6146
William Shaw - The Man Who Varnished His Cow Bails
SummaryThe life of William Shaw, who settled in Katikati in 1878 
Main BodyThe recently published book William Shaw 'the man who varnished his cow bails' is an account of the life of William Shaw, an Irishman who brought his family to Katikati and quickly earned a reputation for both enterprise and extravagance. Written by William's great-great grandson, Dean Crowley, the book backgrounds William's origins and traces his life from his birth in County Kildare to his death in Devon, England, with emphasis being given to his time in New Zealand.
William was born on 30 April 1848 at Temple Mills House on the banks of the River Liffey in Celbridge, County Kildare. He was the second of nine children and eldest son of Joseph Shaw and Margaret Henry. Joseph Shaw ran a lucrative flax-milling business at Temple Mills and was a big employer of labour in Celbridge. William's ancestry on his Shaw side has its roots in England. His great-grandfather Giles Shaw was a clothier in Yorkshire and Lancashire. His grandfather William Shaw was born in Manchester, but he apparently moved to Ireland in the early 1800s because his father did not approve of him marrying the daughter of a French refugee. William's ancestry on his mother's Henry side has its roots in Northern Ireland and his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather were all Presbyterian ministers from Ulster. His grandfather, Pooley Shuldham Henry, was the first President of the then Queen's College, Belfast.
William was brought up in the Church of Ireland and his father and several other local landowners were chief providers for the parish church in Celbridge, particularly after the Government changed its monetary allegiance towards the Roman Catholic Church. Educated at Repton School in Derbyshire between 1863 and 1866, William was the school's top sportsman in his final year. After completing his education, he worked for his father at Temple Mills as a flax spinner. However, he was living in Dublin when he married Alice Emma Dickson in October 1870. Four years his senior, Alice was born in Brewood, Staffordshire, and was the second child of William Dickson and Lucy Handley. Alice's family immigrated to South America when she was seven years old and lived in Ecuador and Colombia for several years. It is thought that the move was prompted by her father's business interests as a commission agent dealing in coal and wine.
William and Alice settled in Celbridge, where two daughters (Margaret Josephine and Evelyn Sarah Helena) were born in July 1872 and August 1873 respectively. The family then left Ireland and spent at least 10 months in Switzerland, where their third child (Blanche Camilla D'Outhoorn) was born in December 1874, but returned to Celbridge following Margaret's death in October 1875. It is understood that William then decided to immigrate to New Zealand on the advice of George Vesey Stewart, who sought prosperous Protestant men and women from mainly Northern Ireland to form his planned Irish settlement in Katikati. However, while Vesey Stewart brought out the first group of special settlers to the district on the Carisbrook Castle in September 1875 and the second group on the Lady Jocelyn in August 1878, William's family came out independently on the Sam Mendel in 1876 and settled in Tauranga, where his fourth child (Joseph William Conolly) was born in July 1877.
William purchased 1,000 acres of land in Katikati, which he named “Woodlands.” The huge picturesque property, which was purchased in his father's name, covered the floor and hillsides of the upper Tuapiro River valley and was by far the biggest section in Katikati. Much progress was made in ploughing and clearing the land and forming an access road by March 1878. William provided much employment in the district during hard times and, at one stage, had 26 men clearing and ploughing the land. He came in for high praise for his enterprise in wanting to build a bridge near his property and the Bay of Plenty Times commented in July 1878 that it “would like to see a great deal more of similar self-reliance and go-a-headism.” Progress continued to be made throughout the year and, by December 1878, William had 130 acres under crop and around 60 cows. His fifth child (Violet Maude Lucy) was born at Woodlands in September 1879.
In the meantime, William's sister Elizabeth Jane and her husband Rupert Virginius Thomas Edward Stevenson had arrived in the district as part of the second group of special settlers and purchased the “Fern Cliff” farm in Wairoa, near Tauranga. Also in this group was the Hon. Randolph Thomas Rowley, nephew of William's older sister Sarah Eliza and her husband Tom Conolly.
