I am sorting out last years Christmas cards to see who is on the list for next year, and found some notes I had written about Bill.
Nineteen year old Johanna had Bill in Napier and I surmised she had travelled there by coastal ship.
My research notes record that the road to Porangahau was reputedly the worst in the Province and the bridge on the road between Wallingford and Waipukurau wasnt opened until the mid 1870s. In 1882, ten years after Bill was born, the Courier newspaper's Waipawa correspondent asserted that Porangahau was one of the most inaccessible settlements in Hawkes Bay; the nearest Doctor was 28 miles away over "hitherto roadless country. Yet we are told that this valiant little place has provided itself with a library of 400 books".
It was also reported in 1883 that it took a team of 12-15 bullocks to take a half laden dray through the Porangahau/Blackhead Road.
Bill's skills were extended to remembered feats with his Team; he was known to have delivered the mail from Dannevirke to Herbertville by bullock team.(Google tells me the current road is 66 km)
The Birds had a "bush" block at Eparaima to the east of "Woodland". In the early days Bill's father John cut and sold fencing material to William and David Hunter, until their overseers (Bethune and Hunter) in Wellington, said he was too dear and they had to source posts off their own block. (I have copies of the letters held in the Turnbull Library)
Latterly Bill sold firewood, and an old timer told me he had a trick of stacking it over a stump, so what you saw wasn't what you got!
Bill was 16 years older than his little sister Annie (Babs) and doted on his God daughter.
His stepmother Mary Nelson, who was a good mother to her ready made family, chose her brother Michael Nelson to be sponsor at the baptisms of her children Joe and Charlie, and to stand proxy for Bill at Anne's baptism.
I have found the spot where Bill was buried in the Waipukurau Cemetery. Plot 8, Row 8A
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| RIP William Daniel Bird 1872-1953 |
I think my mother's family lived in Bill's house in Waipukurau around 1920 to 1930s. Rumour has it that our family lived in his house and my grandmother did the housekeeping for her familyand for Bill. My grandfather had a motor workshop in Waipukurau and I believe he worked on Bill's vehicles.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information! Bill's parents John and Mary lived in the St Mary's Road house above the Waipukurau School from about 1918 till John died in 1922. Annie, Bill's sister was living there too. Some time during the 1920s Mary and Annie went to live with Jack Bird, Mary's nephew , in Waimana, Bay of Plenty where Mary died in 1931. Annie married her cousin Jack in 1939 at Opotiki. They returned years later to the house in St Mary's Road where she died in 1959. I have corrected my profile page so that you could contact me by email if you have any information you care to share about who lived in the house after Mary left. I am interested that Bill lived in town; i had assumed he lived at Wallingford; maybe he came into town at the weekends? Your family may remember the furore there was in the family over the marble edifice Annie ordered for the family plot in the cemetery!Thank you again for putting some flesh on the bones of the family history.
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