In a Dunedin cemetery is a member of an Eastern European royal family who lived his last days in New Zealand.
Prince Alois Konstantin Drucki-Lubecki was born in 1801 in Warsaw, Poland, a descendant of the Norman Prince Ruric who was once invited to govern Russia. His forefathers became Lithuanian princes. His grandfather had married a Polish noblewoman and a cousin was Prince Xavier Drucki-Lubecki, a minister of finance in the Polish government.
Lech Paszkowski in his book, Poles in Australia and Oceania 1790-1940, said Alois was an officer in the Polish National Army and took part in the Polish-Russian War, a failed revolution called the November Uprising seeking to create an independent state. When the movement collapsed he got away, but his estates were forfeited.
He left to live in Germany, then France before going to England.
There he married Laura Duffus in 1836.
With Laura’s brother, the Reverend John Duffus and his family, the group emigrated to Australia where he and his family were the first known settlers in New South Wales.
Unable to get a job, Alois and his new wife opened a school in Parramatta for young ladies.
But as the area became economically depressed, the school failed and Alois became ill.
After his recovery, the couple moved to Sydney then to Melbourne where Alois became a confectioner while Laura continued to teach.
In 1863 with Laura and his two daughters, Alois came to Dunedin where they settled.
The old prince named his Dunedin residence Koldano after the battle he had fought in an engagement with the Russians.
He was often called the talking general, liking to talk about those times. It is believed he became a bank manager in New Zealand.
During the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1863, Alois Lubecki contributed to the press campaign on behalf of Poles, writing to New Zealand newspapers.
Unfortunately, he was not to enjoy his life in New Zealand for long, he died on 7 October 1864. His wife lived until 1901 in Nelson and was then buried with Alois in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery.
The Prince’s grave was restored in 2019.​

The case of murder against Cantonese miner Ah Lee would have been thrown out of court if it happened today.
Almost nothing about the evidence against him was solid, there was no motive for the murder, and there was even better suspects.
What is beyond argument is that Mary Young was killed on August 4, 1880. She was found in her Naseby home dying.
Mary was a young widow, who after her husband had died was planning to return to her homeland, Scotland.
Instead she was found by her neighbour Lee Guy about 7.30am.
That started a series of events that compromised any investigation. First a number of people came and went. Mary was still alive, but barely so Guy sent another neighbour to get help and then a doctor - who was 16km away.
Margaret Fogie who had come to help had spoken to Mary, trying to find out what happened and who did it.
She asked who did it? Was it an Englishman - and Mary managed to say it was not. When Margaret asked if it was a Chinese, Mary said yes.
By the time the doctor arrived, Mary was unconscious. Large stones were found beside her and likely caused her injuries. She died around 1.30pm
At the inquest the case for it being a Chinese man became the centre of the investigation. That turned public attention to all Chinese immigrants living in the area. Two were arrested shortly after but let go.
Attention then turned to 24-year-old Ah Lee. Lee usually lived at the Coal Pit Gully, did odd jobs and sometimes smoked a little opium.
He was arrested on August 10. Not long after, a Naseby businessman had a breakdown and began ranting that he had killed Mary. He was quickly and quietly committed to Seacliff psychiatric hospital.
Meanwhile shoe tracks found near Mary’s home had a distinctive nail pattern and a bootmaker matched it to Ah Lee’s boots.
A silk handkerchief said to have been Ah Lee’s was found under Mary and a local draper said Ah Lee had bought it from him.
Spots of blood on Ah Lee’s trousers were examined and determined not to be animal blood.
Ah Lee gave a sort of confession - although the translator who helped did not speak the same dialect as him. Shortly after Lee Guy was also arrested.
No defence was called for Ah Lee who was found guilty and hanged at Dunedin Gaol on November 5. Lee Guy was found not guilty.
But there were serious issues with the evidence. The boots Ah Lee had were not the only ones with that print pattern in the district and many people had come through Mary’s property in the hours after her death.
The blood found on Ah Lee’s trousers could not be found to be human. And the timeline around the handkerchief failed - the draper gave a date that did not fit with when Ah Lee had been seen with it.
Shortly after the Naseby businessman was released from Seacliff and promptly repeated his claim that he had killed Mary and was again hushed up.
Ah Lee was initially buried in the gaol yard but his body was reinterred in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.
Photo by Bernard Hermant.​

