PATTERSON, David
Born 28 February 1888; died 20 November 1918; buried 1 December 1918; age 30
The wording on David’s gravestone is arresting; it describes him as being ‘late of Khandallah and Reefton’. This juxtaposition is not simply alphabetical or geographical; rather it simply identifies places that had meant much to him in the different phases of his short life.
David’s parents, Robert and Catherine PATTERSON née SEARIGHT both came from what today we call Northern Ireland. His father was born in 1838 in Fairy Glade, Killyleagh, County Down, while his mother originated in Bellaghay in County Derry. Robert Patterson had migrated first to the gold rushes in Victoria, Australia in 1854 and then to Gabriel’s Gully in Otago, working his way over many of the southern gold fields before settling on the West Coast and taking up storekeeping first in Kanieri and ultimately in Reefton from 1872 where he worked with his brother James.
Robert and Catherine married in Brighton, a settlement on the Fox River, West Coast in 1871. Catherine, born in 1852, was 14 years younger than Robert.
A fire burnt down the first Patterson business in Broadway, Reefton in 1874, but the enterprising brothers rebuilt their store with living accommodation behind it in the main street. Robert Patterson contributed to the community there as a member of the local school committee and as chairman of the Inangahua County Council. The family grew over 18 years to nine sons and three daughters; David was their second to youngest and among the four children still in their minority when Robert died, intestate, in 1903. David’s older brothers, James (born 1873) and Isaac (born 1879) continued to run the family business as other siblings moved elsewhere to other training and occupations (i).
Brother Isaac had undertaken commercial and legal training of some form in Wellington while David’s brother Hugh received an ‘A’ scholarship after 9 years of schooling in Reefton. The ‘destination’ entry on David’s school record shows he too moved to Wellington when he left school in October 1905. He took up clerical work in the public service and in 1917 was called up for military service (ii).
In August 1918 David married Ethel REITH of Wellington. Born in 1875, in Dunedin, she was the youngest of three daughters (her older sisters were Barbara Ann born 1866 and Ella born 1870). Ethel attended the Terrace School and became a pupil teacher herself at the Mt Cook Girls School in Buckle Street from 1892 and then at Te Aro School in Willis Street in 1894/95. Her parents were John and Jane Reith née OGILVIE, Scottish migrants born in Portsoy, Banffshire in her mother’s case and in St Cyrus, Kincardineshire in her father’s (iii). They had been in New Zealand since at least 1866 (iv). Living first in Dunedin where John Reith was superintendent of the Knox Church Sunday School, he had worked as a bookseller and stationer there (in a partnership with a Mr Wilkie). He was later employed as an accountant by Messrs Guthrie and Lanarch and for Proctor and Jones in Dunedin before moving to Wellington in the 1890s to run the New Zealand Bible, Tract, and Book Society. John was a well-regarded lay preacher, elder, and prominent member of the Presbyterian Church, who worshipped at St John’s in Willis Street. The Reith family lived in Buller Street in the central city in 1905/6 (v). On retirement, the Reiths moved to Khandallah calling their residence in Crescent Road (now Simla Crescent) ‘Auchenblae’ (vi). John Reith died at 74 in 1916 but it was at Auchenblae that the marriage of Ethel Reith and David Patterson took place in August 1918, just a few weeks before the flu epidemic began.
Born 28 February 1888; died 20 November 1918; buried 1 December 1918; age 30
The wording on David’s gravestone is arresting; it describes him as being ‘late of Khandallah and Reefton’. This juxtaposition is not simply alphabetical or geographical; rather it simply identifies places that had meant much to him in the different phases of his short life.
David’s parents, Robert and Catherine PATTERSON née SEARIGHT both came from what today we call Northern Ireland. His father was born in 1838 in Fairy Glade, Killyleagh, County Down, while his mother originated in Bellaghay in County Derry. Robert Patterson had migrated first to the gold rushes in Victoria, Australia in 1854 and then to Gabriel’s Gully in Otago, working his way over many of the southern gold fields before settling on the West Coast and taking up storekeeping first in Kanieri and ultimately in Reefton from 1872 where he worked with his brother James.
Robert and Catherine married in Brighton, a settlement on the Fox River, West Coast in 1871. Catherine, born in 1852, was 14 years younger than Robert.
A fire burnt down the first Patterson business in Broadway, Reefton in 1874, but the enterprising brothers rebuilt their store with living accommodation behind it in the main street. Robert Patterson contributed to the community there as a member of the local school committee and as chairman of the Inangahua County Council. The family grew over 18 years to nine sons and three daughters; David was their second to youngest and among the four children still in their minority when Robert died, intestate, in 1903. David’s older brothers, James (born 1873) and Isaac (born 1879) continued to run the family business as other siblings moved elsewhere to other training and occupations (i).
