Family History 4.39

Robinson story

adapted from Robinsons of Rotherhithe by Joanne Robinson

The Morgan Family

It was during this period also that William was involved as a founder of the Baptist Church, helping to compile its constitution and regulations. He would walk to Onehunga to take services and took on the job of Superintendent of the Baptist Sunday School, when it opened in March 1858.

 

His work as a printer, particularly at night, did not allow any improvement in his eyesight and he speculated on the idea of becoming a farmer. Joshua's plans must have helped and he joined in the move to Pukekohe East, again in 1858. The family stayed in Freemans Bay till the whare was built and the town house kept them going with the rent until the farm started producing.

 

When the war came and the family moved back to Auckland in 1863, William stayed on in Drury as War Correspondent for the Southern Cross. But by 1865 he was back setting type for the paper again.

 

When they returned to a new wooden house at Pukekohe East, William was appointed teacher of the school there. However the government stopped teachers' pay in  1867 and he had to give up and turn to other work.

 

In 1870 Jane became ill and died. William remarried later in the year. He eventually died in 1903.

 

Joshua Morgan

Joshua is the most famous of the next generation of Morgans.

 

He was married to Annie Dent in 1888 and in 1892 they had a daughter, Edith Leila.

 

Joshua was a surveyor, and a true pioneer, venturing into bush-clad areas where no white man had been and in some cases no Maori either, paving the way for future roads to remote areas. He could speak and write Maori and his journal is now in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

 

He was working as a Government Surveyor in 1893, with a party engaged in pegging out the route between Taumarunui and New Plymouth through the dense bush of the Ohura and Tangarakau Gorges. According to his diary on 10th January 'he was still suffering from influenza' and on the 1st February 'had wricked his back'. Next day he had 'to lie down all morning with a pain between his shoulders'. On 4 February he was 'still suffering from a pain in the back of the neck.'

 

There was just one entry on 5 February: 'Stayed in camp all day'. The last entry, 24 February,, 'the wind NE showery. Blowing hard. The men split about 90 pegs.' The following day Joshua was desperately ill. Urgent medical care was needed, but he could not be moved. Fred Willison, one of the party, set off for help, walking in record time through dense bush twenty miles along Maori tracks and crossing swollen rivers, then by horseback to Waitara. He took a doctor back tom Tongaporutu and pushed on to the bush camp, only to find that Joshua had died.

 

His mates buried him on the hillside above the river a few metres from where the highway now runs. His grave and the memorial have become a landmark in the Tangarakau Gorge and the Automobile Association have erected a sign near the river bridge carrying the details of his history and death.

 

Annie and her daughter were waiting in Kaimata; they later moved to Murrays Bay, and when she died her ashes were placed on Joshua's grave sixty years after his death.

 

My sketch of the grave site. I have visited it several times. If you are travelling along the "Forgotten Highway" between Stratford and Taumarunui it is very close to the road at the Tangarakau River Bridge.