railway between New Plymouth and Waitara in 1873.

Elected to the House of Representatives in 1869, he sat continuously until 1884, and for years was a member, then chairman, of the Harbours Board. He held seats on the Land Board, the Education Board and the Taranaki country council. Elected to Parliament as chairman of the Public Petitions Committee, he was a staunch supporter of both the Ballance and Seddon governments. Add to this list of credentials his day job: that of leader writer for the Taranaki Herald.

Thomas Kelly's son Charles was also a man of note. After finishing his local education, he went to sea on an apprenticeship with the New Zealand Shipping Company.

Eventually made captain, Charles served on several steamers before he took up a position with the Eastern Cable Company's fleet. But he fell ill in the East Indies, and though he returned to Taranaki, never recovered his health and died in 1903 at the age of 36.

An only child, he left a widow and three young children, one of whom, Bertram, would fall, like John's son, in 1917, the same year their grandfather Thomas died.

John Kelly

For John Kelly, his brother must have been a hard act to follow. But John worked hard in the new land, too, keeping a sense of humour and nurturing a passion for writing.

The year 1917 was a bad year for the Kellys    who buried not only John but soldiers Bertram and Fred. John's obituary from 15 October, 1917 reads:

"A very old and respected settler of this district passed away yesterday in the person of Mr John Kelly, for many years a resident of Lepperton, but lately living in retirement in New Plymouth. Mr Kelly, who was 83 years of age, came out from home by the ship Cresswell in June 1855, with his father and family, among them his elder brother, Mr Thomas Kelly.

He served through the Maori Wars as a volunteer, and equipped a small company of the Taranaki Bushrangers, of which he was captain. He also held the rank of lieutenant in the Otago Military Settlers. After the restoration of peace, he settled at Lepperton, and farmed there until a few years ago, when advancing years caused him to retire from active life to live in New Plymouth.

He possessed a quite remarkable fund of anecdote relating to the Maori War and had a distinctly happy knack of putting these into writing. Many of our older readers will doubtless remember a series of "Yarns with a twist in them" which appeared in our columns during the 80s of which he was author."

John Kelly's funeral left from his residence, 'The Pines', next to the Te Henui River.

Margaret Watson, nee Kelly

When John and Annie married, their first child Margaret, born in 1889, grew up on the Lepperton farm. Only a slender thread of her life exists, though it is known that she had eleven siblings, some of whom died young, and who carried Flight names. Leonora Flight would one day be a Taranaki back-blocks nurse at Uruti. 

Margaret married Frederick Hay Watson, a banker. She gave his first name to her son    Frederick William Watson, born in 1891. They also had a daughter, Isabella, in 1889.

We know very little about Margaret, except she and her family lived at Bulls, near Rangitikei, somewhere in the country, and kept chickens and a horse named Caesar.

While son Fred was away, she sent him books and ties because as Fred wrote, "You and Isa are such good judges of ties." When his rugby jersey ripped, he sent it home to be fixed. Finding it was past repairing, Margaret sent him a new one.

While he was overseas on active service, she sent him parcels of cakes and tinned food to supplement his army rations. She must have loved him very much as she kept every diary and letter he wrote from 1906 until he died. These form part of the Watson collection.

F.H.Watson

There is little data on Frederick Hay Watson, Margaret Kelly's husband. But every letter written weekly went to the New South Wales Bank, Bulls, Rangitikei. Inside, the earliest ones are addressed to Dear Mum and Pup and signed Billy. Later the letters came addressed to Dear Mother and Father and signed by a more grown-up Fred.

Fred must have respected his father's work and perhaps inherited his head for finance and figures. He always kept his father fully informed of his financial situation, with the help of a running ledger for his expenses.

Frederick William Watson

Frederick William, only son of Frederick Hay and Margaret, and brother to Isabella, was born in Ashburton in 1891. Billy, as he was first known, was educated at Christchurch Boys High and then Canterbury College where he studied Surveying and Geography.

He was a good student, focussed and ambitious. The year he turned 17, he seems to have had the whole world at his door. He went to church, ran to keep fit, played an ace game of rugby, was a crack shot with a rifle, kept a tight reign on his budget and unfailingly wrote one letter home per week.

All his diaries, from 1908 through till 1912, are written margin to edge in the most tiny, tidy writing. They seem to mark his passage through time, from a boy to a man.

Though most entries begin with "Work as usual" the earliest tell of more boyish occupations: "Went down to the beach with Ted and Mort and got 75lbs of fish. I got 4 schnapper and 4 kahawai. Ted found some Dotterill eggs, 3 in a nest, and gave them to me."

By 1912, the majority read simply "office" or "survey work", and the last, scrawled across six days of December reveals a boy grown up. "Working as much as possible to keep up exam swat. Miss Blackburn a bobby dazzler!"

Fred Watson had a sound sense of family. He wrote regularly to Grandma and Aunty Kate, also to Uncle Billy, Uncle Jack, Aunt Louisa, Aunt Nora, Uncle Herb, Aunty Rose.

A small but beautifully put together photo album holds snaps taken in Greece, Anzac Cove and Gallipoli, with captions in white ink on black paper. An inscription reads: "To Uncle William and Aunt Millie, with best wishes for Christmas 1916."

