By Roselyn Fauth
Information sign at the Timaru Landing Services Building. - Photo Roselyn Fauth
I was on a side quest learning about Ann Williams when I found a photo of Mr John Wilds and his family. It was mounted on a sign at the Timaru Landing Service Building, the very place where Ann once lived. The photo is sepia-toned, showing a weathered man, a seated woman, and three young children standing out front of a modest timber cottage. There seemed to be an age disparity between the adults, so I tried to work out who was who. The woman seated was his daughter, Mary Annie Davidson. The children were her own. But something struck me as strange: someone was missing.
Where was Esther Wilds, John’s wife?
That question led me down a historical rabbit hole that reveals far more than a single photo or even a information sign can hold. It reveals sacrifice, survival, and a family whose journey began in the town of Deal, Kent, UK.
Take your mind to the port town of Deal. In the 1700s and early 1800s, Deal was one of the busiest and most dangerous ports in England. Perched close to the Goodwin Sands, known equally for their shelter and treachery, Deal was a place where boats were launched directly from the beach. The Deal boatmen earned international fame for their bravery and skill, launching small surfboats into fierce seas to rescue ships in distress, unload cargo, and deliver letters and passengers.
But after the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), things changed. Steamships began to replace sail, smuggling was cracked down upon, and the once-thriving Deal boatmen found themselves in poverty. By the 1850s, many families faced grim prospects.
Enter James Edward FitzGerald, the first Superintendent of the Canterbury Province. In response to their plight, he offered assisted emigration to New Zealand. Thirteen men and their families (around 50 in total) accepted the offer in 1858. Another seven paid their own way. They brought with them a lugger named Fox and dreams of starting a fishing industry. One of these families was John and Esther Wilds, and their young daughter Mary Annie.
The Wilds arrived in Timaru in June 1859. John, along with Morris Cory, Robert Bowbyes, William John Roberts, Henry Clayson, and John J. Bowles, formed the heart of the Timaru surf-boat crew, employed by merchants Henry Le Cren and Captain Henry Cain.
But the work was dangerous. Within the first year, Henry Clayson drowned and was replaced by Phillip Foster. Then in October 1860, disaster struck. A violent gale tore through the Timaru coast. The schooner Wellington appeared in distress. Despite the rough sea, the Deal boatmen launched a two-oared surfboat to assist. A wave capsized them. Sadly, Morris Cory and Robert Bowbyes drowned and they became the first recorded burials at Timaru Cemetery.
This is more than a sign, and it is helping me finding the women behind the deal boatmen.
A month after the deaths of the two boatmen, Ann Williams died at the doorway of the Timaru Hotel. The timing is awful. The women who had just mourned their husbands and supported one another through shock and loss would have then mourned Ann too.
These were women of courage. Their names often go unmentioned. Esther Emery Wilds was one of Timaru's early European mothers. She bore at least six children: Mary Annie, John Henry, William, Margaret, Esther (later Bentley), and Herbert. After a hunt through papers past, I came across her death notice. On 12 November 1894 it was reported that Esther drowned in a small dam just 70 yards from the family home in North Street. She had brought tea to John and returned to gather eggs. When she didn’t return, her husband found her body floating in the dam. Her inquest concluded it was a tragic accident. She was 63.
Two years later, a photo was taken in front of the Wilds' home, now the site of Timaru Boys' High School. It shows John with his daughter and grandchildren. Esther is absent. But I am sure was not forgotten.
But memory, like the sea, holds more than what is seen on the surface. In October 1912, nearly two decades after Esther’s death, John Wilds died in what newspapers of the time described as suicide. He was 88 years old and had recently undergone a serious operation. Reports say that early one morning he left his cottage on North Street and walked to the beach, where he entered the water. He was seen and pulled out alive and taken home. But a few hours later, he left the house again and, although thought to be too frail to go far, he managed to walk to the wharf and down the boat steps into the harbour. This time he could not be saved. He was pulled from the water, but life was already extinct. The cause of death was believed to be heart failure.
It is a quiet and sorrowful end for a man whose life had begun among the breakers of Deal and ended beside the tides of Timaru. His passing, like Esther’s, is part of the broader story I have been exploring. Behind the names and photographs are real people with full lives, marked by courage, hardship and quiet endurance.