Both William and Alice were active in the community. William dabbled in public life and served as a trustee on the Katikati Highway Board. He also briefly served on the Katikati North School Committee, a school board responsible for overseeing the No. 1 and No. 2 schools in Katikati. He was also a member of the committee organising the inaugural Katikati Fair, held in April 1885. A keen sportsman, William played cricket for both the Tauranga and Katikati Cricket Clubs and was a member of the Tauranga Jockey Club. He owned a bay gelding called Charley, which won the Hurdle Race and came second in the Settlers' Plate at the inaugural Katikati Races in February 1879. Alice was a willing fundraiser for worthy causes in the community. She was a member of the Tauranga Choral Society and sang in amateur concerts staged by settlers to raise funds for causes such as local schools and churches. While she often received “imperative” encores and was praised in musical reviews, she also entertained audiences by playing in piano duets. Her deep concern for the well-being of those less fortunate than herself extended beyond her community to collecting clothing for the survivors of the Mt. Tarawera eruption and in wanting to found a crofter settlement at Bowentown.
With considerable financial assistance from his father, William was one of the wealthier settlers to come to Katikati and he and fellow settler Percival Crène were described by Arthur J. Gray as “men of means.” It was said that William brought £20,000 with him to the infant settlement. However, like many of his fellow settlers, William's wealth eroded as he struggled with the hardships of pioneering life on a difficult farm and he soon found himself in financial strife. He had spent a lot of money making improvements to his farm, not to mention building a bridge and roads. He incurred debts to several local merchants and was signing bills of sale with goods and chattels as security.
William's involvement in two “bill of sale” cases in 1879/80 not only generated considerable interest in the district, but revealed the extent of his insolvency and the desperate measures he took to evade his creditors. Judgments were being awarded to his creditors and, without any means to pay his debts, he had to stand back and watch as furniture was seized from his house and cattle from his farm. These were difficult and unsettling times for William and his family and it was common knowledge that he was drinking to excess. He suffered the ultimate humiliation of seeing all his chattels sold at an auction sale at Woodlands in August 1880. Despite his net liabilities exceeding £6,000, William never filed a petition for bankruptcy but later offered 13 shillings in the pound to his creditors. He eventually paid them seven shillings in the pound in 1884. William and his family returned to Tauranga and the vacant Woodlands was rented to Charles Harley in October 1881.
William was frequently away from his family and made four trips back to England. His first trip in mid-1881 was presumably to secure more money from his father, who had closed his flax mills in Celbridge and retired to Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. It was during this absence that William's sixth child (Cuthbert Collingwood) was born in October 1881. He returned to England in late 1882 and also gained considerable practical farming experience in America. William's third trip in 1885 was necessitated by his mother's ill health. He returned to England for the fourth time in 1887 following his father's death and was away from his family for nearly two years!
When William returned home in April 1884 after his second trip, he was in a considerably better financial position than when he left. While he undoubtedly received more money from his father, he may have also prospered from his farming venture in America. Armed with his new-found wealth, William started to transform his seven-roomed house at Woodlands into a palatial colonial residence. He hired local builder Robert Simms to make considerable alterations to the house, including the addition of a spacious drawing room, dining room and two bedrooms. The house had wide verandahs, ceilings decorated with elaborate cornices, ornate door and window frames, and carved wooden ornamentation around fireplaces and in the halls. Kauri from Mercury Bay was used for weather-boarding and panelling and on the front door was a handsome Italian brass door knocker and knob that William had bought on his recent voyage from England.
No expense was spared on the homestead and the stables were as carefully finished as an ordinary house. Almost 1,000 square feet in area, William spent £2,000 on the stables and the varnished cow bails and palatial quarters for horses were the talk of the settlement! A white picket fence stretched on either side of the driveway for half a mile from the entrance to the Woodlands Valley, where the road was bridged across a stream, all the way to the circular drive in front of the house. A pipe was installed in the centre of the circle to form a fountain, gravity-fed from a hillside spring. The grounds were attractively laid out with a kitchen garden, croquet ground and lawn tennis court. William built a new road to the rear of his property to provide access to a large area of firewood. Cut and brought to Tauranga, he earned a royalty of one shilling per ton of firewood.