Brother Isaac had undertaken commercial and legal training of some form in Wellington while David’s brother Hugh received an ‘A’ scholarship after 9 years of schooling in Reefton. The ‘destination’ entry on David’s school record shows he too moved to Wellington when he left school in October 1905. He took up clerical work in the public service and in 1917 was called up for military service (ii).
In August 1918 David married Ethel REITH of Wellington. Born in 1875, in Dunedin, she was the youngest of three daughters (her older sisters were Barbara Ann born 1866 and Ella born 1870). Ethel attended the Terrace School and became a pupil teacher herself at the Mt Cook Girls School in Buckle Street from 1892 and then at Te Aro School in Willis Street in 1894/95. Her parents were John and Jane Reith née OGILVIE, Scottish migrants born in Portsoy, Banffshire in her mother’s case and in St Cyrus, Kincardineshire in her father’s (iii). They had been in New Zealand since at least 1866 (iv). Living first in Dunedin where John Reith was superintendent of the Knox Church Sunday School, he had worked as a bookseller and stationer there (in a partnership with a Mr Wilkie). He was later employed as an accountant by Messrs Guthrie and Lanarch and for Proctor and Jones in Dunedin before moving to Wellington in the 1890s to run the New Zealand Bible, Tract, and Book Society. John was a well-regarded lay preacher, elder, and prominent member of the Presbyterian Church, who worshipped at St John’s in Willis Street. The Reith family lived in Buller Street in the central city in 1905/6 (v). On retirement, the Reiths moved to Khandallah calling their residence in Crescent Road (now Simla Crescent) ‘Auchenblae’ (vi). John Reith died at 74 in 1916 but it was at Auchenblae that the marriage of Ethel Reith and David Patterson took place in August 1918, just a few weeks before the flu epidemic began.
The Terrace School (about opposite where Bolton Street joins the Terrace) attended by David’s wife Ethel
From Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Wellington, 1897
From Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Wellington, 1897
Teaching was the occupation of more than one member of the Reith family. The teachers included Ethel’s sister Ella and her husband, William Walter ROWNTREE who taught at Worser Bay School in 1916 (vii) as well as another relative Mary Janet Reith who had married James GORDON in 1910 and whose teaching registration was notified in the New Zealand Gazette in 1917.
David Patterson was taken to the Wellington College Temporary Hospital when he got sick and he died there with Ethel present on 20 November 1918 (viii). David died intestate and the newspaper notice announcing his death (Evening Post 21 November 1918) made it clear he was living with his new bride at the home of his widowed mother-in-law in Khandallah.
PATTERSON.—On 20th November, 1918, at Wellington College Temporary Hospital, of pneumonia, David Patterson, of Crescent-road, Khandallah. Private interment.
James Gordon Smith the manager of the International Correspondence School and William Mouat Hannay, a gentleman, put together the £600 bond to enable Ethel to settle his affairs (ix).
Ethel remained in Wellington for a time and in subsequent years moved away. Her paternal aunt and uncle by marriage, Mary Janet Gordon (née Reith) and James Gordon (a stenographer) of 38 Sugarloaf Road in Brooklyn, were later buried in David’s grave in the Public 2 section of Karori Cemetery, plot 280 I when they died in 1952 and 1929 respectively.
The Reith parents were both also buried in the Public 2 section of Karori Cemetery in plot 40 Q. By 1924 when Jane Reith made her final will she had moved back to Buller Street from Khandallah, having purchased a house at number 7. She died in May 1930 at 92 leaving her freehold home to her daughters, Barbara Ann and Ethel as tenants-in-common and other assets to be shared with their sister Ella and her grandson, John Burgess Rowntree (x).
Researched and written by Jenny Robertson
Grave Information:
Section: PUBLIC2
Plot: 280 I
Sources:
(i) The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Nelson, Marlborough & Westland Provincial Districts], published 1906 provided much background on the life of David’s father, Robert Patterson.
(ii) New Zealand Gazette, page 1917, page 1925
(iii) Probate for John Reith, died 1916, in Archives New Zealand, Wellington
(iv) Otago Daily Times 24 July 1920 refers to a bible class started by John Reith in Dunedin in 1876. The electoral rolls for Dunedin show someone of this name on the roll from the earliest 1870s. BDM places them in New Zealand even earlier, however, with the birth of their first child, Barbara Ann, in 1866.
(v) 1900 Wellington electoral roll
(vi) Obituaries for John Reith appeared in the Evening Post 4 September 1916 and the Otago Witness of 6 September 1916.
(vii) Evening Post 4 September 1916. The Rowntrees were the parents of John Burgess Rowntree born in 1906.
(viii) Probate for David Patterson held by Archives New Zealand, Wellington
(ix) Ibid
(x) Probate for Jane Reith, died 1930, in Archives New Zealand, Wellington