Medicine in the 19th Century

Sometimes in the course of your research you may find a cause of death listed on a death certificate and you have no idea what it means. Many names of illnesses have changed over the years. There's a good resource at Antiquus Morbus to help you interpret them. For example, Gastropathy, disease of the stomach; Dropsy, a collection of fluid or Tabes, a type of consumption or wasting of the body.
Louis Pasteur only discovered the "germ" in the 1850s. This was a decade and a half after the first settlers arrived on New Zealand's shores. It would have been some time before people truly understood the purpose of hand washing, sterilization, etc and adopted those practices fully.
It's fascinating that the area of Te Aro in Wellington was a marshy swamp before the 1856 earthquake raised the level of the land and allowed it to drain. Until then the area was a health hazard. A Maori Pa was located there and Maori and settlers co-existed (along with their horses, dogs and cattle.) Te Aro was notorious for it's high incidence of typhoid and dysentery and other communicable diseases because of its poor drainage and lack of clean drinking water. But it wasn't any initiative by local government that improved the lives of the residents, it was an "Act of God" which raised the land level, improving drainage and consequently the health of its occupants.
Maybe it's because I have had the flu for the last week, but I have been dwelling on how perilous life was in the early times for New Zealand settlers. Diseases that are unheard of now killed off people in thousands. Scarlet fever, typhoid, TB, and even measles were killers back then.
There was such a lot of illness in those days that it is surprising that so many survived. Perhaps they were tougher than we are today. It must have been incredibly heartbreaking for my great, great aunt Lilly Thompson's family as they watched their youngest and beloved sister die a horrible, painful death from appendicitis. It was 1892, and even in the civilised capital city of Wellington, nothing could be done to save the 20 year old's life.
I am thankful that I have grown up in the age of high tech surgery, effective pharmaceuticals and innoculations to protect children's health!

Filling in the Background

Like a painting, a written family history is far more interesting if the background is filled in, not just the subjects of the work. Stark details of births, occupations, names of ships, etc are interesting but may not keep the reader engaged for long.

You may be wondering why your German forbears made the journey to New Zealand or Australia in the 19th century. Why did they leave their culture, their language, their families and their lands behind to come to a strange place? As you write your story, you plumb the depths of your own knowledge, often finding gaps in your understanding. This is where research into, for example, social conditions in Germany at the time, the changes to people's situations caused by the industrial revolution, etc, becomes so valuable. You may not know for sure what particular circumstances caused your ancestors to make the momentous decision to leave, but you can guess at some of the possibilities and hypothesise some likely scenarios.

A site that you may find interesting if you have British forbears is Vision of Britain. You simply enter your village or area name to view historical descriptions and statistics, maps, geographical and social information about that specific locality. The information available is for the period 1801 to 2001. This is useful when writing about why the family members left Britain when they did.

Because my Maxwell family history is so closely related to the New Zealand kauri timber trade, it has become more and more obvious that I needed to learn more about that industry. What exactly is a pit sawyer? What is a timber jack used for? Where did bushmen come from, etc. While writing my story, I hope to make it much more readable by fleshing out the less riveting aspects with stories and facts about the harvesting and milling of kauri.

There are many resources available online and in libraries to use to fill in your backgrounds. Take the time to record the sources of your information and attribute them in your writing. Then your work will be complete - subject and background nicely filled in!

Serendipitous Discoveries

Sometimes as we are exploring New Zealand I come across interesting information when I am not expecting to. An example of one of these happy discoveries is when we visited Clendon House in Russell, the home of Captain James Reddy Clendon and his family in the late 1800s. I had a vague idea that there was some connection between the Clendons and the Maxwells. Leafing through Clendon family photographs, copied from the family album, I was excited to discover members of my own family. James Clendon's son was married to my great grandfather's half sister Katie Quigley. In the album were several photographs of Katie's nieces and nephews - photographs of relatives I had never previously seen images of!

Agnes Blair nee Maxwell

Another example of this is when we recently visited Great Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf. This was a holiday which we thoroughly enjoyed as the island has some wonderful walks and a very special quality which leaves you feeling re-energised and ready to go back to busy everyday life. While we waited for our plane on our last day, we explored the local museum. I looked at the wonderful array of artifacts, tools, models and photographs, all the while aware of a nagging feeling that some of the names were familiar and maybe there were some family connections here. Because I had no knowledge of any family at "The Barrier" I had left all of my notes behind. It was only a week or so later that I discovered that one of the first Maxwell's daughters, Agnes, had married a Blair, and that they had indeed lived for many years at Great Barrier Island, only metres as it happens, from where we were staying at Tryphena. Agnes was my great grandfather John's sister.

The moral of the story is to go prepared, research the area you are visiting beforehand just in case so that you can take advantage of your time there. So I guess I'll have to return to The Barrier one day - ah well, I think I can cope with that!

Finding Nuggets

It feels like a wonderful adventure when you are researching family history as you often begin with so little. Gradually the search process enriches those few details until you have a much fuller and more interesting picture.

In New Zealand we are all descendants of immigrants, one way or another. My Maxwell ancestors came to New Zealand on the first New Zealand Company ship to land at Wellington in 1840, the Aurora. James and Elizabeth were from Ayrshire originally, we believe. After a short time the couple and their two young daughters relocated to Auckland. Their story and that of their family is coming to life on the pages I am now writing for their descendants.

At the moment, I am concentrating on their oldest daughter Mary, about whom I knew very little until recently. I have discovered that Mary's line died out quickly and I knew that TB responsible for at least one death in the family. I assumed from that that the family was poor, but have discovered that Mary married a timber merchant and that the family business was very successful. Most of this information was gleaned from the Papers Past site. This is part of the National Library and a great source of early New Zealand information. Newspapers currently available for Auckland are Daily Southern Cross (1843-1876,) New Zealander (1845-1852,) and Observer (1880-1909.)

I found newspaper ads for the timber firm of Schapp and Ansenne, as well as stories of fires at their mills, and even reports of how many men they employed plus how much timber they produced. Far from being a poor family struggling with disease in urban late 19th century Auckland, this family was prospering from the profits of timber from Coromandel, sold in Auckland and used to build many of Auckland's early buildings.

You'll get a great thrill when you discover more about your ancestors too. I often liken it to mining gold - each nugget turned up can completely change your viewpoint and open up new pathways to search, hopefully leading to even more gold!