Lost names of long-gone CHB settlers restored

Wendy Andersen at the Ashley Clinton Cemetery with the list of names she has compiled for the unmarked graves.

Under the lush grass of a peaceful roadside paddock in Makaretu lie dozens of unmarked graves.

To one side, an oak tree marks the site of a long-gone Lutheran Church. In an opposite corner a clue... one lone headstone, a survivor of the bush fires and decay that took its fellows and hid the identities of those whose burials they marked.

Ashley Clinton resident Wendy Anderson has been researching the Ashley Clinton and Makaretu areas for about 12 years, with a view to eventually writing a book.

"I live here and I love history so it's an interest," she says.

She had accumulated a lot of printouts of birth and death records when she began to realise there were far more deaths than there were headstones. "I was quite horrified. Where are they? They had been buried and then forgotten. I wanted to give them their names back."

The grassy roadside paddock at Makaretu...with its dozens of unmarked graves.

There was one headstone in the paddock next to the Makaretu Cemetery and the story went that there had been wooden grave markers and crosses but they were burned in bush fires and rotted away, and as families had moved on the markers were not replaced."

The Ruataniwha Plains had been settled in the 1860s, by the British who established large stations.

As the region grew Hawke's Bay needed workers: men to build roads and railways, women as servants. In the early 1870s the provincial government campaigned in the UK and Scandinavia looking for immigrant workers, tempting them with a "carrot" of assisted passage and a 40 acre (16ha) block of land. Some of these immigrants were destined for Ashley Clinton and Makaretu.

When these families arrived they discovered their blocks were thick bush, traversing gorges and hillsides. They lived in tents and punga whares, barely surviving. They built communities and churches — Lutheran, then Wesleyan and for a short time Plymouth Brethren. But accidents and illness were common and many children were lost before they reached their teens.

"Ashley Clinton must be one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Central Hawke's Bay," Wendy Andersen.

The death record printouts Wendy had noted where each person had died and where they were buried, but the plans for the Lutheran Church Cemetery at Makaretu had been lost and no one knows exactly where the burial plots are.

"It became too risky to dig new graves as no one knew where the old ones were, so in the 1950s John Severinsen donated some land on the opposite side of the cemetery."

While many of the Makaretu burials are unmarked and unidentified, in the Ashley Clinton Cemetery there are sites that are unmarked, but identified.

"Ashley Clinton must be one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Central Hawke's Bay. It's so peaceful," Wendy says.

There lies the small grave that started it all. "There was one grave with an ancient picket fence around it. I thought 'whose is that?' He has his name now: Sydney Verran."

The picket fenced, once nameless grave of Sydney Verran at Ashley Clinton cemetery.

Another unmarked grave belongs to Isabella Durham, buried with her husband John. They had a recent celebrity visit from their great-great grandaughter, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

With the names came family connections and often Names restored at Ashley Clinton

photographs. Wendy has printed out as many as she can and places the images on the graves when she conducts cemetery tours.

Stories came out as well, one of the Ashley Clinton graves is that of a small boy whose mother was simply trying to get her washing done when shooed him outside to play. He did just that, climbing a tree and falling, becoming fatally impaled on a branch. Wendy has woven these stories into the guided cemetery tours she gives as she fundraises to continue her research. The documents she needs come with a cost, which she meets herself, with the help of donations from community members and grants from Takapau Lions and Waipukurau Rotary Club. "I'm passionate about it though. I get a lot of satisfaction from helping the descendants of these settlers. I've solved quite a few mysteries."

"I don't know if I got them all...that's why I have left a gap on the end of the sign," Wendy Andersen.

In October, in a ceremony, those in the unmarked graves in the Makaretu roadside paddock were formally recognised, with their names memorialised on new signage. "Nearly 70 of them now have their names back, but I don't even know if I got them all...that's why I have left a gap on the end of the sign."

Wendy is compiling biographies, in book form, of the settlers and their families buried in the two cemeteries which will be available to buy in 2022.

Anyone who would like to take a guided tour, would like to contribute to the project or who has information to share can contact Wendy on Families of Ashley Clinton and Makaretu Facebook page.