CHAPTER 8
Susannah Catherine Chamberlain
In the days when secondary education was not so common among young women Susannah Catherine Bull and her sisters kept a school. Born in 1809, she married Thomas Chamberlain about 1831 and they lived in the boot-manufacturing town of Daventry, Northamptonshire, England.
Thomas Chamberlain, born in 1806, came from a tall family. His grandmother, who had been an Edinborough, had been spoken of as "a giant of a woman", and when laid out after death was found to have been six feet two inches in height. The family was connected to the Parliamentary and screw-manufacturing Chamberlains, and there were some members who considered a lowly schoolteacher to be beneath their social level. They ignored Thomas after his marriage, treating him as an outcast and no longer one of the family.
Susannah and Thomas's first son, William Edinborough, was born in 1832, and their daughter, Sarah Ann, in 1834; Giles Edinborough was born in 1838 and Edwin Edinborough in 1841.
The few acres they owned jutted like a wedge into the neighbouring property of a titled person whose name is still known to descendants. This man was most anxious to buy their property and sent two of his agents to negotiate with Thomas.
Thomas refused to sell. He preferred to work his own land rather than to toil in the boot-making factory. The agents persisted until, eventually, they offered generous terms for the lease of the land, the period to be until after the maturity of one crop.
This offer seemed to be too good to refuse, and at last Thomas agreed. The land was taken over and planted. When the young leaves appeared it was seen that acorns had been placed in neat rows, and as it takes scores if not hundreds of years for acorns to grow into oaks and reach maturity, the Chamberlains realised they had been tricked out of their land. They then decided to emigrate to New Zealand.
After turning every available asset into cash they made body-belts into which they thickly and closely sewed their small wealth of sovereigns. These belts were worn by Thomas and Susannah as they stepped aboard the sailing vessel London. Susannah's sisters had tried to persuade them to leave William and Giles behind with them to be educated, but the little boys sailed with their parents from Gravesend in the December of 1841.
The voyage was a nightmare of storms and sickness. Some fifteen people died, most of them children, and little Edwin was one whose body was slipped quietly over the side in its canvas shroud. Susannah was desperately ill and her body-belt was taken off and placed on William, who was nine and a half.At last it was over and they arrived at Wellington on 2 May 1842. Passengers were put into open boats which were run as far as possible up the sandy beach. The women were then carried to dry land while the men waded ashore, and the goods also had to be carried ashore.
What is now Lambton Quay was then a sandy beach, and above high-water mark were a few shanties including some shops, all being primitive dwellings with thatched roofs of rushes and toetoe. Te Aro was mainly a large swamp, and where Luke's foundry was later built was then the site of a large Maori pa. Another pa stood at Pipitea Point, and the sight of so many dark, tattooed faces terrified the new settlers.
Susannah's first home in Wellington was a shanty on the Tinakori track opposite what later became Sydney Street, between St Mary Street and Lewisville Terrace. From here five-year-old Giles walked through the bush to attend an infant school opened by a Mrs Buxton. One day he did not return. Susannah and the family searched frantically through the bush, fearing he had been taken by Maoris, but it was later discovered that instead of going to school he had met the daughter of Henry and Mary Jones, who had taken him home to play with her brothers. When darkness had fallen he had been too frightened to walk home through the bush.
While living in the Tinakori track shanty Susannah's next baby, Edmund Edinborough (7) was born in 1843.
Thomas, during his early days in Wellington, took up boot-making, but found that leather was almost impossible to procure. He then took up land at what was known as Parkvale, situated between Karori and Makara. It was all in dense bush and everything had to be carried in by hand over ground that was slippery and steep in places. Thomas carried a large oak chest into Parkvale on his back, and then trees had to be felled before they could build a house.
While the Parkvale house was being erected Susannah remained in the shanty with Sarah Ann and baby Edmund. Thomas walked between the two places at night, carrying back supplies of food for the next day. During his absence from Parkvale William and Giles spent the nights hiding in the oak chest in case Maoris came about the place.
The Parkvale house had clay walls and a clay floor, timber being pitsawn for the roof to carry the shingles. When it was finished their belongings were carried over the hills and through the bush, and Susannah moved to live there.
The bush felling continued and while engaged in this William had a leg crushed by a falling tree. Thomas carried the boy to Wellington to enable the leg to be given proper treatment by a doctor, and while there he rented a house in Mulgrave Street from a Mrs Hempleman, whose husband was captain of a whaler. It was found necessary to amputate William's leg, and this was just done with a saw and without anesthetic the leg was buried in Mrs Hempleman's backyard.
Susannah and Thomas spent three or four years at Parkvale before they decided to buy a portion of the hills at present known as Northland and begin dairy farming. The house was situated on the hills west of what used later to he known as the Wireless Station Building, and the land stretched just west of this and almost to the Karori tunnel with one boundary crossing to the Botanical Gardens. Their baby Thomas was born here in 1847.
