Wairarapa 1876-1900

Landfall Wellington 1876

The “Times” on the 25th March 1876 reported that it was from aboard the “Manawatu” that Carl and Maria, with Mary, finally stepped on to New Zealand soil,
"The P.S. Manawatu, Captain Harvey, left Wanganui at 8.45p.m. of the 23rd, crossed the bar at 9.30, and arrived alongside the wharf at 10.20a.m. yesterday. Experienced fresh N.W. winds to arrival. Had a very heavy sea in crossing the bar. Passed a barque and schooner beating through the Strait. After landing passengers and discharging cargo, she proceeded to the German ship Gutenburg, and brought all the immigrants with luggage to the wharf...."

The immigration commissioners reported upon the ship’s arrival,
"On inspecting the immigrants we found that generally they were a healthy and robust body of people with the exception of the Italians many of whom were undersized and in our opinion unfitted for the laborious work required of immigrants introduced to this Colony."

After a voyage lasting 99 days aboard the “Gutenberg” Carl, Maria and Mary spent an unknown period of time in Wellington, presumably in immigration barracks, before they made their way over the Rimutakas by bullock wagon to Featherston.

Featherston 1876-1880

It is known that Carl & Maria were living in Featherston when Charles William was born during December, 1876 nearly nine months after their arrival. Information about his birth was supplied to the registrar at Featherston by a settler named James G. Cox. It is understood that Carl worked on the construction of the railway over the Rimutakas from Wellington into the Wairarapa. This may have involved him in some of the tunnelling work associated with the Mangaroa-Featherston section of the line. Having worked in coal mines, such work would not have been foreign to him. Writing about this section of the line, Bagnall in "Wairarapa: an Historical Excursion" noted,

The tunnel was not pierced until March 1877 the two faces being a mere seven inches out at the junction .... unskilled labourers were paid 9s. to 10s. per day of eight hours.

The line to Featherston, including the Rimutaka Incline, was opened in August 1878 - about two years after the family arrived there. Railway construction into the Wairarapa continued, Carl working on it to support his growing family, and to save for the purchase of land. Bagnall continues,The railway’s uncoiling over the plain henceforward was comparatively rapid. The Masterton opening was in November 1880, the Woodside to Greytown climax having been quietly reached the preceeding May.

Carl and Maria’s third child, Theresia Veronika, was born in October, 1878 at Kaiwaiwai (near Featherston). Anna was born also at Featherston nearly two years later in August, 1880. Both their birth certificates record Carl as a labourer during this period. Around the time of Anna’s birth, Carl moved north to begin clearing land he had purchased, and to build a house before the family followed after him.

Mangaroa Tunnel 253m long on the Rimutaka Line built 1875-1877 during the period Carl Alve began work on the Rimutaka railway line construction.

Alfredton, Eketahuna 1880-1896

Application to Purchase Land in the Wairararapa
Signed by Hermann Schormann and Carl Alve - April 1880

Alfredton - a small settlement 18 km east of Eketāhuna on State Highway 52. Alfredton was settled in the early 1870s, but due to poor roading failed to prosper. Its Māori name is Moroa. D.M. Parsonson of Alfredton Women's Institute wrote in 'Tales of Pioneering Women,'

The first white men to penetrate the Alfredton district were Pat Brannigan and John Smith, who arrived there in 1869 and were followed within a year or two by George Richardson, H. Faulkner, George, William and John Cross, J. Revell, G. Cooper, W. Allpass, W. J. Saunders, Alfred and Henry Burling, and G. Alfred. It is from Mr Alfred that the town takes its name, and not, and is generally supposed, from Prince Alfred.

Early in 1880 Carl jointly purchased 117 acres of land with Hermann Heinerich Schormann, whom he had accompanied aboard the Gutenberg while emigrating to New Zealand - see above. This land was in Alfredton Road near Eketahuna in the midst of the “German settlement”. A footnote (p.16) in Irene Adcock's, “A Goodly Heritage” indicates that a number of German families settled in this area about 1880. They took up land on the line of what is now the Alfredton Road. These included Messers Fritz Hanker, Rhode, Schormann, Alve and von Reden. In addition to the Bayliss brothers, another settler in the same area was the redoubtable Scot, Alexander Anderson. Both Frederick von Reden and Alexander Anderson would become Justices of the Peace later in the 1880’s and be prominent in local government.

