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Manawatu, New Zealand
1995
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“Well I never.” Len, the youngest of Daniel’s grandsons, took another drag on his roll-your-own. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be.” Libby searched amongst the papers spread around the table. “There are some details I haven’t been able to find out, but one thing I am sure about is that Daniel’s father, Samuel, came from Derbyshire. Here, look at this.” Libby handed across a list of names and dates.
“And all the time we thought he came from Liverpool.”
“Daniel did. Or at least he was born there,” Libby explained. “There are still gaps. Probably always will be, but the facts speak for themselves. Samuel was born in the summer of 1801. There were nine children in all. Mary was the eldest by two years. Then Samuel, the firstborn son, another daughter and a second son were all born in the tiny village of Lea. Then in 1804, the family moved to an even tinier hamlet, Stanfree, near Bolsover. That’s where five more children were born.”
She leant over to point out places on the map, and going by their eager faces, at least some of Daniel’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren wanted to know more about this man, the first of their New Zealand line.
“What sort of farm did they have, Lib?” Len, now in his sixties, was keen to hear what she knew.
Libby smiled. Trust them to ask that question. Only dyed-in-the-wool farmers would ask about the farm rather than the people.
She was prepared. “I don’t know what sort of farm they had in Lea, but probably a tenant farm. The one in Stanfree was a dairy farm, and they certainly owned the land in later decades. They did rather well, by all accounts. The family built the house somewhere around the 1890s. Here’s a photo of it in 1930 and again when we were there – you can see the alterations. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
The descendants of Daniel Adin sat around the kitchen table drinking tea, as they had always done. Different houses, different locations, but the tradition of storytelling around the table remained.
Over twenty years earlier Daniel’s great-grandson Ben had taken her to visit his nana at Bainesse near Palmerston North. There, every Sunday, various members of the family would come to gossip the day away in the kitchen of the ‘homestead’. The room was large. In modern terms it would be called the family room; to them it was the heart of the home.
Deliciously warm in winter and stiflingly hot in summer because of the coal range, the smell of fresh baking, roasting meat or soup simmering in the black iron pot greeted everyone who visited. The old kauri table, with its enormous turned legs and ruinously painted green, dominated the room. Covered by a plastic tablecloth and surrounded by assorted wooden chairs and school forms, there was little room for the other furniture. A long, roll-arm couch was squashed against the wall behind the table, and Nana’s armchair sat in pride of place in the corner by a window. Amongst some of their best English bone china, mix-and-match Crown Lynn crockery was scattered across the table. At the far end was the enormous double-door pantry cupboard, with deep drawers and pullout flour bins. It still hosted the large jar of lollies generations of children had enjoyed, and was cluttered with vases, jugs, bowls and plants.
Everything was old and well worn. Cosy cushions and rugs were thrown on the chairs and hand-crocheted antimacassars and covers were everywhere – even on the sugar bowl and milk jug.
Ben had introduced Libby into that household – where his widowed nana lived, along with Aunt Ruby and the uncles Charles and Len – and it had been in that same room and around that very table she had first heard the stories of Daniel, the founding father of this large, complicated New Zealand family.
Libby remembered looking at the photos on the walls, asking about people she would never know and listening to the stories of people long gone who formed the roots to her new family. Laughter rang around the table as yarns were told; the acrid smell of match and smoke filled the air as hand-rolled cigarettes were lit one after the other, another pot of tea made. Sometimes they’d talk well into the evening, sharing supper before going home.
There was so much history wrapped up in a few dates and destinations. Yet she couldn’t help feeling some stories were still to be told – or not to be told. Deeply held secrets lay hidden amongst the laughter. Libby was fascinated. For years, she listened to the tales, often asking Ben to clarify a name or place. Bit by bit she started to write down the details, putting families together and tying in dates, but years passed before she turned her hand to searching official records, digging back into Daniel’s history while on a trip to England. Now, many more years and many kitchen tables later, it was Libby’s turn to tell the story.
