Scottish Catholics in Early

Being Scottish in an Irish Catholic Church in a Scottish Presbyterian Settlement: Otago's

Scottish Catholics, 1848-1895

The story of Otago's pioneer Scottish Catholics can be no more than a sidebar to a number of larger stories. They were a tiny group, a minority within the larger minority of Catholics (overwhelmingly

Irish) who settled in nineteenth-century Otago and Southland. Among the wider Scottish population they were distinctly anomalous, linked by bonds of nationality but divided by their adherence to a reviled and alien form of religion. This chapter will look at three areas of Scottish Catholic experience in colonial Otago. Firstly, the early years of the Otago settlement scheme, when Catholics were few in number, led by Scots and ministered to by Frenchmen. How did they fare in the sectarian battles of early and what kind of Church community did they develop? Then, the new phase of Catholic development, which began with Bishop Patrick Moran's arrival in 1871. What was the status of the pioneer Scots in an increasingly Irish version of the Church? It will also consider the experience of the solitary Scottish priest to work in nineteenth-century Otago and the family circle that accompanied him to the colony. Finally, it will consider Highland communities in

Southland and assess whether their distinctive brand of Catholicism made any mark on the development of the Church in the south.

The early settlers 1848-61

The congruence of ethnic, national and religious identities was a hotly contested zone in early Otago.

Fierce battles were waged over the nature of the settlement, with rival factions marking themselves out along the very lines - national and religious identity - which the Scottish Catholics straddled. A

22/08/2003 1 © S.G.Brosnahan 2003 closer examination of their position may offer fresh insights into the founding group's struggle over

Otago's soul. It is arguable that a Scottish background may have equipped Catholics particularly well for life amidst a Protestant majority. Their experience of fitting in discretely to a hostile social environment was potentially a significant asset as Catholicism sought to establish itself in Otago.

Scottish Catholics were an oddity to begin with, even in their homeland. The Protestant Reformation had swept through Scotland decisively in 1560 and few Catholic structures survived the flood, only the patronage of a few powerful families keeping a Catholic presence alive in Scotland beyond the sixteenth century. There was some revival in the seventeenth century as Catholic missioners made inroads in the north and west, reclaiming areas that had scarcely been Protestantised. There were also enduring Catholic areas in Abderdeenshire, Banffshire, Inverness-shire, the outer Hebrides and

Kirkcudbrightshire. Undoubtedly the clearances had a major impact on some Catholic areas of the

Highlands, especially Glengarry and Knoydart, from which large numbers of Catholic Highlanders emigrated to Canada from the late eighteenth-century onward.

Church numbers grew gradually through the early nineteenth century. There was no equivalent of

England's Anglo-catholic movement and the dominant Presbyterian Churches remained fundamentally hostile to Catholicism. Catholic numbers remained low, however, and the Church's self-effacing adherents posed little threat to the Presbyterian hegemony. Catholic infrastructure was similarly low-key, with humble places of worship offering little symbolic challenge to the supremacy of the Kirk. In the Highlands and Islands, where there was a Catholic majority in some places, there was also a strong tradition of sectarian harmony. This stable and peaceable sectarian environment was severely disturbed by the mass migration of Irish Catholics into Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire in

2 mid-century. With their more assertive brand of Catholicism, their pervasive experience of social deprivation and their allied demonstration of politic and cultural dissidence, these Irish incomers upset Scotland's social equilibrium. A nasty effusion of sectarian conflict resulted which lingers on into contemporary Scottish life. The coming of the Irish also posed a severe challenge to the Scottish

Catholic Church, which spent the rest of the century trying to cope with massive new demands on its slender resources. The Church at mid-century was a poor and struggling denomination, with many of the characteristics of a missionary territory. This is worth noting as the focus shifts to consideration of the origins of the Otago settlement scheme in southern .

The Otago scheme had its roots in the vision of George Rennie, a well-connected Edinburgh liberal, who in the early 1840s proposed a planned settlement on the Wakefieldian model for Scots

Presbyterians in New Zealand's . The schism of the Scottish Presbyterian Church in

1843, which witnessed the formation of a new "Free Church" Presbyterian body, coincided neatly with the promotion of this scheme. Rennie and Wakefield saw value in a core religious identity as a binding element in the proposed settlement and courted the new organisation to take a major role in the planned settlement. The Free Church was only interested, however, if the colonisation scheme was exclusive to its adherents. They sought a Free Church theocracy in the South Seas, hence when

Rev Thomas Burns was appointed as Minister to the proposed colony he set out to redefine the proposal on this narrower basis. This put Burns on a collision course with Rennie, who was unwilling to sacrifice his broader vision of a Scots community in New Zealand to promote the interests of the new sect.

