An ordinary family: the Crees in Avondale and Waterview

 

One of the overdue projects I’m working on during this continuing pandemic is an index of all the issues of the Avondale Historical Journal, with the aim to put it online at the Society’s website. Going through Issue 60 from 2011, I came across a photo sent in by the late Rich Afford of children that performed in a pantomime at St Judes of “Princess Chrysanthemum” in December 1932. Above is a detail from his photo, with this bit of Rich’s letter catching my eye 11 years later:

“Centre of the three pixies: Peter Crees (killed in the war).”

This had me wondering, first, what happened to Peter Crees?

According to aviation historian Errol W Martyn in For Your Tomorrow, Peter William Crees was born in Swindon, Wiltshire in England 14 June 1923. He was still a baby when first his father William Hugh Crees arrived in New Zealand in October 1923, then Winifred Caroline with Peter and his older (three years old) sister Leila Doris in mid 1924. William Crees who had been a farmer back in England secured a position as a medical attendant at the Auckland Mental Hospital in Pt Chevalier. The family lived initially in Fir Street, Waterview, then at 153 Blockhouse Bay Road by the early 1930s.

Peter went on to study at Seddon Memorial Tech in the city as a motor mechanic, and became an apprentice at T S Sampson’s on Richardson Road in Mt Albert. He joined the Army in 1940, then switched to the RNZAF at Levin in January 1943 as an Aircrafthand, becoming a Flight Mechanic on 5 July 1943. He was sent to the Pacific theatre of the war in February 1944. Based at Pallikulo on the island of Espirito Santo, Vanuatu, Crees was on board a PV-1 Ventura aircraft returning from Vila in the afternoon of 8 August 1944. He and three others in the crew had just delivered spare parts for a grounded Corsair. They failed to arrive back at base, and a search over the next two days proved fruitless. Six weeks later, some information came through from locals on Malekula Island that they had seen the plane. The wreckage was found on the island, having crashed on a hill in poor visibility, exploding on impact. All four were buried on the island, and were commemorated on the Bourail Memorial in New Caledonia.

According to Errol Martyn:

“Investigators considered that unserviceable radar equipment was a contributory factor, and that an erratically behaving artificial horizon may have been a further contributory cause.”

At this point in the research, I thought I would simply be writing a brief piece just about Peter Crees, the young pixie in Rich Afford’s photo, and the story behind Rich’s comment about Peter’s death in the war. I looked into what happened to Peter’s parents, and something unusual cropped up.

William Hugh Crees died aged 62 in 1953. He was cremated at Waikumete Cemetery, but his cremains were laid to rest at Purewa Cemetery in Meadowbank. Nothing really unusual there.

His widow Winifred Caroline Crees died in May 1968, aged 78. I found her listed both by the NZ Society of Genealogists in their transcription from burial records, as well as the more modern online Auckland Council database for burials, at Waikumete Cemetery. Not just cremated at Waikumete and then her cremains laid to rest, perhaps, beside her husband at Purewa. Oh, no. Both the NZSG and Auckland Council have her sharing a plot with a stranger, a Mr Lionel Francis Henderson, who died a day later than Winifred, on 8 May.

Not what you may be thinking, either — for it turns out that Winifred’s remains are listed in her own plot … at Avondale’s George Maxwell Memorial Cemetery on Rosebank Road, Avondale.

John Russell from St Judes Church who maintains an excellent website devoted to the cemetery at Avondale, with detailed lists of burials including photos etc has confirmed that Winifred Crees’ final resting place is indeed here in Avondale. The Waikumete Cemetery entry could have come about, perhaps, because of the funeral director at the time booking in a plot at Waikumete, only to have someone change their mind and take up a plot at Avondale instead.

Whatever the reason, Mrs Crees is now recorded in two cemeteries, several miles apart, and that will probably remain the case to confound future family historians who are related to her. 

John Watson’s trees: the Boy Who Ran

At 63 Riversdale Road in Avondale, there stands a protected, heritage scheduled Norfolk Pine. About 80 metres away in Riversdale Reserve stands another Norfolk Pine that isn’t heritage scheduled. Both, though, appear to be linked to a single story. One man owned the land on which both trees now stand, from 1907 through to 1919, when the part now included in Riversdale Reserve was sold to another owner. It is possible that both trees are over 100 years old. The one at 63 Riversdale Road, at least, is definitely connected with the man I’m about to talk about, seeing as he died in 1929, and his family finally relinquished the rest of his property in the late 1940s.

