Names are funny things. Streets, regions, cities all have names and there is nearly always a story behind them.
And sometimes the story behind the names seems obvious at first glance but in fact there is much more to it.
Take Elizabeth Island in Milford Sound. The largest island in inner Doubtful Sound.
We automatically think of things named Elizabeth are named after our late Queen. Or the first Queen Elizabeth but in reality it was neither.
Elizabeth Island is one of the many places in the Fiordland National Park named by settler, sailor, ship builder, ship captain, sealer, whaler and farmer John Grono.
And it was after his ship the Elizabeth - itself named after his wife Elizabeth Bristowe.
He also named Bligh Sound, again named for one of his ships which was named for infamous Captain William Bligh who was Governor of New South Wales.
Milford Sound was named by Grono after a place in his birthplace.
Grono was born in 1763 in Newport, Wales. Not much is known about his early life but he went into the Navy, aboard the Royal William as an able seaman and in 1798 he went to Australia aboard the HMS Buffalo and transferred to the first Australian ship.
He left that life in 1801 and went into business going into farming and growing wheat.
After losing money he took up sailing again - seal fur hunting in New Zealand.
He gathered several ships and organised the trips, even turning to ship building.
In 1809, his ship the Governor Bligh struck a rock in Foveaux Strait. The ship was able to be saved and he made it back to Sydney with over 10,000 seal skins.
It was the first time the name of the strait had been in print.
Later that year he returned and entered Doubtful Sound where he set up a base on the south coast of Secretary Island which is still called Grono Bay. The highest peak on the island is named Mount Grono.
He also named Milford Sound after Milford Haven in Wales. Nancy Sound and Caswell Sound, and Milford Sound's Cleddau River have also been traced back to him.
Later he made two more trips to New Zealand aboard the Elizabeth before handing his ships over to his son-in-law Alexander Brooks.
Permanently back on dry land he concentrated on ship building.
Grono died on 4 May 1847. Elisabeth had died fourteen months later at age 77. They are buried at the entrance to Ebenezer Church, New South Wales.
Photo over Doubtful Sound near Elizabeth Island from Te Papa’s collection​

​War artists often captured the harsh realities of war in a way that gave a visual shock.
Not only did they show us the images but some were also appointed officially by governments who used them in other ways, to show them landscapes so they could plan, record events or for propaganda purposes.
Nugent Herrmann Welch was born on July 30, 1881 in Akaroa to Joseph and Isabel.
Joseph was surveyor and in 1893 he took a position as a draughtsman in Wellington and moved his family there.
Nugent was interested in art early, copying his father who was an amateur artist.
He passed first and second grade drawing exams and became a clerk in the accounts branch of the Wellington Harbour board but hated it, resigning to become a full time artist.
He worked full time from the family’s Wright Street home in Mount Cook then opened a studio in Boulcott street and began exhibiting.
The first World War came and he enlisted in March 1916 and served with the 2nd Battalion, New Zealand Rifle Brigade on the western front.
In April 1918 Nooge as he was called was appointed divisional war artist with the temporary rank of sergeant. His landscapes often featured ruined buildings and seldom included people, portraying the desolate aftermath of battle.
After his discharge in 1919 he went back to his art, becoming a member of the council of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.
For the National Art Gallery's opening in 1936, he was commissioned to paint a large canvas of Wellington Harbour; it was later displayed at Government House.
Landscapes in particular held his interest, and most of his attention was devoted
to the lower North Island, particularly Wellington's rugged coastline.
Cape Terawhiti was one of his favourite painting locations. Tall and athletic, he regularly tramped for three hours to Oteranga Bay, where he would paint by day (often nude) and spend nights in a cave furnished with wood from the beach.
He most often worked in watercolours.
He received an OBE in 1949 and many of his works at held at Te Papa.
After a fall in 1964 he was forced to give up his studio. He never married and lived in his family home until 1967 when he moved to a rest home with his sister Jessie.
He died in Wellington on July 16, 1970 and his ashes were scattered at Cape Terawhiti.