3 The contest between Rennie and Burns is pertinent to this study as the first skirmish in an on-going battle over the very nature of what Otago would aim to be, and the place to be afforded 'dissident' religious groups within it. Rennie's displacement as leader of the scheme, supplanted by Burns and his secular ally Captain William Cargill by 1845, represented a victory for the exclusive theocratic vision of the Free Church. As Cargill's biographer notes, with Rennie's withdrawal, ‘it was clear that

1 the Otago scheme had lost its voice of reason and champion of tolerance’. It also lost the support of the men of capital who Rennie had recruited to emigrate. Yet the Free Church's enthusiasm for

Otago proved more notional than had been hoped for; it offered no money and little practical assistance to the scheme. It was left to a Lay Committee of the Church to beat the drum for Otago, virtually a one-man band in the person of Edinburgh lawyer John McGlashan. Even the enthusiastic recruiting drives of Burns made relatively modest progress in securing settlers from Scottish Free

Church congregations.

Burns, Cargill and McGlashan may have lacked Rennie's influence and social cachet, but they were a formidable trio possessing a steely determination in pursuit of their shared vision for Otago.

Following Rennie's ouster in 1845, they guided the scheme through the numerous obstacles and setbacks which time and again threatened to finish Otago before it began. Their resolve had its reward in the belated establishment of a settlement at the head of Otago harbour in early 1848. While

Cargill and Burns took ship to guide the chosen people across the seas, McGlashan remained behind to push the cause in Scotland. Yet from the outset their dream of an exclusive Scots Free Church preserve in Otago was compromised, the required numbers of 'ideal' immigrant recruits not being forthcoming. Indeed, the first group of settlers barely passed muster at all. While the Philip Laing sailed from Greenock in November 1847 with a solid core of Free Church families, there were almost

4 as many from other branches of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. The smaller complement of the

John Wickliffe, which departed from the London port of Gravesend, had scarcely any Scots aboard.

Instead a grab bag of English recruits, mainly Anglican or Wesleyan by religious affiliation, was

2 accepted of necessity to fill the ship and get the settlement under way.

Reality had intervened to shape the founding Otago community more along the lines envisioned by

Rennie after all, but undaunted, Burns and Cargill hoped for better things from future shipments of settlers. In this respect McGlashan played his part, significantly raising the standard of Otago recruits secured between 1848 and 1852 and lifting the profile of Free Church families on each successive boatload. If the two founding shipments had proven a disappointingly motley assortment, Burns

3 recorded increasing satisfaction with the subsequent arrivals. Relieved of the time pressures which had forced the abandonment of all pretence of selection with the first ships, a more rigorous assessment of aspiring migrants became possible. The ideal may have been compromised, but as a rising quota of its adherents began to arrive in Dunedin Free Church predominance remained a realistic goal.

The social dynamics of early Dunedin were strongly coloured by the main ethnic divide in the founding group, Scots versus English, sharpened by a degree of sectarian animosity surprising in such a small community. The overlay of religious and national identity was further complicated by factors of class and influence. Cargill and Burns resented Otago's dependence on English capitalists to make the embryonic settlement viable, and they were further aggrieved when Crown appointments to Otago added further to the ranks of Englishmen with official influence. The muddy little village established in 1848 was so riven by bitter disputations over the next few years that it became a

5 byword for discord in New Zealand circles, a reputation that also received negative publicity in

4 Britain.

From the outset the Free Church party derided its opponents as ‘the Little Enemy’. Usually characterised as an English faction, one made up of Anglicans and Wesleyans, Tom Brooking more accurately describes it as ‘all those individuals, groups, institutions and forces who opposed the

5 religious, economic and political ideals of Cargill and Burns.’ This was a broad alliance. Certainly it included the English capitalists and Crown officials who so irritated Cargill, but it also had a Celtic component, with Welshmen Dr Robert Williams and George Lloyd to the fore, also dissident Scots

(including the Catholics as will be shown), as well as the somewhat disreputable ranks of old whalers and ex-convicts who had preceded the settlers to Otago. These diverse groups were united in their opposition to the pretensions to dominance of the Free Church.

Historians have tended to categorise this rivalry among the early settlers as the over-enthusiastic

6 factionalism of a village society. Yet their apparently petty disputes were sometimes about

7 important issues. The ‘Little Enemy’ led the charge for religious freedom and denominational equality in Otago.

Not surprisingly, Otago's few pioneer Catholics threw in their lot with the 'Little Enemy' and were prominent in its public expressions of opposition to Free Church hegemony. Who were they? The original Catholics in Otago were a polyglot bunch among the flotsam and jetsam of whalers and sealers comprising the first wave of European settlers. They were augmented by several Gaelic- speaking Irish families among the Sydney recruits for John Jones' farming settlement at Waikouaiti in

1840. The arrival of the Scots from 1848 brought little immediate addition to this tiny enclave. Irish

6 Catholics neatly defined the unwelcome end of the spectrum of settlers considered suitable for the

Free Church scheme. Many Scottish Protestants were attracted to emigration precisely to escape the hordes of poor Papists flooding in to the industrial zones of Scotland from Ireland by the late 1840s.

8 Scottish Catholics were almost as suspect on religious grounds, but at least three Scottish Catholics did come to Otago on immigrant ships organised by the Free Church.

