John Grigg—Some Notes On A Foremost Pioneer

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28920, 13 June 1959, Page 10

John Grigg—Some Notes On A Foremost Pioneer

[Specially writen for "The Press” by G. R. MACDONALD]

Two good short biographies of John Grigg have been published—one by P. G. Stevens, of Lincoln College, and one by Randall Burdon—and it is therefore unlikely that anything further will be written about him. The following notes have been gleaned mostly from the files of the early newspapers. It is hoped that they will prove of interest and add something to our knowledge of a man, who, more and more, emerges as the outstanding figure in the early history of Canterbury.

The inside history of the partnership of John Grigg and his brother-in-law, Thomas Russell, the financier, of Auckland, will probably never be known. The Longbeach papers were all destroyed when the homestead was burnt in 1937 and inquiries for Russell papers have had no result. The exact terms of the partnership must therefore be a matter of guesswork.

The year of the purchase of Longbeach has been set down as 1864. However, Frank Standish, ■who had been with John Grigg at Otahuhu, and who was to be his chief stockman at Longbeach. arrived with his wife by the Airedale at Lyttelton in September, 1863; and this makes it appear that Grigg had made some definite decision and had sent his stockman to take further steps—probably the purchase of cattle. Grigg had an office in Christchurch as early as 1867—first in Matson’s buildings and later in Hereford street. Various things were advertised for sale from this office—houses, town sections, land, and even an odd parcel of shares. But the principal occupation of his agent in this office must have been the conducting of Longbeach business—engaging labour, making cartage contracts, attending to shipments in and out, attending to the various partnership farms in and round Christchurch, ami to the buying and shinping of grain.

The fact that the partners made large purchases of land round Christchurch and went in for buying and shipping grain on a large scale makes it likely that Russell insisted on some of the capital being invested in shortterm j speculations. James Ashworth, in his account of his life, written for his family, says that John Grigg was the first man to put life into the wheat market during the bad times of 1865-70. The shipping notes in the newspapers are full of Grigg cargoes arriving and sailing. (Most of the grain was shipped at Kaiapoi for Lyttelton, and there transhipped.)

Here follow a few examples.— Shipped to Auckland, July, 1868. 120 sacks of barley, 234 of oats, 1143 of wheat, 153 of flour. Shipped to Melbourne, September, 1868, 3292 sacks of oats. Shipped to Mauritius, October, 1868, 3663 sacks of oats. Brig Chartered The partners chartered the brig Cambodia in 1869 and in June she sailed to Auckland, carrying 3000 sacks of barley, 1098 sacks of oats, and 6220 sacks of wheat. In July, 1869, they shipped 1755 sacks of wheat, 796 of oats, and 2095 of barley in the Southern Cross. They went halves in a shipment of sugar of 104 tons, which was sold by auction for £4OOO. The partners had at least two agents for the purchase of grain in North Canterbury— Joseph Beswick, of Kaiapoi, and a man called Frederick Crowley. John Grigg brought his wife and family down from Otahuhu in the Phoebe, which sailed from the Manukau and reached Lyttelton in January, 1866. He bought Avonbank, Fendalton, as a temporary home for them, and used to ride backwards and forwards to spend Sundays with them. He must have spent more time in Christchurch than is generally realised, for .in 1869 and 1870 he acted as churchwarden of St. Michael’s— and he was the last man in the world to accept such a position lightly. In 1870, he acted as chairman of Moorhouse’s election committee when he stood against Rolleston for the office of Superintendent of Canterbury.

Always A Farmer It should be noted that Moorhouse framed his campaign to catch the working man’s vote. He had defeated the pastoralists* candidate, J. D. Lance, in an earlier election but this time Moorhouse was a failing man and was easily defeated. John Grigg, although he bought 32,000 acres, was always a farmer as opposed to a grazier and never, joined in graziers’ politics; his point of view was directly the opposite. He gave every encouragement to the

small farmer and helped many Longbeach men to make a start; whereas the grazier was the sworn enemy of the freeholders. A sale of land in and around Christchurch “on account of the

