Why I Wrote This Book

Ever since I can remember, one of my favourite pastimes was piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. The satisfaction and excitement of piecing together one by one, and the greatest of all, as the very last piece falls into place. I tell you this so that you may understand just how thrilling and even emotional it can be when those very jigsaw pieces were members of my own family who had played their part and departed this world.

I actually searched for a long period of time to track down the long-gone members of my ancestral family, who, like the pieces of my jigsaws, just suddenly seemed to fall into the right places. Perhaps I have made this sound simpler than it was. I hope you will believe me when I tell you the more difficult I found tracing any part of the family story, the more determined I became, and the more satisfaction I felt when I had it in place.

It has been through the help of a very sincere cousin, Jean Williamson, and many other interested relatives, as well as the deep patience of my husband, that I found so much. My husband always came with me in my searches and assisted in many ways, but refused to assist in my search of graveyards. He would patiently sit in the car and wait, even if it were hours.

My search had led me to the Turnbull Library and ship logbooks from the early sailing vessels of the 1840s, to find names of family groups whom at that time I only suspected were part of my family chain. The move after that was always the most difficult: to find out where they lived, what they contributed to my story, and finally their last resting place. So often I worked backwards from their last resting place.

From hearsay I was led to the records of the newly opened Otago University in 1860 to discover that my great-uncle Alexander Watt Williamson was the very first person to graduate at a university of New Zealand. In actual fact, he was the only student ever to graduate from the University of Otago, as the later students graduated from the University of New Zealand. (Otago University merged to become part of the Universities of New Zealand.) My uncle received a certificate from them also later.

I felt excitement and sadness, the latter because I knew practically nothing of my ancestors until after the passing of both my parents. I have since come to realise that they, like so many other immigrants, were endowed with intelligence, wit, and powers for strenuous work over long periods. The Turnbull Library has a wealth of knowledge of the early settlers, but it takes a great deal of time and patience to find a particular subject in such a vast house of knowledge.

One of the things I found was a passenger list on the ship Bernicia, which sailed from London on the 7th July 1848, arriving in Wellington, NZ on 3rd November 1848. Among the list was:

• Williamson … Francis – Age 39 years
• Emma Mynas – 37 years
• Harriet – 10 years
• Francis – 8 years
• Felicia – 4 months

Number of souls on board: 85 men and 72 women, total 157.

Of all the relations interviewed, none believed the above family to be relatives. I, in fact, by now believed the above family to be my grandfather’s uncle and his wife and family, with whom my grandfather Francis had made the journey to New Zealand on the Bernicia in 1848.

It was my trip to Waverley Cemetery that confirmed my belief. The very first burial in that cemetery was indeed the man for whose records I had spent so much time searching. It was my great grand-uncle’s grave, which is marked by a single column on which is the following inscription:

Francis Williamson
Died at Waitotara
20th July 1877
Aged 68 years

Emma Myna Williamson
Died at Whenuakura
9th June 1891
Aged 81 years

I shall remember always the excitement I felt when I read this. A big step forward had been made. This discovery made the rest a little less complicated.

One day Jean Williamson sent me a copy of the family tree dating back about 200 years. From this I learned that my grandfather was born at ‘Dunns Castle’ in East Lothian, Scotland. The question took possession of my brain: “How was it that he was born in this lovely old castle?” I wrote to ‘The Occupants’ of Dunns Castle, asking many questions, hoping for an answer to some of them.

At last a long and interesting letter arrived from a Lady Hay, who told me her own story as well. Her husband’s people had owned Dunns Castle and had lived there for 400 years. Her husband had passed on, but she lived there still, happy in the thought that her almost-grown son would carry on.

Then she went on to the answers for which I had been waiting. I was tense with excitement as I hurried through what she had to tell me. She had contacted the Minister of the Parish Church for the records held there, but found that records before 1890 had been sent to Edinburgh, and added that births were not officially registered at that time. However, the Minister, in his search of records held at Edinburgh, found that Alexander and Sarah were married at East Lothian in 1829 and, as newlyweds, had gone to live at Dunns Castle — Alexander holding the position of Head Gardener there. It was about a year later, in 1830, that Francis was born there and baptised in the little parish church.