The first was perhaps the most significant. William Poppelwell was born in 1819 to a prosperous farming family of English origins at Hutton on the Scottish border, near Berwick-on-Tweed. He was educated at Ushaw, the famous Catholic College at Durham, and was intended by his family for the

9 priesthood. Opting instead for a career at sea, William came to New Zealand as First Officer on the

Tyne, bringing emigrants to Wellington in 1841. He stayed on and subsequently ran trading vessels between Wellington and the Manawatu. In the early 1840s he came as far south as Otago to deliver a boat to the Ngai Tahu chief Tuhawaiki, thereafter claiming to have been the first European to sail a boat right up the Otago harbour. In 1843 he married Catherine McLaughlan, one of the large party of

Highlanders from the Fort William area who had come to Wellington on the Blenheim in 1840. She

10 was not a Catholic, but converted some time after their marriage.

The Poppelwells remained in Wellington until 1846, when they returned to Scotland with a young family. William rejoined his family at 'Sunwick', their 670 acre property at Hutton, and spent the next two years learning all he could of farming. His lively young Highland bride proved a bit much for his staid step-mother, however, and they decided to return to New Zealand. With a solid knowledge of farming, three young children, as well as a substantial share of William's family estate, they were now in an ideal position to become colonists. In March 1848 William Poppelwell wrote to

7 the Otago Association in Edinburgh seeking information on Otago. Family tradition has it that he was initially refused passage to the settlement because the family did not fit the Association's

11 religious criteria. While it is difficult to test this belief against the extant record of their application, it is an intriguing hint of the family's perception of hostility to their faith. On every other count - as

Scots, as a young family, as people with capital and experience of New Zealand conditions - they were ideal colonists. Laying down £108, they joined the ranks of those rare creatures - Scottish purchasers of Otago land. They thus also became eligible for free passage and embarked on the

12 Association's ship the Blundell, which sailed for Otago in May 1848. On arrival in Dunedin

William selected a suburban property in North East Valley and began cutting a small farm out of the bush, but in 1853 they sold up and left Dunedin for the Tokomairiro plain, making the first journey by a wheeled vehicle into that district. Here the family established a substantial farm near Milton, naming it 'Sunwick' after the ancestral seat. They were joined by Catherine's two bachelor brothers,

Duncan and Hugh (or Ewan), who worked as shepherds at 'Sunwick' before acquiring their own farms nearby. Duncan became a Catholic in 1857.

Little is known about the second of the Scots Catholics, John Dalton, who arrived on the Mary in

1849. He is chiefly of interest here because of his relationship with Donald Reid, one of Otago's most significant nineteenth-century personalities, who was his step-son. By the end of his life Reid had attained a status among Otago's founding families as the very epitome of the 'Otago Early

Settler'. From humble beginnings, he achieved wealth, status and influence by dint of hard work and good living. It is intriguing therefore to find that he came from a family background of mixed religious identity. The family group on the Mary consisted of Dalton, his Presbyterian (Church of

Scotland) wife, Margaret McGregor, and her three sons Charles, Donald and Hugh Reid. Charles

8 13 was 20 and married just before the ship left Scotland, Donald was sixteen and Hugh thirteen. The

Reids were Highlanders, originally farmers from Strathtay in Perthshire. They had moved to

Edinburgh in the late 1830s when their father's health began to fail. When he died the eleven-year- old Donald was sent to live with his uncle back in Strathtay, and was there exposed to the evangelical

14 rigours of the new Free Church. Meanwhile, his mother remarried in Edinburgh to the Catholic

Dalton, a bricklayer. Donald rejoined the family when his uncle died suddenly, just in time for their emigration to Otago.

The Dalton/Reid family was unusual in early Dunedin as a Protestant/Catholic combination where each affiliation seems to have been maintained. John Dalton remained loyal to his Church,

15 supporting it financially and opposing the 'class settlement' principle publicly. He remained in

Dunedin on his property in Princes Street until his death in 1862, unlike his co-religionists who early on removed themselves to the country districts. His wife, meanwhile, is identified by Burns as belonging to the Church of Scotland and neither she nor her three sons became communicants of First

Church (although Donald was certainly identified with the Free Church in later life). Charles established his household near his step-father's house and may have worked with him as a bricklayer, suggesting an amicable relationship within the family unit. They exemplified perhaps the Highland tradition of sectarian harmony.

Neil Joseph Bruce McGregor was the third Scottish Catholic to arrive in Otago under the auspices of the Otago Association. He too was a Highlander, born at Thurso in Caithness in 1817, the son of a

16 sergeant in the 42nd Black Watch Highlanders. In 1838 he married Margaret Ogilvie of Keith.