Dr Margaret Cruickshank was so worn out from her work trying to help those sick during the influenza epidemic, she lost her own life.
She was one of 14 doctors who died trying to save lives during the outbreak.
Margaret Barnet (or Barnett) Cruickshank was born on New Year’s Day, 1873, to farmer George Cruickshank and his wife Margaret.
They lived in Hawksbury - which was later called Waikouaiti - in Otago. Margaret and her twin Christina were about 10 when their mother became gravely ill. Life being hard, the girls alternated going to school - one staying home to care for the five younger kids while the other attended and then that twin taught what they had learned to the other.
Their mother died on June 19, 1883.
Margaret went on to high school where she was joint dux with her sister then she won a New Zealand University Junior Scholarship in 1891. Christina gained an MA and Msc and later became principal of Whanganui Girls College and Margaret went to the University of Otago Medical school.
She became the second woman in New Zealand to complete a medical course and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1897.
Margaret became the assistant to a doctor in Waimate and in 1897 became the first New Zealand woman to register as a doctor and go into general medicine.
With only one break - in which she studied for a year overseas - she worked at that practice and her patients were devoted to her.
She then obtained the degree of doctor of medicine in 1903 and studied in Edinburgh and Dublin.
Her patients in Waimate presented her with a purse with 100 sovereigns and a gold watch for her trip.
Margaret returned in 1914 to a huge workload - many men were away with the First World War and there was much to be done. Along with the practice she organised the local red cross fund and worked at the hospital.
When the influenza epidemic hit she responded with more work. She was the only doctor left in the district and used a bicycle or horse to get to her patients when her driver fell ill. Sometimes she helped by feeding the children, cleaning and milking the patients’ cows.
In November 1918 she caught influenza herself and while she tried to continue working - and did for several days - she was eventually hospitalised and died of pneumonia on November 28, 1918.
The people of Waimate turned out for her funeral - lining the streets to farewell her.
A statue of her was put up - the first time a statue of a woman other than a royal was put up in New Zealand - with the words The Beloved Physician/Faithful unto Death.
She is buried in the Waimate Old Cemetery.​

It’s not often that significant pieces of art go missing in New Zealand but William Trethewey’s sculpture has been missing for over 100 years.
William Thomas Trethewey was born on September 8, 1892 to Jabez Trethewey and his wife Mary. Jabez was a carpenter so William grew up surrounded by wood so it came as little surprise when he left school at 13 and became a wood carver of things like finials, fireplaces and bedheads.
He studied at the Canterbury College School of Art and when he moved to Wellington studied life modelling.
But his interest in anatomy was mostly self-taught studying his own muscles and the works of great sculptures like Rodin and Michelangelo.
It was then he became a monumental mason.
After the end of the First World War he saw new opportunities. He produced other works like a highly realistic statue of a New Zealand soldier, 'The Bomb-Thrower', which he showed in the Canterbury Society of Arts exhibition in 1919 as a model for local war memorials. The work excited great interest and was purchased by the society.
He also carved the war memorial at Kaiapoi, the portrayal of a digger with the details of the kit so exact down to a broken bootlace.
Shortly after the life-sized statue of Margaret Cruickshank, the doctor who died in the influenza epidemic was unveiled in Waimate. William had carved it out of a five tonne piece of marble.
Commissions began to stream in, busts of benefactors and mayors, a sheep shearer for the New Zealand pavilion at the Wembley exhibition as well as detailed plaster work.
In 1928 he won a competition to produce a sculpture of Captain James Cook from a 12 ton piece of Italian marble. The work was unveiled in Victoria Square in 1932.
When the idea came up for a war memorial in Cathedral Square a local artist was suggested. An emblem of peace rather than a depiction of war was wanted.
William’s design was six symbolic figures Youth, Justice, Peace, Valour and Sacrifice around an angel breaking the sword of war. It is considered one of the finest public memorials to this day.
Among his other works was a sculpture of Maui Pomare in Waitara, lions in art deco style and a large figure of Kupe standing on the prow of his canoe. It stood for many years at the Wellington Railway station but was subject to vandalism and is now at Te Papa.
None of his work brought much fame and fortune and after the Second World War there was little call for his art and he began making clocks.
But his first work - the Bomb Thrower was lost and has never been recovered.
William had married Ivy Louisa Harper on July 24, 1914 and they had four children.
He died on May 4, 1956 and is buried at Bromley Cemetery.