Two ships are responsible for the settling of Norsewood in central Hawke’s Bay, the Ballarat and the Hovding.
But the man behind the settlers was Bror Eric Friberg.
Friberg was born in Kristianstad in Sweden on July 6, 1839, to Else Lundgren and Nils Erik Friberg.
He studied forestry and worked as a forestry officer in Scandinavia. He married Cäcilie Elisabeth (Cecilia Elizabeth) Böhme on January 31,1866 before they decided to come to New Zealand which was opening up forested areas for settlement.
They sailed from Hamburg in 1866 and arrived in Auckland where they had their first child. Friberg transferred to Napier where he managed the Hawke’s Bay Steam Boiling Down Company.
The Government wanted to make sections available and thought immigrants should be brought in to work the land.
Friberg offered his services to the Immigration and Public Works department as a recruiting officer.
Given that he spoke Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German and English, he was appointed and was sent to Europe. The recruitment of Norwegian settlers had already been arranged and he was prevented from recruiting settlers in Sweden
He eventually sailed for New Zealand from Christiana - now called Oslo - Norway on the three masted sailing ship Hovding with 292 adult immigrants- mostly from Norway. It arrived in Napier on September 15, 1872.
A few hours earlier Ballarat, with Danish immigrants, had arrived.
It was not as simple however as travelling to their new homes. It was a long hard slog to where Dannevirke and Norsewood would be - taking days.
And when the men arrived they found there was little in the way of sections cleared and they would have to do it themselves. They were given an area and some tools.
So they set to work. The women and children arrived 12 days later but there were no shelters and many slept and cooked outside.
While their homes were being built - the men also had to work for the government - clearing land for roads - for three or four days a week.
They also found they had to pay £5 for their passage to their new country, £40 for 40 acres of land and £1 for their trip to the newly forming town.
They were disillusioned and bitter about it, but worked hard. Of those that arrived 63 families settled in the Norsewood area. Friberg took several to what was to be Dannevirke.
A year after they arrived the Hovding returned with another bunch of immigrants.
He supported a petition for an extension of time for repaying their passage money.
Friberg himself had applied for three sections in the Makotuku settlement and later bought four more.
He was a hard worker, travelling on horseback across the area in all weather and it affected his health.
Friberg was naturalised on February 1, 1876, and made a justice of the peace.
But in 1877 his salary was reduced as part of a reduction in the immigration service. The next year he requested a leave of absence due to ill health but the reply to that came too late, he had died on February 3, 1878, in Norsewood aged only 38.
He is buried in the Norsewood Cemetery.
Norsewood, of course, has a Hovding St and gallery, named for the ship that started it all.​

John Rodulphus Kent was first in quite a few things, including sailing the first European ship through the Rangitoto channel and entering Waitemata Harbour.
His was the first survey plan made, allowing other ships to brave the harbour.
But he’s also considered the man who brought mice to New Zealand, even if it was by accident.
Mice were, of course, all over the world - but for isolated countries that had never encountered Europeans.
New Zealand had a strange assortment of animals, but only a couple of mammals before human settlement, a bat and marine mammals like Hector's dolphin.
Kent was born about 1790 in England, although there don’t appear to be any records confirming that.
The first real mention of him is as an officer in the Royal Navy serving the government of New South Wales as captain of the schooner Prince Regent.
They surveyed timber resources in New Zealand and Kent was able to explore the Hokianga and Northland harbours.
A year later, as captain of the cutter Mermaid he sailed to Hawaii before returning to Port Jackson in 1823.
In May of that year he took the Mermaid to Foveaux Strait to look at whether a flax trade was viable. He went on to visit many South Island harbours, sketching coastal profiles to aid navigation.
It was in 1823 that Kent took the Elizabeth Henrietta, a brig, back to Foveaux Strait for another load of flax.
But this time the brig broke her mooring and drifted ashore on Ruapuke Island, one of New Zealand’s southernmost islands. It would later become known for a particular species of spider that was everywhere on the island.
But the Elizabeth Henrietta was carrying something else - mice that escaped on to the island, and over time came to New Zealand.
The Elizabeth Henrietta was refloated and went on its way, but by then the damage was done.
Kent went on to captain sealing ships before setting up a trading post in Hokianga in 1826 under the patronage and protection of the Ngāti Korokoro tribal leader Moetara, and formed a liaison with his daughter Wharo.
In 1828 he moved to Kawhia to trade with the Waikato Maori. There he met Te Wherowhero, paramount chief of the Waikato tribes and later the first Maori King, and married Tiria, his daughter.
His trading went well for years and Kent often crossed the ocean in various ships.
He retired to Kaitotehe, near Taupiri, his flax trading activity became based at Ngaruawahia, centre of the trade routes for the Waikato River and the Manukau Harbour.
He became ill and died at Kahawai on the Manukau Harbour on 1 January 1837 and on 3 January he was buried by his Maori friends in a cemetery on the Te Toro promontory. A collection of Kent's northern profiles is preserved in the Hydrographic Department at Taunton, Somerset, England.​