McGregor converted to Catholicism at some point, possibly before the marriage as Margaret

9 17 remained a Protestant until 1857. They lived in Dunfermline, where he traded as a travelling merchant. In 1849 McGregor purchased an Otago property from the Association for £120. The dearth of Scottish purchasers meant the family had to travel down to London (at a cost of £6) to take ship on the New Zealand Company's chartered vessel Berkshire in September of that year. There was only a small complement Otago-bound on the ship among emigrants for the Company's other

New Zealand settlements. It made landfall first at Nelson on 1 February 1850 but was wrecked on the sandbar there. Nothing was lost, but the family had to wait for another ship heading south, finally arriving in Dunedin on the aptly named Perseverance on 12 March.

McGregor had bought his land on the Taieri Plain from Scotland, but on inspection was unimpressed with its quality. He sold it and bought a section at the foot of Saddle Hill where he established

‘Home Farm’ (later renamed ‘The Grange’) as the centre of wide-ranging business interests.

McGregor was the first of the settlers to move out to the Taieri Plain and as a man of significant capital proved a great benefactor to later arrivals who worked for him while breaking in their own small farms. He kept a low profile in public affairs, but was well known as a Catholic and was not afraid to stand up for his Church. He maintained good relations with his neighbours and was highly

18 regarded by one and all. After a few years he moved across the Plain and gradually developed a sizeable estate at Silverstream.

Poppelwell and McGregor were thus important in the early settlement as capitalists prepared to work their lands. Moreover, they led the way in moving out from Dunedin on to the two substantial plains to the south. Their shared faith naturally drew them together. The Poppelwells stayed with the

McGregors on their way to Tokomairiro in 1853. They joined forces to secure priestly visitations to

10 the settlement from the Marist mission in the North Island, the missionary priests basing themselves

19 at the two homesteads on their irregular missions to Otago. Every Sunday Poppelwell read the

20 prayers of the Mass at 'Sunwick' and McGregor may have done likewise at 'The Grange'. Both sent their daughters to Wellington for a convent education. Their households were the twin pillars of

Catholicism in Otago through the 1850s. Even when a trickle of Irish Catholics made their way into the settlement in the later years of the decade, this was a characteristically Scottish version of the

Church. It was not publicly demonstrative and had no church buildings to cause offence. It was also familiar with French spirituality and well used to minority status in a Protestant culture.

Yet both McGregor and Poppelwell, and Dalton too for that matter, objected to the exclusive status of the Free Church under the Otago Association's arrangements with the British Government through the New Zealand Company. These provided for a set portion of money raised from land sales in the

Otago block to be devoted to religious purposes. Such was standard New Zealand Company policy.

But in Otago, in a new variation, the money was to go exclusively to Free Church purposes, rather than in proportion to all denominations. This was the cause of much friction between the Free

Church group and their 'little enemy' and came to a head after the demise of the New Zealand

Company in 1850. At that point the Otago Association desperately sought an extension of its monopoly rights to land sales in Otago through the granting of a charter similar to that of the

Canterbury Association. Meanwhile, the 'Little Enemy' marshalled its forces, securing 186 signatures to a petition against any such extension despatched to Governor George Grey in August 1851. When this document became public, it drew a vitriolic response from the Free Church group, who attacked

21 the character of its signatories. The passing of the New Zealand Constitution Act in 1852 had meanwhile made the petition redundant, the battle for denominational equality in Otago being

11 thereafter contested in the province's own political assembly. What is significant is that the first two

22 names on the petition were William Poppelwell and Neil McGregor.

23 William Cargill was elected Provincial Superintendent unopposed in 1853. He held the position for the next six years and, through his family clique and Free Church allies, maintained a firm grip on provincial policy. His narrow views on education and immigration, which sought to maintain Free

Church dominance, were vigorously opposed - by some Scots as well as the English. But Cargill was vehement in his defence of the Otago ideal. He preferred a slow, steady flow of migrants of the right sort, which to him was synonymous with Scots Presbyterians, rather than meeting local employers' pressing demand for labour by widening the recruitment pool. His stranglehold on the organisation of immigration from Britain significantly retarded Otago's progress. The province lagged behind the other New Zealand settlements in immigration numbers and agricultural development through the

1850s.

The in-flow of Catholics to Otago under the Provincial Government system remained a trickle. Yet by the late 1850s the trickle was increasing as Irish Catholics from Galway and Waterford established migration chains to exploit the administration’s provision of assisted passages for colonially

24 nominated migrants. This modest Irish contingent found a place for itself at the coalface of the provincial workforce. Its religious needs were supported by the embryonic French/Scottish Church, somewhat different to what they were used to but providing the bare bones of sacramental life in what was still a frontier zone. A later cohort of Irish Catholics would prove less accepting of the service provided by the French Marist missionaries. But it was another Scottish Catholic who took

12 the first initiative to secure a resident priest for Otago and he looked to his home district in Scotland to provide one.