That man was John Watson, born 4 August 1845 at Llanbryd (now Llanbryde) near Elgin in Morayshire, Scotland. He was the eldest son of John Watson and Margaret née Proctor. In 1859, John Watson senior left his family in Scotland to take up a job as farm manager for an Auckland merchant named James Burtt, on Burtt’s farm near Paerātā (now 77 Burtt Road), north-east of Pukekohe. Margaret and the rest of the family arrived aboard the Black Eagle in November 1861, and settled with him on Burtt’s farm.

The early 1860s was a traumatic time for the area around Pukekohe, with the simmering forces boiling over to all-out war in the Waikato, following on from the Taranaki conflict in 1860. The Watson family, and the name Burtt’s Farm, are now part of New Zealand Land Wars history. One of the iwi with mana whenua at Paerātā are the Ngāti Tamaoho, whose pā tauā, Te Māunu a Tūmatauenga, stood atop a high ridge of ground. It had been a place of many battles over centuries. The site would see another battle in September 1863, due to the fact that when the Crown had taken over the land in the 1850s, selling it to local farmers and city speculators, the ridge and the pā site became part of Burtt’s farm, and there he had a house built, up on that same ridge, for his manager, John Watson and Watson’s family. The ridge became known to settlers as Burtt’s Bluff.

What exactly triggered the attack on the farmhouse on 14 September 1863 is still not absolutely clear. Most of the information about that day, during which a church at Pukekohe East was also attacked and besieged, with a number of deaths on both sides, comes of course from the narrative of surviving settlers and later commemorations in the media. According to a report prepared by Ngāti Tamaoho themselves from February 2021, their papakāinga and maara kai had been looted and destroyed back in July 1863 by “colonial militia from Pukekohe, Patumāhoe, Mauku, Paerātā and the surrounding lands” so the attack on Burtt’s Farm was in response to that action. Another report, by Te Tupu Ngātahi claims that “the battle began after the farm manager Mr Watson was spotted erecting fences on Ngāti Tamaoho land.”

On the morning of the attack, around 10 am (according to the account by Land Wars historian James Cowan, published early 1920s), Mrs Watson was lying ill in her bed in the house, while her husband John was out fencing with another son Robert, and another farm worker named Hugh McLean was ploughing a field toward the west with eldest Watson lad John, aged 18. The attack began with shots fired at John Watson senior and 14 year old Robert at the fence line, mortally wounding the latter. The Maori attacking that day surrounded the farmhouse with a dozen men, cutting it off from both John Watson senior’s party, and Hugh McLean with the younger John Watson. McLean and Watson apparently faced 10 attackers, McLean firing on them.

Young John Watson had left his own rifle at home that day, so taking off his work boots, he left McLean and ran barefoot to get help, finding his brother William working elsewhere on the farm. Together, they reached Drury and sounded the alarm, an armed force quickly setting out from that settlement.

Meanwhile, those Maori who were besieging the farmhouse fired into the doors and windows, Mrs Watson diving under her bed. One of her two daughters there with her, Mary Ann, got away, and freed the family’s dog to rush at the attackers (the dog was killed). Mary then ran to one of the neighbours, but they’d already heard the shots, and were coming with their employees to the rescue, all armed. The attackers were driven off.

The Watson family and their workers were escorted into Drury, where Robert died later in a military hospital. McLean’s body was found later in a swamp. He’d been shot through the heart and his rifle taken. Later, once the war had ended, the Watson family returned to the farm, but in 1874 Burtt sold the property. This is probably when John Watson senior and his wife Margaret moved to Buckland further south, where Margaret died in 1878, and where he died in 1895. James Burtt, the man who probably originally brought the Watsons to the country, died in 1908.

Meanwhile John Watson the younger married Irish-born Bridget Tobin in 1868. While John had been baptised in a Scottish Presbyterian church, from that point on his own family were Catholic. He appears to have settled in Puni, to the south-east of Pukekohe, and lived there through to 1907. One son, William, died in 1891 aged only seven. Another, his eldest son Alexander aged 25, met with a tragic accident in 1894 while driving a wagon along the Piako Road at Hamilton. Something frightened his horse – some reports say it was the sight of a Maori sitting beside the road – and it bolted. Alexander fell, and one of the wheels went over him. He died a few hours later in hospital. Another son, named John, died aged 35 at Puni in 1905.