It’s clear, even in its current abandoned state, that the former St Mary’s Church in Carterton was once a beauty.
Now the church that was once the heart of a community sits alone, forlorn and looking like it had been through a fire.
From the outside it’s discoloured, stained glass windows are broken and the statue of Mary at the top is looking down on an overgrown garden.
Despite being on the main road, it feels lonely but there was a time when it was the centre of the community.
After the Christchurch earthquake, St Mary’s was assessed as unsafe and in need of extensive restructuring.
In 1876, Fr Anthony Halbwachs raised funds to build St Mary's Church in Carterton, the center town of the Wairarapa.
Halbwachs was the first parish priest in the Wairarapa. He also raised funds to build churches in Masterton, Greytown, Featherston, and Tinui.
Wellington architect Thomas Turnbull was picked to design the church.
It was built on a block of land purchased in 1867, for £146. Sited at 461 High St South, it became the centre of a growing Polish village and the first headquarters of the Wairarapa Catholic Mission Station. It originally had a 23m spire.
In 1901 when the towns from Carterton south were recognised as a separate parish. Fr Thomas Cahill was the appointed resident priest in 1904. The church was relocated a number of times and in 1932 it became the parish hall for a new larger church of ferro-concrete built for a growing congregation.
Thomas Turnbull was born in Scotland - the home of gothic style churches - on August 23, 1824 to Jeanie and Joshua Turnbull.
Both however died early in his life and he was raised by relatives. He initially went into the building trade before going to the architectural office of David Bryce in Edinburgh.
By 1851 he had gone to Australia - filled with burgeoning gold fields and began gaining experience designing churches.
He married Louisa Urie in Melbourne before the couple went to San Francisco where he worked until 1871 until he came to Wellington.
At the time Wellington was still rebuilding after a series of severe earthquakes. Turnbull advocated for structurally sound methods of building, using ideas such of iron supports and tensile reinforcing.
But his true talent lay in the gothic churches, a great many of which are still standing, such as St Peter’s and St John’s, both on Willis Street.
He also designed many Wellington buildings that showed his style, the General Assembly Library and a group of commercial buildings on the corner of Lambton Quay and Customhouse Quay, including the former National Mutual Life Association building, and the former head office of the Bank of New Zealand (1889), both strong and ornate classical designs typical of much of Turnbull's commercial architecture.
The old Kirkcaldie and Stains building and the stunning Old Bank Arcade are also his work.
Thomas died in Wellington on February 23, 1907, and is buried in Karori Cemetery.
Many of his works still stand and it’s a shame one of his churches, many of which are heritage listed, has been left to the elements.​

While death is always a tragedy, there is something particularly terrible about a death of a beloved family member just before Christmas.
Leonard Naylor was on his way home for Christmas.
It was December 23, 1939, when he got a ride with 23-year-old Leslie Trevor Moore who had a car. They were heading from Gisborne to Tiniroto, a tiny farming and forestry village part way to Wairoa.
The pair had set off just after midnight - very early morning.
It would be more than 24 hours before they were found - by which time Leslie was dead.
Naylor, who was 45, was never able to remember what had happened. They were driving and then they were over 300ft down a bank to the Kaikoura river.
About 7am on Christmas Eve, a truck driver from the Public Works department, Harry Campbell saw Naylor lying on the side of the road badly cut up and unconscious.
He realised Naylor had managed to climb up the bank and went down himself to find the car at the bottom with Leslie in it.
Campbell went for help.
A rescue complete with ropes and a sledge was needed to retrieve Leslie.
His watch was found to have stopped at 4.35.
Neither man was believed to have been drinking.
Moore was a lorry driver himself and only a few weeks before had been fined 2 pounds for speeding
Moore had been born in 1916 the third son of Phillip and Edith Moore.
Naylor never seemed to quite recover, being in trouble for drinking on and off for several years after. He died in 1963 and is buried in Taruheru Cemetery.
Moore, who was single, was buried in Patutahi Cemetery.
Picture by Artem Maltsev.​

