Samuel Oates

Samuel Oates, the son of Samuel and Mary (née Godber) was born on 8 September 1814, at Codnor, Derbyshire, England. He had at three older sisters, Ann, Bessie and Mary, received a good education and trained as a surveyor although he turned to farming for his livelihood. Samuel married Jane Bonsall at St. Leonard’s Church in Monyash, Derbyshire on 28 April 1840, and having initially farmed in Codnor, they soon moved to Woodthorpe, where in 1851, Samuel was farming fifty acres and employing one man. Samuel and Jane by this time had five children, Richard Bonsall (1841), Samuel Jnr. (1843), Joseph (1847), Hannah (1848), and Ann Elizabeth (1851). The family subsequently moved to Claycross a mile south of Woodthorpe.

A combination of adverse conditions in the farming sector and the death of their sixth child, four-month old William in August 1852, made Samuel determined to make a better life for his family. While Jane and the children returned to live with her parents at Monyash, Samuel sailed from Liverpool on board the Baltimore, on 16 October 1852 for Australia. Arriving at Port Phillip, Melbourne, on 30 January 1853, he set off for the gold fields of Ballarat and Bendigo.

Samuel experienced no success with gold, but according to family tradition, he met Charles Rooking Carter, visiting Victoria from New Zealand, who convinced Samuel to take land in the Wairarapa. Carter was a committee member of the Small Farms Association set up in 1853 to promote the settlement of the Wairarapa, which resulted in the establishment of Greytown and Masterton in 1854.

Despite this tradition the first time Carter set foot in Australia, and Victoria, was in 1863 on his first return trip to England. As Carter noted the Wellington Provincial Government was actively recruiting in Victoria for immigrants, “through its own chartered vessels and special agents acting for them in Melbourne”, and it is more likely that Samuel took heed of the shipping notices that appeared in the Melbourne newspaper The Argus advertising the Government chartered immigrant ship the Seringapatam about to sail for New Zealand. Samuel took passage on the Seringapatam that departed Melbourne on 11 January 1856 and arrived at Port Nicholson, New Zealand on the 28th of the same month.

Whilst in Wellington, Samuel lodged at the Wellington Coffee House the premises of William Robinson Hastwell on Lambton Quay. Hastwell and his wife Elizabeth were soon to be prominent early settlers of Greytown, and lifelong friends of the Oates family.

In regard to Oates and Carter’s meeting, a newspaper advert appeared two days before the arrival of Samuel’s ship at Wellington advising employers of the range of skilled workers about to arrive in port and to place their names at the customs office. Carter had a contract to build a butcher shop in Wellington that needed the foundations to be dug, but had been unable to employ a gang of three or four men to do the work in six weeks. Samuel “had only landed a few days, and he was a big powerful fellow ready to tackle anything. He heard of the job, and went to Mr Carter and undertook to do the work in the time specified for a lump sum”. Not requiring any assistance, Samuel is said to have asked for a ‘double-sized’ wheelbarrow capable of taking a larger than normal load, and did the excavating single-handed and on time.

Upon completion of the task Samuel set off to take up his land in the Wairarapa, loading everything he owned into the wheelbarrow. The load included a 100lb bag of flour, tea, sugar, tools, and mail for Greytown. As he was about to leave, Carter asked Samuel to transport twelve gum tree seedlings, considered to be the first of their kind introduced into the Wairarapa, to plant on his land at Parkvale, near Carterton, for an additional four acres of land. Despite the assertion that Carter bought these seedlings on his trip to Australia, gum tree seeds and seedlings had been readily available in Wellington for a number of years, primarily to be used as quick growing shelter trees. With his companion Mr. Fairweather (not Richard Fairbrother the future first mayor of Carterton who arrived in Wellington with his family in March 1857 – a year after the event), Samuel Oates became the first man to bring a wheeled vehicle over the Remutaka mountain range, some three months before the track was opened to carts, “twenty miles of the distance being then unmade road, and six miles of it a difficult and dangerous steep mountain path, suitable only for pack bullocks”. Whilst Samuel and Fairweather were resting at the Rising Sun Hotel in Greytown, three of the seedlings were removed from the wheelbarrow.

Samuel continued on his way following the track from Papawai and crossing the Waiohine River at Waiheke arriving at the area now known as Parkvale at the end of a four or five day journey, a total of 62 miles. Samuel planted the gum tree seedlings as instructed and discovered that three were missing. Having purchased his first 60 acres of land, which he continued to expand over the years, Samuel set about creating the farm for his family that would become known as Peach Grove after the peach trees that were planted and said to have given unusually large fruit.

