http://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

Genealogy Investigations, Wellington (2025)

25/11/2025

The New Zealand tank.
There are any number of jokes about how well equipped our military are or have been.
But once upon a time, we designed our own tank.
Well, what we really designed was uniquely Kiwi. An armoured tractor.
In the Second World War we needed military hardware. In particular we needed armoured vehicles. So in the usual Kiwi way, we adapted.
Minister for Works at the time was Bob Semple and he and Thomas Beck, a Christchurch engineer, set about designing and creating one.
There were no blueprints or formal plans. What they had was a postcard from America. One that showed a tractor-tank conversion.
It was decided that a 'tractor-tank' would be an adequate design; if the need for defence arose, a large tank superstructure could be bolted upon a tractor base within a few hours, allowing for quick transformation and deployment of the tanks.
It also needed tracks rather than wheels so the first prototype was built on a Caterpillar D8 crawler tractor. We didn’t have heavy artillery of course, so instead it was equipped with six Bren light machine guns.
When finished, the ‘tank’ was 12ft tall - making it unwieldy. And it’s armour plating - well we used corrugated iron. That’s right, a good old Kiwi tank made out of corrugated iron.
The first was built at a Temuka workshop in June 1940 for the grand cost of £5,902 by the Public Works Department who could make 81.
The intention was to disperse the hulls at locations ready in case of a Japanese invasion at which point they would be mounted on tractors for use.
But the tanks were too heavy, with not enough armour, and slow, having to stop to change gears.
They never saw combat and were eventually quietly disposed of.
Robert Semple was born in New South Wales on October 21, 1873, to John and Mary and began his working life as a gold miner at the age of nine.
After being blacklisted during a strike he moved to the West Coast and became president of a miner’s union.
He was jailed in 1913 for supporting the general strike and again in 1916 after fighting conscription for overseas service during World War I. Semple served as the President of the Labour Party from 1926 to 1928.
Semple was also a Wellington City Councillor then elected to the Wellington South Parliamentary seat.
He later won the seat of Wellington East which was later renamed Miramar.
During his time in Parliament he was the Minister of Public Works and Minister of Railways.
He did not seek re-election in 1954 and died on January 31,1955 and was cremated at Karori Cemetery.
Stories of New Zealand: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

21/11/2025

The Great White Fleet
If 16 American warships sailed into Auckland today it would look like an invasion but in 1908 it was a show of strength.
In 1907 American president Teddy Roosevelt sent the warships on a world tour.
It’s a name that would be frowned upon now, but back then, the fleet was named for stark white paint of their hulls.
It was, essentially a public relations mission, to send off the warships to visit various countries and at the same time show off America’s new naval strength.
Behind that was a secondary mission. Grumblings with Japan had been going on a long time and the tour would help familiarise American sailers with various ports. The ships were all relatively new - the first time in many years America had a fleet of any power.
The fleet arrived in Auckland with great pomp and ceremony for a six day stay.
The city had been decorated for the visit, including a a 55-foot-high triumphal arch covered in native lycopodium fern, erected over Queen Street.
It was a foggy Sunday morning when the New Zealand training ship Amokura gave a gun salute as the ships, in formation, sailed in.
Despite the early hour, some 100,000 people—10% of New Zealand’s population— lined the shores of the Waitemata Harbor and Rangitoto Channel to witness the arrival.
But as a Sunday there was little open in Auckland so it was the next day that Rear Admiral Charles Sperry, in charge of the fleet, was officially welcomed at a civic reception and a display of military power.
That evening the first state banquet ever held in New Zealand was given for the men.
The city had a fair-like atmosphere for that week, with side show-like attractions being put on.
And at night the battleships’ search lights roamed the sky.
Fourteen thousand men roamed Auckland and as far away at Rotorua and Hamilton, with trains laid on for them to see the country.
Then, on August 15, the ships took to the sea again and sailed for Sydney.
The trip had been a success - and it was at the invitation of Prime Minister Joseph Ward.
Ward had been born on April 26, 1856 in Melbourne to William and Hannah. His father died when he was four and he was raised by his mother, herself a successful businesswoman and in 1863 they moved to Bluff.
Like a lot of boys, he went to primary school but had no formal secondary school training, educating himself from books as he got a job in the Post Office.
Ward got involved in local politics early, and at 25 he become the youngest mayor in New Zealand in Campbelltown - Bluff.
In 1887 he stood for Parliament and won and from there held a variety of posts, like Post Master General, Treasurer and Minister of Railways.
He was knighted in 1901 for introducing the penny post to New Zealand.
He was sworn in as Prime Minister in 1906 after the death of Richard Seddon while in office.
Ward died in 1930 and given a state funeral before he was taken back to Bluff to be buried at the Bluff Cemetery.
We love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

