Street Stories 7: Children's names in Morningside

Images are details from DP 4163 and DP 4806, LINZ records.

It never pays, in local history, to just assume and not to check.

Dick Scott in the classic local history In Old Mt Albert (1961, 1983 and reprinted 2006) wrote this about one of Morningside’s early landowners:

“There was Elihu Shaw, another Hokianga pioneer who had been driven out by Heke’s war in the north. He bought 16½ acres at Cabbage Tree Swamp in the late ‘forties and then acquired larger areas as he prospered. Shaw Street is named after him and Collin and Ethel Streets and Leslie and Kenneth Avenues after his children.”

John Davenport in another classic, Street Names of Auckland (1990) went ahead and used Scott’s paragraph in his book. The Auckland City Library’s very good “Auckland City Street Names” database has:

Collins Street: (Named after Collin Shaw, son of subdivider Elihu Shaw.)
Ethel Street: (Named after Ethel Shaw, daughter of subdivider Elihu Shaw.)
Kenneth Avenue: (Named after Kenneth, a son of the subdivider Elihu Shaw.)
Leslie Avenue: (Named after Leslie, a child of the subdivider Elihu Shaw.)
Shaw Street: (Named after the subdivider, Elihu Shaw.)

and

McDonald Street: (Named after a local early settler family.)

These are streets in Morningside, between Morningside Drive (formerly Argyle Street) and Sandringham Road (formerly Kingsland, then Edendale Road).

There’s just one slight problem with Scott’s book, Davenport's book, and the library database: Elihu Shaw didn’t subdivide Allotment 153 where McDonald, Shaw, Collins and Ethel Streets were dedicated, nor did he subdivide Allotment 154, where Kenneth and Leslie Avenues were dedicated. In fact, he never owned Allotment 154 in his lifetime, and Allotment 153 was subdivided as “Shawville” well after his death.

I’ll go more into Elihu Shaw’s story in another post when I can, but … here’s the gen. He died in 1895, and the executor of his estate was his son-in-law Alexander McDonald. It was McDonald who subdivided Shaw’s farm at Morningside (he himself was a market gardener as was his father-in-law in Shaw’s latter years). Another son-in-law was Mr. Collins. The McDonald, Shaw and Collins families are each memorialised in “Shawville” streetnames (the subdivision taking place in 1910, 15 years after Elihu Shaw’s death.) It’s not certain who Ethel was, but I reckon she was either a McDonald or a Collins.

As for Kenneth & Leslie Avenues, these streets are on a farm formerly owned by James Gribble until his death c.1886. In 1891, his son-in-law, S. L. Hirst, had the title, and in 1906, 20 years after Gribble’s death, the allotment was subdivided and the roads dedicated. Who were Kenneth and Leslie? Probably either from the Gribbles or the Hirsts. Hopefully, more info will come to light.

For the record, the names of Elihu Shaw’s children were: John, Silas, Emily, William, Mary, Martha, Elizabeth and Reuben. Nary a sign of an Ethel, a Kenneth or a Leslie. To Scott’s credit, however, he may not have thought to check the subdivision plans at the time, and wouldn’t have had ready access as we have today to the Shaw family history. His book, though, is still a classic.

Sources:
The Gardener and the Squire’s Daughter, Gwen P. Howe, 1988
Deeds Indexes for Allotment 153 and 154, Section 10, Suburbs of Auckland, LINZ.

An update -- and likely answer as to who Kenneth and Leslie were -- here.