The Macphersons of the Far North of New Zealand Reynold Macpherson, 17 March 2011 Alfred Sinclair Macpherson, 1895-1968 Eric Gordon Macpherson, 1907-1979 Not for sale, free download available from www.reynoldmacpherson.ac.nz The Macphersons of the Far North of New Zealand1 Reynold Macpherson, 17 March 2011 Introduction My earliest memory is of Queen Victoria’s breasts, although at first I assumed that they were Papatuanuku’s. At the top of the Mangatoetoe (plume grass stream) Valley where I was raised are a pair of rounded hills (see right). A.W. Reed reputedly claimed in Place Names of New Zealand that they were “Named in honour of the Great White Queen, The Breasts of Kuini Wikitoria,” to which a leading historian of the Far North observed dryly that “it is doubtful whether she would have appreciated this honour done to her by her Māori subjects.” (Ramsey, 2001, p. 2) Like most New Zealanders, I learned early the Māori creation myth which explains that the Earth Mother, Papatuanuku, nurtures humankind under the gaze of Ranginui the Sky Father. Ranginui sometimes weeps at being separated forever from his lover by their children; the gods of the forest, sea, weather, peace and war, and their descendents, people. This showed that when I first ‘situated my appreciation’ of the view from our lounge room window, instead of ‘appreciating the situation,’ my early imagination was already shaped by a blend of Anglo-Celtic and Māori perspectives. With this context of largely unrealised and ongoing interculturalism in mind, I will now explain how Macphersons came to be in the Far North of New Zealand, not knowing if they were related to the McPhersons, living plural lifestyles in a Polynesian paradise, and integrated with many other families of British, Māori and Dalmation descent. What we have all benefitted from is Papatuanuku’s bounty; a profusion of protein. The name of the main town in the Far North, Kaitaia, is appropriate; it means food in abundance. Three people led the Macphersons into the Far North; Frank McPherson (born about 1874 died about 16 February 1922), Alfred Sinclair Macpherson (left), and his brother Eric Gordon ‘Gordon’ Macpherson (right). Alfred (born 20 April 1895 died 20 February 1968 aged 72) was the eldest son of Henry ‘Harry’ Macpherson and Lily Halliwell of Headingly Hall in Leeds. Gordon (born 1 June 1907 died 24 January 1979 aged 71) was their 1 This title refers to all Macphersons, McPhersons, MackPhersons, MacPhersons, McFersons, MacPhearsons and McPhearsons, whatever the spelling of their surname. The spelling of our surname has varied over the years, to the point where spelling can’t be used to confirm or deny a relationship. In this chapter, I will use the exact spelling as used by each person and family I have researched. In any case, these many spellings of our surname all mean the same thing in the Scottish Highlands; son of a parson. A parson was a local administrator of a church and its lands, not the priest. A parson was a secular leader of a church community, not a religious leader. A parson was appointed by the community with the office often being passed on from father to son. Priests were appointed from afar by the Church. Finally, priests were expected to remain celibate while parsons were not; which is fortunate for all Macphersons, as this chapter well demonstrates. 2 fifth child. Another chapter in this family history, The Macphersons of Leeds 1834 to 2010, explains that Henry and Lily had a family of eight children born between 1895 and 1917. Another chapter explains how they lost their fourth child on 14 October 1917; Henry Douglas Macpherson, a fighter pilot in the First World War. Another chapter reports what is known of the life and descendents of Frank McPherson Alfred and Gordon Macpherson, World War One As explained in the Macphersons of Leeds chapter, Alfred and Gordon were both sons of Henry ‘Harry’ Macpherson. He was an industrialist who helped his older brother William Walker Macpherson manage the Wellington Foundry in Leeds that made textile making machinery and tools. They attended Sedburgh School (2010, April 2), a famous boarding school in Cumbria, in the North West of England near the border with Scotland. They attended Sedburgh Preparatory School (see right) for their primary education and then the main school for their secondary education. Sedburgh School has a long and distinguished history as a private school. It was founded in 1525 by Roger Lupton, Provost of Eton College. It is famous for its rugby teams, ‘outward bound’ activities, scholarly achievements and dignified cloisters that record the names of all pupils and teachers known to have died in the two World Wars. In Alfred and Gordon’s day it had a reputation for Spartan routines, cold showers and early morning runs with physical punishment common. These practices ended by the 1970s, although they reappeared in Alfred’s treatment of