“Let’s wind back. With only vague leads, I found it difficult to get started. I won’t bore you with all the details about searching census records and microfiche files, and dusting off heavy tomes in records offices. Going through them line by line, month after month and year after year, trying to find one clue that would lead me to the next step.”
“No, she won’t,” Ben interrupted before she could say anything more. “Don’t get her started on that hobby horse, or she’ll go on for hours. But one story worth the telling is the day she went to the Matlock records office.”
Libby told them about her visit to that office, located in an old building once used as a courthouse or council room, but recently restored and painted white. Set back on an expanse of green, it gleamed in the sunshine. “The lady in charge was a bit stiff upper lipped as she showed me where to find the records to start with. Full of instructions about being quiet, using the gloves provided to handle some of the records and how to mark the place where I had taken down a file. I was almost too scared to touch anything.” Libby realised she was wandering.
“Anyway, that’s where I unearthed all this information. The first day I found Samuel’s birth certificate and records for his mother and father. I didn’t bother to look for all his brothers and sisters – except I do know the youngest boy, Benjamin, died when he was about fourteen months old.”
Elaborating on the fact that the father’s name was also Samuel, she differentiated between them by calling one Sam Senior and the other Sam Junior. Libby pointed again to the map. “Samuel Senior was born in 1771, here in Alfreton. Not far away at all. But then ...” She lowered her voice and leant forward, holding their attention. “I had almost given up hope of finding any answers when I found two wills.” She paused for a second, but no one spoke.
“The first will turned out to be Samuel’s brother Joseph’s, and that led me to a list of property titles. But the best find was the second will. I leapt up from my seat and ran about saying, ‘yes, yes, yes’.”
Libby laughed at the memory. “There were only half a dozen people in the tiny room, but they all stopped to stare and made it quite plain I’d broken some unwritten law.
“I clapped my hand over my mouth, mouthed sorry to the dowager behind the desk and sat down again to read the minute written words on the screen in front of me. I’d found the Last Will and Testament of Elizabeth Adin.”
Libby paused again. “Not Sam Junior’s mother, as I had expected, but a generation further on – Samuel’s daughter – Daniel’s sister!”
Everyone began speaking at once. They had heard a rumour about a sister, but nobody knew her name or where she lived. Cambridge, they thought. But that didn’t add up, they said. Another pot of tea was made and copies of the wills passed around to be marvelled at. The old-fashioned script and terminology was hard to understand, but everyone had to have a look. Speculation ran riot around the table.
Once they had settled again, Ben continued with the story of their visits to several cemeteries mentioned in the records but they’d not found anything of real interest until they got to Bolsover. They searched among the numerous headstones around the beautiful old church with its spire and clock, with a growing feeling of despondency. “So many were broken, missing or unreadable, I couldn’t see how we would find anything.”
Libby chipped in, ”Ben called out to me. I could tell he’d found something important by the tone of his voice. I rushed over to see him staring at Samuel Senior’s headstone. Hidden under the trees and set back against the wall behind the church, the inscription was almost impossible to read. The concrete was dark and badly stained.”
“It was quite special,” said Ben, “standing there beside the headstone of my great-great-great-grandfather.” Ben counted back on his fingers. “Six generations from him to me. It was so, um ...” He paused, trying to think of the right word. “... real. No longer simply stories and myth, he really existed. It put everything into context somehow. And his wife Elizabeth is buried with him.”
Close by, they discovered several more family headstones; some were the sons and daughters of Samuel and Elizabeth, others more removed. The headstone for Daniel’s uncle, Joseph, and his family was broken. They found the damaged section and propped it against the plinth.
Libby handed around more photos, describing how they checked the dates and began piecing together a story.
She sat back surprised she had talked for so long without interruption. This family was usually garrulous and getting a word in edgeways had been something she’d had to learn over the years, but not this time. This time they were keen to hear a new story.