18/11/2025

The sad end of Dr Hanratty
Doctors held a position of respect in our early communities. But like everyone they are human.
Michael Hanratty’s credentials appeared to have come from Ireland and was a specialist in midwifery.
He seems to have come to New Zealand in about 1880 and began work in the Wairarapa communities. He advertised his practice widely.
But even then the seeds of his downfall were there. He often said he could be consulted at hotels rather than in medical offices.
In 1881, the first problem emerged - he was picked up by police in Wellington and ordered to be examined over his mental health.
He received a short prison sentence where the opinion was he had been drinking a bit too freely.
Hanratty went back to Featherston and resumed his practice. And for a couple of months all was well.
Then in August he was called to the bedside of a woman giving birth. The tiny baby, a boy, was born without signs of life.
Hanratty immediately asked for hot water - he covered the infant with a towel and poured the hot water over the baby which immediately began to cry. Despite being asked if the baby would have blisters he said no and the child was wrapped up and handed over to his parents.
But hours later the blisters emerged and five days later some of the flesh on the child’s legs was turning black and the child died.
Sometimes after burial the story came to the attention of the police who ordered the body exhumed.
At inquest the jury decided the scalding water had caused the death and Hanratty was arrested on a charge of manslaughter.
It was an unpopular decision - many thought Hanratty had done his best and should not have been charged.
In the end he was acquitted and again returned to practise, with the fall out being many newspaper articles railing against what was called an unfair prosecution.
But less than a year later Hanratty is back in the papers for drunkenness. And that was to continue for several years with charges like drunk in charge of a horse, drunk and abusive language until in 1891 a prohibition order was made against him which would make it an offence for him to buy alcohol.
He received a variety of short prison sentences, some for vagrancy, but all came back to drinking.
By 1894 he was thrown out of a hotel for demanding a drink, literally thrown out, so that he broke a leg and ended up confined in a hospital.
He continued to practise sometimes but finally and sadly in 1906 he was found wandering the streets of Wellington on August 21 looking for somewhere to stay. He was put in a home but would wander away and ended up in prison for vagrancy.
Hanratty died on September 8 having been taken from the prison to hospital, his years of drinking having caught up with him. He was believed to be about 70 years old.
He is buried in Karori cemetery.
Picture by Felipe Ponce.
Everyday stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

14/11/2025

Death by water jug
Falls in the home often caused death, but even by usual standards the death of Samuel Osborne was odd.
Osborne had been born on May 1, 1862, in Queensland, Australia. But by the time he died in 1902 he was living with his wife Augusta in Greymouth.
At one time he had been well known in racing circles but at the age of 40 he was working odd jobs on the Greymouth wharf and living near his brother George.
The night before he died he had been at the Opera House and had been drunk enough to be tossed out when he disturbed the play.
The man who had been with him, Robert McTaggert got him home but did not see him again until 11.30pm when he went to Samuel’s home and found him on the kitchen floor groaning and with blood all around him.
McTaggert called another man, Felix Campbell, to get a doctor.
Campbell found a doctor and told him of the accident but did not ask him to come.
He found another doctor who told them to bring him to the surgery.
By the time a third doctor William McKay came to the house at 1am it was too late. By then Samuel was lying with his head on a pillow and quite dead.
The doctor found that there was a large wound to his head under his right ear and extending around in a horizontal line. It was also deep, going to the base of the skull.
He told an inquest that several arteries had been severed and the wound was sufficient to cause death from blood loss in a short time.
Neither of Samuel’s friends had thought it was that serious. The doctor said with immediate attention Samuel’s life could have been saved if someone had got to him in 40 minutes or so.
What had caused the wound was a water jug. He had apparently fallen on it. It was found beneath Samuel and the doctor found a chip fromthe jug in the wound.
The coroner said it was unfortunate the two witnesses had not told the doctors just how serious the case was, that Samuel could not walk and was dangerously hurt.
The jury returned after a brief deliberation and found that Samuel Osborne had died because of bleeding from a wound caused when he fell on the water jug.
A funeral call went out to the Greymouth Labourers industrial Union to accompany Samuel to his grave. The cortege lined the streets and he was finally laid to rest.
Samuel had been 43, and is buried in the Karoro Cemetery.
New Zealand stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

