William Wintersgill

Born at Northallerton, Yorkshire, he enlisted in the 65th Regiment on 30th November, 1841, at the age of nineteen. After service in England and Ireland, the regiment was first sent out to Australia then ordered across to New Zealand to help quell the Hone Heke rebellion. Wintersgill was in the army for several more years until he bought his discharge at Wanganui in April, 1851.

After spending three years at Stoneyhurst Station in North Canterbury, Wintersgill returned to Yorkshire where he worked in and around the Hull. He then decided to emigrate to New Zealand and is thought to have arrived at Wellington on the ship “Wyvern” in March, 1856, and two months later began working as a farm servant for Amos Burr at Whirokino. While there he became acquainted with Burr’s widowed mother, Ann, who was thirty five years his senior. Married by the Rev. James Duncan on 15th August, 1857, in the presence of D. Garrick and George B. Nye, theirs was the first marriage to take place in the Foxton Schoolhouse which was built by George Nye and Garrick for the contract price of thirty pounds.

Following their marriage, William went to work as a farm labourer for Mr Hammond in the Rangitikei. After he had been there a year, Amos asked Wintersgill to return and work for him, but they couldn’t hit it off, so he went back to the Rangitikei and worked for Mr Scott. A year later, Amos again approached his stepfather and offered him a job, told him he hoped to purchase two or three hundred acres of land as soon as the Manawatu Block was opened up for sale. Because he owed Wintersgill money, he promised to purchase timber and have a house built for them but the whole scheme fell through when Burr went bankrupt.

Wintersgill went ahead and by March, 1860, he and Ann were living in a new home which had been built for the sum of eighty pounds. In one of his letters he says that his residence was on the east bank of the Manawatu River, known by the name of “Okorewa”. Built of timber, with two chimneys, and raised on six foot piles, Wintersgill had taken a risk in building where he did, as apart from continual flooding in the area, he was unable to obtain legal title to the land on which it stood.

Towards the end of 1861 he received a Land Order which entitled him to select sixty acres of rural land in the Province of Wellington, free of cost. All former army men who remained as settlers were entitled to a land grant. In December that year, he was fortunate to obtain constant work with Captain Francis Robinson, walking to work each day along a rough track which took him the three miles to Robinson’s cattle farm on the other side of town.

By 1863 Wintersgill had cleared the land around his home, sown it in grass, planted fruit trees and had four head of cattle grazing there. Nevertheless, he must have heaved a sigh of relief when, at an auction held in Foxton on 7th November, 1866, he purchased the thirty acres on which his house stood, for the sum of thirty four pounds. He was later reimbursed by the crown who purchased a further thirty acres at auction in 1867. Travelling south by road from Foxton, his property was situated at the end of the long straight, on the right hand side of the bend, which turns left and goes on towards the Whirokino Bridge. At one time it was known as Wintersgill’s Corner and I believe the land today, is called the same.

Ann Wintersgill passed away on 24th August, 1872, at the age of eighty five, and was interred in the Foxton Cemetery. Several years later, Wintersgill met Mary Ann Clayton nee Moate, at Whyte’s Hotel in Foxton. A widow with three young children, her husband William. had died on the ship “Berar” shortly before their arrival at Port Nicholson in January 1875. They were married by the Rev, James Duncan at Wintersgill’s residence on 2nd April, 1875, their witnesses being George Nye Jnr., his mother Eliza Nye of “Sunnyside”, and Mary Jane Atkins.

Elizabeth was born on 3rd May, 1878, followed by Mary Ann on 16th June, 1882. Shortly after her birth, the family watched anxiously as the flood waters rose within two inches of entering their home, already built six feet off the ground! Fortunately some Maoris arrived on the scene in their canoe and rowed the family of seven to safety. It was a fortnight before they could return home, only to find that their clothes, bedding and books all had to be dried out. A great granddaughter has in her possession a small Bible belonging to William Wintersgill which still has faint traces of mud between its pages.

Like many other settlers in those days, Wintersgill milked cows, had pigs and kept fowls. He had a large orchard with peach, apple, plum and cherry trees, as well as a pear and quince tree. There were gooseberry bushes, the berries being sold by the quart. Locals came each year to buy the fruit, some purchasing up to seventy pounds at a time. Around the house were three or four flowerbeds, with a lovely pink rose bush which grew so tall it was level with Julia Clayton’s bedroom window, and bloomed all the year round, with the exception of July.

Due to continual flooding, the children missed a lot of schooling and the damp swampy area finally took its toll, when Mary Ann Wintersgill contracted consumption and died at the age of forty two years, on 17th August, 1884, leaving a husband and five children to mourn her loss.

Buried alongside their mother are ten year old Frederick Clayton who died of fever, just two weeks after his mother, followed two years later by his sister Annie, who died in childbirth on 27th October 1886, and was buried on what would have been her seventeenth birthday.

Following her sister’s demise, Julia, herself a chronic asthmatic, took over the roll of housekeeper to her stepfather and half sisters Lizzie and Mary. The years that followed were hard ones for the old soldier-settler. Family sources say that he was heartbroken with the many floods that so frequently covered his land. For two years prior to his death on 17th May, 1891, he suffered with chronic quinsy. The “Manawatu Herald” carried these words: “An old settler, William Wintersgill died on Sunday morning on his farm near town”.

When his estate was wound up the remaining thirty acres of land and buildings were sold for one hundred and ten pounds to A.S. Easton, Wintersgill had previously sold twenty-nine acres to Easton in 1883. His stepdaughter Julia Clayton received a legacy of thirty pounds, the remainder being held in trust until his daughters Elizabeth and Mary came of age. Francis Robinson’s sons, James and Walter, together with George Nye, were named as trustees.

Julia left the district to make a life of her own, while Wintersgill’s daughters were made wards of the state, Elizabeth being placed with the Anderson family of Palmerston North where she worked very hard indeed. Mary was more fortunate, she went into the home of well known missionary, Abraham Honore, and after his death in 1894, his son Abraham, brought Mary Wintersgill up with his own family.

Julia Clayton married Herbert Cartledge in Auckland on 18th October, 1911, and had two sons Thomas and Claude. Elizabeth, my grandmother, married Alexander McKay at Levin in 1903. Their children were Ellen, Violet, Myrtle, Leslie and Mavis. Mary married Dave Meekin at the Honore residence near Palmerston North, their children were Hazel and Richard.

Although today, there are barely one hundred descendants, with none now resident in Foxton, we feel that our links with the town were forged for all time, when Mary and William Wintersgill made their home at Whirokino.

Compiled by great granddaughter Francis Stewart nee Corlett.

Sources: National Archives, army records, Wintersgill’s letters, family, certificates, land titles, Manawatu Herald

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