Questions for the Curious:
What can a photo fail to show?
Who do we centre when we talk about ‘early settlers’?
What role did women like Esther Wilds play in shaping Timaru, beyond their husbands’ occupations?
How might our understanding of history change if we followed objects like Esther’s apron, or a teacup, rather than just a boatman’s oar?
My Take aways
As a woman and a mother, this story has stayed with me in ways I did not expect. It started with a photo on a sign, but the deeper I looked, the more I uncovered. This was not just about one family, but about strength, sacrifice and quiet resilience.
I keep thinking about Esther Wilds, walking across the garden to bring John his tea, then heading back to gather eggs. Just an ordinary moment in a life that had already seen so much. She had left everything behind in England, crossed oceans with a child on her hip, buried fellow settlers and raised six children in a new land. Her death was sudden and domestic, but it speaks of how so many women’s stories have ended quietly and without recognition, despite the lives they helped build. (I also want to learn more about where they lived, and where the dam was).
And I think of Ann Williams. She was here too, in those early years, likely one of the first European women in Timaru. She ran a busy kitchen, birthed babies, kept the hotel running, and welcomed new families like the Wilds. When two of the Deal boatmen drowned in the storm of October 1860, I imagine Esther and Ann standing side by side, comforting widows and holding hands at gravesides. And then, not even two months later, Ann collapsed and died in the doorway of the Timaru Hotel. Her death marked the end of an early chapter for women in this place.
The women of that time were strong in ways that often went unseen. They were the ones who held communities together, who kept homes going through hardship and heartbreak. They were the ones who buried children and friends, cooked meals for neighbours, and went back to their work because life still had to go on. They did not always leave journals or monuments or even have many if any photos of themselves taken, but they left their mark in the people and places they shaped, including their ultimate legacy, their children.
I think, too, about Esther’s grandson, John Emery Wilds. He grew up on the land she helped settle, but died far from home in France at just 21 years old. Serving in a war she would never know. I wonder what Ann and Esther would have made of that. That their descendants would once again cross the world, not to settle a new life, but to defend their homeland.
As a mother, I feel that deeply. While we can connect to their headstones or photographs, they were people who loved, who worked hard, who gave so much. Their lives mattered.
It makes me want to make the most of each day as if it were my first. To cherish those around me. To take lots of photographs, not just for the record, but to hold onto those small, ordinary moments that become precious with time. To remember people and place, and to pass those memories on. Knowing a little bit more about the people of our areas past, is helping me learn more about myself, and question what will be my contribution to our community... my legacy.
Because in the end, it is the everyday stories that take a bit more hunting for, can help that hold communities together. Remembering Ann and Esther, and all the women like them, helps me see the past more clearly, and my place in the present more deeply. I feel greatful and thankful to the work and duty of those who have come before.
A Note on Context:
While this blog explores the journey of the Wilds family and other early European settlers to Timaru, it’s important to acknowledge that this land was not empty when they arrived. Ngāi Tahu, the principal iwi of Te Waipounamu (the South Island), had a long-standing relationship with the coast, rivers, and whenua of this region. The arrival of European settlers marked a time of immense change... one that brought both opportunity and disruption. As we tell the stories of settler families like the Wilds, we must also remember the tangata whenua whose stories are often marginalised in these public narratives. The land that welcomed the Deal boatmen had its own ancestral guardians.
This sepia-toned portrait, taken by A. Burford in Timaru around 1896, shows John Wilds, one of six Deal boatmen brought from Kent, England, to Timaru in 1859, standing outside his North Street home with his daughter, Mrs Mary Annie Davidson, and three grandchildren. From left to right, the children are Esther (Ettie) Davidson (1887 to 1974), John Wilds (grandson of the elder John Wilds, son of John Henry Wilds), and John (Jack) Davidson (1894 to 1969). Mary Annie, seated at the centre, was the firstborn child of John and Esther Wilds. The image was captured near the present site of Timaru Boys’ High School and serves as a visual record of one of Timaru’s early settler families. A handwritten note on the reverse of the original cabinet card reads: “John Wilds one of 6 Deal boat men. 1st April landed Lylleton [sic] Ship Mystery. Came Timaru June 1st 1859 in a small ship [Canterbury?]. Taken where Boys High School now stands about 1896. Sitting daughter Mrs M A Davidson, 83 years resident in Timaru.” The portrait not only offers a glimpse into family life but also links to a wider narrative of emigration, hardship and legacy. Courtesy of South Canterbury Museum, Catalogue Number 2057.
