No happy ever after.

[anne fraser]

As a child I was a keen stamp collector amd I knew we had relatives in New Zealand who sent me beautiful stamps with pictures of flowers and animals.
My mother used to tell me the story of their only son a New Zealand soldier who had come to stay with her parents during the war and had then gone to France where he had been killed in action. The photos he had sent his parents of him and my mother were the last ones they received and I think they regarded me almost as a surrogate grandchild.

They also sent us a handtyped book of family memories of clearing a farm near Mount Egmont. My mother always said that my grandmother's cousin had gone to New Zealand as a baby and that she had gone on writing to her daughter. The only problem was when I became interested in family history all the people I could ask about this story were dead and I had long since got tired of my stamp album.

Even allowing for a generous interpetation of cousin I could find no link between the New Zealand family and mine. My grandmother's maiden name of Cox did not help. Then yesterday I googled Adelaide Cox the name of one of her aunts and I found the story of her sister Sarah who married Elijah Gadd a stone mason from Dundry in 1852 age just 21. In 1853 they had a daughter Emma Jane and in 1854 they set sail for Brisbane on the General Hewitt. Unhappily Sarah died at sea shortly after giving birth to a second Child Elijah Samuel. The death of Elijah Samuel is recorded in Brisbane Cathedral at 9 weeks.

Elijah however prospered he married another Sarah had several more children and help build Christchurch in New Zealand. The family story had been proved right my grandmother did have a cousin in New Zealand.