The Jones Family

Meyrick Liewellyn Jones came from Cardiff and had plenty of cheek. Whether on the boat coming to New Zealand or when he got here he captured the attention of Mary Anne McDonald who was intended to marry the son of a reputable Dunedin family. He married her and produced ten children in short order. He is said to have been at Gabriel's Gully and was also at Charleston during the gold rushes. I understand that at Charleston he managed a pub which would have been easier and probably more rewarding than digging for gold. He was quite literate and got in with the politicians including King Dick Seddon. They were opening up land at Karamea and he along with several other families were allotted land at Kongahu a few miles south close to the Blackwater and Granite Creeks.

How much farming he did is not known but as soon as the boys were big enough he set them to work and became a land surveyor and spent much of his time travelling. He became something of a local squire and Jonesville Kongahu was a regular stopping place for travelling dignitaries including the Bishop of Nelson.

Until his grandson Karl Jones took the place over it was little more than a subsistence farm but they seemed to live well and my mother always had fond memories of it.

The eldest child was Annie. She was always fearsome to me as a small child and chided me for being lackadaisical. I didn't know exactly what it meant but I knew that she wasn't pleased with me. She married Willie Scott a Catholic who died after 25 years of marriage without producing any children. I think that they lived in Westport but when she became a widow went back to Kongahu and died there in her eighties..

Meyrick Liewellyn jnr (Son) never got on with his father and left home. He was shrewd like his dad and married well. He had an idyllic life with Auntie Mag who was either a Catchpole a Quinn or maybe a Holder. They were well off and Uncle Son lived in Seddonville where they had the pub. He had a small coal mine on his section and he would mine his own coal. He bragged that his house cost 29 Pounds and offered to give it to anyone who wanted it. It was an experience staying with them often recounted by family members. Mag was a meticulous house keeper as were her daughters. The guest room was the wash house with a wooden cover over the tubs that were scrubbed white. The floors were also scrubbed white and the brass taps kept shining.

I think the eldest was Alf who took up a farm at Corbyvale on the heights between Seddonville and Little Wanganui. I only met him once which was when I first went to Karamea. He had no children and his farm was meticulously kept. He had a stroke and died shortly afterwards having completely topdressed his paddocks. It was felt that he had brought the stroke on by over work. I was working in Customs in Wellington and was going into the Army full time just before the Japanese came into the War. It was going to be a welcome relief for me as I was getting by on 4 pounds ten a month and paying thirty two and six a week board. I struck a month in which there were three Fridays which meant that I had to pay four pounds seven and six just for board. I took five pounds with me when I went to Wellington and it was just about all gone.
I had some leave to take so I went down there. I struck it very lucky and met so many relations that I lost count. I went by boat overnight to Nelson arriving on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning. Mum had it off pat, she told me about the ship heaving to in French Pass to unload mail and passengers into a launch for D'Urville Island and as she advised me I walked up from the wharf to the town and as she had predicted the others who had gone up in the bus were still waiting for breakfast which was served almost as soon as I arrived.
Soon after, the service car left for Westport and after stopping for lunch at Lyall that had been devastated by the 1931 earthquake we went through the Buller Gorge to be met by Cousin Mag Taylor Son's eldest daughter and taken home. They lived in a Railway house with corrugated iron walls. Her husband Bert was an engine driver with a painful leg injury that had never healed properly and which killed him soon after. They had several children most of whom I never saw again and can't remember. The eldest son Jack spoke quite rudely and broke wind loudly without any sign of embarrassment. I soon found that the whole family was earthy and did not stand on ceremony. They took me down to a local pub and in those days it was six o'clock closing. During the evening we got the word and all moved out into the back yard carrying our glasses. The. Cop arrived and inspected the bar and was soon gone. The publican then invited us back in and rang the next pub to say that the Cop was on his way. This was apparently routine practice.