John Watson bought the Riversdale Road property from the estate of George Willey by April 1907, but the deal would have been finalised months earlier, as he’d sold up his farm goods at Puni in February that year. He would be known to his last days, off and on in the press when someone brought up the siege at Burtt’s Farm, as the boy who ran to get the troops.

In July 1919, he transferred half, seven and a half acres, to Harry McLeod, and that part went to Auckland City Council in 1990 as part of Riversdale Reserve, after being designated in 1977. When Watson died, the remaining seven and a half acres at 63 Riversdale Road was left to his two unmarried daughters, Margaret and Annie Watson. When Margaret, who lived there in the 1930s and 1940s died in October 1946, Annie inherited her sister’s share and in 1949 transferred the land to the Auckland Catholic Diocese. Half of that was taken for state housing in 1950, and the remainder was subdivided by the church authorities in the 1960s.

So, two trees on an Avondale street, one scheduled, and the other not. There’s probably no way of knowing how old they really are, but I do think that if one is scheduled, then the other on the Auckland Council reserve, even more of a streetscape landmark in the neighbourhood, should be protected as well. They are two remaining links we have with both the market gardening and orchardist heritage of Rosebank Peninsula – and with those events in that tragic war that took place on our island nearly 160 years ago.

Cecil Herdson, and his gold-toothed dog

From around 1926 to late 1935, Cecil Hastings Herdson and his dental practice was part of the developing suburb of Avondale. He used the rooms above Arthur Maxwell’s pharmacy next to the police station on Great North Road, taking over from Robert Allely, Avondale chemist-dentist from the 1910s. A breeder of hunting dogs, his name lived on in many of the minds of those who had been in Avondale then as not only the local dentist, but the man who gave his dog golden teeth.

According to the story, related to me by a number of people back in 2001, Herdson’s hunting dog lost its teeth in an accident, so Herdson fashioned and fitted another set of teeth for the dog, made from gold. The story went further that when the dog did eventually pass on, Herdson buried the animal secretly, in case anyone came after the gold in his pet’s mouth.

Did it happen? I doubt we’ll ever know for sure either way. Dentists were, indeed, giving dogs gold crowns over their teeth at the time, filling cavities in dogs’ teeth with gold, and fashioning gold dental bridges for beloved canines. This seemed to have been a faddish trend from the early 1900s to the 1930s, in Britain, Germany and America, and the newspapers reported on it with fascination. If anyone ever digs up a dog’s skull in Avondale or Mt Albert with that certain glint attached — that might be Herdson’s beloved animal.

So, who was Cecil Hastings Herdson?

He was born the youngest of three children at Waiuku on 1 August 1888, to stockman Montague James Dayrell Herdson and Elizabeth Doncaster Herdson, née Oldham. Montague Herdson died at the age of 47 in 1909, and lies buried at Waikumete Cemetery. Elizabeth married again, this time to William Edward Maugham, on 22 December 1909, nearly a month after her first husband’s burial. Two years later, 23-year-old Cecil Herdson was working as a dental assistant in Waihi, then took up working for dentist A E O’Meara in Hastings, just before the outbreak of the First World War.

Herdson enlisted almost immediately, on 11 August 1914 with the B section of the 8th Mounted Field Ambulance, Hastings. This was the first unit to mobilise from the Hawke’s Bay region. Herdson served with the unit at Gallipoli in 1915, and was promoted to Lance-Corporal in August that year. By December, he was promoted again, to Sergeant, and then in February 1916 transferred to the NZ Dental Corps. He worked in Egypt until sent to France at the end of 1916. Another promotion, to Staff-Sergeant, came in 1918. He served throughout the rest of the war, and was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in 1919, just before he returned to New Zealand towards the end of that year.

It appears that Herdson stayed as a lodger with Mrs Gertrude Duvall at 13 Highbury Street from around 1921 until 1927, when Arthur Maxwell took up the lodging in his place (and remained a friend of Mrs Duvall, living there through to her death in 1967). Herdson had two suburban dental practices at one point. As well as his Avondale one, he had another in the back of Ozich’s block of shops, built 1925 on what is now Railside Avenue. A fire in 1927 destroyed the block.

