The book tells the story of the Carthew and Brent families who came to New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s and carved out successful lives.
In 1879, William established a book and stationery shop bearing his name in Feilding and Pioneering Families traces the history of the shop and four generations of Carthew booksellers.
William’s daughter Annie married Joseph Darragh who founded the Darragh retailing dynasty.
Mary Carthew’s brother Stephen Brent established Brent’s Temperance Hotel in Rotorua.
Guests were asked not to tether horses to trees or shrubbery in the hotel grounds.
People of ill-repute or lurid behaviour were not tolerated and guests had to present shotguns and concealable firearms to the house policeman for safekeeping.
Russell Carthew, 81, lives in Masterton. He and his wife Dara used to own Carthew’s Bookshop and Toyworld in Palmerston North.
Carthew said he’d received feedback from people who aren’t relatives about how much they enjoyed the book. He tried to make it a readable history with lots of photographs and large print.
His ancestors had some amazing adventures getting to New Zealand, and then finding it was not the El Dorado they thought it was going to be.
William Carthew had been a miner in Cornwell working for a pittance and decided to chance his arm as a gold prospector on the West Coast, where he had narrow misses with the Burgess-Kelly Gang. He later moved to Thames to work as a mining inspector before settling in Feilding.
Carthew’s great-great-grandfather William Brent came to New Zealand in 1855 from Prince Edward Island in Canada – he was originally from Devon.
William Carthew’s son, also William, was also mayor of Feilding, and his grandson Alan (Russell’s father) served as mayor of Pahīatua.
William kept an anniversary book – a perpetual diary in which he recorded births, deaths, family celebrations, travel around New Zealand, and major events. His son William continued making entries until his death in 1970. The diary is now in the Feilding & Districts Community Archive.
Carthew said Ancestry, museums and Papers Past had also been great sources of information. He started the research 10 years ago and has been plodding away since. He was fascinated by what he discovered and knew he had to put it in a book. When he retired in 2017 he had more time.
While William supported women’s suffrage – his wife signed the petition and he had five daughters – he also saw an opportunity for married men to have a “dual vote”.
William and Mary Carthew are buried at Feilding Cemetery. William’s inscription reads “forever with the Lord” while Mary’s says “with Christ which is far better”.
Among the events covered in the book are a Carthew’s role in getting the Duke and Duchess of York (later George VI and the Queen Mother) to visit Feilding, a Brent’s visit to Queen Victoria, and a Feilding-based campaign for the kōwhai to be New Zealand’s national flower.
There are also details of when a jilted woman ran amok in Feilding in 1896, which resulted in a passing doctor being shot, the bullet creasing his scalp. The doctor is said to have remarked afterwards that she was the only woman he had ever known who had kept her word.
The book is on sale for $35 at Paper Plus in Feilding and Palmerston North and the Coach House Museum.
Judith Lacy has been editor of the Manawatū Guardian since December 2020. She graduated from journalism school in 2001, and this is her second role editing a community paper.