The next day I caught the train to Seddonville accompanied by another cousin Alice Kissell one of Mag's sisters. She was now living in Invercargill and was visiting home. She was one of the most intense talkers I have known. She would grab you by the lapel and talk right at you. She was really interesting and filled me in on all the scandal in the family then and later when we lived in Invercargill ourselves. The trip flew by in a welter of conversation to which I contributed very little. At Seddonville of course. I met Uncle Son and Auntie Mag and Cousin Alma and her husband. I later understood that Alice was her mother by a youthful indiscretion and that Auntie Mag had brought her up. She and her husband were school teachers so Mag had obviously done a good job.
I of course slept in the wash house and the next day enjoyed one of Auntie Mag's famous Sunday dinners. Alf and his wife were there and drove me to their place where Cousin Karl Jones picked me up and took me to Kongahu. The old house was still standing but the earthquake had lowered the land and they had built a new one on higher ground. It was square and roomy and in the middle of a large orchard. In addition Karl and his wife Mary had built themselves a modern little house on the bank overlooking Granite Creek.

I met one of the other brothers who was a bachelor. Uncle Charlie who my father apparently detested, claiming that he was the laziest man alive. He certainly never took any responsibility, stayed single, lived at home all his life but did not live to a very old age. He died shortly after I was there probably in his sixties.

Another brother Evan (Ev) Karl's father died in about 1932. His wife was Dora Lietchwark a Catholic who died in childbirth in about 1913 when Karl was still a little boy. There were complications and with no road over the bluff she was carried over rough tracks on a stretcher to Seddonville and put on the train for Westport. She didn't survive this ordeal so Annie was left to bring Karl up.

Bill married Rosina Ballard and after living in Karamea and working at Gilbert Bros sawmill eventually shifted to Auckland. They farmed at Whitby and then in the Mount Wellington area before retiring. Auntie Rose died in the early thirties, hers was the first dead face I ever saw. I was with Mum and Auntie Venus and we went into the chapel before they closed down the coffin. The material had a small square opening with an embroidered cover over the face. Auntie Venus lifted it off and there was Auntie Rose looking as if she was asleep. It haunted me for days. Bill then lived with his daughter Doris until he died. He was at our wedding and we have a picture taken of us in the bridal car with Uncle Bill's hand in the window. He had two pounds for a wedding present and was still lecturing me about spending it wisely when we were ready to go. He had four children, Doris the eldest, who married Bert Guthrie, Meyrick who married Eva McGrath a staunch Catholic, Douglas who also married but I forget who she was, and Llew who married Olive

Auntie Venus married Leslie Hill who was also a Catholic but not a particularly good one. They had no children and our family had a lot to do with them as they lived in Auckland most of the time. At one stage Auntie Venus had worked in the pub at Seddonville where she learned catering. They had lived in Papatoetoe but the first place I knew about was in Favona Point Rd. Mangere North where they had a small town milk supply farm. The Auckland Milk Co collected the milk once a day using a motor bike and sidecar. I had a falling out with the headmaster at Milford School in Standard 2 so I was sent to live with them at Mangere where I attended Mangere Bridge School and did very well.

Auntie Beatrice (Bet) was the beauty of the family and married a handsome teacher who came to the local school. He was shifted away and later died in Masterton at quite an early age. They had one daughter Nola who caused her mother much grief.

Owen Glendower (Glen) went to the First World War and was gassed. He was not at all good looking but was a very successful womaniser causing much scandal in the small community. He became a clerk in the Ministry of Works in Wellington and eventually lived with Llew and Olive until he died in the early nineteen fifties.

Adelaide so named because she was born at the time of an eclipse of the sun that was observed in that city was the youngest. She and my mother were their father's pets and received as good an education as was possible. They attended the convent at Westport which was the only secondary school in the whole area where they learned painting and music. When her mother died she was left to manage the house at Kongahu where she had to cope with visits from passing dignitaries. Cousin Alice spent some time helping her and had many tales to tell of how Auntie Ad with hardly a thing to eat in the house would curtsey to the Bishop while Alice got busy cooking something to entertain him with. She married Tom Miller a Catholic and lived first in Ranunga and then in Cobden suburbs of Greymouth.
It was often told how you could always tell if anyone was in the outside toilet at Ranunga because for twenty five years there was a board missing that Uncle Tom never got around to replacing. After Tom died Ad went to live with cousin Pat at Little Wanganui where she died about twenty years ago.