Finlay Stanislaus Murchison was a Highlander, born at Ardnarf, Lochalsh in Ross-shire in 1834. He spent eight years at the Scottish seminary Blairs, in Aberdeen, but recurrent ill health put an end to

25 his priestly aspirations, leaving the seminary for good in October 1856. Three years later he secured an assisted passage to Otago on the Sevilla with his sister Catherine, who was pregnant and unmarried. Also aboard, and with assisted passages, was the extended family of Henry McCormack, a Catholic carpenter from Dumbarton. His party consisted of his wife Maggie, a convert from

Presbyterianism, their three young children and Henry's four orphaned younger siblings. This

Catholic group's assertiveness was not appreciated by the authorities aboard ship. Official correspondence about the voyage referred to the poor moral character of the emigrants, mostly evidenced by the drunkenness of some of the assisted migrants on the voyage but also referring to

Henry McCormack and his sister being ‘troublesome on [the] voyage; Catherine Murchison a single

26 woman had baby’.

The ‘troublesome’ Catholics on the Sevilla were to have a major impact on the Otago Catholic community. The McCormacks were assisted after their arrival by William Poppelwell, who loaned them money to build a home in Cargill Street. The two families became lifelong friends and were later linked by the marriage of children. Fr Delphin Moreau lived with the McCormacks on his sojourns to Dunedin until a presbytery was established in 1861. The Murchisons also looked to the

Poppelwells for a welcome on arrival, bringing with them a letter of introduction to Mrs Poppelwell from her home place in Scotland, which was near their own. Catherine Murchison was soon married

13 off to Stephen Watson, an Englishman who had been living at Riverton since 1840. He adopted her baby and took them back to Riverton. Finlay was to follow her south, but not before securing his co- religionist's backing for a plan to secure a resident priest for Otago.

Tragic events in Otago in early 1860 reinforced the urgent need for a resident clergyman. William

Poppelwell's eldest son died in January from a sudden illness, aged just fifteen and deprived of the

27 last rites. Bishop Viard wrote from Wellington expressing his sympathies and offering the hope

28 that Otago would get its own priest before much longer. But Otago Catholics had been hearing this for years and the moment seemed propitious to advance their alternative plan. The recently arrived

Finlay Murchison had brought with him news that a Fr James Lamont, the forty-three-year-old priest at Dornie in Kintail (his former parish), was prepared to emigrate to Otago if the necessary funds could be found to support a mission. The funds proved no obstacle, McGregor and Poppelwell each

29 advancing £50 to pay for his passage and set-up. Poppelwell then wrote to Viard with the proposal, requesting him to make contact with Fr Lamont's bishop in Aberdeen. He also wrote to Bishop Kyle himself, making a case for a Scottish priest that closely resembles similar pleas by Irish Catholics a few years later for Irish clergy:

At present there is no likelihood of the permanent establishment here of a priest, of our own

language and conversant with our requirements.

The French clergy who from time to time visit us are good zealous and pious men, who are

anxious to further the good work, but they are not sufficiently acquainted with our language

30 and habits, to be so eminently useful as we might expect one of our own countrymen to be.

14 Bishop Viard responded supportively to the Otago plan. A correspondence was established with

Bishop Kyle and Father Lamont, as well as the Marist Superior in France, only part of which

31 survives. It indicates that the initial response from all parties was positive and that by May 1861 Fr

Lamont had committed himself to Otago, subject to a number of final conditions. These are not stated in the surviving letters, but no difficulties were anticipated and by August Bishop Viard was confidently awaiting word of his imminent arrival in Otago. He was no doubt relieved at the prospect. Gabriel Read's discovery of gold in the Otago hinterland in late May had unleashed a flood of new arrivals to the province, including thousands of Catholics. The Marist priest Delphin Moreau had been caught by this sudden influx and his annual visitation south looked like extending indefinitely. The Scottish priest was needed more than ever. Unfortunately he did not come. In

December a letter arrived from Scotland with news that Fr Lamont had withdrawn and that no other

32 candidate was available to take his place.

The gold rush decisively changed Otago's demography, a transformation affecting the Catholics more than most. There had been at best a couple of hundred Catholics across the province in 1860. Even though these were mostly Irish, they were an unassuming lot, deferring to the leadership of the Scots and accepting the ministry of the French, in Church matters at least. The mining influx brought Irish

Catholics of a very different stamp, and thousands of them. While Fr Moreau strove valiantly to provide pastoral care, assisted by a miscellany of drifter priests and short-term assistants, the French missionary enterprise was scarcely adequate to meet the new religious needs. McGregor and

Poppelwell remained to the fore as Moreau’s chief lay supporters through the 1860s, securing a site for St Joseph's church in Rattray Street in 1868 and acting as trustees for the church. But the gold rush Irish Catholics had higher expectations of their Church than the Marists could provide. They

15 wanted Irish priests and pushed hard to get them. In December 1869 they got their wish with the appointment of Patrick Moran as the first bishop of the new diocese of Otago.