Woodlands was variously described as beautiful, picturesque, grandiose, palatial and the show piece of the district. While William deserved his reputation for extravagance, he nonetheless made a valuable contribution to Katikati as a large employer of labour. He generated the circulation of much-needed money in difficult economic times and, in the words of the settlement's founding father, George Vesey Stewart, William dispensed money “with no niggardly hand.” Vesey Stewart was unqualified in his praise of William's contribution to the town when he said “I wish we had six dozen more William Shaw's.”
William was generously provided for under his father's will and he initially entertained thoughts of abandoning New Zealand and taking up residence at Temple Mills. He had a change of mind and Temple Mills was eventually sold in January 1889. However, upon arriving home from Ireland in March 1889, William discovered that his liabilities were greater than expected. Together with unpaid and partly paid old accounts, new debts had been incurred during his absence. Unable to pay the duty on the personal, household and farm goods he brought out, he borrowed the money from James Weir Gray. He then took out a big mortgage from Auckland financier John Abbott in November 1889, which was secured by the income he received under his father's will, the equity in Woodlands and a life insurance policy. William's financial crisis deepened and auctions of his household and personal goods, farm equipment and produce were held. He filed a petition for bankruptcy in January 1890 and his net liabilities exceeded £770. William's offer of four shillings in the pound on all unsecured and non-preferential debts was accepted by creditors in September 1890.
Bankruptcy signalled the end of William's time in New Zealand. The family left Katikati and settled in Tauranga, initially at Devonport Road and then at Cameron Road. It was probably while living here that William's daughter Evelyn met her future husband, Herbert Benbow Mansel, whom she married in April 1891 at the Holy Trinity Church. They settled on a 50-acre block of the Yatton Estate in Gate Pā that Herbert had received from his aunt, Lucy Mansel. In the meantime, the Public Trust Office, as first mortgagee, leased Woodlands to William Villiers Tuthill in March 1890 and then to George Vesey Stewart and his son Hugh in April 1891 for sheep grazing. The house remained untenanted until the property's sale to Thomas George Marlow in April 1892.
Alice and the four younger children remained in Tauranga when William moved to Auckland in 1893 and this may have been due to her poor health. She had been described as “mostly an invalid” during the three years she lived in Tauranga. They joined William in 1894 and the family lived at Oakleigh Park in Avondale. Despite living in Auckland, William could not resist the temptation to hunt for gold in Katikati and he was granted a miner's right in October 1895. He applied for a special claim grant in July 1896 for 100 acres of land bordering Woodlands and gave notice of his intention to construct a water-race, but did not proceed with either venture.
Alice's death in December 1897 sparked the dispersal of the family. With the exception of Evelyn and Blanche, who were living in Tauranga and Avondale respectively, the remaining members of the family all eventually left New Zealand and settled overseas. William was the first to leave and he sailed to England in early 1898. He wasted no time in finding a new partner and, within eight months of Alice's death, he married Inez Mary Foulkes in July 1898 in Hampstead. His three youngest children followed him to England the following year.
William and Inez settled in the small village of Brendon in North Devon and were joined by Violet. Joseph did not stay long in England and ended up fighting the Boers in South Africa. Cuthbert pursued his love of horses and worked as a groom in Hampshire for one of England's leading race horse trainers. William was widowed again when Inez died in 1910 in the seaside resort of Ilfracombe in North Devon. He and Violet then moved to Sticklepath in West Devon and, at the age of 72, he married Lucie Agnes Evelyn Saunders in Worcestershire in 1920. The couple left Sticklepath and moved to the seaside town of Seaton in East Devon to spend their final days. Lucie died in 1927 and William died two years later on 2 December 1929, aged 81.
—-
This page archived at Perma CC in February of 2017: https://perma.cc/V2ST-6BS4 ;
The original Tauranga Memories Article was first created: 3 August 2011 and last update 7 February 2017
Note
This article was originally part of Tauranga City Library's 'Tauranga Memories' website. To your right the 'Archived Kete Link' (if there is one) will take you to a snapshot of the original record.
Tauranga Memories was made up of several focus areas, called 'baskets'. This article was part of the General basket. It was first published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License. Please note that articles on Tauranga Memories were often uploaded on behalf of a member of the public, meaning sometimes the author is misattributed to a library staff member. Please contact us if you this is the case for an article you authored.
