Misc. Notes
Name, date of birth, date and place of marriage, from “McCaul Family Scotland” (first compiled in 1991 and updated to 2002) by Marcia Barbara (Barbara) McCaul, Canada (b. 1932, d. 2002). Barbara was the great-great grandaughter of Gilbert McCaul (b. 1765) and Janet McFarlan (b. 1770). Brian of
nzolivers.com is the great-great-great grandson of Gilbert and Janet.
Year of death from:
https://www.geni.com/people/Constance-Kuring/6000000042613001504How We Came To Karorihttp://wrhpc.org.nz/archive/display_one.php?g1=1&a...7&g15=22&g16=518&g17=&g18=&g19=900
Naomi McCaul (nee Hartill) responded to a call from the Editor of “The Stockade” for Karori Historical Society member contributions of brief accounts of how their families reached Karori in Wellington New Zealand. It was published in 1985 in Issue No 18. Naomi’s account reads as follows:
From The Midlands and Surrey - Naomi McCaul (nee Hartill)After serving his time as an apprentice in the family engineering firm my grandfather, John George Hartill, came out from the Midlands to Australia on the ‘Hotspur’ in 1862, and on to Charleston on the West Coast in 1866 (ship unknown) at the time of the discovery of gold there. In the Cyclopedia of N.Z. he is listed as blacksmith, mining engineer, wheelwright and coach builder. He married Jessie Ballard, who arrived as a baby with her family in 1866 at Constant Bay (the port of Charleston) on the “large” steamer ‘Alhambra’. Although it was 11 p.m. when the ‘Alhambra’ lay off the Bay the passengers for Charleston were transhipped and landed, Jessie being carried up the beach. The Ballards lived in tents amid the bush on Nile Hill for some time, Mr Ballard being engineer at the Nile Steam Saw Mill. He later became an engineer on several West Coast steamers. My father, one of the sons of Jessie and John Hartill, was the first of the family to come to the North Island in the early 1900s.
My mother’s grandparents, William and Sarah Remnent (2 other spellings exist for this) and family of four, from Surrey, left Plymouth on the 7th May 1874 on the barque ‘Adamant’, crossed the Equator on 2nd June when a heavy squall struck the ship carrying away the mast and rigging, and reached Nelson on 13th August [1874].
The ‘Adamant’ was the first of four ships bringing families for Sir Julius Vogel’s “special settlement” of Karamea, remote, difficult of access, 92 kms northeast of Westport. The families were to stay in Nelson while the head of each family and the eldest son went to Karamea, where they were guaranteed work for one month, and then half-time employment for six months, mostly road construction, and were to clear land and build dwellings for their families. The early years in Karamea were a time of great hardship and thirteen men left in the first month. My forebears did not stay long as settlers in Karamea, though they were there long enough for the shift to “The Promised Land” up the river where the soil was much better. The family story continued in Nelson and then Wellington.
Almost exactly 100 years after the ‘Adamant’ arrived in Nelson I came out to live in Karori. Here on Campbell’s Farm my Nelson great-uncle Ben Remnent had camped with the First Contingent of Men who sent to the Boer War, a story that I heard in my childhood as I did stories of the Coast and Karamea.
Result from marriage search on New Zealand BDM website in July 2023:
1945/16852. Bride: Constance Naomi Hartill. Groom: Ian Halse McCaul
Full date of marriage of 4 September 1945 confirmed from further searching in July 2023 on BDM Search by incrementally changing the date range for the marriage.