Richard Pearse is best known as the Kiwi who beat the Wright brothers to powered flight. But in fact it was a tiny part of the tortured history of the man who died in obscurity in a mental asylum.
Born on December 3, 1877 to Sarah and Digory Sargent Pearse who was a farmer a few miles from Temuka.
He was the fourth of nine children and was the family dreamer. He played cello in the family orchestra and was a champion tennis player.
After school his dream was to study engineering. It would have meant going to Canterbury College but the family could not afford it.
Instead when he turned 21 he was given a 100 hectare block on the family land. He promptly built a workshop on it, even building his own forge and lathe.
It was here that his inventing started. For all we believe him to be the person who invented and built and then flew the first plane, it was only one invention among a huge number.
His first patented invention, dating from 1902, was an ingenious new style of bicycle, bamboo-framed with a vertical-drive pedal action, rod-and-rack gearing system, back-pedal rim-brakes and integral tyre pumps.
Richard’s dream however was to fly.
He read about advancement with experiments overseas in scientific journals and he seems to have worked on ideas for powered flight from as early as 1899 and built a two cylinder petrol engine. Around it he built a bamboo, tubular steel, wire, canvas monoplane with short wide wings, which is a bit like the design of modern microlights now.
His first attempt that was witnessed was on the road near his farm. He spent about 50 yards in the air before crashing. There are no details of it beyond that and it wasn’t until two of his letters were public - published in 1915 and 1928 that he wrote it was early 1904. He also believed he did not achieve proper flight and did not beat the Wright brothers who flew in December 1903.
But later and with the help of eye witnesses, it is more likely the day he flew was March 1903 rather than 1904.
He kept at it, achieving several other powered take-offs or long hops. In July 1906 he patented his aircraft.
His genius however was barely recognised. He was a failure as a farmer - and most likely frustrated when his attempts did not do better.
He was given several nicknames - such as Mad Pearse - by neighbours who treated him with scepticism
So he moved to South Otago where he farmed near Milton and set out inventing farming equipment.
He was conscripted into the Otago Infantry Regiment in May 1917 and sent overseas in January 1918, but was too ill to see action and he returned to New Zealand in October that year.
In 1921 he moved to Christchurch and built houses and began work on a second plane, applying for a patent in 1943 - it was approved in 1949.
It was well before its time, with tilting engines to allow vertical take-off and landing.
But there was no interest from aviation companies and Pearse became more and more paranoid and was admitted to Sunnyside hospital. He died there on July 29, 1953.
Among his other inventions were a needle threader, power cycle, recording machine, harp, power generator, potato planter, top dresser and musical boxes.
Richard was cremated at Bromley Crematorium Chapel. A memorial rose tree was planted over the ashes; appropriately, it was a "Pearse Rose."​

Dr Dutton’s problems were all his own doing.
Doctors were often held to be men deserving of great respect especially in remote places where they were called out and it took them considerable effort to minister to patients.
But William Henry Dutton was hardly worthy of respect. A womaniser, alcoholic and generally unpleasant, it’s hardly a wonder he lost his first job in New Zealand before he even started it.
Dutton was hired by Arrowtown Hospital Trustees in 1894 to replace their last doctor. He was coming from Australia and had beaten out 31 other candidates.
He was hired as a surgeon and the Otago Witness newspaper reported he had a string of letters after his name.
But even as the offer of a job was being made, Australian newspapers were reporting , with some glee, the salacious tales of his well publicised divorce.
It even turned out some of his references were forged. One was from the Bishop of Goulburn who admitted he knew Dutton’s parents and they were respectable people but he would not have written a reference that described Dutton as having ‘steady habits”
Reports were coming in from Australia of Dutton’s divorce case from his wife Mary Dent Oswald for adultery, cruelty and habitual drunkenness. There was also a suggestion that she was so afraid of him that she and their infant son spent the night outside in cold weather rather than go back inside - after which the baby died.
Evidence of another doctor he had been in partnership with spoke of his drinking, his bad language to his wife, a chemist nearby told of getting into a fight with a drunk Dutton and domestic servants said he was inappropriately intimate with them.
Dutton himself blamed everything on his wife. And to a lesser extent to his three children.
They had married in 1884 when Mary was 17 - and she came into a lot of money after the death of her father.
They were ill-suited. Mary was from a refined family while Dutton was much rougher and everything he had had come from his own hard work.
The divorce was granted and Dutton headed for New Zealand.
The news that his job no longer existed came to him only after he landed but it didn’t stop him. Dutton set up a private hospital in the New Orleans Hotel and much to the public hospital’s chagrin turned out to be more popular than the doctor who took his place.
He worked for a bit then took a short trip back to Victoria before returning to Otago, working between Gore and Invercargill for a bit before settling in Queenstown.
For a while he did well for himself, affecting some amazing cures and was popular for it.
He wrote one book, called The Bird of Paradise, that was supposedly a work of fiction, but in fact was about himself with the facts twisted to reflect better on him.
But it got a lukewarm reception and Dutton went back to drinking.
At only 38, the drinking caught up with him and he died on November 18, 1896. His body was returned to Australia and he was buried at the Geelong Western Public Cemetery.
Picture from Te Papa’s collection.​

