EARLY NEW ZEALAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 7

EARLY NEW ZEALAND

TRIALS OF A FAMILY

MARRIAGE 80 YEARS AGO

Every day fresh, interesting material dealing with the beginnings of New Zealand is being received by the Government officers in charge of the Centennial historical surveys now in course of preparation.

When Bishop Harper (the first Bishop of Christchurch), Mrs. Harper, and ten of their fifteen children landed at Lyttelton in December, 1856, they Tafare met by Bishop Selwyn, who escorted them to Christchurch. Mrs. Harper and the youngest girl rode together on a horse, and the others walked over the hill to Heathcote Valley, where vehicles awaited them. Bishop Harper, Bishop Selwyn, and others pushed and pulled a handcart on which bedding and other articles were stacked. The walking girls carried bundles containing bonnets and finery which they were to wear next day. The first home for the Harpers was a small cottage in Cambridge Terrace, by thp Avon River.

This incident (published in "New Zealand Centennial News") is recorded in a book, *'My Early Days," written by the late Mrs. C. G. Tripp, of Orari Gorge, Canterbury (a daughter of Bishop Harper). A VERY SMALL HOUSE. "Our house was very small, and when visitors came to see my father some of us had to go to the hospitable neigh-1 bours to make .room," wrote Mrs. Tripp. "Three of us slept in an attic bedroom which we reached by a stepladder. On beams over the beds our saddles hung, and on top of them our ball dresses, pinned, up in sheets.

"Mary (a sister) had become engaged some months before me, which. gave time to send to England for her things, but my- trousseau was a very simple affair; my father, going to Wellington" about that time, bought me three dresses —a white muslin with pink sprays on it, a black and white striped thin silk with blue silk flounces, and a brown barege, unmade. A riding habit was made in Christchurch, and I had one pair of boots and one pair of shoes. Everything else I made myself—rather different to the trousseau of a girl of the present day—and I know I had to buy boots a few months after my marriage, the rough country walking soon wearing out anything but the strongest, s "Our wedding day was September 23, 1858. My wedding gown of white silk and the bridesmaids' white tarleton and little straw bonnets trimmed with ribbon were all bought at Miss Skillikorn's general stores, also the wedding ring. Though my future husband had a large property, ready money was not plentiful, and he had always said he had to borrow £8 for wedding expenses, and I only had 8s of my own. "I had to come down the step ladder from our bedroom backwards in my wedding finery, and Mary's room downstairs was so small that she stood on her bed to be dressed. We walked to St Michael's, and both couples returned from church together in a new omnibus, ttte only other vehicle being a hansom cab without wheels, so not much use. Old Mrs. Westenra made us pretty little bouquets of white primroses, these and a bunch of gorse being the only flowers to be had."