Main BodyThe recently published book William Shaw 'the man who varnished his cow bails' is an account of the life of William Shaw, an Irishman who brought his family to Katikati and quickly earned a reputation for both enterprise and extravagance. Written by William's great-great grandson, Dean Crowley, the book backgrounds William's origins and traces his life from his birth in County Kildare to his death in Devon, England, with emphasis being given to his time in New Zealand.William was born on 30 April 1848 at Temple Mills House on the banks of the River Liffey in Celbridge, County Kildare. He was the second of nine children and eldest son of Joseph Shaw and Margaret Henry. Joseph Shaw ran a lucrative flax-milling business at Temple Mills and was a big employer of labour in Celbridge. William's ancestry on his Shaw side has its roots in England. His great-grandfather Giles Shaw was a clothier in Yorkshire and Lancashire. His grandfather William Shaw was born in Manchester, but he apparently moved to Ireland in the early 1800s because his father did not approve of him marrying the daughter of a French refugee. William's ancestry on his mother's Henry side has its roots in Northern Ireland and his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather were all Presbyterian ministers from Ulster. His grandfather, Pooley Shuldham Henry, was the first President of the then Queen's College, Belfast.
William was brought up in the Church of Ireland and his father and several other local landowners were chief providers for the parish church in Celbridge, particularly after the Government changed its monetary allegiance towards the Roman Catholic Church. Educated at Repton School in Derbyshire between 1863 and 1866, William was the school's top sportsman in his final year. After completing his education, he worked for his father at Temple Mills as a flax spinner. However, he was living in Dublin when he married Alice Emma Dickson in October 1870. Four years his senior, Alice was born in Brewood, Staffordshire, and was the second child of William Dickson and Lucy Handley. Alice's family immigrated to South America when she was seven years old and lived in Ecuador and Colombia for several years. It is thought that the move was prompted by her father's business interests as a commission agent dealing in coal and wine.
William and Alice settled in Celbridge, where two daughters (Margaret Josephine and Evelyn Sarah Helena) were born in July 1872 and August 1873 respectively. The family then left Ireland and spent at least 10 months in Switzerland, where their third child (Blanche Camilla D'Outhoorn) was born in December 1874, but returned to Celbridge following Margaret's death in October 1875. It is understood that William then decided to immigrate to New Zealand on the advice of George Vesey Stewart, who sought prosperous Protestant men and women from mainly Northern Ireland to form his planned Irish settlement in Katikati. However, while Vesey Stewart brought out the first group of special settlers to the district on the Carisbrook Castle in September 1875 and the second group on the Lady Jocelyn in August 1878, William's family came out independently on the Sam Mendel in 1876 and settled in Tauranga, where his fourth child (Joseph William Conolly) was born in July 1877.
William purchased 1,000 acres of land in Katikati, which he named “Woodlands.” The huge picturesque property, which was purchased in his father's name, covered the floor and hillsides of the upper Tuapiro River valley and was by far the biggest section in Katikati. Much progress was made in ploughing and clearing the land and forming an access road by March 1878. William provided much employment in the district during hard times and, at one stage, had 26 men clearing and ploughing the land. He came in for high praise for his enterprise in wanting to build a bridge near his property and the Bay of Plenty Times commented in July 1878 that it “would like to see a great deal more of similar self-reliance and go-a-headism.” Progress continued to be made throughout the year and, by December 1878, William had 130 acres under crop and around 60 cows. His fifth child (Violet Maude Lucy) was born at Woodlands in September 1879.
In the meantime, William's sister Elizabeth Jane and her husband Rupert Virginius Thomas Edward Stevenson had arrived in the district as part of the second group of special settlers and purchased the “Fern Cliff” farm in Wairoa, near Tauranga. Also in this group was the Hon. Randolph Thomas Rowley, nephew of William's older sister Sarah Eliza and her husband Tom Conolly.