Harry Dale really did run away and join the circus but it turned out to be his death.
Circus’ were huge attractions in the late 19th and early 20th century.
But far from the type of spectacle they are now, these were the old style - dangerous animals, tricks, clowns and trapeze artists in a big ring.
People flocked to them.
Even the strange performing flea circus that toured the South Island in 1889-90 as part of the New Zealand and South Seas exhibition.
Along with a switchback railway or roller coaster, a camera obscura, the Fat Family, Jo-Jo the Russian Dog Faced Boy (who was said to resemble a Skye terrier), Unzie the frizzy-haired and gentlemanly Circassian Albino, and two replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the fleas were quite the attraction.
Professor Upini (sometimes Ubini) was travelling with his troupe of world celebrated performing fleas - the first to visit New Zealand - and he set up in a building in George St.
His fleas performed feats of strength pulling chariots, a wheeled (miniature) elephant and a cab.
Newspapers even reported that they chopped wood and carried water.
They had extraordinary names, like Boulanger and Bismarck, and fought duels with swords and one named Tom was a miniature strong man.
A local newspaper even gave a hilarious (and ridiculous) story about how the fleas were trained.
The whole thing was hugely popular.
Very little is known about Signor Upini except he came from London and claimed his grandfather was who had perfected educating fleas.
One of the biggest circuses to visit New Zealand regularly was the Wirth Bros. Formed by Philip Wirth and his brother George, officially opening in 1880, the circus travelled throughout New Zealand several times over 60 years. It was usually based in Australia and coming over must have been quite the exercise for its biggest attractions were its elephants.
Their first elephant was bought from Burma
In 1909 the whole circus were heading off on the road from Hastings when they came across a steam traction engine stuck in shingle by the Waipawa River. The driver asked if the elephants could pull it out.
Five elephants were hooked up and managed to pull it out.
One of the elephants was Toby, who was considered bad tempered.
Later that year, back in Australia Harry Dale, who was a New Zealander, was in charge of Toby while transporting materials to a train at the railway station. Toby pinned Harry against a railway truck, crushing him badly.
Harry died June 27, 1909 and is buried at Apple Tree Creek Cemetery in Queensland. His gravestone says he was a member of the Wirth Bros circus.​

The specialist companies of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force may not have had huge numbers, but their impact was massive.
The Tunnelling Company was made up mainly of miners. They dug subways, cable trenches and dugouts but their most important work was burrowing under enemy trenches to plant explosives.
In 1914 the British began working on warfare below the trenches, but could not compete with their enemy.
So the call went out and men from all over New Zealand (except miners working with coalmines because it was considered an essential industry) began joining up.
Enlistment began in October 1915 and they needed 250 minors and 150 unskilled workers for the first company.
The company worked exclusively on the Western Front and led to the first confirmed Kiwi death on the Front - Sapper Michael Tobin.
Tobin had been born on February 8, 1880, in Pukekohe to Michael and Mary Tobin.
Michael had been working as a miner for the Public Works department - which had huge numbers of workers who undertook most major construction works in the country including roads and power stations.
He had been at Mt Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty when he volunteered to enlist in October 1915.
He left New Zealand on HMNZT Ruapehu two months later.
Records describe him as 5’9 of fair complexion with blue eyes.
In April 1916, his company had landed in France and were sent to an area just north east of Arras. The company blew up a counter mine which let out gas.
The section of ground had to be reopened and the company continued to work despite a number of men having bad colds and some with measles.
A few days later Michael was admitted to hospital and was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia.
He died a day later. Michael had never married but had seven brothers and sisters.
He was buried at Beauval Communal Cemetery, Somme, France, the only New Zealander interred there.
His name can be seen on the Tauranga Domain Memorial Gate.​