his own children in New Zealand in the 1920s and 1930s. The school enrolled its first young women in 2001 and today admits 13 to 18 year olds from the English and Scottish upper middle class. It provides an Anglican curriculum that stresses a well rounded preparation for leadership in private enterprise or in public service. Alfred proved a moderate scholar at Sedburgh, excelling at swimming. He was there for five years, from 1909 to 1914. He then started training as an engineer’s draughtsman in the family business; Fairbairn, Naylor, Macpherson & Co. Ltd. The company had been co-founded in Leeds by his grandfather, Alexander Sinclair Macpherson, Henry’s father, who had moved down from Fife in Scotland soon after 1855 when his mother had died (see The Macphersons of Leeds chapter). The 19 year old Alfred enlisted soon after World War One was declared on 28 July 1914. His father Harry intervened and had the enlistment cancelled. It may have been because Alfred was under 20 and he did not have his permission. Alfred would have had to wait until 20 April 1915 to turn 20 but his discharge record indicates that he served in France from October 1914 (Ancestry.com., 2008a). This suggests that he must have gained his father’s permission within a month or so and enlisted again, although not in the East Yorkshire Regiment, where he could have expected an almost automatic commission in the family regiment. His younger brother Bertie (Herbert Alexander Macpherson, born 4 August 1896 died 5 June 1976 aged 79) joined the East Yorkshires and was immediately commissioned and rose to become a Brigadier General. Instead Alfred enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Regimental Number 45 (see right), and served as an unarmed stretcher bearer in the trenches of France. Alfred was discharged from the British Army in 1915 due to “ill health contracted on service” (Sedburgh School, 1925, p. 65). As far as I know he never spoke to anyone about his time in the trenches but it was probably an horrific experience. The mortality rate and mental illness suffered by stretcher-bearers was particularly high (Devenish & O’Meara, 2010). While Alfred was extremely lucky to survive it is most unlikely that he did not suffer from mental illness. Many decades later, the form of 3 mental illness commonly suffered by war veterans was given a clinical name; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To clarify, Lindorff’s (2002) study of veterans found that the “most frequently reported problems [were] with concentration, sleep disturbance, nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and emotional distress.” Veterans typically did not want to talk about their war time experiences, they had no access to psychological medicine to help diagnose or treat those with PTSD, and they and their families simply had to live with their emotional damage, less obvious than physical injuries and scars. This may help explain why Alfred often drank to excess and seemed unable to appreciate the hurt he sometimes caused others, even decades later. About the time of Alfred’s discharge for ‘ill health’ he met Margaret Louisa Kendall of Leeds (born 19 June 1895 died 15 September 1974, aged 79). She would have radically different ideas about military service than Alfred would have heard in his home and school, where duty and sacrifice to God, King and Country were sanctified. I will come back to Alfred and Margaret’s relationship and their move to New Zealand below. In the interim, it is important to note that Alfred’s experiences in WW1 probably affected his relationships and behavior for many decades. Gordon, who was 12 years younger than Alfred, had been too young to serve in the First World War. It appears that he did very well at Sedburgh Prep but then had a setback when he caught rheumatic fever during his secondary schooling. He recalled later in life having gone home to bed for three months. It became a family joke that, during his convalescence, he had briefly attended Leeds Girls High School (RMS Dunn & Dunn, 2010). He apparently recovered, did very well at Sedburgh and won a place at either Trinity (Northland Age, 1945) or Pembroke College (Banks, 1979), Cambridge University. Whatever, he read theology, history and psychology at Cambridge, which is one of Britain’s most prestigious universities, for a Bachelor of Arts degree that automatically converted to a Masters degree in time. After graduation Gordon returned to teach at Sedburgh Prep with success to the point where he was ‘shoulder tapped’ to lead the school. However, according to family oral history (RMS Dunn & Dunn, 2010), when the headmaster decided to delay his retirement, and Gordon’s proposal of marriage to Ines Hilda Bennett (born 23 January 1905 died 24 August 1985 aged 80) on a bridge in Sedburgh was turned down, Gordon and a friend purchased a preparatory school in the Ngog Hills, near Nairobi, Kenya.