The following year the 1848 earthquake wrecked the house, but they rebuilt it and continued with the dairy farm. Samuel was born in 1849, and in 1851 baby Susannah, but she died while still an infant.
In 1854 Thomas took part in the first ballot for the drawing of sections at the new settlement of Masterton and was successful in obtaining sections on the Upper Plain for himself and his sons.
In 1855 another earthquake completely wrecked their Northland house. The 1848 shake had been heavy, but was nothing in comparison with the violence of this one: the earth trembled at intervals for three weeks, with great rents being made in many places. It hastened their decision to move to Masterton.
The boys went first and built a house on their parents' section in readiness for their arrival. Ironically, considering past history, they called it The Oaks. William's section became Bellevue, Giles named his Starwood, and Edmund's became Rosswood.
It was 1858 before the dairy farm was disposed of and Thomas and Susannah were able to move over to Masterton. By that time a dray road had been built over the Rimutakas and they were able to take most of their goods and chattels over in a cart. Susannah was on board and Thomas rode. Their cottage, with its pitsawn timber and shingled roof, stood in what was later to become Edith Street, and despite the fact that the Chamberlain men were all over six feet, the doors were only five feet ten inches in height. Some of the cows had already been driven over to the Wairarapa so they were able to have milk and butter.
Their daughter Sarah Ann married Brown Hunt and also lived in Masterton. As a wedding present the family gave her their town sections. Wishing to turn them into money she sought advice from Henry Bannister, who told her there was no such thing as money in Masterton--everything was bartered. He told her that a man who had gone to Wellington to mortgage his section had asked him to sell him some ewes; when this man returned with the money and paid for the ewes he would pay Sarah £15 for her three sections. These town sections extended from the State Theatre to J. Bradbury's shop.
Susannah and Thomas had been in their new home only a year when Thomas died from a heart attack in the January of 1859. Susannah continued to live in The Oaks cottage, being visited by grandchildren and taking her part in the building of the settlement of Masterton. With Sarah she was one of the earliest members of the Methodist Church, attending the first meetings held in the home of Henry and Mary Jones.
Susannah had much in common with the Jones family as they also had come from Northamptonshire, had sailed on the London and had lost their youngest child on the voyage. In Wellington they too had faced much hardship as four months of salt meat and biscuits had left Henry too weak for much hard toil. Work, when it could be found, consisted of sawing timber, carting firewood and working on the roads that were being formed. Sometimes they had only two meals a day, these being potatoes and fish that Henry had caught in the Harbour. At last, through perseverance, their conditions improved, and in the 1850s they made a move to the newly opened Wairarapa.
The effort of moving the Jones family over the Rimutakas began on 1 January 1856. A horse took their baggage in the early stages of the trip and by the end of the first day they had reached the accommodation house at Mangaroa. The next day they crossed the Pakuratahi River and made their way to the summit, their belongings now packed on bullocks. The two young daughters were placed in packing cases balanced on either side of one quiet animal, which made its way steadily along the precipitously rising track. The cases on the other bullock contained pots, kettles and a box of glass for the windows. On going down the hill one of the bullocks kicked over the traces, began backing, slipped off the track and rolled over and over until stopped by a log. Strangely, nothing was broken but the harness.
On the Wairarapa side of the range the family made for Burlings accommodation house, now the site of Featherston, where the meals were rough and ready. The next day they set out for Greytown where they stayed the night at the home of Mr and Mrs Kempton, and it was there that little Edward Jones made his first attempt at walking.
In those days the tracks lay to the east of where Greytown now stands and passed through the Maori settlement of Papawai. The Waiohine River, swift and treacherous at times, had to be crossed, and on the opposite bank they were met by their friend Charles Dixon, an early Wairarapa settler, with a horse and dray. The route then lay across swamps and the Taratahi Plain with its many boulders and morasses, until at last another mountain torrent, the Waingawa, was reached. and had to be crossed. Another two and a half miles brought them to Masterton and homemaking in the Wairarapa began at last, but it was eight years before they could afford one dozen American chairs, for which they paid £4.
The first Sunday school in Masterton was held in the home of Henry and Mary Jones and Henry was its first teacher. Their work for the Methodist Church continued for some years and was carried on by their descendants.
Susannah Chamberlain took a great interest in those early Methodist Church beginnings and seldom missed a meeting. Another of her interests was the making of health drinks, such as senna tea and other herbal beverages, and these guaranteed cures for all aches and pains were kept in little teapots, which stood in a row on the mantelpiece. Visiting grandchildren soon learned to keep very silent about their ailments when visiting Susannah, because they knew that a dose would follow immediately.
She died in 1891, but The Oaks cottage in Edith Street on the Upper Plain stood for 115 years. It eventually passed from family ownership and was allowed to become a dilapidated wreck, eventually used as a hay barn, and demolished about 1970.