New Zealand has many firsts that we can be proud of - including that the first registered nurse in the world was a Kiwi.
Ellen Dougherty was born on September 20, 1844, in Cutters Bay, Port Underwood in Marlborough to whaler Daniel Douherty and his wife Sarah.
When she was about five the family moved to Wellington where Daniel became a harbour pilot.
Life could be rough and isolated and Ellen and her siblings grew up in boats and exploring the bush and becoming accomplished riders. Part of their education came from reading from their father’s library, where Ellen likely learned about Florence Nightingale for the first time.
After her father died in 1857 they moved to a boarding house which her mother ran in Ghuznee St.
It is believed that before nurse training, she worked with Charles Barraud in his Wellington pharmacy, one of the first in the country.
She went into a job at Wellington hospital in 1885 and completed her certificate in nursing in 1887 studying elementary anatomy and physiology.
Ellen became the head of the hospital’s accident ward and ran the surgical ward.
After being passed over for the position of matron, she accepted a job as matron of the Palmerston North hospital but arrived to find money was scarce and there were little supplies. Her very first job was organising sewing bees to get sheets, pillow-cases and bandages.
It was beyond busy. Palmerston North was the centre of construction for the main trunk railway line and she had to set broken limbs, dress wounds, and on occasions amputate an arm or a leg. She also ran the hospital's dispensary so in 1899 was formally registered as a pharmacist.
Then in 1901, New Zealand was the first country to start separate legislation for the registration of nurses. The first person on that list was Ellen.
She retired in 1908 back to Carterton to be near her family. She had never married.
Ellen died on November 3, 1919 and is buried in Clareville Cemetery in Carterton.
With thanks to Julie who nominated this amazing woman for a story.​

Albert - Bert - Henry Baskerville - also spelled Baskiville - was a rugby player - and a damned good one but what he is really known for is organising the first rugby league team in the country.
Bert was born on January 15, 1883, in Masterton to Henry William and his wife Maria.
The family moved around quite a bit - nearly everyone of his brothers and sister was born in a different New Zealand town, but by the time he was 20 the family was settled in Auckland.
It was also where Bert lost his father. Henry was killed in an accident on January 30,1903, while doing some drainage works on Upper Queen Street in Auckland.
He and some other workmen were working in a deep excavation when one side of it began to collapse, men called out but his father moved the wrong way and was buried to his neck. He was quickly removed but his injuries were too serious to survive.
Bert - who was a postal clerk - moved his family to Wellington where he became the main income earner.
He played rugby for the Wellington club in 1903 then switched to the Oriental Club where he played regularly.
He published his book Modern Rugby Football: Modern New Zealand Methods; Points for the Beginner, the Player, the Spectator, in 1907 which started his national profile.
He turned his attention to his next ambition, a professional tour of Great Britain.
Along with rugby he was also a short and middle distance runner and often competed for money, along with ideas for inventions, filing a patent for a "cuff protector and blotter".
He became intrigued by the breakaway sport played by the Northern Union in England - which played what would become rugby league - asking for it to host a tour of New Zealand rugby players and when it was agreed he left his job in the Postal Department to organise it full time.
However the Wellington Rugby Union moved quickly to attempt to stop him from attending its grounds and he received a life ban from the New Zealand Rugby Union.
He still managed to put together an impressive touring party that included eight All Blacks, including four from the 1905 tour of Great Britain.
The tour was a great success although Bert only managed to play one game, so busy was he with the administration of the tour.
Then on arriving in Australia he played in the first ever trans-Tasman test which was the first match by the Australia national rugby league team, again scoring a try. That was to be the only time that Baskerville represented New Zealand in a test match.
On the trip home he contracted pneumonia on the ship and died in Brisbane on May 20, 1908.
He is buried in Karori Cemetery.​

