The Letters From William Liggins

THE LETTERS FROM WILLIAM LIGGINS

AND FAMILY

There are only four letters in this group and of course they were all sent to John and Katie Stanfield, who were Joseph’s and William's brother-in-law and sister, and were my grandfather and grandmother. As has already been explained, John Stanfield took over the responsibility of looking after Joseph’s affairs in England, as well as William's, when he also emigrated to New Zealand.

After going through all of Joseph’s letters and seeing the considerable volume of information contained in them, it came as a rather depressing thought that there were only four letters in this group. This situation was not helped by realising that, although the first letter from William was given to the pilot of the ship on which he, William, was emigrating, this letter had no date on it. Also, the second letter, written by William's wife, Ellen, was dated 22 nd March, 1917. This leaves a gap of some 25 years between Joseph's last letter and these letters with nothing identifiable by date in-between.

The first questions that came to mind were - can anything be found out about this long empty period and - when did William and his family emigrate to New Zealand? I suspect now, in retrospect, it may have been a case of not being able to see the wood or possibly the New Zealand bush for the trees because, if the bits of the jigsaw were there, they refused to fall into place. It seemed a good idea to try and draw a graph of William’s age against the dates of certain relevant events and see if this helped to shed any light on this empty period.

William was born in 1855 and from this graph it is apparent that by the time of his mother's death in 1894 he was already 39 years old and in the following year he signed a release under the will of his mother. This confirms that he was still in this country in 1895 when he was 40 years old and starting to be a little old to emigrate.

At the other end of the vacuum, Ellen's letter in 1917 was during World War 1 and so they probably emigrated, at the latest, before this began, say 1913. So the period for their possible emigration has reduced somewhat to between 1895 and 1913, a period of 18 years, but this is still a long time.

If one bears in mind William's increasing years, they would probably emigrated towards the beginning of this period but against this idea is the fact that my mother stayed with them during the weekdays when she went to school in Ashby from 1900 to 1904, by which time William would have been aged 45 to 49.

To further confuse the situation apparently, the only known photograph of William is in front of the bungalow at Tokomaru standing with Joseph Liggins and his family and in this he certainly looks middle aged. This photograph is on the cover of this book. If this photo could be dated then of course we would know at least an early time when William was in New Zealand. In it Young Joe, Joseph’s youngest son is aged about 5 or 6 and he was born in 1894. Therefore the photo was taken in about 1900 with William aged 45 and Joseph aged 49.

This date for William to be in New Zealand appears at first to conflict with the time that my mother was staying with them in Ashby. Fortunately, the clue to resolve this apparent impasse is to be found in William's first letter, which he gave to the pilot, and where he says :- " I am so far comfortable and no one has yet been put in my birth. Ellen will show you her letter -". This statement quite clearly indicates that he emigrated first and his wife and family emigrated some time later, by which time my mother had left school and no longer needed to stay with them.

So, if the above assertions are correct, we at least know that William emigrated about the turn of the century and all that can be said after that is, that it is a pity that there is such a long break between Joseph’s letters and William’s letters.

William and Ellen Liggins’ children, Maggie and Osborne