Archive

Dive into our inaugural digital archive, “The New Zealand Diary of the Hon. Mrs Henry Petre 1842.” Currently the sole document in our collection, this diary offers a unique glimpse into early colonial life in New Zealand. Stay tuned, as we will soon expand our offerings with more historical treasures.

There is great contrast between the Petre family background and life in the new colony of Wellington, New Zealand.

The Petre family are descended from Sir William Petre, one of the principal secretaries of State to King Henry VIII, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. Henry William Petre, who emigrated to New Zealand, was the second son of the 11^th Baron Petre. It was typical for the second sons of the landed gentry in England to be sent to a British colony to make their fortune.

Mary Ann Eleanor Walmesley (known as Ellen) was the only daughter of Richard and Marianne Walmesley of Middleton Hall, Brentwood, Essex, England, a Lancastrian Catholic family. Henry Petre married Ellen Walmesley on 6 June 1842, one month after her seventeenth birthday. It is probable that Ellen’s diary was a wedding gift, as it is covered in what looks like expensive exotic animal skin, with her name and title printed on the cover.

The Petre’s arrived in Port Nicholson (Wellington), New Zealand on 31 January 1843 with their household staff, property, and animals. The diary reveals an epic adventure, covering Ellen’s first year in New Zealand during the year 1843 and the 6-month journey to reach the new colony. The Petre’s had survived a near shipwreck, they saw a huge comet that could be seen in the sky for more than two weeks, and they experienced the preparation for the invasion of Wellington after the Wairau Affray. Ellen records befriending a number of local Māori. All of this and more was observed and recorded by Ellen before she was even 19 years of age. Ellen’s youthful view of the world meant that she was curious about the land and the people, making her diary entries enjoyable and informative to read.

Twelve years later in 1855, on 23 of January, a severe earthquake shook the Wellington region, raising the ground almost three meters in some places and causing a huge landslide that cut off Petone from Wellington. This was the end of the Petre family’s time in the new British colony of Wellington, as their home and farm in Petone would have been devastated by the earthquake. Ellen had a four-week-old baby at the time of the 1855 earthquake, and six other children under the age of ten. In total, Ellen Petre had sixteen children, with the following nine born in England.

Not only is this unique diary a legacy to the large Petre family but is also a legacy for New Zealand because of the vibrant observations of a young woman in a new colony.

My goal for publishing online this particular archive record is to help readers decide for themselves, how they would like to view Ellen Petre’s observations of Wellington from 1843. Ellen’s diary may have been overlooked as valuable New Zealand archive, as she was the young wife of the Honorary Henry William Petre, who was an original member of the First Colony of New Zealand Committee, commissioned by the New Zealand Company.

This archival resource is unique in its quality and purpose. Ellen Petre was educated and privileged, which gave her an advantage over many other settlers, for she knew how to write eloquently and had the time to write daily. She was not financially restrained, meaning she did not have to focus her time and energy on survival. Instead, it was important for her to record her daily activities and what was happening in the community, to be able to communicate with her family and friends in England, who were apprehensively awaiting news.

This diary was used as an ‘aide memoire’ for Ellen’s letters back to England and contains many informative details. Since the Petre’s were far away from established society in England, most of their regular activities were absent from their daily life. Thus, keeping a diary had the importance of being able to track a twelve-month calendar year. As Ellen Petre recorded the dates in her diary with no other time-keeping comparison, sometimes errors have occurred, indicating how easy it was to lose track of time when it is not regulated.

When publishing this diary online, I considered carefully how to handle the errors, including spelling and grammar, as well as incorrect dates. I found guidance from a diary edited by Keith Sinclair, ‘A Soldier’s View of the Empire: The Reminiscences of James Bodell, 1831-92’, published in 1982. In the introduction to this book (page11), Sinclair explains that there was no point in publishing Bodell’s memoir’s exactly as he wrote them, as his manuscript is not easy to follow. Sinclair decided to tidy up the text with basic grammatical structures that help the understanding of readers with simple improvements, such as capital letters at the beginning of a sentence and full stops at the end. Sinclair also corrected the spelling.

I have completed a similar practice to Keith Sinclair when using June Starks’s transcription of the Petre diary. I provided basic sentence gramma, which was not clearly indicated in the diary, and June had transcribed the diary exactly as she found it. I checked back to the National Library images of the original diary when anything in June’s transcription was not clear. I have indicated when there is an error with the recorded dates, but not corrected it. I have not used macrons for the word ‘Māori’ and kept the original spellings, to preserve the authenticity of the diary.

I am hugely indebted to the historical work of June Starke.  June typed up the diary of Mary Ann Eleanor Petre using a typewriter, beginning sometime in the 1970s, painstakingly interpreting the handwritten pages of the diary. Later in the 1990s, June returned to her work on the Petre Diary and began a project to create a biography of Mary Ann Eleanor Petre, which was never published, but the draft is available through the National Library archives. Sadly, June passed away in 2006.

Most of the information contained within the National Library archive records for this diary is published on this website (see Archive Page for details). I have excluded non-informative National Library images of the diary. The biographical information about the Walmesley family and the Petre family and can be found within June Starke’s draft biography (National Library: 2003-228-04). Also, there is a paragraph at the top June Starke’s transcription of the diary about the Petre Family (National Library: 2003-228-05). Information about the 1855 earthquake is from https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/story/2178057.