BIOGRAPHY
Ann Fraser, the fifth daughter of Duncan and Marjory Fraser was born in the two-storeyed stone cottage on the Ardgour Estate on 12 September 1829, and was 11 years old when the family arrived in New Zealand on 27 December 1840. She had celebrated her birthday on the Blenheim, which, according to Jessie Campbell's diary at noon on that day, was at latitude 24° 34' North by longitude 20° West. This placed the Blenheim in the Atlantic Ocean just north of the Tropic of Cancer and some 400 kilometres off the coast of West Africa.
On Christmas Day, 1849, at St Peter's Church in Willis Street, Wellington, she was married to Thomas Furner Richardson, a carpenter and bricklayer. Thomas was the eldest son of Thomas and Delia Richardson (née Burgess), and was born at Hastings, Sussex, on 1 April 1825. Thomas and Delia along with their family had arrived at Port Nicholson on 21 October 1841 on board the Arab.
Thomas had been apprenticed to his father, also a carpenter and bricklayer, and by the time he was married was a tradesman in his own right. They lived in Willis Street near to his parents, where their first six children were born.
By the mid 1850s all of Ann's brothers and sisters had moved away to the Wanganui or the Rangitikei district, and so her and Thomas decided to follow about 1861. Their first home was on Duncan Frasers property near the Fraser Burial
Ground. About 1871 Thomas purchased 300 acres of coastal land further west of Pukehou and built his own home there and called it "Sandridge".
The timber for the house came from Rowes Steam Sawmill and Planing Factory, at Makowhai. The ruling price for timber then delivered by bullock wagon was four shillings and sixpence per hundred feet. The house was then reached by crossing the paddocks from Brookie's Lane, a road which was later named Pukehou Road. There was also a paper road named Sandridge Road but this was never officially formed.
The country around "Sandridge" was fairly sandy and Thomas eventually sold out to the Keiller brothers about 1890 and purchased another property on the other side of the Rangitikei River near Ohakea, where he built the "Karaka Terrace" homestead. The "Sandridge" property was eventually bought by the Dalrymple brothers and the house became the home of the sharemilkers employed by the owners. The house was last occupied in 1958, and today has nearly all gone.
"Karaka Terrace" was a large single storied house built on the terrace between the river and what is now the Ohakea Air Force Base. Unfortunately it too has succumbed to time and was demolished some years ago.
Thomas Richardson died at Palmerston North on 10 October 1904 and was buried in the Family Burial Ground on 12 October. Ann remained at Karaka Terrace in the care of her daughter Jessie, where she died on 8 October 1907.
Source: Pukehou: The Frasers of Lower Rangitikei, Ian Clapham, 1998.
Chris Korte's New Zealand Genealogy Project
1829 - 1907 (78 years)
Has 6 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
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Sources (Log in)