My Account
Charles Ludwig Kaspar was born at Memel on the Baltic Sea about 1832 and came to New Zealand as a young man. The timber trade was thriving on the Mahurangi River and it was here he found work. By 1861, he was skipper of a cutter named Clyde and was shipping kauri shingles, timber and firewood to Auckland. In February 1863, he brought the first Puhoi settlers up the coast to the mouth of the Puhoi River where they were transferred to Maori canoes for the final four miles of their journey. In the same year he married a Scottish lass Margaret Ann Johnstone and soon acquired the land the family was to occupy for the next 80 years. Naturalisation papers were issued to him in 1869.
It was Captain Kaspar who brought the steamboat Lady Bowen up the river to Warkworth in the 1870s. The progression from sail to steam was not at first universally accepted, but apparently found favour with the ladies. A correspondent to an Auckland newspaper, describing her experience of spending a night in the overcrowded cabin on a cutter, suggested the sailing boat may be fine for men, pigs and potatoes, but women and children needed more space and comfort.
Through the enterprise of Jeremiah Casey, who built up a fleet of coastal vessels, the steamers kept coming to Warkworth usually under the command of Captain Kaspar. It was said that not only did he plough the deep but also he kept a plough going at home, for his homestead was one of the most promising and his fine crops of maize covered six acres. The Kaspar home was known as Pinegrove and it was here that five sons and three daughters were raised.
On September 13, 1888, the flags of the Rose Casey and other coastal boats flew at half-mast in memory of Captain Kaspar who had died the previous evening. The boy from the Baltic was buried half a world away near the river he knew so well. As a widow, Margaret Kaspar stayed on at Pinegrove and advertised rooms to let. Guests could enjoy sea-bathing boating and fishing. She liked to recall her childhood in Auckland when Queen Street was a creek, where Maori paddled their canoes laden with pigs and kumara, and the law was enforced by confining prisoners in stocks owing to the lack of gaol accommodation. Margaret died in 1922 having lived more than 70 years at Mahurangi. The sons of the family continued the sea-going tradition becoming well-known as captains of the scows used in the coastal trade and the Kaspar homestead remained as a landmark on the river.
Kaspar or Kasper? The first family used the Kaspar spelling but over time, Kasper has become more usual. The change could be deliberate given the sensitivity to German sounding names during the wars.