The land settled by Carl Alve and Heinerich Schormann was in the midst of an area settled predominantly by Scandanavians. It was officially described as being in the Mangaone District Section No. 45 in Block X. The deposit made with the application on 29th April, 1880 was £11-15-6. Payments on the land are recorded until 9th January, 1891 - ten years being the normal term during which deferred payments were made. It seems that Carl and Hermann Schormann may have taken separate titles to the land soon after they were allotted it, dividing it in half. “A Return of the Freeholders of New Zealand, 1882” has the following entry,

"Alve, Charles, Settler, Mangaone, owning 58 acres of land valued at 140 pounds in Wairarapa West County."

It is not known when the family joined Carl in Alfredton Road, but they were there when when Carolena was born in August 1882. As well as clearing and working his newly acquired land, Carl was also employed in clearing the Forty Mile Bush which ran north into the Southern Hawkes Bay. The settlers in this area subsisted on earnings from contract bush-felling, which often took them far from their homes. A glimpse of the difficult situation faced by these settlers is given in this extract (p.271) from, “Waiarapa: an Historical Excursion,"

Something of the problems of the deferred payment settlers in the Mangaone on the still unfinished road to Alfredton comes through to us in a petition signed by Frederick Von Reden and eleven others in July 1882. The men who had bought their land three years earlier were struggling to keep their engagements with the Government. The heavily bushed country which they had accepted at two pounds per acre was taking ‘a great amount of labour and expense before we can make it remunerative’. They were finding it almost impossible to pay this high price for unimproved sections. ‘Most of us had saved a little money in previous years before we took the land and this has helped us so far in keeping up payment.’ This had now gone and they were at a loss to find the cash to keep up future payments. A man with a hundred acre section had to pay 20 pound a year rent and effect improvements to the value of 10%. Their only opportunity for employment they claimed was 30 miles or more away from home and even then ‘after he has worked for a month and paid for his own and his family’s provisions there is very little left to enable him to work his own land and meet his ... payment’.

Carl was most likely a signatory to the above-mentioned petition.

However, despite such difficulties, the family continued to arrive at regular intervals at Eketahuna:
Elizabeth                 December 1884
Alfred Ernest          December 1887
Henry Wilhelm October 1889
Edward Otto January 1891
Rosa Ellen              January 1893
Emma Ida May 1896

The circumstances of Alfred’s birth further indicate that these were pioneering days. He was born when no one was present to assist Maria in childbirth. The family arrived home to discover his birth and Maria resting after having cleaned him and put him into his crib. It is also noted that Edward was born on his father, Carl’s, 42nd birthday, and that Rosa was born on new year’s day in 1893. Emma was born prematurely and lived only eight hours. She was buried in the Alfredton Road, Eketahuna cemetery but no records are available recording her burial. This cemetery has now been cleared.

On the 10th March, 1886 Carl wrote to the Honourable T.A. Buckley, Colonial Secretary, asking to be naturalised. He indicated that he had been in N.Z. ten years, five of which had been in Eastern Wairarapa. He signed himself, “Charles Alve”. A local J.P., Alexander Anderson (a neighbour mentioned above) witnessed and probably wrote his letter. He subsequently signed an Oath of Allegiance on 5th May, 1886 and was naturalised on the 18th May. It is assumed that New Zealand citizenship was automatically conferred on Maria and Mary also.

An interesting anecdote relating to the Alve’s days in Eketahuna is provided by Colin Alve’s wife Margaret (nee Gillanders). In a letter to the author written in 1978 she noted,

"It is a coincidence that my mother’s parents lived in Eketahuna at the same time as your great grandparents. As a little girl, my mother was sent to get eggs from the Alve’s. Your great grandmother kept geese and my mother was terrified of the big gander which would hiss at her. Your great grannie would shoo it away in German. The Alve's and the Haycock's (mum) both shifted to the Manawatu (in 1902) and lost touch!"

“A Goodly Heritage”, Irene Adcock’s history of Eketahuna and Districts gives us some insight into the religious history of Eketahuna. The Alve’s were Catholics and would have been involved in the beginnings of organised religion in Eketahuna. Adcock (p.104) comments,
"In the early nineties, by which time a fair sprinkling of British stock had joined the Scandanavians - and the half dozen German families in Alfredton Road - clergymen from several denominations were visiting the Eketahuna area to administer to the need of their parishioners.... According to some reports the first services of the Roman Catholic Church were held in the Eketahuna schoolhouse. Father Vincent McGlone in his history of the Catholic Church in the Wairarapa district records that, "At Eketahuna Mass was said in the beginning at Mr Kelliher’s Club Hotel. He was an Irishman and always welcomed the priest’; the priest at the time being Father John McKenna of Masterton. With his brother, Father Thomas McKenna, the curate of Masterton, this priest devoted much of his time to the Bush district."