Moran and the MacKays

Moran's arrival in Dunedin in 1871 was a watershed event. He came to build a strong Otago Church on the Irish model and saw himself as part of an Irish spiritual empire in the colonies. How did the pioneer Scots fare in his hibernicisation of the Church they had helped establish? Things began badly. The bishop arrived in Dunedin on 18 February with considerable fanfare, accompanied by Fr

William Coleman and ten Dominican Sisters from Ireland. But the initial euphoria was soon replaced by dismay at the state of the Church, apparently a far cry from the glowing descriptions of Dunedin received before accepting the appointment. Moran was particularly unimpressed with the French clergy's pioneer effort, holding the Marists responsible for his disappointment. Poor Fr Moreau left the diocese soon after, receiving a fonder farewell from Dunedin's Protestants than from his Irish co- religionists. Moran embarked immediately on a determined campaign to rectify the diocese's perceived deficiencies. Over the next twenty-four years he built a network of churches and schools across the diocese, firmly moulding Otago as an outpost of the Irish Church.

Moran was also eager to do battle with Dunedin's Presbyterian establishment to advance Catholic rights. When the secular press would not give his views a platform he established his own newspaper

(the New Zealand Tablet). As soon as Catholic schools were in place he required Catholic parents to

33 withdraw their children from the public schools or face ostracism. His school system sought to foster Catholic solidarity in a hostile Protestant environment, but it was a solidarity based on the

16 melding of ‘Irish’ and ‘Catholic’ identities, which may have left non-Irish Catholics in an awkward

34 position. This was a very different approach to the previous era. Moran had no sympathy with the modest public profile characteristic of the Scottish Catholics, who were ‘tarred’ from the outset in any case by their close association with Moreau and the Marists. Moran quickly had the deeds for the

St Joseph's church site transferred from them into his own name. There was no leadership role for them in his diocese. The twenty-three year Scottish era of the Catholic faith in Otago was quickly

35 consigned to historical obscurity.

Ironically, the first year of Moran's episcopacy finally saw a Scottish priest arrive in Dunedin. This was Fr John MacKay, a thirty-one-year-old from Banffshire, whose elder brothers had preceded him to the colony. MacKay was educated at Blairs, the Scottish seminary at Aberdeen (beginning there during Finlay Murchison's final year at the seminary), as well as French seminaries at Douai and

36 Paris. He was ordained in Paris in 1868 and returned to Banff, serving the Scottish Northern

37 District that Fr James Lamont had left for Canada three years earlier. He was an energetic young priest and built a new chapel at Banff, putting to good use skills taught him by his stonemason father.

By 1872, however, his health had broken down and a change of climate was recommended.

Accordingly, he followed his brothers to New Zealand, accompanied by his parents and sister and a number of family friends from Banff. They arrived in Dunedin on the Christian McAusland in early

December. MacKay had leave from his bishop for two years, but the Otago climate proved so beneficial to his health that he was granted permission to remain permanently. He was to serve the

Church in Otago for fifty-four years.

17 MacKay's initial appointment was as first parish priest to the goldfields region of the Lakes District

38 (Wakatipu). He made his first journey there just after Easter in 1873. Based in Queenstown, he rode huge distances to minister to scattered Catholics across the goldfields. When in Arrowtown he was able to stay with his storekeeper brother William. Within a few months he was running an Art

39 Union to build a church there. He was a tall, well-built man with an impressive flowing beard, who made a strong impression on his new parishioners. His health flourished in Central Otago and within ten years he had built churches, a convent and three schools - regularly teaching in them himself.

These achievements proved his worth to both Moran and his Irish parishioners. Only one thing was

40 counted against him: his refusal to allow the school children a holiday for St Patrick's Day.

In 1890, after seventeen years building up the Wakatipu parish, Fr MacKay was moved to . It was a significant appointment. There he was replacing the deceased Monsignor Coleman, Moran's senior priest since their arrival together in 1871. He was quick to make a favourable impression in

Oamaru. Within three years he had established a branch of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic

41 Benefit Society and laid the foundation stone of a magnificent new church, dedicated to St Patrick.

This was the first of a number Oamaru stone churches of the basilica style designed by , at the time possibly the most impressive parish church in New Zealand. Bishop Moran's high regard for bricks and mortar saw MacKay honoured with the title of Dean after the opening of the new church in 1894. He was also appointed Vicar General and administered the diocese after Moran's death until the arrival of the new bishop, Michael Verdon. 42 It was a remarkable achievement for the sickly Scottish priest who had come to New Zealand on leave in 1872. Adapting to the colonial environment, and to the Irish model of Church, he had been able to fit right in. He remained at

43 Oamaru, esteemed and honoured, until his death in 1926.

18

The circle of family and friends who accompanied Fr Mackay to New Zealand also fitted in to the

Irish style of Catholicism in Otago. Surviving letters to and from Scotland reveal an extended

44 network of Banffshire Catholics who supported each other in their colonial adventures. They found Catholic life and practice somewhat flashier and more publicly demonstrative than what they had been used to at home, but were quite at ease with the difference and made the transition without difficulty. Jessie MacKay, writing home to her sister after a first Easter in Dunedin in 1873, reported that ‘the offices and ceremonies of Holy Week were quite new to us altogether ... there was six priests

45 all the week, the services were all sung...’ Recording her participation in an Art Union for the church while on a visit to Lawrence, she tellingly compared ‘Fr Larkin’ to their old priest at

46 Dufftown ‘Mr Kemp’. The use of the two contrasting titles is a subtle indication of her perception that the Irish priest enjoyed a different public status to the Scottish. These letters reveal the Church as a key focus of the MacKay family's life in Dunedin, an important agency for social interaction as well

47 as religious practice. Scottishness proved no barrier to integration within the Catholic community, but any Scottish flavour was quickly absorbed into the dominant Irish blend.