“We went in search of the property in the records at Church Road, Stanfree. By chance, Libby spotted the sign half-buried under ivy growing on a stone wall. On the corner was an old stone house. As we went round to the front porch, we saw the name Oak House Farm over the doorway, just like in the photo, and rapped on the door.”
There was no answer so they wandered around the back to where a rather tired and weedy looking vegetable garden lay within the ancient wall that had once separated the house area from the farm.
“We knocked at the back to ask about the family,” explained Libby. “After a while, a frail old man came to the door. When we said who we were, he invited us in to meet his wife. Inside was dark with a low ceiling, but the glow from the coal range brightened the place. Bits of brassware, tankards and miniature horseshoes decorated the exposed beams and mantel, and an old scrubbed wooden table took up the middle of the room. They offered us tea and, like we do here, we sat around the kitchen table and talked.”
“As it turned out, they didn’t know much,” said Ben. “They had heard of the family and confirmed the house was once owned by the Adins.”
But the couple did remember a neighbour was related somehow. They sent Ben and Libby a short distance along the road to the yard of Yew Farm, another Adin property. Etched into the concrete lintel of the brick outhouse was the name: Vernon Adin Dicker. His mother was Joseph’s granddaughter. She’d handed the family name down as his middle name.
“We spent a couple of hours with the man and his wife,” continued Ben. “They told us lots of tales about the area. Stories about the farm, the restrictions the European Union had put upon farmers like him, how badly the coal company had treated them when part of the house had collapsed. And they showed us schoolbooks from the days when there had been a local school. He would have kept us talking for hours if he’d had his way.”
He’d even taken them to see his herd of cows – all thirty of them. Beautiful, well-cared for animals, each with a name. Ben had wondered how he made a living from so few cows, even with the EU subsidies.
But the upshot was the man knew nothing about Daniel or about any branch of the family in New Zealand.
“In fact, he wasn’t sure there were any other Adins left in Derbyshire at all. Some in Bournemouth, and one in America, he thought, but all too far removed and tenuous for us to follow,” finished Ben.
Libby showed a few more photos, as she expanded on the story that Joseph’s son George and then George’s son, another Joseph, had both been local district councillors. The family had once been quite important, wealthy landowners. George had built the smart, white house they saw in one photo, as well as the row of terraced houses she’d found titles for.
“We’re famous,” she announced, “with a street named after us. Adin Avenue.”
Another photo showing a street sign in Shuttleworth, a similar village a few miles down the road, joined the circuit.
Chas studied the copy of Elizabeth’s will but was confused. “It says here she lived in Chesterfield but didn’t you say that’s near Bolsover where this family lived? If she lived in Derbyshire, how come Daniel was born in Liverpool?”
“We don’t know the answer for certain, but we’ve got some ideas,” Ben cut in.
Libby simplified what she’d found.
“Elizabeth was born the same year Samuel Senior died, in 1836. Census records say she was born in Manchester. Daniel was born some six years later. In the gap, the 1841 census was taken. It showed Samuel Junior back at the farm in Stanfree – alone. No wife, no child – just him, his mother and his brother Joseph. The same census shows Sarah Adin with Elizabeth, aged four, living in Liverpool with Mary and John Meyers, Samuel’s sister and her husband.
“We know Samuel returned to Liverpool because he died there only five months after Daniel was born, but Daniel doesn’t show up on any census records at all. I’ve no idea where he lived between the time he was born and the time he left England. He was with the 12th (Prince of Wales’s) Royal Lancers for a couple of years, but I couldn’t find any official records of what he did while in the cavalry either. Can’t have been much – it was after the Indian Mutiny in 1860 and before the Boer War.”
“What about the mother?” asked Ruby.
“There’s little about her early life, other than it seems she was born in Market Drayton, Shropshire, around 1811. I can’t find a marriage certificate for her and Samuel, but her name Sarah Adin, née Green, appears on Daniel’s birth certificate – along with her ‘mark’, which indicates she was illiterate. She married a John Winter in 1850 and became a publican, but now’s not the time for that story.”