dissolution of the [Grigg-RussellJ partnership” was held on June 20, 1871. Most of it was highclass farming land and some of it was just ready to cut up for building purposes. It must have been carefully selected with a view to its rapid appreciation and its management must have given a good deal of trouble to whoever was in charge of the office. To judge by numerous advertisements in the papers for harvesters, and similar evidence, must have been actively farmed. important item in the B** properties for sale was i? ?TWiawall Farm of 407 acres at

the foot of the hills near Hoon Hay, of which more later. A farm in Kaiapoi Island of 482 acres, some of the richest land in Canterbury was put up in six sections and only averaged a little over £6 an acre. A block of 141 acres, bounded by Papanui road on one side, known as “Lockharts” was cut up into sections mostly of three to four acres which sold mostly at £4O to £5O a section. John Grigg had used it for holding bullocks.

£37,000 Property Sale

A group of St. Albans farms were offered under lease with a few years to run. They were small dairy farms which supplied Christchurch with milk. Avonbank did not reach its reserve There were also sections on the North road in what was later known as Belfast which were then and for long after known as “Griggs land” and a well-known Kaiapoi farm known as “Cherry’s Farm.” The total offering was 1401 J acres and the realisation was over £37,000.

It seems reasonably certain that the tying up of so much capital in this way when Longbeach was crying out for money to be spent on it must have been due to Russell. The partnershin did not actually terminate till 1882. John Grigg bought Trehalswell Farm early in ’65 from Wallace Burton and presumably he gave it its half-Cornish name. The “Lyttelton Times” gave the price as £7OOO but this must surely have been a mistake. He used it mostly for show sheep, stud sheep and rams. He soon developed a big business in rams, particularly Lincolns and Leicesters. Letting Of Rams He used a system common enough in England, but unknown in New Zealand as far as the writer knows—that of letting rams instead of selling them outright The famous Bakewell who, in England, made his Dishley Leicesters the best fattening breed of the day developed* this system to such effect that he received £BOO for two-thirds of the services of his top ram—reserving of course the first third for himself. A Yorkshire man called Marcroft looked after Trehalswell Farm and the show teams from it were difficult to beat and did at various times sweep the pool. When Marcroft left Trehalswell Farm he went in for breeding and sometimes beat Grigg’s sheep He came to grief in the end and finished up as stock expert at Lincoln College. J. T. Matson held an annual letting sale of Grigg’s rams at Tattersalls and the prices were not very encouraging. Most of the rams brought £2 to £3 for the season’s service. Later, when there was a general rise in prices, bids rose to £7 10s, and the best price for a year’s service was £2O for a single ram, bid by Aaron Frapkish. It was, never related in what condition the rams were returned, but, one- would think, thin and foot rotty.

Matson advertised that there would be 400 Leicester rams to be bid for in 1872. The system does not appear to have been continued after 1874. At the partnership dissolution sale Henry Gray gave £l2 an acre for Trehalswell Farm and in 1875 turned it over to his brother, Ernest, of Hoon Hay, for £25 an acre. [The seventies were boom times in Canterbury.] Ernest Gray bred a successful flock of English Leicesters on the farm.

Cattle, Horses, Pigs John Grigg devoted as much attention to cattle, horses, and pigs as he did to sheep. He sold the whole of his dairy herd in September 1870. There were 90 cows, five bulls and three heifers. The cows averaged £9 13s 4d and brought up to £l6; £29 was paid for a heifer.

He had six teams in the Ashburton Ploughing Match in 1875, and the excellence of his horses was remarked on. A young teamster who drove one of the teams was William Ferguson Massey, a future Prime Minister of New Zealand. In May, 1880, Grigg sent down to Tattersalls his eighth annual consignment of draught horses. They were all of the active sort, not too heavy, and there were 45 of them. J. T. Matson thought they were the best line of draught horses he had ever handled.

Later, instead of sending his draught horses to Tattersalls he sent them to Ashburton where David Thomas, considered the best auctioneer of horses in Canterbury, did the selling. His annual draft usually consisted of about 90 horses. He shipped 600 light horses to Calcutta in August, 1889.

Grigg stood for Parliament for Wakanui in 1884. Apparently he kept his intention dark until the last moment and then launched a hurricane campaign and he beat his opponent, Joe Ivess, comfortably. However, he was the last man in the world to make a success in politics. Compromise and the acceptance of the second best are of the essence of politics and they were anathema to him. He was won over to a short-lived admiration for the wily Vogel but soon found it was impossible to follow that astute politician for long. In a momentary fit of annoyance, a crowd burnt him in effigy at Ashburton and Rakaia. John Grigg pursued an independent course during the session and resigned soon after and the whole business was forgotten.

