This is the story of the Lindsay Family as told by Margaret Staples nee Stuart to be included in the booklet called Winter Family Stories. This was compiled after the Winter Family reunion.
THE LINDSAY FAMILY
Amelia Winter and Alexander Lindsay had four children. They were Alexander George born 16th January 1893, Henry John (Harry) born 28th November 1894, Jane Ruby (Jeanie) born 26th February 1896 and William Alfred born 29th March 1897. Harry was killed in 1914.
Margaret Staples, Amelia's grandaughter, and Jean's daughter tells what she remembers about her family.
John Winter set out the Mirimar golf course and my grandfather, Alexander, became the head greenkeeper there. Grandmother Amelia ran the little tearoom at the golf club. Her clients must have appreciated her baking because one gave her daughter Jean a beautiful doll which she treasured for years. Jean was the only girl and may have been rather spoilt. The children went to Worser Bay School and a ride in the first electric tram that came to Mirimar. Before that they had to go by boat from Mirimar to Wellington. Jean hated it because she got seasick. At that time they rode in a horse drawn tram. We think the family moved to Happy Valley when they left the golf club.
Amelia used to get asthma, and would go over to relations in Masterton to get rid of it. It was on one of these visits that Jean and her friend set fire to a haystack on their farm. Alexander was very upset about it, but he never smacked his daughter. He insisted when Amelia came home that she would either go without the present her mother had brought her or get a good hiding. Amelia had been so pleased to see her daughter after being away. She put a pillow over her bottom and told her to yell every time she hit it. Amelia did not usually deceive Alex they got on very well together.
The Mangaroa Valley where Amelia and Alexander had their farm was a lovely place - just farms and trees with the river running through it. One stream went through the farm making it a lovely place for picnics and picking blackberries and mushrooms.
When Amelia and Alex retired from the farm they had their son Alex build them a house in the valley. They had a large piece of land with it where Margaret remembers her grandad growing a huge garden. There were black and red currants, strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries. One carrot or parsnip would feed a family. Grandma preserved their hen's eggs. Her never to be forgotten baking was really scrummy - black currant pies, strawberry shortcakes, light scones and sultana cakes we called Grandma Cakes. We lived quite near them when we were young and saw them often.
Mum's boyfriend was killed in the war, so she was about twenty four when she married my father, John Stuart, Margaret continues. He and his partner had a farm about half a mile from Mum's home.
Dad's partner sold out his half of the farm to Mum's young brother, Uncle Bill. We had to share the big farm house, until both families started to expand, we had to rent a house, as the homestead was on Uncle Bill's land. He and his wife Phoebe, had four children, Keith, Milton, Lesley and Ailsa.
As soon as a larger house became available we moved into that. Amelia, called Milly, was my older sister. I was the second one, born in 1922, after that came Elsie, Vallma, Alison, Jeanie and Joan, who died as a baby.
Elsie was born at the home. One day, when she was put out on the verandah in her canvas bassinet I leaned over to see her, pulling on the rail to get a good look. Over it went. Luckily the baby was well wrapped up and no harm to Elsie - but what a spanking I got!
Milly and I were the best of friends until she died, and what mischief we got up to together.
Early one morning Mum found our bed empty. We were only about two and three years old. She rang the neighbours after hunting for us everywhere. Then they saw something white in the pigsty. There we were. trying to ride one of the young pigs. We were put straight intothe tin bath - and didn't we smell.
Milly was afraid of nothing. One day Mum caught us feeding the bull, that was chained to a log and not in the best of moods, with handfuls of clover. When we were older we used to tickle trout under the large stones in the river.
We had quite a way to go to our little country school, so Mum kept Milly home until I was five so we could go together. The teacher gave me some chalk and told me to draw on the blackboard. I drew a horse with its tail up and lots of manure coming from it in a great pile. For effect I made a border of the manure too. The teacher said it wasn't very nice and stood me on a desk in front of the class to feel ashamed of myself. I then made faces at the children, so I was shut out in the corridor where I wet my pants because I couldn't ask to go to the toilet.
The school inspector came round once a year. He told the teacher I had a terrific imagination and he hoped I'd have a chance to make something of my story writing, but of course the depression came, and I left school to go to work when I was fourteen.
The only successful story I have written was for my adopted son's school magazine.