11/11/2025

The French sailor
In another world it could have been Jean Francois Marie de Surville who was credited with discovering New Zealand - a French merchant captain. And our country would have looked very different.
In fact, his ship the St Jean Baptiste passed very close to James Cook at the same time in 1769.
Abel Tasman had been in New Zealand in 1641 but it is generally considered that Cook is the one whose voyage led to European settlement.
At the same time Cook was mapping the New Zealand shore, de Surville was blown toward Hokianga by a storm arriving December 12 1769.
De Surville spent 15 days at anchor off Doubtless Bay while helping to nurse some of his crew back to health who were suffering from scurvy.
At first his interactions with Māori were good. He was respectful, asked permission if he needed something and even gave up his sword to a chief so they bought him green food and he reciprocated with hogs, chicken and other food. He recorded the interactions and the ship’s chaplain celebrated Mass on Christmas Day onshore.
However de Surville’s temper got the better of him when he thought a ship’s boat that had drifted ashore was stolen. He burned huts along the beach, food stores and a waka.
He also took a chief prisoner, Ngāti Kahu leader, Ranginui, who later died at sea.
In the last day a violent storm overtook Doubtless Bay and du Surville ordered all of the ships anchors - three of them - cut so they could sail out of the bay to safety.
De Surville had been born in Brittany, France and went to sea at the age of 10. He sailed extensively in the Indian and China seas and then joined the French Navy and fought in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War.
For a time he was a prisoner of war and once released became a merchant sailor in the slave trade.
He gained his own command and became a privateer, targeting the English where he was again captured and held for a year.
Later he was commander of Renommée and had made the acquaintance of Marion Dufresne, who would later become known for his voyages to the Pacific.
In 1865 he began trading in the Indian Ocean. Returning to France in 1766, Surville gained the approval of the French East India Company for his commercial plans. Needing a ship for his venture, he supervised the construction of Saint Jean-Baptiste, a large merchantman armed with 36 guns, at Port-Louis.
On hearing of lands with potential riches in the Pacific Ocean and with the French East India Company looking to gain a foothold before the British he set off in the Saint Jean-Baptiste.
De Surville then sailed for South America, ending up in Chilca in Peru where he and two others drowned when a small boat they were in capsized. He is listed as missing at sea but there were also rumours that his body was later found and buried at Chilca by locals.
Two of the anchors were recovered in 1974 and one is now at Te Papa.
We love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

07/11/2025

The Waikato monster
In 1886 Hamilton was gripped with fear. There was a monster on the loose.
In September, two boys near a creek were chased by some huge beast with a long pointed head, brown and covered in scales. It chased one of the boys with its mouth open and a large number of teeth were seen.
It even resulted in police visiting the scene.
Then a group of nearby residents got up a hunting party and searched the surrounding area - beating the bushes and carefully patrolling the area near the creek where it had been seen. All for nothing.
The two boys again saw the creature shortly after, swimming in the river.
A few days later something was seen in the Waikato river by a school master. It was large and had a long tail that it thrashed about.
Local Māori said it was a taniwha. Others said it looked like an alligator.
The two tourists saw something and a tale emerged of a young Māori girl who had been found dead a year ago at the same spot with the meat stripped from one arm.
By late October another report, slightly more chilling, came in that the creature had gone to a slaughteryard in Frankton and stripped away a sheep’s carcass right off the hooks and stripped the bones of flesh.
This time tracks were found - unlike any tracks anyone had ever seen before.
In November, an advert appeared in the Waikato Times proposing a saurian hunt, urging men to come out to find the creature.
By now there were so many theories that the creature was simultaneously a bear, a tiger, or a type of alligator with no two people agreeing.
And any odd sighting automatically turned into another tale of the beast.
In late November something with a horse-like head was seen in the Ohinemuri River which caused great excitement.
There were also many headlines after a big creature with a fine coat and tusk like teeth was caught and killed in Paeroa. In the end, that animal turned out to be a type of seal.
The Poverty Bay Herald perhaps summed it up best,
“The alligator, tiger, big dog, yearling c**t, maneater, child-chaser, sheep devourer, sealed monster, which has caused so much excitement throughout the colony, and Waikato in particular, has been captured. It has turned out to be a grey seal.”
There was more than a hint of sarcasm to the article which was in the form of an editorial.
The paper was started by a group of 24 locals in 1877 and was bought by Frederick Dufaur and Captain Thomas Chrisp in 1879 then by William McIntosh Muir who sold his stake of his brother Allan Ramsay Muir. There was a good chance it was written by Muir who also quipped that it would likely be exhibited around the colony.
Muir died in 1914 and is buried in Makaraka Cemetery.
We like weird stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