Both William and Alice were active in the community. William dabbled in public life and served as a trustee on the Katikati Highway Board. He also briefly served on the Katikati North School Committee, a school board responsible for overseeing the No. 1 and No. 2 schools in Katikati. He was also a member of the committee organising the inaugural Katikati Fair, held in April 1885. A keen sportsman, William played cricket for both the Tauranga and Katikati Cricket Clubs and was a member of the Tauranga Jockey Club. He owned a bay gelding called Charley, which won the Hurdle Race and came second in the Settlers' Plate at the inaugural Katikati Races in February 1879. Alice was a willing fundraiser for worthy causes in the community. She was a member of the Tauranga Choral Society and sang in amateur concerts staged by settlers to raise funds for causes such as local schools and churches. While she often received “imperative” encores and was praised in musical reviews, she also entertained audiences by playing in piano duets. Her deep concern for the well-being of those less fortunate than herself extended beyond her community to collecting clothing for the survivors of the Mt. Tarawera eruption and in wanting to found a crofter settlement at Bowentown.
With considerable financial assistance from his father, William was one of the wealthier settlers to come to Katikati and he and fellow settler Percival Crène were described by Arthur J. Gray as “men of means.” It was said that William brought £20,000 with him to the infant settlement. However, like many of his fellow settlers, William's wealth eroded as he struggled with the hardships of pioneering life on a difficult farm and he soon found himself in financial strife. He had spent a lot of money making improvements to his farm, not to mention building a bridge and roads. He incurred debts to several local merchants and was signing bills of sale with goods and chattels as security.
William's involvement in two “bill of sale” cases in 1879/80 not only generated considerable interest in the district, but revealed the extent of his insolvency and the desperate measures he took to evade his creditors. Judgments were being awarded to his creditors and, without any means to pay his debts, he had to stand back and watch as furniture was seized from his house and cattle from his farm. These were difficult and unsettling times for William and his family and it was common knowledge that he was drinking to excess. He suffered the ultimate humiliation of seeing all his chattels sold at an auction sale at Woodlands in August 1880. Despite his net liabilities exceeding £6,000, William never filed a petition for bankruptcy but later offered 13 shillings in the pound to his creditors. He eventually paid them seven shillings in the pound in 1884. William and his family returned to Tauranga and the vacant Woodlands was rented to Charles Harley in October 1881.
William was frequently away from his family and made four trips back to England. His first trip in mid-1881 was presumably to secure more money from his father, who had closed his flax mills in Celbridge and retired to Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. It was during this absence that William's sixth child (Cuthbert Collingwood) was born in October 1881. He returned to England in late 1882 and also gained considerable practical farming experience in America. William's third trip in 1885 was necessitated by his mother's ill health. He returned to England for the fourth time in 1887 following his father's death and was away from his family for nearly two years!
When William returned home in April 1884 after his second trip, he was in a considerably better financial position than when he left. While he undoubtedly received more money from his father, he may have also prospered from his farming venture in America. Armed with his new-found wealth, William started to transform his seven-roomed house at Woodlands into a palatial colonial residence. He hired local builder Robert Simms to make considerable alterations to the house, including the addition of a spacious drawing room, dining room and two bedrooms. The house had wide verandahs, ceilings decorated with elaborate cornices, ornate door and window frames, and carved wooden ornamentation around fireplaces and in the halls. Kauri from Mercury Bay was used for weather-boarding and panelling and on the front door was a handsome Italian brass door knocker and knob that William had bought on his recent voyage from England.
No expense was spared on the homestead and the stables were as carefully finished as an ordinary house. Almost 1,000 square feet in area, William spent £2,000 on the stables and the varnished cow bails and palatial quarters for horses were the talk of the settlement! A white picket fence stretched on either side of the driveway for half a mile from the entrance to the Woodlands Valley, where the road was bridged across a stream, all the way to the circular drive in front of the house. A pipe was installed in the centre of the circle to form a fountain, gravity-fed from a hillside spring. The grounds were attractively laid out with a kitchen garden, croquet ground and lawn tennis court. William built a new road to the rear of his property to provide access to a large area of firewood. Cut and brought to Tauranga, he earned a royalty of one shilling per ton of firewood.
Woodlands was variously described as beautiful, picturesque, grandiose, palatial and the show piece of the district. While William deserved his reputation for extravagance, he nonetheless made a valuable contribution to Katikati as a large employer of labour. He generated the circulation of much-needed money in difficult economic times and, in the words of the settlement's founding father, George Vesey Stewart, William dispensed money “with no niggardly hand.” Vesey Stewart was unqualified in his praise of William's contribution to the town when he said “I wish we had six dozen more William Shaw's.”
