Museum Notebook: The life of Jessie Campbell

Jessie Campbell, around 1860s. Photo / Whanganui Regional Museum Collection ref: CVC.071

As we celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, now is a good time to reflect on the pioneering women who emigrated to New Zealand and settled in Whanganui.

One such woman was Jessie Campbell, the great-grandmother of celebrated composer Douglas Lilburn. While recorded history tends to focus on the achievements of men during the early settlement of frontier society, Jessie Campbell is a good example of how women made significant contributions to family decision-making, resourcefulness and economic stability. The Whanganui Regional Museum holds copies of Campbell's letters and a detailed journal, the originals of which are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Born Jessie Cameron in 1807 in Inverness, Scotland, to John and Louisa Cameron, Jessie married Moses Campbell when she was 20. From Perthshire, Moses was a captain in the 72nd Highlanders.

In August 1840, the Campbells arrived in Wellington on the Blenheim, a New Zealand Company-chartered emigrant ship, with their five young children in tow. Jessie kept a detailed journal of her time on the Blenheim, and her letters back home to friends and family in Scotland give an insight into early settler life in New Zealand from Jessie's perspective.

She recorded that shipboard life came with a bland diet, so the Campbells brought additional food with them - sheep, ducks and hens - which were killed on board. In her journal, Jessie remarks that one evening for dinner they ate the best pea soup she had ever tasted.

The Blenheim arrived in Wellington on December 27, 1840, but the family discovered the land allocated to them was in fact in Whanganui.

Delays in surveying it meant, however, that it would be some time before they could take possession, so they stayed in Petone. In November 1841, the Campbells finally set sail for Whanganui from Wellington on board the Clydeside. The voyage was treacherous and, while crossing the bar of the Whanganui River, the pilot ran the ship onto the North Spit among breakers, before dislodging.

The Campbells took over two adjacent 100-acre sections bordering Lake Wiritoa. Jessie described their new home as "the best house in Wanganui". She was one of many women who were required to adapt to their new lives. But this adjustment proved liberating for women in some ways.

Jessie had a strong role in the family's decision-making and strongly influenced the family's future. A shrewd observer, she recognised the business acumen, carpentry skills and knowledge of cattle possessed by her cousin, John Cameron, and insisted her husband go into partnership with him.

Work was scarce so Campbell and Cameron concentrated on raising cattle, while Jessie resourcefully supplemented the family's income by contributing £1 a week from her flourishing dairy. Cash was scarce in Whanganui so bartering, at which Jessie showed great skill, was common between settlers. She bartered her dairy produce to pay the family's expenses including goods from the shoemaker and tailor.

She even made her own cheese.

"I have so much milk that I have actually made some small cheese, the rennet made from pigs' stomach, which does very well. We have pumpkins not yet at their full growth which already measure 4ft. in circumference," she wrote.

Jessie Campbell died on October 18, 1885, aged 77. Her obituary in the Wanganui Chronicle ran on October 20, 1885, noting:

On Sunday afternoon Mrs Campbell (widow of the late Captain Campbell), one of Wanganui's oldest and most respected residents, passed peacefully away to her rest. The deceased lady, who was in her 78th year, succumbed to an attack of bronchitis, which an enfeebled system was too weak to resist. Though she had been ailing for about a fortnight, she was only confined to her room for four or five days and retained perfect possession of her mental faculties to the last."

Kiran Dass is Marketing & Communications Coordinator at the Whanganui Regional Museum