The Highland Catholics of Southland

Many other Catholic Scots settled in Otago and Southland from the 1850s, obituaries and parish histories suggesting that they were often notable members of parish communities. Such sources are too slight, however, to test the contribution of any characteristic Scottish elements to parish life. The stories of two different extended Highland family groups in Southland offer a little more evidence of a Scottish element in Church life. This was the Highland tradition of sectarian amity. In rural

19 Southland distinctive concentrations of Highlanders, Presbyterian and Catholic, made their mark.

They migrated in chains, based on extended family and locality networks, and re-established themselves in communities where Highland cultural markers - the Gaelic language, the musical tradition of the pipes, and the illicit distillation of whisky - survived well beyond the immigrant generation.

The first family group centred on Donald Angus Cameron of Nokomai. Born in Fort William,

Inverness-shire, in 1835, he spent time in a Glasgow shipping agency before leaving Scotland in 1854 to work for his great-uncle, Alexander Cameron, on his sheep station at Penola in South Australia.

Penola was the centre of ‘a particularly strong and close-knit, though still small, group of Catholic

Highlanders’ amongst whom Donald's uncle, the senior Cameron, was known as ‘the King of

48 Penola’. Donald served his uncle well and by 1858 had risen to be manager of one of his stations.

The next year he decided to strike out on his own and, accompanied by his cousin Angus Alphonse

MacDonald, set sail for Otago. In early 1859 the Otago interior remained a largely unknown quantity and the two young Scots made the first exploration of the eastern side of Lake Wakatipu, naming the

Lochy and Nevis rivers, Ben Nevis and The Devil's Staircase after places in Lochaber and Glencoe.

A kinsman, William Cameron, who had preceded them to Southland, joined them in Invercargill. He had already applied for the Glenquoich run, subsequently managed by his brothers Robert and

Archibald. Back in Dunedin Donald and Angus applied for their own runs, then returned to Penola to charter a vessel and transport their flocks to New Zealand. Donald established himself at Glenfalloch

49 Station, Nokomai, and Angus first on the Islay Run and then at Reaby.

20 Donald Cameron's brothers John, Angus and Alexander came with him to Otago with the sheep. The youngest brother, Duncan, followed in 1864 and father Ewen and sister Margaret in 1869. Donald travelled back to Australia to marry a Penola McDonald in 1863. They returned to Glenfalloch, where they established a substantial homestead that was to be their home for sixty years. Further properties were added to their holdings from the 1870s and these were run by family members and retained in family hands for many years. ‘Glenfalloch’ was a centre of Highland culture. Cameron was an authority on the Gaelic language, which he spoke fluently, and had a considerable knowledge of bagpipe music, being identified by Jennie Coleman as one of the first of the piping ‘tradition- bearers’ to settle in the south.50 Piping was part of the cultural life of the station and Cameron acted as patron to some of New Zealand's outstanding nineteenth-century pipers. These included James

McDonald, who lived on the run and composed a number of notable tunes in his honour, and Angus

MacIntosh who is buried with him. Donald Cameron was also the first Chief of the Highland Society of Southland. In 1906 he made a trip back to the Highlands, accompanied by Archibald Macrae, another of the pipers from Nokomai. The story of his pioneer experiences in New Zealand was published in the Glasgow journal the Celtic Monthly in 1907.51

Donald Cameron was a staunch Catholic. Every Sunday he led family prayers at eleven o'clock in the morning and nine o'clock at night. At three-monthly intervals the parish priest of Queenstown - none other than Fr John MacKay for seventeen years - would come to ‘Glenfalloch’ to say Mass. In

1897 an even more notable guest was the Australian foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph, Mother

Mary McKillop. After her visit to Queenstown she sought out the Camerons, who were related to her

52 uncle in Penola and known to her family as ‘Donald New Zealand’. The bed where she slept at

‘Glenfalloch’ was venerated for generations by the Camerons, sick members of the family being put

21 53 there to benefit from its healing properties. Donald Cameron was the only pioneer run holder of the

1850s to see out his days on his original property. He died there in 1918, aged eighty-three, and was given a Highland funeral by the Highland Society of Southland, being buried in the Catholic portion of the Tapanui cemetery. His grave is adorned with an Iona cross shipped out from Inverness and inscribed with memorials in English, Latin and Gaelic.