His mana was in no way affected. Randall Burdon has dealt fully with this episode. It is generally believed that John Grigg was in financial straits during the eighties and the nineties and in writing to his son John at Cambridge he described Longbeach as “heavily encumbered.” Although it is not known what capital he had available when he went into Longbeach, some sort of guess can be made. He was engaged to be married. In his letters to his fiancee, Martha Vercoe, written from England, he refers .frequently to his prospects and what capital he hoped to bring out with him. He had to provide for the other members of the family and the lowest figure he mentions is £3OOO. At other times he is more hopeful and expects to have £5OOO available.

We know he had a heavy loss with a shipment of potatoes to Australia but we also know that in his 10 years at Otahuhu he was very successful with his sheep which became known all over New Zealand. At those times sheep were very profitable so he should at least have doubled his capital. The purchase of the Longbeach station involved £64,000 but the cost of draining, fencing, reading and equipping it with stock and machinery must have added up to several times more than this figure. Tiling alone is known to have cost £5 an acre.

The greatest burden of all was interest which was at the rate of 15 per cent, when he started and was only gradually reduced. The fact that in the middle eighties he started the expensive business of tiling shows that he cannot have been in desperate straits. When he died in 1901, he had only had about three years of slowly improving prices after twenty years of depression and he was able to make ample pro - vision for all his family. Considering his modest capital, the high rate of interest and the depression which continued through more than half his farming life at Longbeach, the feat of making Longbeach a financial success as. well as a farming success must be considered all the more remarkable. A Former Employee There must be few men left alive who worked under John Grigg /at x Longbeach. There is one at any rate, Mr John Read, of Cheviot. When applications were called for the position of head blacksmith at Longbeach he was perhaps a little surprised when his application was accepted. Nevertheless although a young man, he was highly qualified and held a diploma in engineering from Canterbury College. The old hands at Andersons’ Foundry gave him much good advice: “Boy. keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.” He found, when he arrived, that he had six blacksmiths working under him. A short time after he arrived he received a summons to’ the station office John Grigg told him that the windmill which supplied his house with water had broken down and asked him to put it right. This he did and, as it was not of the new automatic .cut-off variety, asked the cook particularly to remember to turn it off before she went to bed. This she forgot to do and a nor’-wester which sprang up during the night wrecked the windmill. He got a summons to the office next morning and found a very angry John Grigg awaiting him. Young John Read got the fright of his life. He says, “I have never seen such eyes in a man. When he spoke seriously they literally glowed. He was an exacting employer who demanded and got something near perfection from his men. His genius lay in picking highly competent young men who were of the type'who were stimulated by the progressively heavier load of responsibility that was laid upon them. Once they had proved themselves, they became partners more than employees. They worked not so much for John Grigg as ‘on Longbeach.’ Such- men were rewarded with generosity in wages and also with his confidence ana personal regard.” Half-Yearly Wages The wages at Longbeach were made up half-yearly on September 30 and March 31, and any balance left was credited with interest at 5 per cent. “Many employees in my day had substantial balances,” says John Read. “I thought I was wealthy when I had £lOO in the books. I wish I had bought a piece of the sheep paddock with it. The price was £l3 an acre, 10 per cent, cash and the balance at 5 per cent.” John Read tells a story about the housekeeping arrangements. After Mrs Grigg died, one of the daughters took over the housekeeping. Once, when a visit was expected from several expert meat men whom John Grigg wished to impress with a joint of prime Canterbury lamb, he gave Orders that a lamb should be selected and killed and a roast saddle should be placed before the visitors.

To his fury, the lamb appeared in the form of Irish stew. He immediately sacked that daughter and replaced her with another. Housekeeping was a position of importance and responsibility and he would never tolerate carelessness or inefficiency from a responsible person. John Grigg was a man of deep and genuine feeling, and sometimes this caused him to burst out impulsively into violent words. Once in speaking of a town jury which had refused to return a verdict against a man accused of sheep-stealing, he referred to them as “a set of city larrikins.”