04/11/2025

The Fallen Ace
It was a wretched Wellington day - high winds and rain on February 19, 1936. Parts of the Basin Reserve Area were flooded along with parts of Lambton Quay, Courtenay Place and Willis St.
At the Rongotai Aerodrome Captain Malcolm Charles McGregor was trying to land his Miles monoplane.
In the bad weather the tip of one wing caught the anemometer mast (in a tragic irony, it is the device which measures wind speed) and crashed as he tried to land.
McGregor had been born on March 4, 1896 near Hunterville, the son of Ewen McGregor and Matilda Chubbin.
He was refused permission to join the army when war broke out but was allowed to train as a pilot in England.
In 1916, during WW1 he was appointed his Aero Certificate and the next year he was appointed a Flying Officer in the Royal Flying Corps.
His first success was on June 16, 1917 when he used a Sopwith Pup to destroy a German fighter in France. A year later he survived being shot down. In the No 85 Squadron RAF he drove down an enemy reconnaissance plane over Armentieres then three days later drove down a pair of fighters. He destroyed another recon machine on June 27, 1918 and was considered an ace. Ace pilot was a term used for someone who had shot down a specific number of planes - usually five or more.
A month later he scored another two in Belgium destroying a Fokker and driving another out of combat, then another two over the next month.
In all he was credited with 11 during the war. He was awarded the Distinguished flying cross.
But then he shifted direction - becoming a balloon buster, destroying an enemy observation balloon east of Maretz, France. His final tally was an observation balloon and five enemy airplanes destroyed, plus four planes driven down out of control.
McGregor was discharged from the Royal Air Force on 17 July 1919 and initially worked on his parents farm before buying his own at Taupiri.
McGregor married Isabel Dora Postgate, a law clerk, on 29 July 1925 at Frankton Junction; they were to have two sons and two daughters. The farm was sold in 1927 and he worked as a drover for the next two years.
He joined the New Zealand Territorial Air Force in 1921 where he was appointed Squadron Leader in 1930 No. 2 (Bomber) Squadron.
He also took part in civil aviation activities. He ran a "barnstorming" operation, Hamilton Airways. In late April 1929, he participated in the New Zealand Air Pageant.
McGregor established Air Travel with Francis Maurice Clarke in 1930 with a De Havilland DH.50. It was New Zealand's first regular air service between main centres, Christchurch and Dunedin but there was not enough demand for the service.
He was appointed chief instructor to the Manawatu Aero Club in 1932 but he broke his back in a crash in December 1932 while popping balloons at the Manawatu Aero Club's first pageant and spent almost a year in Palmerston North Hospital.
It didn’t stop him though - he entered the MacRobertson Air Race in 1934 and he and his copilot completed the course, Mildenhall to Melbourne, in 7 days 15 hours.
He and Clarke then sold their idea of a national airline but only a few weeks later he was killed.
McGregor is buried at Kelvin Grove Cemetery in Palmerston North.
Incredible New Zealanders: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

31/10/2025

The myth of Carlile House
Auckland’s Carlile House has, for many years, been reputed to be haunted.
It has been many things, but as an orphanage, the story went that in 1912 there was a huge fire after a candle set curtains alight killing 43 orphans. The story has also said that it was a nurse who died.
At least one New Zealand paranormal website mentions that the children still walk the halls, eyes watch from the multicoloured stained-glass windows and hear them calling out and that their little hobnail boots would be heard in the hallways.
Carlile House was built in 1886 in Grey Lynn after Auckland identity and philanthropist Edward Costley left a bequest of £12,500. Originally the money was going to the Kohimarama Training school, however it had closed.
As the Costley Training Institute, the huge two-storey late Victorian building of an Italianate style, was built in brick with limestone dressings, had a H-plan layout with two projecting wings and a central single-storey columned portico.
It housed residents who were apprenticed to a range of trades.
Numbers of apprentices dwindled and the school closed and it became the Richmond Road Children’s Home.
After the 1931 earthquake, it became the Hukarere Maori Girls School for a year then housed the headquarters and school of the Church Army founded by Wilson Carlile and so was renamed Carlile House.
It was used as a remand home, then an alternative school before being bought by a Tongan Community Group and it is currently owned by the United Church Tonga.
It is now in such a bad state that it has had a dangerous building notice put on it with an estimated to take between $7 million to $10 million to fix.
It’s hard to know when the story about the fire and the dead orphans came up but it has been a persistent story for decades.
The problem is, there is no record of a fire at Carlile House.
You would think that if there really had been a fire that killed so many youngsters that it would be headlines all across the country.
But there is no mention of it anywhere. None of the newspapers around at the time report any such fire.
There is not even any report of a nurse dying rather than the children although Sister Cecil of the Order of the Good Shepherd who had managed the facility died there in 1912.
Given how many had been in the house since it was built it would not be a surprise if there were deaths or even that the building is haunted but it is not because of a fatal fire.
Wilson Carlile was born in England on January 14, 1847. He joined the Plymouth Brethren then became an evangelist and joined the Church of England and became a deacon.
He went to work in slums, and visited the Salvation Army and began a Church Salvation Army which became the Church Army.
Carlile died on September 26, 1942 and his ashes were interred at the foot of his memorial in St Paul's Cathedral.
Happy Halloween!
We love weird stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

