Christopher Alderson Calvert, An Unassuming Coloniser.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18496, 23 June 1928, Page 23 (Supplement)

Christopher Alderson Calvert, An Unassuming Coloniser.

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, AS TOLD BY HIS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER.

(By

LILY CALVERT.)

From my copy of “ The Canterbury Standard” of January 25, 1855, I take the following notice of holidays to be observed by the Supreme Court:— The Supreme Court of New Zealand. The Deputy Registrar of this Honourable Court hereby gives notice that the office is at the Land Office, Christchurch, and is open every day (Sundays and holidays excepted) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Christopher Alderson Calvert, Deputy Registrar. Supreme Court Office, January 24, 1855. - N.B. By order of the Court (No. 6)* the following days are holidays in the Court and the offices thereof; . that is to say, Good Friday, Easter Eve, Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, Whit Monday and Whit Tuesday, the days from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day, both included; the Birthday (May 24) and the Accession Day (June 20) of Our Lady the Queen, and the Day (January 29) of the Proclamation of the Queen's Sovereignty over these islands. From a packet of letters I take one of historic interest. Eckington, , Chesterfield, March 30, 1858. My Dear Cousin, —The bearer of this is the son of my acquaintance the Rev George Rolleston, of Maltby. near Conisbro’, and an old acquaintance of the late Mr Hasteneys. He is going out to New Zealand as a settler, and I have much pleasure in giving him this introduction to you. and I shall feel particularly obliged by your giving him any information that lies in your power, and I have no doubt you will both derive satisfaction in conversing of parties known to each.—l am, dear cousin, yours affectionately Alfred Alderson. C. A. Calvert, Esq. My mother was the eldest daughter of Rowland Robert Teape Davies, or Davis as it became known, a Welsh engineer, who, with his wife and three children, Richard, Mary and Lucy, came out in the Aurora, the first ship to bring settlers to Wellington, and landed at Petone on January 22. 1840. Her father being Welsh, we were provided with a love of music and numerous relations with unpronounceable names! His mother had been one of the Barrys, of Cork, whose people, the M’Carthys, had owned Blarney Castle until Lord Clancarty, who married his cousin, Lucy Davis, was exiled and his estates forfeited for fidelity to his own folk. By this we were also endowed with “ the glamour of the green” and other hereditary tendencies! My grandmother, Mrs Davis, was the eldest daughter of John Groombridge, of “ Beechgreen Farm,” later of “ High Rocks” Tunbridge, only son of John Groombridge, of Groombridge Manor, Kent. . My mother, who was seven years old when the Aurora arrived, retained a clear recollection of that first historic landing in Port Nicholson, with native bush down to the sea, and magnificent canoes with high carved prows manned by fifty or eighty Maoris coming out to meet them. After many anxious years of Maori wars and disastrous earthquakes, Mr Davis visited Canterbury in 1849, and bought land in Pigeon Bar, and in April. 1851, he brought his family down and made a home for them there. Christopher Alderson Calvert and Mary Ann Davis were married on May 17, 1859, at St Michaefl’s. Christchurch. Att«r tie wedding breakfast, they were driven to the foot of the hills, and they walked over Dyer’s Pass to Ohinitahi. Mother was attired in the voluminous dress of the period, a dove coloured silk and the round poke bonnet with white blososms under the brim. Over her dress she wore a large white burnous, or cloak, with a deep hood, and wade bell sleeves all trimmed with purple silk cord and large tassels. On the summit, where they stopped tc rest, mother complained of the

weight of the tassels, and father, gallantly investigating, discovered two rosy apples in her hood, popped in by her brother in lieu of a lucky shoe! Our parents’ first home was situated on the southeast corner of the Papanui Road and the extension of Montreal Street, where in March, 1860, their first child, Mary Ann Dorothy, was born, and baptised in St Michael's. Being near to Bishop’s Court, father saw much of our beloved Bishop Harper, of whom he writes: “I have for him a great and abiding regard.” Hearing father was about to build, the stonemasons, who could get no work on account of the dread of earthquakes, asked him to build in stone, which he did, and by day labour (15s a day) with stone brought down by bullock waggon from where the Kiwi Rest House now stands, was built the first stone house in Christchurch. It was situated at the junction of Chester Street and Oxford Terrace, a Gothic building in the form of a cross, and was called “The Hollies,” as father planted the first holly trees brought out here, two of which still mark the site of our old home. This was the birthplace of their second daughter, Elizabeth Honoria, their only son, Row land John, and myself, and we were baptised in St Luke’s. My parents spent many happy years there with kind neighbours, such as the Bowrons, of Hey wood, Judge and Mrs Gresson, of Gressford, the Nalders, and others. In 1863 my father had sold the old London house. One of Canon Calvert’s sons, writing to me recently and enclosing a picture of old “ Temple Bar,” now removed to Theobald’s Park, Cheshunt, seat of Admiral Sir Hedworth Meux, brother to Earl Durham, says:—“ Under this old city gate your father and mine must have passed thousands of times, for as you know it was just outside the Temple, and our grandfather’s house was a little to the east. That house, 189, Fleet Street, was only pulled down a year or two ago. It had been for many years a bank (Praed Fane and Co.), and my father had an account there’ till the time of his death. It was finally absorbed by Lloyd’s Bank, who closed it up, and on the site the Norwich Insurance Company, one of the bestknown insurance companies in England, has built a fine London office.” I have no recollection of “ The Hollies,” for I was but a few weeks old when father sold the property and took us back to Governor’s Bay. He settled at Pairakiraki, where now Mr Tapley has his fine orchard, having sold Ohinitahi to Mr Thomas Potts, an enthusiastic botanist, who made a beautiful garden and built a large stone house, which still remains. My first recollection of my father was when, in the bravery of my second year, I was toddling after my brother along the avenue of ngaios dewn the steps in the bush to the beach. A fallen tree, over which my brother jumped, barred my way, and when my father appeared from nowhere my mortification at being obliged to accept help from “ a mere man ” was soothed by the diplomacy with which he suggested that he thought there was a very high bank at the bottom, down which, by heroic efforts, I could jump unaided. So there was, but it is not there now! In that little community were some fine old families, such as the Vigers, Hodgsons. Potts, Parsons. Grays, Dyers and others. Of these Mr Cow Uri, now in his ninety-third year, alone remains to recall memories of the long vanished years. In 1871 we recrossed the hill and lived for a short time in a house on the west of St Peter’s, Ferry Road. My only recollection of father there was on a very stormy night when he came in with a woman in widow's weeds who was carrying a baby and had two others clinging to her. Father said to my mother, “My dear, this lady is going to have tea with us.” There was no public help for the

widows and orphans in those days, and we used to lay a stranger's plate. Next to us there lived Mr Noble-Campbeil and his family, son of Captain NobleCampbell, of the third ship to reach Wellington, the Adelaide. Mr F. NobleCampbell was one of the first auctioneers here, and his eldest son married my eldest sister. We moved further down the Ferry Road to Lower Heathcote, now called Woolston. It was a sociable little village, with its picturesque little stone church, which at first was almost filled with my mother's people, for her parents lived in a quaint, old-fashioned house called 44 Kealkill,” on the terrace by the Heathcote River (then an unpolluted stream), and sisters and brothers were near them. (To be Continued).