He was involved in a motor accident in Pt Chevalier one night in 1928, through no real fault of his own, when a motorcyclist collided with the back of his car on a darkened Pt Chevalier road. The motorcyclist later died in hospital, but Herdson, who was driving with friends, was not held responsible.

Herdson was breeding Gordon Setter puppies at Avondale by 1926, and Irish Setters by 1931. His love of the dogs, hunting and fishing were obviously well-known in Avondale, and form part of the lore that led to the story of his golden-toothed dog. One particular dog, an Irish Setter named Lorna Doone from which he bred puppies until around 1934, seemed to be a favourite.

The 1930s, despite the Great Depression, seemed to be the decade when Cecil Herdson would do very well in both his life and his career. He got married in 1931, bought investment property in Avondale and elsewhere, his dogs were a success, and his practice profitable. In December 1935, he set himself up with an office in the prestigious Dilworth Building in the city.

Then, in 1937, Cecil Herdson went blind. His dental practice ceased. I don’t know why he went blind, that hasn’t been disclosed publically. It may have had something to do with his war service, but there isn’t anything on the surviving file that refers to an incident or illness that would have clearly led to it. The Defence Department did refer to his death in 1963 as being war-related — but as his death registration shows he suffered from arthrosclerosis lasting years, even that isn’t very clear. But, with his life so drastically altered, Herdson still managed to make the most of things.

This from the Auckland Star, 11 November 1944.

“To men newly-blinded in this war it must surely be encouraging to hear words such as these from a man who lost his sight when approaching middle life: "Blindness doesn't make a lot of difference. One can still lead one's ordinary social life, keep up many of one's old interests, and take up new ones also."

“The speaker was Mr Cecil H Herdson, of Great South Road, who was well known as a dentist in Auckland before he went blind seven years ago. The way in which he has adapted himself to his new world proves the truth of his own courageous words. Moreover, the fact that he has, in the last year, taken up a new hobby—that of making toys—should be an inspiration to younger men compelled through blindness to devote themselves to new careers. “Before he lost his sight Mr Herdson was quite competent at doing odd carpentering jobs about the house, but he had never made children's toys. Now he can display an attractive selection of doll's prams, small wheelbarrows (though one was large enough for a grown person to use with ease), scooters, tip-trucks, rocking horses and little carts, gaily painted in red, green, cream and yellow. “About a year ago he procured some iron and repaired a scooter and a pram. The idea came to him to try his hand at making wooden and iron toys, and four or five months ago he set up a workshop at his home. One of his first efforts was a wheelbarrow, a small, solid affair. Pointing out that it had faults, he said to-day that wheelbarrows were very hard for anyone to make.

“All his toys are solidly constructed with thorough detail that makes one marvel at the seeing fingers that guided the cutting machine. His tools include a drill and sanding machine. Particularly attractive (and for Mr Herdson one of the most difficult to make) is a doll's pram in cream painted wood, with rubber wheels, smooth chromium handlebars and pink lining.

“In his collection are several scooters in red and green-painted iron, and a splendid tip-truck with a jack for changing the wheels, a winder to make a satisfying clanking noise, and bushed wheels with iron axles. The rocking horses are of wood, unpainted as yet, but Mr Herdson is planning to make another type which will fit into an iron cradle and give a lifting motion. This will save wear and tear on carpets.

“The first and sometimes second coats of paint are put on by Mr Herdson, but a friend adds the top coat and two-colour effects. The friend also put the lining in the pram. Mr Herdson said that the Blind Institute had asked if it could take his toys for selling, and commercial firms had offered to buy them; but he had plenty of friends who were anxious to buy the toys for their children. It took him three or four days to make a wheelbarrow. Recently, as a change from making toys, he built a shower box in the bathroom. The job took him about a week, though he did not then have the sanding machine. When his photograph was being taken, Mr Herdson said, with a humorous "crack" at his former profession, "This is a worse ordeal than going to the dentist!" On discovering that a flashlight was being used, he chuckled, "It won't blind me, will it?"