28/10/2025

Carterton’s Mummy
During the Victorian era we were fascinated by mummies, to the point where there were unwrapping parties. Earlier than that there was a craze for giving the ground up mummies to sick people as a cure-all.
Weird to say the least.
But the preserved remains were part of the huge interest in Egyptology.
In 1885, New Zealand got its own mummy - and it was gifted to the Colonial Museum by Charles Rooking Carter after whom Carterton is named.
Carter had bought the mummy for £170 along with its case or coffin. He told them it had been found in 1994 and recorded the mummy’s provenance as Akhmin, or Panopolis in the Ancient world, and stated that she belonged to the Ptolemaic Period of Egyptian history.
There is some slight uncertainty about who it is. Called Mehit-em-Wesekht, it was believed to be an 18-year-old woman. Her family was believed to be associated with the Temple of Min at Akhmim, and her mother was a musician priestess, a position which Mehit-em-Wesekht would have been raised to fill.
Information about the mummy given by Carter had led the museum to believe initially that she was a man named Petisiris, a priest of the god Khem then the hieroglyphs on Mehit-em-Wesekht’s coffin were thought to say that she was actually a priestess named Neith.
It wasn’t until 1957 that the hieroglyphs were re-examined and her name was discovered.
Carter had been born in England on March 10, 1822, to John and Hannah Carter and was an apprentice carpenter and joiner, taking the chance to read widely and attend evening classes. He became a strong advocate of moving to New Zealand particularly after seeing the economic and labour conditions in London.
Carter married Jane Robertson in 1850. They sailed for New Zealand that same year landing in Wellington where Charles became a builder, completing many important buildings in the city.
He was also responsible for the early reclamation of land in the harbour.
He persuaded Governor Grey to buy the first blocks of land in the Wairarapa and acquired, by a series of purchases, a large area of land in the Taratahi block, and his work for the district led, in 1859, to the new town of Carterton being named after him.
Carter represented the Wairarapa in the General Assembly but left when he spent several years in England
In that time he became a collector, especially books on New Zealand. In 1890 he presented a collection of 395 works on New Zealand to the New Zealand Institute and Colonial Museum and by the time of his death the collection exceeded 1,000 books. He bought books for the Carterton library.
On his death on July 22, 1895 he left part of his estate to the New Zealand Institute for an astronomical observatory which led to the establishment of the Carter Observatory in Wellington.
Carter is buried in the Clareville cemetery.
And his mummy, which used to be on permanent display, needed conservation work and is now in controlled storage.
Stories of New Zealand: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