The Church of the Good Shepherd at Lake Tekapo is one of the most photographed buildings in the world.
Built out of local stone, it was specifically designed to be a part of the landscape and not to impose upon it. Where many churches were built to exalt their magnificence - the Church of the Good Shepherd was to be built without disturbing anything in the area and the materials had to be from within five miles of the site.
It was built in 1935 as a memorial church commemorating early settlers.
Since then its raw beauty has drawn photographers from everywhere.
Walter Ernest Detheridge Davies had recently become the vicar of Fairlie in February 1933 and he realised it needed its own church.
He thought it in particular should have a view over the lake.
The land for the building was given by the owners of Braemar Station.
The church was designed by Christchurch architect Richard Strachan De Renzy Harman based on the drawings of Esther Hope.
Esther Barker was born in Woodbury, on August 8, 1885 to farmer John and mother Emily.
She went to Miss Bowen’s school in Christchurch and was always fascinated by art. She went to England where she attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London as well as studying at the Chelsea College of Arts.
Esther became known for her watercolour paintings of the Mackenzie Country.
She travelled as she painted in Europe and was in Brittany when the first World War began and she was initially unable to return to England.
Once she did, she drove trucks between London docks and the city, before travelling to Malta to become a Voluntary Aid Detachment She married Henry Norman Hope in 1919 and returned to New Zealand where she began exhibiting her art.
Esther prepared several drawings of a church in 1933 and they were given to the architect who used them to create a design. The church was opened in 1935.
The builders of the church were instructed that the site was to be left undisturbed, and that even the matagouri bushes surrounding the building were to remain. Rocks which happened to be on the wall line were not to be removed.
Esther’s watercolours were exhibited around the world and now her work is held in several New Zealand museums.
She died on July 16, 1975 and was cremated at the Salisbury Park Crematorium in Timaru.​

There are of course many New Zealanders buried overseas - from those dying of natural causes and accidents, but most poignantly, those who fought for us and ended up in foreign soil.
For Wellington, there are four buried in an English cemetery that have a special relationship with us.
They are Pilot officer Charles Agnew, Pilot officer Alfred Churchill Lockyer, Flying officer Terence McKinley and Flight sergeant John Matthew Stack.
Charles was born on January 1, 1919, the son of Robert and Margaret Agnew. They had emigrated from Fife, Scotland to New Zealand.
During the Second World War he went to Canada and trained with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in winnipeg, Manitoba. He joined the 630 Squadron in Lincolnshire which was equipped with Lancaster Mark III bombers whic carried out strategic bombings.
On November 22, 1944 he was a crew member on a mission to detect German U boat pens but the engine on the plane failed and crashed out of control. He was the only one of his 10 brothers who was killed in action. He was also the husband of Cecelia Joyce Agnew.
Alfred was born on October 2, 1921 to John Adams Lockyer and his wife Gertrude in Belfast in Ireland.
Alfred had also trained on Lancaster bombers.
On March 17, 1945 he and six others were selected for a training exercise over the North Sea but it was quickly cancelled and they were ordered to proceed to a bombing range at Alkborough to drop practise bombs. Warned of an air raid they were told to put their light outs as a Luftwaffe twin-engine place appeared behind them and attacked. Lockyer’s plane was engulfed in flames and he ordered the crew to bail.
Only the flight engineer got out before the aircraft went into a dive and
crashed into the sea.
Terence was born on April 23, 1922 to Denis Alphonsus and Mildred Agnes McKinley.
He trained with the Royal Canadian Air Force Training School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada and graduated on 7th November 1941.
He joined the night bomber squadron and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross as an outstanding captain.
He piloted Halifax Bombers and on November 14, 1943, he and three others were testing one when it suffered a double engine failure and crashed.
John was born in June 1917, in Lower Hutt to John Charles Edward Stack and Ada Ann who had come from England.
He served in the Royal Air Force as part of bomber command and was based in Cambridgeshire.
On October 18, 1944 he and six others took off in a Stirling MKIII on a night training exercise.
The weather quickly turned bad and their plane crashed in Mickle Fell in County Durham.
All four Wellingtonians are buried in the Stonefell Cemetery, (along with 19 other New Zealanders) in Harrogate (along with - Wellington’s sister city.
Pic by Ray Harrington.​