After Fred joined the Lands and Survey Department in Wellington in 1908, he was transferred to Auckland. Later he worked as first as Assistant Surveyor at Matata and then at Ongarue.

During the Great War, he joined the Auckland Infantry and became 2nd Lieutenant, later to be awarded the D.C.M. for action at Chunuk Bair. In January 1917, Fred joined the Machine Gunners only to die in battle at Messines, France, in July, aged 26 years. He was buried at Kandahar Farm, Wulvergham.

His last letter home spoke of the weather being beautiful and abundant birds. "You wouldn't know there was a war on except for the sound of the guns…"

His personal effects - one canvas bag - arrived at the New South Wales Bank, Bulls by registered post in January, 1918. A Certificate of Service followed, with its pale purple and navy blue etching depicting the unknown New Zealand soldier adding his name to the paper on Britannia's knee.

His obituary reads: Amongst the casualties at Messines is the name of Second-Lietenant F.W.Watson, only son of Mr F.H.Watson, of Bulls, at the age of 26. Winning for himself a fine education at the Christchurch Boys' High School and Canterbury College, he entered the Lands and Survey Department, and was one of the most promising surveyors and draughtsmen in the service. When war broke out he was in the Auckland district and joined an Auckland machinegun section as a private. Leaving New Zealand witht he main body, he went through the Gallipoli campaign, where he won the D.C.M. during the Suvla Bay advance. After being transfered to France, he was promoted to seargeant and later to the rank he held when killed. Summed up, his record is fine scholar, fine athlete, fine solider. The deceased solier was a grandson of Captain J.Kelly of New Plymouth, who saw considerable service during the troublous times in Taranaki.

Isabella Watson

What do we know of Isabella Watson? We know that she was called Isa and that she had straight hair and good taste in ties. 

Perhaps she indulged Fred, as he once wrote: "You can tell Isda to have as many tins of toffee waiting for me when I come back as she likes. Also, I would not mind 3 or 4 cakes. (Not seed ones.)"

Perhaps she indulged him, as he once wrote: "You can tell Isa to have as many tins of toffee waiting for me when I come back as she likes. Also, I would not mind 3 or 4 cakes. (Not seed ones.)"

For a while Isabella lived at Epsom, so perhaps, she was sent to boarding school there. We know that, like her great aunts, she never married though she had many aunts and uncles who gave her 17 cousins.

One of those cousins is Joan Harris of Lower Hutt, whose father was Herbert Kelly. Now in her 80s, Joan remembers Isa as someone people knew and liked. "I met her when I was a little girl. She was 30 years old. She was much older than me."

As a schoolgirl, Joan and her sister often spent weekends at the Watson house with Aunt Peg, small-framed Uncle Fred and Isa, whose job it was to entertain them. She describes Aunt Peg as "a lovely woman, very warm and kind." 

The family lived in Carrington Street, New Plymouth, after relocating when Frederick Watson retired from the bank in Bulls. Interestingly, though her forebears were staunch anti-Anglicans, Isa was very involved in the Anglican church.

Joan says Isa was neat, tidy and quite prim and proper. "You had to wear your gloves when you went out."  Always interested in music, she passed on her skills to willing pupils, though she was more of a hobby musician than a trained teacher. Later, after Joan moved to Lower Hutt, Isa spent holidays with her.

After breaking an arm, Isa went from the public hospital to Iona private one, and then on to Chalmers Elderly Care, overlooking the sea on Octavious Place, New Plymouth.

Joan, Isa and three other family members helped empty her house. "There were lots of books as well as documents. We all agreed to the museum taking them. Ron Lambert (senior researcher) came and helped us go through it," Joan says.

"I had a collection of goodness-knows-what in my hand and I took all the stamps too, just in bundles. Ron said his heart just sank and he thought all the Devenish-Flight-Kelly papers - I called them that - were lost forever."

Instead, Joan, a passionate genealogist, transcribed Josiah Flight's diary and gifted the documents which contained his original birth certificate to the museum in 1980.

Rae O'Grady, manager of Chalmers, says Miss Watson, as she knew her, lived at the home from 1979 to 1988, until she died aged 99. Like so many of her settler relatives, Isa seems to ahve had longevity on her side.  Ray describes her as a small elderly woman with a sharp mind. "She had long hair, always very neat, up in a topknot. She almost reminded me of a Beatrix Potter character."

Though Isabella gave the impression of being quite prim and proper, O'Grady always knew she had the ability to see the funny side of things. "She was a dainty little thing, an intelligent woman, but she had a quiet humour. She was a great observer."

She also dreamed in the past. "I went in one morning and Miss Watson had had a dream, a nightmare, where she'd gone in a horse and carriage to visit frieds. But the horse died in their driveway. She woke feeling all the embarrassment we might feel if our flash car broke down."

She recalls a small screen on a pole, a Victorian relic, that stood in her room. "They used to put them in front of their faces when they sat beside the fire so the heat didn't danage their complexions." She believes it went to the Operatic Society after she died.

Through family fortune and great tragedy, Isabella Watson became the keeper of not only her great, great grandparent's effects, but those of her brother. There were also the Māori artefacts which might have been unearthed on the Kelly or Flight farms, or by Fred during his surveying work.

Deposited with Puke Ariki, they have been itemised and catalogued as the Miss I.Watson Collection, a valued and valuable resource for future generations.