Family History 3.02

Goodwin History

Emigration to Auckland

Quite what he expected to find here I cannot imagine, for slate rooves are nowhere to be seen except on the Auckland Art Gallery. So Robert took up plastering, and used to make and install those decorative plaster ceilings that were so common around the turn of the twentieth century. 

Robert had two daughters, Julia and Kezia (Kitty); a third had died in infancy. 

In Auckland they found a house in Newton, down the hill from Karangahape Road, and it was there, in the kitchen, that Julia was doing the family’s ironing when the great Tarawera eruption happened on 10 June 1886. She used to talk about how the wall of the house seemed to come closer to her and then move away during the shake that accompanied the eruption. In the evening the family, along with hundreds of other residents, climbed Mt Eden to watch the eruption in the south-eastern sky. 

In Kettering the Goodwins had attended the Baptist Church, Fuller Chapel, which was famous as the place where the Baptist Missionary Society had been founded in the late eighteenth century by William Carey and several of his associates before Carey left for Calcutta. The BMS later gave rise to other societies, like the NZBMS, with which I worked in Tripura. 

Julia and her sister attended the Fuller Chapel Sunday School, and we still have a letter which was written after they left by the Pastor to encourage Julia. 

The family history goes back beyond the early nineteenth century in Kettering however. Robert’s mother was a Kettering girl.  Her father, Robert Smith, the third in line of that name, was quite an identity around the town. In 1837 he had been asked to talk to the Kettering Historical Association about the land ownership system in that part of the country. His text of the address was brought to New Zealand by Robert when he came, and is still in the family.

The information provided by Robert is mostly of interest only to the Kettering people, who knew the land that he was talking about.  But his introductory pages are of general interest, especially the following story in explanation of his being well informed on this subject: 

“For a long time previous to the year 1787, one Thomas Fox used to lay out the grass for the mowers in Kettering open fields.  By laying out the grass I mean making knots in the grass, to mark how far the respective farmers were to mow. When old Fox, as he was called, died, which was in the year above mentioned, the farmers turned their eyes towards my father, who they thought most likely to succeed him. 

In Kettering open fields there were more than 3660 pieces of land; to understand the exact proportion, relation and situation of which, must necessarily take a great deal of time and study: to assist him therefore in this business, he employed me in 1788, when I was but 9 years of age, to write out for him a copy of Braisier’s Survey of the Lordship.  This Brasier’s Survey was made in 1728, consequently when I wrote, it was 60 years old: in the course of which time most of the names had become obsolete, for I believe but about 4 continued the same: but having been used to write the old names over, and over again, from the said Survey, it led me to be very anxious to know where they lived, and what was become of them: many hours have I spent in  the churchyard to find out their gravestones; and if any of the old people could tell me the farm yards of those persons, whose names were in the survey, it was to me a delicious treat.”

Robert’s reference to Kettering open fields means he is speaking of a time before the fields around the town were fenced, in otherwords, before the Enclosure Act covering Kettering had been passed by Parliament.  The Enclosure Acts permitted landlords to fence the open fields and graze sheep on their land instead of renting the land to tenant farmers as they had done for centuries. The tenants in many cases had to migrate to the growing cities and try to get jobs in the new mills that were being built everywhere.