Anecdotes have been passed on about Carl Alve’s uneasy relationship with the Catholic Church and its Priests. One suggests that he was at one time castigated from the pulpit for giving only 10 shillings to the Church, which was less than generous. On another occasion it is suggested that the Priest asked for, and took, a cooked leg of mutton when there was no money for his collection. Maria is reported as commenting on how different the Church in New Zealand was from what she had experienced in Germany. In the Wairarapa during their years there, the cost of extending the Church into new communities was no doubt considerable and consequent appeals to the faithful would have seemed heavy. Compared with Germany where it had been long and well established, the pioneer Church in New Zealand inevitably would have appeared and felt very different. Notwithstanding these tensions, the services of the Catholic Church and its Priests were called on by the family, at least until Carl’s death in 1910, when he was buried in the Catholic section of the Palmerston North Cemetery.

Alfredton School Class about 1896
Back Row L-R: Henry Alve (4th) and Alred Alve (6th)
This is possibly the oldest photo of any of the family still in existence.

South Featherston 1896-1900

The move from Eketahuna back to the Featherston area was made in difficult circumstances. As noted above, the Alfredton Road land was hardly an economic unit, especially to support a large family. Although it seems the land was paid for early in the 1890’s, prices for dairy produce at this time were not good, and a number of North Wairarapa settlers were selling out. Some went full time bush-felling. Others, notably a number from Mauriceville, moved south to share-milk for the Donald’s of Featherston, who had much good land. Carl joined this latter group during the winter of 1896, shortly after Emma was born prematurely and died.Sadly, shortly after the family moved to Donald's Rosa died, having been ill with diphtheria for six days. Her grave remains in the Catholic section of the cemetery near Featherston with the inscription,

R.I.P.In loving memory of
Rosa Alve
Died August 21 1896
Aged 3 years 3 months
ALVE

There was a stone cross on top of the tombstone that was broken off and lying on the ground in January 1991 when the author sighted it with Tis Emmens.

James Donald (1829-1899) who employed Carl sharemilking, had his own butter factory named “Tarureka”, which was established in 1882. Bagnall’s "Wairarapa: an Historical Excursion" notes,

By 1889 there were a total of four “dairies” each milking 125 cows, mostly Red Danes, supplying it. Each dairy had its own brake capable of carrying forty cans of milk to the factory. The dairies were all run by sharemilkers who were responsible for the feeding out of hay, milking of the cows and delivering the milk to the factory. Here the milk was weighed and a tally kept in order to pay the sharemilkers their agreed share on the 15th of every month. Tarureka was equipped at first with a 90 gallon capacity separator, but by 1901 two 400 gallon separators were processing the milk from the 600 cows. Five hands were employed in the factory while on the farms some fifty persons were employed in all.

Another burden that faced the family after their move back to Featherston was Theresia’s encounter with hydatids. About 1896 she spent several months in Wellington hospital following surgery to her lungs and liver. For quite a time she was in a life -threatening situation and to her doctors’ amazement she pulled through, although requiring a return to hospital later to deal with infection. Despite this health problem which affected her for many years after, she pitched in with the milking at South Featherston along with her brothers and sisters.

The second to last of Carl’s and Maria’s children, Clara, was born during July 1897, a year after their move back to Featherston.

At the end of the following year, at the Alve residence Featherston, “Annie Mary Alve” married George William Henry Busch on the 27th December 1898. The photograph below is thought to show all family members who were living at the time of the wedding.

Just before Carl & Maria left to live in the Manawatu with most of their family, Mary and George presented them with the first of their thirty six grandchildren - William John Busch. He was born in Featherston on 23rd July 1900.

With the turn of the century and their move to Rangitane, Manawatu Carl and Maria had been in New Zealand - Wairarapa settlers - for 24 years. Their family had grown from the one child, Mary, with whom they had arrived in New Zealand to eleven children plus two deceased, and one grandchild. In financial terms they had made modest headway, enough to pay a deposit on another area of virgin, bush-clad land on the other side of the Tararua Ranges. Life had been very difficult, especially during the sixteen years in Alfredton Road near Eketahuna. If the burden of debt and little income pervaded their years in the Wairarapa; the problem of flooding in the Manawatu would now come to dominate their lives. Probably without them knowing it, the Manawatu River on whose banks Carl and Maria and family would settle had its headwaters in the Mangaone River. This river had drained the land across the ranges where they had first farmed near Eketahuna!

This next chapter of their lives in New Zealand would begin as their Eketahuna one had; clearing land of its primeval bush covering.

Dr Chase's Receipt Book held by Colin Alve
(Maria's equivalent to the Family Bible)

Click images to enlarge