William was generously provided for under his father's will and he initially entertained thoughts of abandoning New Zealand and taking up residence at Temple Mills. He had a change of mind and Temple Mills was eventually sold in January 1889. However, upon arriving home from Ireland in March 1889, William discovered that his liabilities were greater than expected. Together with unpaid and partly paid old accounts, new debts had been incurred during his absence. Unable to pay the duty on the personal, household and farm goods he brought out, he borrowed the money from James Weir Gray. He then took out a big mortgage from Auckland financier John Abbott in November 1889, which was secured by the income he received under his father's will, the equity in Woodlands and a life insurance policy. William's financial crisis deepened and auctions of his household and personal goods, farm equipment and produce were held. He filed a petition for bankruptcy in January 1890 and his net liabilities exceeded £770. William's offer of four shillings in the pound on all unsecured and non-preferential debts was accepted by creditors in September 1890.
Bankruptcy signalled the end of William's time in New Zealand. The family left Katikati and settled in Tauranga, initially at Devonport Road and then at Cameron Road. It was probably while living here that William's daughter Evelyn met her future husband, Herbert Benbow Mansel, whom she married in April 1891 at the Holy Trinity Church. They settled on a 50-acre block of the Yatton Estate in Gate Pā that Herbert had received from his aunt, Lucy Mansel. In the meantime, the Public Trust Office, as first mortgagee, leased Woodlands to William Villiers Tuthill in March 1890 and then to George Vesey Stewart and his son Hugh in April 1891 for sheep grazing. The house remained untenanted until the property's sale to Thomas George Marlow in April 1892.
Alice and the four younger children remained in Tauranga when William moved to Auckland in 1893 and this may have been due to her poor health. She had been described as “mostly an invalid” during the three years she lived in Tauranga. They joined William in 1894 and the family lived at Oakleigh Park in Avondale. Despite living in Auckland, William could not resist the temptation to hunt for gold in Katikati and he was granted a miner's right in October 1895. He applied for a special claim grant in July 1896 for 100 acres of land bordering Woodlands and gave notice of his intention to construct a water-race, but did not proceed with either venture.
Alice's death in December 1897 sparked the dispersal of the family. With the exception of Evelyn and Blanche, who were living in Tauranga and Avondale respectively, the remaining members of the family all eventually left New Zealand and settled overseas. William was the first to leave and he sailed to England in early 1898. He wasted no time in finding a new partner and, within eight months of Alice's death, he married Inez Mary Foulkes in July 1898 in Hampstead. His three youngest children followed him to England the following year.
William and Inez settled in the small village of Brendon in North Devon and were joined by Violet. Joseph did not stay long in England and ended up fighting the Boers in South Africa. Cuthbert pursued his love of horses and worked as a groom in Hampshire for one of England's leading race horse trainers. William was widowed again when Inez died in 1910 in the seaside resort of Ilfracombe in North Devon. He and Violet then moved to Sticklepath in West Devon and, at the age of 72, he married Lucie Agnes Evelyn Saunders in Worcestershire in 1920. The couple left Sticklepath and moved to the seaside town of Seaton in East Devon to spend their final days. Lucie died in 1927 and William died two years later on 2 December 1929, aged 81.
—-
This page archived at Perma CC in February of 2017: https://perma.cc/V2ST-6BS4 ;
The original Tauranga Memories Article was first created: 3 August 2011 and last update 7 February 2017
Note
This article was originally part of Tauranga City Library's 'Tauranga Memories' website. To your right the 'Archived Kete Link' (if there is one) will take you to a snapshot of the original record.
Tauranga Memories was made up of several focus areas, called 'baskets'. This article was part of the General basket. It was first published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License. Please note that articles on Tauranga Memories were often uploaded on behalf of a member of the public, meaning sometimes the author is misattributed to a library staff member. Please contact us if you this is the case for an article you authored.
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AcknowledgementTe Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries
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TaxonomyStories | Peoplewebike, William Shaw - The Man Who Varnished His Cow Bails. Pae Korokī, accessed 18/06/2025, https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/6146
