The Search for David Borthwick - Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The story now moves forward some hundred years to 1960 when I met Joyce Stevenson in Aden and we were married in Sussex , England. Six years previously Joyce’s big sister Jean met and married a young New Zealand Engineer Peter Sharpe who was over in Britain on a graduate apprenticeship. Peter took Jean home to New Zealand and Joyce and Jean lost contact.
There the story might have ended but for our developing an interest in family history round about 1984. Shortly after I retired in 1989 I was in Register House in January 1990 and I came across the death certificate of Joyce’s Aunt Jean who had died in the Western General Infirmary in Edinburgh in 1982. The informant was George Cowe (Joyce’s Uncle) whose address was given as in Carricknowe only about two miles from our home in Barnton. If Uncle George were still alive he would be well up in his eighties.
We didn’t feel we could just charge over there so Joyce wrote explaining the situation. Imagine our excitement when two days later we got a phone call: “hello, this is your uncle George!”. Uncle George was 87 but bright as a button. He was able to tell us that Jean had also been trying to find her family, and had been in contact with Uncle George since 1983. He was able to give Joyce Jean’s address in Christchurch New Zealand. Joyce immediately sat down and wrote a long letter to Jean giving Jean as much of the family history as we had been able to find. A week later our phone rang on Sunday evening. It was Jean from New Zealand. Jean had received Joyce’s letter and had immediately got on the phone to her long-lost sister. What a reunion that was!
In the summer of 1991 Jean and Peter came over to Britain to stay with us. Eighteen months later in early 1993 Joyce and I went over to New Zealand.
The thought of going to New Zealand brought back memories of the brass-bound campaign desk and the letters of Great-great Uncle David Borthwick. Would we be able to solve the riddle of David’s disappearance? Only time would tell.
One of Peter’s little self-imposed tasks in his retirement was to visit some of the old parishioners in the area, and on one occasion he took Joyce and me along to see an old lady called Marian Lee whose grandparents had come out from Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth century. While we were having tea with Marian I noticed an old book in a bookcase; the title was “Defenders of New Zealand”, written by Thomas Wyath Gudgeon, published and printed in Auckland in 1887. I asked Marian if I might browse through it and she said “Of course”. It was a series of anecdotes of the exploits of certain men who had fought in the Maori Wars (Now called the Land Wars). In the appendix was a list of men who had been killed fighting the Maoris; and there part-way down the first page was a line which made my blood run cold:
“Borthwick, David, Pvte..Hawkes Bay Military Settlers..K.I.A. Nov.18 ‘65”
In another part of the book I was able to determine that David was killed along with his sergeant and four other men at the storming of the Pa at Waerenga-a-Hika just north of Turanga now known as Gisborne. Well, I had always wanted to solve the riddle of the disappearance of Great-great Uncle David but now that I had the answer I felt rather deflated. However it was still left to go up to North Island and see if there was anything at Waerenga-a Hika or close-by to commemorate the death of the six men.
Jean and Peter had arranged for the four of us to go on a tour of North Island. We drove up to Nelson and caught the ferry across to Wellington.
We made our way by stages up to Gisborne and put up at the Teal Motor Lodge for a few days whilst exploring the area. At the Gisborne museum we picked up a booklet which mentioned the old cemetery at Makaraka on the main road out of Gisborne where among the monuments was “an old obelisk standing close to the road (which) marks an even earlier event, when the battle of Waerenga-a-Hika took place in 1865, the soldiers who were killed fighting for the government are remembered by this stone, and their remains were buried under it some years after the battle.”
We all four piled into the car and drove out to the cemetery. There was the Obelisk fully inscribed:
Inscribed on two of the other faces were six names, five of them were correct according to the old book but the sixth that should have been D.Borthwick was Robert Bothwell!
What were we to do? There had been no Robert Bothwell. At least no one of that name was killed at Waerenga-a-Hika. Having just solved an old family riddle, we had uncovered a 130-year-old mistake. I felt that my old relative had been ignored or tossed aside. We’d have to think what to do.
We carried on our tour of the North Island but my thoughts were ever and again on how we could right the wrong done to the Borthwick Name. On the way back to Christchurch we had to go through Wellington again and Peter took us to the Register Office in Lower Hutt, where we looked for the record of David’s death, but had no success. It seemed that back in 1865 the records were not 100% accurate. That afternoon we went to the National Archives and there we were able to find David’s Conditions of Enlistment along with all the other men enlisted along with him. Again no trace of any Robert Bothwell. We also found copies of the despatches pertaining to the fighting at Waerenga-a-Hika together with casualty returns. Everything pointed to the 130-year-old error on the old obelisk.
Time was running out for us as we were due to return Scotland. We came home pleased with having made the acquaintance of all our New Zealand relatives but slightly sad that we had left some unfinished business in the Makaraka cemetery.......
For more information about the 'Moari Wars':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Cape_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Wars
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Cow02NewZ-c12.html