24/10/2025

The Quaker who planted roots at Taita
Lower Hutt was once home to one of the country’s most celebrated gardens.
Fitted between the main road and the river in Taita, The Gums as it used to be called, drew visitors from around New Zealand.
It was a place of wonder, with species from all over the world.
It was built by Thomas Mason.
Mason was born on January 28, 1818 – the first of three children born to John Mason, a tea dealer, and his wife Catharine Smart. Both families were Quakers, and Thomas grew up in that quiet, disciplined world. But tragedy struck early – his father died when Thomas was just four, and before long his mother remarried and sailed to America with Thomas’s younger siblings, leaving him behind in Yorkshire.
He was raised by relatives, attended Bootham School, and went into business and farming – skills that would later serve him well on the other side of the world. In 1840, he married Jane Morris of Upper Poppleton, but because she wasn’t a Quaker, Thomas had to resign from the Society of Friends to avoid being formally disowned.
Later that same year, the newlyweds boarded the Olympus and sailed for New Zealand, arriving in Wellington in April 1841. Thomas bought land at Taita, where he and Jane would build a life and raise a large family – seven sons and three daughters survived to adulthood.
His early years in the Hutt Valley weren’t without conflict. When a group from Ngāti Rangatahi began cultivating part of his land, tensions rose until an agreement was reached through the Native Reserves Commissioner. Once resolved, Thomas cleared and planted his property, turning it into productive farmland.
But by 1845, worried about unrest between settlers and Māori – and concerned for Jane’s health – Thomas moved the family to Hobart, Tasmania. There, he rejoined the Quakers, Jane became a member, and together they opened a small school for Quaker children. During this time, Thomas also visited the Māori prisoners who had been transported to Tasmania after the conflicts in New Zealand, and he later claimed to have helped secure their release.
In 1851, the family returned to Taita. They rebuilt their home, planted 150 fruit trees from Tasmania, and surrounded the property with tall eucalypts that gave it the name The Gums. Over the next decades, Thomas expanded his holdings – running sheep in Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay – but he was always a man of principle. When a surveying error placed part of his Maraekakaho run on Māori land, he paid rent willingly. Later, when another chief tried to seize his sheep over a dispute, Thomas refused to use force and the animals were quietly returned.
He became known locally as “Quaker Mason,” not just for his faith but for the way he lived it. He served on education boards, as a justice of the peace, and later as a member of Parliament for the Hutt. Yet his great passion was always his garden.
At The Gums, Thomas created one of the most remarkable private gardens in 19th-century New Zealand. He trialed crops, particularly potatoes, imported seeds, and planted trees from around the world – eucalypts, camellias, azaleas, rhododendrons, and roses by the hundred. Visitors came from far and wide, and he was generous with cuttings and seeds. He also served for many years on the board of the Wellington Botanic Garden, gifting plants and helping shape its development.
Jane died in 1900, and Thomas followed her three years later, on June 11,1903. Both are buried at Taita Cemetery, not far from where The Gums once flourished.
But the garden itself ended up sold then subdivided - becoming largely the area now called Avalon.
We love stories: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

21/10/2025

The wapiti and the raccoons
It was once the done thing to gift animals to different countries.
New Zealand has received everything from lions to elephants and many were given by one ruler of the country to another.
So when America President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt agreed to give New Zealand 20 Wapiti - massive deer - it was a big deal.
It had come about as Thomas Edward Donne, the head of the New Zealand Government Tourism Department and big game hunter St.George Littledale who had met when the hunter became enthusiastic about New Zealand as a potential hunting ground.
Littledale approached Roosevelt and arranged for the deer to come from the National Zoological Park in Washington in exchange for native birds and tuatara.
Donne travelled to America in 1905 to get 20 wapiti deer, along with whitetail and mule deer, Canadian geese, and five raccoons.
A huge steam powered wagons were designed for the animals for the long overland trip to San Francisco. After a short delay the animals were loaded onto a boat for the even longer trip to New Zealand.
At first things went ok, the animals were on the deck of the ship and well cared for but as they got closer they ran into bad weather and two wapiti died when their backs were broken.
When they arrived the animals were transferred to the Hinemoa and taken to the head of George Sound in Southland. At the time it was very secluded with only fishermen visiting.
The small herd was released and began to thrive although it was slow.
It was in 1922 when the first hunting season was held. Deer introduced into New Zealand were protected except for a hunting season but that changed in 1934 when all protections were removed.
Now it is possible that there are no pureblood wapiti left - many interbred with other deer in the area.
So what happened to the five little raccoons since we don’t have them running round the countryside?
They were taken to Rotorua. By the time they arrived their number had dwindled to two and no one really knew what to do with them.
They were taken to the Sanatorium to be exhibited. They weren’t popular though - they were not game animals and were not to be kept as pets, so the only reason to have them was to have them available to be seen by the public.
But only a couple of weeks after they arrived, the clever little buggers staged an escape.
That led to a raccoon hunt. They were accused of breaking into chicken hutches and killing them.
But by the end of 1905, all news of them vanished and it appears they were never found again.
American president Teddy Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919 and is buried in Youngs Memorial Cemetery in Nassau County, New York.
We love stories:https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

Genealogy Investigations

25/11/2025

21/11/2025

18/11/2025

14/11/2025

11/11/2025

07/11/2025

04/11/2025

31/10/2025

28/10/2025

24/10/2025

21/10/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category