The kind of alchemy a Patearoa writer happily endorses

Otago Daily Times

05-05-2025

Years ago, when family trees were all the rage, genealogists would painstakingly produce family trees which resembled an impenetrable forest of little use to those outside the family.
Of late, though, family histories have told the personal stories of the family members and the general reader is presented with gems of local history. The latest to come my way is The Hore Alchemists -Turning Cornish Tin to Maniototo Gold .
When you live for a few years in a place like Maniototo you soon get to know of the long-standing families, like those who have been here since the 1863 gold rush or who took up farming in the 1890s. Among the families who formed the backbone of the region are the Hore immigrants, who left the tin mines of Cornwall to seek the gold of Central Otago.
Their descendants have made their mark in farming, sport and a dozen community activities. Their stories, now an interweaving of several generations, come together as a regional history rather than simply a narrow family memoir.
Felicity Brown, now of Sydney, is a Hore descendant and her husband Shaun, one-time boss at TNVZ and then of Australia's Special Broadcasting Service, has brought a lifetime of journalism skills to turning the family tree into a rattling good yarn which tells us more about a pioneering family than the "obituary of a great man" style of writing common in the old days.
The author has walked over the ground in Cornwall, fossicked in local archives and pulled together an explanation for the exodus of one family group from the tin mines.
Though drawn to Maniototo by the gold at Hamiltons, a field dominated by Cornish miners, the Hore family were soon involved in business and farming, prospering many years after the gold had been worked out. Their experiences, shared by many other pioneer families, included financial crises, early deaths, illness both physical and mental, and ultimately success in fields far removed from digging for riches.
Perhaps best of all for the history buff is that "family" histories are using the resources once the preserve of mainstream historians but now widely available through digitised archival material. More photographs are being used, which gives us much more than wedding pictures and portraits of Granddad.
Exploring the content of old photos has become a bit of a hobby for me so let's take one from The Hore Alchemists which appears because it shows the Waipiata store established by family patriarch Silas Hore. A poignant picture, as Silas' house and store were demolished years ago and the site is now a playground.
The photo was taken in 1905 and, while the store is the reason it's there, the picture is a window on one year at Waipiata and I'll digress from the family story for a moment to ponder the scene. There's a telephone pole at the left and close examination shows a wire leading from it to a flag-topped pole then across the dusty main street to a small wooden building, the post office. The coming of the telephone to Waipiata is in that picture.
As the Otago Central Railway crept inland a telegraph line accompanied it and both reached Waipiata in 1898. The locals gazed at this new wonder and felt it should not be restricted to railways. A petition gathered 26 signatures asking for the phone line to be extended into the township. The petitioners wanted the phone no more than 100 yards from the station, perhaps in the nearest store.
The curiously titled Superintendent of Electric Lines offered to install the line if £8 ($2000 today) was paid at once. He pointed out that revenue from the line would be £18 a year but construction costs would have been £20, leaving a deficit of £2. In spite of this, the line went ahead and the telephone was available from the post office from January 6, 1900, with Annie Jones running the service.
The photo also shows the Waipiata Hotel under licensee Hugh Cleland, who had taken over in 1905, and the hall owned by the hotel built by Patrick McAtamney, founder of another Maniototo dynasty. The remnants of bills on the wall are a reminder that touring shows used the hall, while the cow on the roadside illustrates the rural ambience which Waipiata still enjoys and flags on poles at either end of Main Street suggest that in 1905 Waipiata had something to celebrate. Perhaps yet another win by the Original All Blacks.
On Sunday afternoon at the Waipiata pub the township and the wider Hore domain covering most of Maniototo will celebrate the launching of their new history. I've been invited to say a few words but don't worry if you can't get to the pub because you've already read most of them.
• Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.