Her end was peace - The story of Damaris Brickwood Williams

By Cheryl Clague, on behalf of the Warkworth branch of NZ Society of Genealogists

Many years ago I was intrigued on seeing the name Damaris Brickwood Williams and the words ‘Her End Was Peace’ on a small headstone in the Te Kapa cemetery. Not knowing anything about her, I decided to research Damaris’s family history beginning with the date of her death etched on the tombstone.

Damaris Brickwood Millar, born in St Germans Cornwall was baptised in 1823. The eldest of the nine children of blacksmith Thomas Millar and his wife Peggy Brickwood, she went to Australia with an aunt and uncle on the immigrant ship Victoria in 1849; their destination, the Cornish settlement at Hill End in Bathurst, New South Wales.

In 1850, Damaris married 38-year-old Cornishman Zacharias Williams, who had been convicted of manslaughter at the Cornwall Assizes in 1832 and transported to Australia in the vessel Neva. After serving out his sentence, Zacharias had eventually made his way to the Cornish settlement at Bathurst.

The couple came to New Zealand aboard the William Denny in February 1855, bringing with them as well as their only son Thomas, an adopted daughter, Ellen Maker, who was to later marry John Dawson, another early Mahurangi settler.

From Auckland they sailed up to Long Beach (an early name for Snells Beach) where, according to Damaris’s obituary, they “spent their first night sleeping under a tree, there being no house in the locality”. Zacharias had purchased land in the Mahurangi and Damaris worked alongside her husband with the building of their home and in the general farm-work. As was the custom of their generation, they led a fairly spartan life, rising at dawn each day and retiring at dusk. Zacharias died in 1887.

After his death Damaris farmed on alone for several years before going to live with Ellen Dawson and her family. Said to have been a bright happy person, Damaris was always interested in the events around her and very fond of reading, especially her nine volume history of the English people. On Tuesday 25 May 1920, Damaris complained of feeling slightly unwell but didn’t consider her ailment as anything serious. Next day she got up as usual and started dressing but, feeling faint, went back to bed where she died peacefully at 3 pm.