Life for women not born into any form of wealth was hard in the 1800’s.
Options were limited and with none of the modern conveniences we take for granted, it was unending toil.
Even so, the life of Margaret Doherty was tragic. Reliant on men for support, often pregnant and reduced to crime and drink, it must have been a constant struggle.
Margaret was born in 1831 to Henry and Margaret Doherty in Limerick, Ireland during the time of the Great Famine.
In 1851 she was charged with receiving stolen clothing and when she got to court it was found she had a previous conviction for stealing a cow and already been in jail.
She was sentenced to be transported and left in 1852 heading to Hobart, where she was described as 20, 155cm tall, brown hair and dark eyes. She could not read or write.
After one small issue with being absent from her service without leave she was unexpectedly charged with murder.
Prisoners had some freedom and while Margaret and another woman were at an eating house with a former convict called Peter Lomas, he went to the loo and never returned. Margaret found him dead with a small bottle of medicine in his hand that she took. A witness said Margaret had given it to her and the police then charged her with murder.
At an inquest though it was found Peter had died on natural causes and the charge against Margaret was dropped.
In 1853 Margaret and George Jenkins applied to be married and four months later Margaret had her first child Harry. They moved to the Huon Valley where they lived with a former convict John Clarke.
Jenkins deserted Margaret to go to the goldfields and Margaret turned to Clarke and had three children by him.
Margaret got her ticket to leave - then her conditional pardon in 1856 only to have tragedy strike.
She was nursing her latest baby Charlotte when a neighbour she had had an argument with threw boiling water over them. Charlotte died.
Although Margaret quickly had another child, a son, it had placed a strain on her relationship with Clarke who up and left.
Unable to support herself Margaret had her three oldest children put into care. She was by this time drinking heavily.
About 1864 Clarke returned and the two youngest went back into their care. They decided to start afresh in New Zealand.
But shortly after their arrival in Timaru, Clarke left again, leaving Margaret with the children.
Unable to cope she got into more and more trouble with the law, and ended up being charged with deserting her children. They were admitted to the Lyttleton Orphanage.
Between 1869 and 1882, Margaret was charged with numerous offences including larceny, vagrancy, drunkenness, using obscene language, behaving in a riotous and indecent manner in the street, having no lawful means of support, soliciting and prostitution, and wilful destruction of private property.
In 1878 she married again a man called Thomas Stanton.
But in 1882 she was accidentally burnt to death at her home when her skirt caught the fire.
She was 50. Margaret is buried in an unmarked grave in the Barbadoes Street Cemetery in Christchurch.
Picture by Carl Tronders.​

The Crimean war was complicated - part territory, part religious war between the Russian Tzar and Napoleon.
It was one of the first conflicts that used modern warfare - like explosive shells, and modern communication like telegraph.
It was also one of the first to be written about extensively with the information available for all to read.
It was a turning point for the Russian Empire - beginning what would be doubts about its strength and influence until many years later it slid into revolution.
We have many veterans buried around New Zealand - and there are even some from the Crimean War - fought between 1853 and 1856.
One was George Reid. He was born to John and Sarah in Dover, Kent, England.
He went to sea young, serving on a man of war ship as a powder boy in the Crimean War. Powder boys, or powder monkeys, ferried gunpowder from the powder magazine in the ship's hold to the artillery pieces, either in bulk or as cartridges, to minimise the risk of fires and explosions.
In 1869 he left service and came to New Zealand where he ended up living in Meeanee and Taradale, where he met and married his wife Brigid Doyle.
In the early days he was caretaker of the Napier Park racecourse. After this he worked in the employ of the Hawke’s Bay County Council for over 30 years.
During this period he spent much of his time on county work in the backblocks. Living away from home so much with a good deal of hardship he was nevertheless in part responsible for some of the development which took place in the back country roads.
A private man, he took a keen interest in different branches of sport, he was highly respected by the many people with whom he came in contact.
He died on May 12, 1934 at his home in Meeanee aged 92 and is buried in Taradale Cemetery.​