Esther and John Wilds' grandson, John Emery Wilds, was born in Timaru but died at age 21 in France during World War I. He served with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and died of wounds on 22 April 1918. He is buried at Wimereux Communal Cemetery, Pas-de-Calais. In Timaru Cemetery, he is remembered with a memorial plaque alongside his grandparents. I can only imagine what Esther might have thought... that after bravely crossing oceans for a better future, her descendants would return to the other side of the world to fight and die defending their homeland. His sacrifice for duty and country forms another chapter in this family's legacy of service.
Today, a pocket watch once owned by John Wilds is on display at the South Canterbury Museum. I am not sure which John to be fair, I will need to go back and re read the display. But from memory it belonged to John Wildes the Deal Boatman. It no longer ticks the time. And when it did, that watch may have marked the hours he spent launching boats, measuring tides, taking intructions, or waiting for word of a storm. It links us to a man’s life in a way a record never can. It reminds us that history is not only written in buildings and plaques, but in objects, absences, and memory.
Like lots of my blogs, this story started with a photo on a sign, and then went on a few side quests, because what we see on that sign is only part of the story. The Deal boatmen weren’t alone in their bravery. The women who came with them raised children, endured grief, carried on, and built lives in in the young European chapter of Timaru.
By looking beyond the obvious, questioning whose stories we tell, and to reflecting critically on what is preserved, what is lost, and why... we might see a photo, a gravestone, or a street name and ask: Who else was here? What did they experience? What might they want us to remember?
Burial Records (Timaru Cemetery)
Esther Wilds: Died 12 Nov 1894, aged 63, buried General Section, Row 6, Plot 105
John Wilds: Died 21 Oct 1912, aged 88, buried with Esther, General Section, Row 6, Plot 105
John Emery Wilds: Memorial only (WWI), died 22 Apr 1918 in France, commemorated at Row 6, Plot 105
John Henry Wilds (their son): Died 29 Mar 1953, aged 92, buried in General Section, Row 6, Plot 104
Sources: South Canterbury Museum Collection; Papers Past; Timaru Cemetery Records; Journey from Deal to New Zealand by Jerry Vyse; Lyttelton Times (1860); Timaru Landing Service Buildings History Sign; HarvardX Tangible Things Course
Pocket Watch on display at the South Canterbury Museum
The Deal boatmen were a group of skilled seafarers from Deal, Kent, who emigrated to New Zealand in 1858–1859, many under assisted passage schemes offered by Canterbury Superintendent James Edward FitzGerald. Recruited for their exceptional seamanship, they were instrumental in establishing the surf-boat and fishing services in Lyttelton and, more crucially, in the developing port of Timaru. Among the original six men engaged in 1859 by merchant Henry Le Cren to work the Timaru Landing Service were John Wilds, Morris Cory, Robert Bowbyes, Henry Clayson, William John Roberts, and John J. Bowles. Tragedy struck early, with Clayson drowning soon after arrival and Cory and Bowbyes losing their lives in a rescue attempt off the Timaru coast during a violent storm in October 1860. Their burials were the first recorded at the Timaru Cemetery. Others, such as Philip Foster (who replaced Clayson), Charles Emptage, Thomas Nash, Stephen and Edward Gambrill, Richard Gillman, Robert Bushell, John Johnson, William Blackman, James Norris, and Thomas Marsh, either arrived on the same ship (Mystery) or funded their own passage shortly after. Many settled in the area known as Dealmans Town, around today’s Deal Street, and brought with them a lugger named Fox to support a new fishing industry. Their legacy is deeply embedded in Timaru’s foundations, not only in port operations but in the families and place names that remain today.