Frances Bateman Fletcher (1828-1885)

Frances Bateman was born on 10 September 1828 in the parish of St John, Stamford, Lincolnshire, England according to a faded entry in the family bible. She was the second daughter of Jane and Thomas Bateman, a dairy farmer or labourer in the area.  Church records show that she was baptized on 16 September 1828 at St John, Stamford,  John, an older brother was baptized in 1818 at All Saints and another, William at St George’s - both churches in Stamford and an older sister Jane was also baptized at St John  in 1824. All these churches were fairly close together.

Little is known of her early life. Family information is that she was well educated, could speak five languages, and if a line from a poem was quoted she could name the author. Her grandparents were thought to have been dairy farmers and Frances was said to be skilled in the care of cows. Her son, Isaac Fletcher recalled that a book called The Dairyman’s Daughter was about his mother but when he consulted a copy he could see no connection and neither could later members of the family. 

When Frances was very young her mother died and her father remarried. This may have been one reason that helped her decide to leave her home in Stamford and emigrate to the other side of the world. Family friends, the Crispes, invited her to accompany them, to help look after the children and to use her dairy skills with cows.

Frances travelled to New Zealand on the Victory under Captain Mullins, leaving St Catherine’s dock, London on 2 October, 1850 and arriving in Auckland on 1 February 1851. On board she was known as “The Literary Lady,” and helped write the ship’s newspaper, The Ocean News.  On a sampler which she worked in silks, she described herself as “Miss Frances Bateman, Gentlewoman”. On the boat she showed the women how to hatch chickens from eggs held under her armpit with the aid of a warm flannel bag.

Her friends the Crispes went to live at Onehunga and then moved to Waiuku, south of Auckland. Frances met Isaac Fletcher after he had left the 58th Regiment a few years before and was living at Onehunga. Records show that two years after Frances arrived in New Zealand that on the 16 March 1853 Isaac Fletcher, bachelor of St Peter’s, Onehunga and Frances Bateman, spinster of the Parish of St Andrew’s, Epsom, were married by bans by Henry Woodfood St Hill. The witnesses were her friends Joseph and Mary Jane Crispe, and Eliza Williams.

The young couple‘s first child, Francis (Frank) Fletcher was born on 7 March 1854 at Onehunga.  Soon after this the family moved to Waiuku south of the Manukau harbour where the Crispe family had settled. Isaac was listed in the 1855 Electoral Roll as a “boatman of Waiuku” and their second son, Isaac Samuel Fletcher was born there on 4 April 1856.

Jane Bateman, a sister of Frances Fletcher with her husband Thomas Holland, emigrated to New Zealand and arrived in Auckland on 5 February 1855. They went to live at Kariotahi, east of Waiuku, so that the two sisters and their families were able to keep in touch.

Isaac and Frances with Frank and baby Isaac moved again to Mauku, north west of Waiuku, about 1858 where another son, Thomas Steadman was born in 1858.  This was where their friends the Crispes had settled and had built a homestead called Stanlake. Here Isaac senior was described as a “sawyer of Mauku”, in the 1858 Electoral Roll. Sawyers were needed to fell trees, saw weatherboards and split shingles for the roofs of houses and  Isaac sawed timber to help build St Brides, the church at Mauku, which is still standing.

In October 1860 there was a tense situation at Mauku when a young man was shot and died and the settlers were fearful of the situation. The Government sent a cutter, the Raven, up the Mauku creek to convey settlers to Onehunga. Messengers went to all the houses to tell people to leave their homes and take shelter on the Raven. Frances, who was pregnant, and her three young sons would have been in this group and Isaac too. Many of the valuables of these settlers were hidden in holes in the ground. It was a Fletcher family tradition that the Family Bible was put down a well with other belongings. Two days later after Bishop Selwyn had spoken to the Māori war party the Fletchers returned and found the bible was untouched. A tapu sign had been put on their door. Frances was very much respected in this community as she used her skills as a midwife and nurse to help both Māori and pākehā The Fletcher Family Bible is still in existence but in two parts as it was divided between the oldest male and the oldest female in the family. Frances’s expected baby, John Bateman Fletcher, arrived safely after all the excitement on 3 December 1860 at Mauku.

The Fletcher family moved back to Onehunga at the end of 1862 and their first little daughter, Jane Elizabeth, was born on 11 January 1863 but died on 1 February the same year at a clinic in Onehunga. Isaac returned to his great love, the sea. He was a master mariner and carried timber from the South Island, Gisborne and Onehunga on sailing ships. He commanded many coastal vessels and at one time ran a ten ton cutter between the Manukau and New Plymouth with a crew of one man and a boy.

While Isaac was at sea, Frances had to carry on looking after the family and doing household tasks. She had more children; William Richard, (1864), Frances Hannah, (Fanny, 1866), Mary Jane, (Jinny, 1869), Sarah Anne, (Annie, 1871) and Rebecca, (Becky, 1874) – altogether a family of nine living children - five sons and four daughters. She had to manage with very little money and often the family collected buckets of pipis (small shellfish) and fish to help with the meals. They all loved bread which cost a shilling a loaf and Frances used to hold it on her lap while she cut thick slices for them to eat.

Frances was well educated and she decided to teach as many children and adults as possible to read and write. She invited them to her kitchen, gave them paper and pencils and charged sixpence a week to those who could afford to pay but took a greater interest in those who couldn’t and gave them extra attention.

She continued as a midwife and nurse to others when needed. Dr Purchas, who was not only a doctor but also an Anglican priest, used to refer patients to her and would provide her with medicines to treat the sick especially when there were epidemics. Her son, Will, who recorded these memories of his mother, said that she made her own ointments and loved helping people in trouble. He wrote more than fifty years after her death that she was “the most self-sacrificing, practical Christian that I have ever seen”.

When Isaac’s ship came into port and the family and Frances could hear the singing of the sailors as they were pulling down the sails, they were very happy indeed that her husband and their father would soon be home. Their eldest sons Frank and Isaac served their apprenticeships on coastal scows on their father’s boats.

Jane Holland, the sister of Frances, who had come out from Lincolnshire to Waiuku died at the early age of thirty five with breast cancer. Frances kept a motherly eye on her nieces and two of them were married from her home in Onehunga with Frances as a witness at both weddings.

Sadly Frances, who had been such a wonderful mother and worker in the community suffered from breast cancer too. Friends such as the Crispes of Mauku with whom she travelled in the Victory came to visit her and supported her in her illness. She died 14 May 1885 at the age of fifty-seven at her home in Onehunga. The church bells tolled all the way from her home as the pall bearers carried her coffin to St Peter’s, Onehunga, where she was buried in the church cemetery leaving her husband, four daughters aged from eleven to eighteen and five sons from twenty-one to thirty–one. Her Bible and Prayer Book, a sealing stamp and a sampler are still treasured by a great granddaughter.

By Joan Stanley 2011

ABOUT THE WRITER: Joan Stanley has written several books about her father’s Haultain family and a number of books and articles about the history of Matamata where she lives. In Frances Bateman Fletcher – a Pioneer Woman she records the story of her great grandmother on her mother’s side of her family.