“Mr Herdson said he still attended dog shows, in which he has always been interested, having had his own dogs at one time. He went to dental meetings, and did some insurance work among dentists. Having served in the last war, he now took an active interest in blinded soldiers' activities, he added. “A warm tribute was paid by Mr. Herdson to Sir Clutha Mackenzie for his help when he was blinded. Sir Clutha was the first blind person to visit him at his home, and presented him with a Braille watch, talking book, and a pack of cards, and later showed him over the institute. Mr. James Maguire, teacher of Braille and typing at the institute for many years, and now the teacher at Fairview, for blinded servicemen of this war, had also given him sympathetic help, for which he was deeply grateful. “Modest about his own achievement, Mr Herdson expressed keen interest in the future of blinded men of this war, and said he wanted to do all he could to help and encourage them.”

That certain Ligar Canal image ...

One thing with going back to a research project that's been simmering away for a few years on the ol' back burner, is that things can be looked at again and reassessed in wider context. That probably won't do a lot to get the description changed/altered on the three main sites that use this image, but -- here's a bit of a go.

According to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, who have a copy of the James D Richardson negative photo-of-a-photo image, this is:

"Ligar Canal, a sewer running down Queen St. Photograph shows the Metropolitan Hotel."

(PH-NEG-B5457)

That's not too bad, but it can lead folks astray -- and has done. Folks presume that the Ligar Canal, the drain built from 1843 to tap into Te Wai Horotiu at the Wyndham Street junction with Queen Street to take waters from High Street, Vulcan Lane and Shortland Street out to the west side of Commercial Bay ran down the centre of Queen Street. It didn't -- but there is an asterisk to that.

In 1849, a trench was dug diagonally across the width of Queen Street, just north of today's Swanson Street, diverting the drain's stormwater etc into another drain at the Fort Street junction. Seems really odd that they did that, considering this shifted the outflow closer to the original Queen Street jetty, but the intent may have been to allow the further reclamation of allotments on the western side of the bay.

So – the Ligar Canal was primarily along the western side of Queen Street from 1843, with part diverted across to the eastern side in 1849.

Te Ara, run by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, picked up one of Auckland Library’s copies of the image, and put this caption on their site:

“The Ligar Canal was an infamous open drain that ran along Auckland’s Queen Street. This 1860s photo shows it crossed by rickety footbridges and surrounded by rough fences. The presence of raw sewage in open drains not only made early cities stink – it also led to high rates of disease and death.”

Yes, the Ligar Canal is an infamous drain – so infamous, folks back then and now tend to label part of the Te Wai Horotiu watershed flow by that name, even the natural watercourses south of Wyndham Street. “Ran along Queen Street” isn’t a bad description. But then they get to “This 1860s photo shows it crossed by rickety footbridges and surrounded by rough fences.” Yes, the image is from the 1860s, but they’ve missed the point as to what the image actually shows. Nothing to do with “footbridges.”

So, now we have the Auckland Libraries’ images. They have two versions of the same one online, this description is for 4-400 (I’ve used 4-9015 for the image to this post which has a simpler description):

“Looking north down Queen Street showing east side with the Metropolitan Hotel with a group of men outside on the corner of Fort Street (right) and the Ligar Canal, a large portion of which collapsed after heavy rain on 30 March 1866. Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2719, 4 April 1866, Page 5: 'On proceeding up the main sewer, a considerable amount of timber and other rubbish was found collected at the junction of Fort and Queen streets. This was caused by an iron bar having been built across the sewer. At this place the sewer has suffered considerable damage, a portion of the bricks on one side having been washed out for a distance of 12 feet in length, and 4 feet in height.'”

Very detailed. And incorrect.

The diagonal diversion across Queen Street collapsed in June 1860 after heavy rains soaked the ground above the trench, which was only covered by timbers right from 1849, causing the heavy soil, mud and clay to make what was described as a gash “resembling an earthquake crack” across Queen Street. (Southern Cross 15 June 1860 p.3) This happened during the construction of the main sewer on the eastern side of Queen Street (that’s the brick sewer photographed at Fort Street corner and almost always mislabelled as the Ligar Canal).

The mess was fixed up, and the Ligar Canal diversion was used as a flush for the sewer. By 1866, the Queen Street Main Sewer had progressed up the eastern side of Queen Street – it reached Wellesley Street by 1865, and all along the way, fresh diversions from both the Ligar Canal drain and the lined watercourse for Wai Horotiu were made, until a diagonal diversion from Victoria Street West in 1865.

So no, this image showing more than just the sewer blown out at Fort Street isn’t 1866 – it’s much more likely to be June 1860, showing the only known event with a contemporary description that matches what we see here.

Really though -- more to do with the Main Sewer works, than the old Ligar Canal.