Christmas was a wonderful time. At school the boys were sent out to find a tree, and we decorated it with lanterns, bells and things we made with coloured paper. At home Grandma used to come and help make the Christmas puddings. We would have a stir and watch the treepences and sixpences go in. Father Christmas usually dropped an orange as he went up the chimney, and always had the drink and cake we left for him. It was a day day for me when I found out the truth abut the old gentleman.
Not long after the depression started things got hard on the farm. There was no guarenteed price for milk, and little money to come and go on. My sister Elsie and I got up at five oçlock to help Dad milk. One winter Dad got pneumonia and we thought he would die. His health took a long time to recover, nor could he work as much as he used to.
About that time Milly started high school. She had to walk about three or four miles down the railway to get a tram from Upper Hutt to Lower Hutt School.
At last Dad sold the farm. We moved to Upper Hutt. I was twelve. Mum became sick, and after a year in bed at home had three major operations. Dad moved to the Public Works in Whitemans Valley, and Milly kept house for him. Elsie and I walked three and a half miles each day to catch the train from Trentham to Wellington, then walked another mile to save tram fares to get to our work - sewing.
It was too far for Dad to visit Mum in hospital, so about this time I boarded with my cousins, the Camerons, so I could see her each night. They lived on a hill in Hataitai.
Each weekend I went home, helped Milly by filling the tins with baking, and made clothes for my younger sisters with cheap material I could get from my work, and from knitting.
When mum came out of hospital Dad was offered a job at Taita working for Mr Kells. I stayed with Aunt Ada, Mum's eldest brother's wife. She was a lovely lady. I loved staying there. My cousin had a little Austin car and gave me a ride to work every morning. They lived on Seatoun Hights in a house Uncle Alex built. We had always had lovely holidays there.
We also always enjoyed holidays with Auntie Ruth Cameron, and Auntir Eva - although she was really Mum's cousin. They had a farm at Otaki. Her husband Jack and her youngest girl were dead. She always seemed sad to me. She had grown up boys who used to work on the farm and a daughter Marjorie, older than I was.
Mum hated any of us away from home, so I got a job in Lower Hutt.
My sister Val had to go to hospital for two ear operations. She was deaf in one ear and missed a lot of schooling. She lived with Mum for a few years after she was married - by this time Dad had died and Mum had a house near the school in Narnae. Jack worked as a butcher, and Val worked while Merleen and Stuart went to school and Mum looked after Glennis, who was always up to mischief. One day she set off for a holiday, with her clothes packed in the suitcase and nothing on. She is now a mother of four herself.
Alison was always artistic. She worked at colouring photos, her firm even sending prints over to Australia for her to do when she had a trip over there. More recently she has been painting and selling her work, she was always the peacemaker on the family.
Jean worked in a factory office. She has spent years doing Meals-on-wheels, belongs to the Samaritans, and takes old folk from Paraparaumu to Welington Hospital. She works a lot of old folks, and many would have spent more time in hospital but for her care. She married Alex Walker, a builder, and they have a son and daughter.
Milly got engaged to an American Marine, a Polish boy. She went to America to marry him, but got very homesick. When Dad was dying with cancer she flew home. Here she met my husband's brother, who had been a prisioner of war in Crete. He was a painter and decorator. They have two children Raema and Roger. Roger is a business consultant in Russia and has one son, and |Raema, now in a wheelcahir, has three daughters.
I married Fred Staples before he went to war with the third division in 1942. He didn't get home until a few months after the war finished. It was very hard at that time to get a house unless you had a family, so we stayed with Mum for two years, and then to Trentham Transit Camp. By the time we had our own home in the hills at Naenae, we had three children.
We have an adopted son who is much younger than the girls. probably because of frustration with dyslexia he had a difficult period growing up, but now, thanks he says to my prayers and his home life he has a worthwhile job and is a great comfort to me.
Although our family didn't have a lot of money, we in our family, were a happy bunch and always got on well together. Friends called us the "Laughing Stuarts". We often look back and remember the funny bits - such as Christine, acting Mary in the Christmas play singing "round John Burgin's mother and child" (yon virgins), and Linda singing instead of "leave the poor old wreck and pull for the shore" - "leave the poor old strangles wretch" and "The man in the engine pulled at little Eva" - instead of "pulled a little lever". There was the time I cut Elsie's hair and kept taking bits off to try and get it even, so she ended up wearing a hat, and when I cut the legs off Mum's plant stand and couldn't get them even either. And many more.
I am very proud of my children and grandchildren, who are involved in nursing, art, marine biology, teaching, computers and business consultancy.
