History – History and mystery

I hope you all managed to visit Warkworth Museum while the Clever Crustaceans exhibition from Te Papa was there. It has now changed to Freaky Features of Colossal Squid – fascinating and also from Te Papa. This exhibition will run until August 17, so plenty of time to plan a visit.

While these exhibitions have been on, there has been a local showcase, Mahurangi Moana, plus a display of maritime artefacts that perhaps we could call a Cabinet of Curiosities.

Among these items are two shellwork creations from the era of Victorian shell hobbies. From as early as the 1700s, the fascination with the natural world was growing as exotic plants and animals were being brought back to Europe from across the globe. Foreign shells were easy to transport and by the early 1800s there was even a specialist shop in London selling patterns for shellwork and pre-sorted packets of shells. A cottage industry arose, especially in port towns, where sailors would buy shell-decorated keepsakes, such as decorated pictures, as mementos for loved ones at home.

The two Victorian shellwork items on display in our cabinet are a decorated box and a needle case. The decoration on the box surrounds a picture of a boat and was gifted to the museum by a descendant of the Ashton family. The needle case is exquisitely decorated with tiny shells and has a note inside that says, “Presented to Mrs Grange from Mrs Smith on her leaving Kohimarama, Nov. 1860”.

This paper has previously had articles about the Grange family in regard to the naming of the shopping complex to the south of Warkworth and also about The Grange property, where I now live on the banks of the Mahurangi River. My grandfather bought this land from the Grange family in 1893 and knowing some of the history, the date of 1860 didn’t sound right and led me to do some sleuthing.

From Joseph Gard’s diaries of 1857-1859, which appeared in the Rodney Times in the 1970s, we know that a Captain Hugh Grange and his wife and daughter were already living in their home, Harbour View, alongside the river. Also in Jade River by R. Locker, there is mention of the Grange family living on their river property by 1857. We know just where the house was, too, as an enormous Norfolk pine planted by Capt. Grange still remains there. By 1858, Jo Gard had married Jeanie Grange and another house was being built on the property for them. So just who was this Mrs Grange leaving Kohimarama in 1860 and presumably moving to the Mahurangi area, as her needle case ended up here?

From my investigations we find there were five Grange brothers and four of them were sea captains.

Three of them, according to shipping records, worked out of NZ ports. Plus three of them bought adjoining Crown grant lots on the banks of the Mahurangi in 1854.

So, investigating museum records, old papers, shipping records and births, deaths and marriages both here and in Scotland, where the family originated, we find that all the brothers married and four of them definitely feature somewhere in NZ records, but just which Mrs Grange was it, if Hugh’s wife was already in Mahurangi by 1857? Had they lived in Kohimarama for a while and not sold up there until 1860? Or was it one of the other Grange wives? A mystery we may never know the answer to.