Jane Oates was more than reluctant about leaving Derbyshire as she was very close to her parents and in particular her sister Margaret, however the result of ill-feeling that had developed between her and her brother Joseph compelled her to join Samuel in New Zealand. Jane and the five children sailed from Liverpool on the Oliver Laing on 24 September 1856 and arrived at Wellington on 19 December. Samuel was unaware of Jane’s arrival but fortunately C. R. Carter was on hand, and Mr. and Mrs. Hastwell were able to arrange accommodation and a plum pudding for Christmas day. Samuel duly arrived to take his family to their new home, a totara slab hut which Jane had to endure for ten years before getting a splendid two storey house built. A further three children were born – John George (1858), Henry (1859) and Ellen (1861).

Like many of the early pioneers, Samuel needed to supplement his income whilst establishing his farm and so, in May 1857, he accepted a Government position as overseer for the road construction between the Waiohine river and Three Mile Bush (Carterton). By November 1858 this work was interfering with the farm, “I have tendered my resignation from the Government Service, I was first appointed Overseer next Foreman and lastly Inspector.” As he expanded his holdings, Samuel began to grow various crops and raising a variety livestock as well as building construction, fencing contracts, bush clearing, ploughing and the hiring out of horses and harness’.

Samuel became involved early on in the affairs of the fledgling settlement and in common with most of Carterton’s first settlers felt a deep gratitude to the efforts of C. R. Carter. He put his signature to a petition in June 1859 to have “Three Mile Bush be constituted a township and named “Carterton” in honour of our representative C. R. Carter”. In the 1860s Samuel along with his sons’ Samuel Jnr. and Joseph served in the Carterton Rifle Volunteers during the tense period of the war against the Kingite Maori of the Waikato and the Pai Marire outbreaks which at times threatened to spread to the Wairarapa. He was elected onto the Taratahi Road Board at the first election on 19 October 1867, and further community service came in the form of sitting on the committee of the Parkvale School which was established on land donated by C. R. Carter, and opened in January 1880. He served for five years from 1880 to 1884. Having performed the duty of churchwarden for the travelling Anglican ministers in the early days of settlement, Samuel contributed £5 toward the building fund for St. Mark’s Anglican Church which opened for its first service on 21 February 1875, and is still in use today, the oldest church in the Wellington Diocese.

The Oates’ family also had their share of heartbreak. In July 1867 their eldest daughter Hannah, who had married Andrew McKenzie in September 1866, died after the birth of her son. Ann Elizabeth, wife of Charles Jury, the son of John Milsome Jury and Te Aitu-o-te-rangi, also passed away in similar circumstances in October 1877. And after a prolonged period of illness, Jane Oates passed away in March 1883. Samuel Oates died on 29 August 1892, at Alfredton, Wairarapa, at the home of his son-in-law and youngest daughter, John and Ellen Boustead. He was buried next to Jane in the Oates’ Private Cemetery overlooking the old Peach Grove homestead.

As for the gum trees, those that Samuel planted on Carter’s property were subsequently cut down when Carter’s Line was widened, although their stumps can still be seen. The three missing trees eventually came to light in various locations around Greytown, when Carter was on one of his return trips from England between his holdings at Parkvale and Wellington. It would seem that the three trees were ‘acquired’ and planted by Thomas Kempton Snr., the leader of the first party of settlers to arrive in Greytown in March 1854, and his son Thomas Kempton Jnr., the proprietor of the Rising Sun, as a practical joke, Carter being well known to the Kempton’s through the Small Farm Association.

Of the three trees the largest on West Street, known as Te Rakau Nui, a Eucalyptus globulus (blue gum) had been planted on Samuel Moles’ land. Moles the unofficial Greytown postmaster to whom Samuel delivered the mail he carried in the wheelbarrow and his wife Jane also became close family friends. It was cut down on 6 February 1939 – the 15ft high stump finally removed in October 1958. Recorded as having a 32ft girth and 148ft height it was reputed to be the largest in New Zealand. The smallest tree at the south-east corner of East Street and Papawai Road, said to have planted over a grave hence its less than impressive size, was cut down in the early 1960s and its stump removed in 1979.

Meanwhile the St. Luke’s tree a Eucalyptus regnans and Greytown’s oldest inhabitant, continues to flourish with a girth of 29ft and a height of 130ft. On 1 August 1964 a plaque, donated by the Historic Places Trust, the Greytown Beautifying Society and the St. Luke’s vestry, was attached to the tree as part of Arbor Day celebrations, followed on 23 August with a family gathering to bless the tree conducted by the Rev. W. L. Low – surely the only time the New Zealand Anglican Church has ever blessed a ‘stolen’ tree! When in February 1968, in its 99th year the original St. Luke’s church was burnt down, the tree was examined by experts and pronounced to be healthy enough to survive another fifty years.

And the story of Samuel Oates and his epic journey is set to last longer with the passing down of the story through succeeding generations of descendants, and an ever-increasing number of versions having appeared with every passing decade in newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, and a short film.

Researched and written by Allan Farley

Further reading:
Dear Sister: Letters between a pioneer Wairarapa family and relatives in rural England, 1856-1883, Edited by Dr Robin Holmes and Allan J Farley, Wairarapa Archive, 2006