Finlay Murchison, the former seminarian from Lochalsh, Ross-shire, is key to a second, even larger, network of Highland Catholics who settled in the south. His early years in Otago were spent near

54 Riverton farming with his sister's husband, Stephen Watson. Other members of the family followed them to Otago through the 1860s, taking advantage of the provincial programme of assisted migration. When the General Government took over and expanded the recruitment of immigrants in

1872, Finlay initiated a series of approaches to officials to bring out large numbers of his extended family. His first list included some sixty to seventy people, all from his home district. With support from James Macandrew, Otago's Provincial Superintendent, this large group received special exemption from the new immigration regulations to expedite their migration. Forty migrants from

Ross-shire - including many of Finlay Murchison's relations (Murchisons, MacDonnells and McRaes)

- arrived at the end of 1872 on the Hydaspes.55

Among the new arrivals was Finlay's sister Mary McRae, a widow who brought her four sons and

56 three daughters with her. She also brought a still and considerable skill in the distillation of whisky.

She settled at Hokonui, a district notorious both for McRaes and for illicit stills. There were in fact nine distinct McRae families in the Hokonui area. Some were related, some were not. All came from

Kintail, Ross-shire. Some families were devout Presbyterians, others equally devout Catholics. In

22 the true Highland tradition there was no sectarian division. Similar communities developed across

Southland, from Hokonui to Riverton. A vibrant Highland culture was maintained, characterised by pipe music, Gaelic and whisky. The religious commitment of these communities was evident on both sides of the sectarian divide. The Ross-shire migrants constituted an important part of the Catholic community in the south. Numerous descendants became priests and religious. Their contribution is symbolised by the church erected at Riverton in 1876. Donald Cameron, the Nokomai 'chieftain' donated a site and contributed much of the cost of the building, making just one condition to his gift:

because the church would be used by a congregation of two nationalities it should be

dedicated to a saint common to both - St Columbkille - who, though an Irishman by birth,

was a Scotsman by adoption and the apostle and patron of Scotland.57

Conclusion

Cultural determinism is a trap for the unwary. This chapter remains circumspect in its assessment of

Scottish characteristics of the Catholic Church in early Otago and Southland. Certainly there were

Scots who were Catholic and who made significant contributions to the development of the Church in the region. How much ‘Scottishness’ was inherent in their Catholicism, or vice versa, is less clear.

Only traces and hints can be teased out from the partial imprint of their lives in the surviving records of the time. What is beyond doubt is that Otago's Catholic history is more than just the story of the

Irish who were its major players. Their Scottish co-religionists had many lessons to offer: in getting along with Protestants; in coping with limited clerical services; in sectarian harmony. More sophisticated analysis might offer greater insights into the interplay of religion, nationality and

23 culture than possible here. Suffice it to say that St Columkille's devotees deserve a place of honour in the annals of the southern Church.

1 Tom Brooking, And Captain of their Souls: Cargill and the Otago Colonists, (Dunedin: Otago

Heritage Books, 1982), p43.

2 For detailed analysis of the early settlers' denominational characteristics see Rosalind McClean,

‘Class, family and church: a case study of interpenetration, Otago, 1848-1852’, (B.A.(Hons) dissertation, University of Otago, 1980).

3 Cargill expressed his satisfaction in a letter to McGlashan of 23 January 1849, ‘I would here repeat my unqualified satisfaction with the character of the people you have sent, and my gratification in having found every successive arrival to be an improvement on the preceding one …’, Hocken Library,

Dunedin (hereafter Hocken), McGlashan Papers, MS-0463, Folder 5.

24

4 A.H. McLintock, The History of Otago, (Dunedin, Otago Centennial Historical Publications, 1949), p

280-1.

5 Brooking, And Captain of their Souls, p72.

6 See for example Erik Olssen, A History of Otago, (Dunedin, McIndoe, 1984), p39. McLintock provides the best account of this period in his chapter ‘The Years of Strife’.

7 Control of immigrant selection and educational provision are the most pertinent to this study.

8 Early Dunedin newspapers are studded with anti-Catholic references as well as hostility to Anglo- catholic influences in the Anglican Church at a time when neither of these religious ‘brands’ had a serious presence in Otago.

9 D.L. Poppelwell, A Pioneer Story and Primitive Gore, (Gore: Gore Publishing, 1933); and Janet

Foster, ‘William Bell Poppelwell 1819-1883: His Life and Times, Background and Descendants’,

(unpublished manuscript, 1991, Otago Settlers Museum Archives).

10 Foster’s family history states that the McLachlans were Catholic but I think this is an error.

Catherine’s brothers were certainly Protestants and Duncan was conditionally baptized by Fr Petitjean at

‘Sunwick’ in September 1857 ‘he having previously abjured Protestantism’. Catholic Archives,

Dunedin (hereafter CAD), French Register.

25

11 Rosalind McClean took issue with this assertion at the Celtic Connections conference in 2002. It is based on the following memoir of Poppelwell's son, published in 1925. ‘As showing the determined nature of the opposition displayed by the Colonising Company to those who differed from them in religion, I may mention that when my father first applied for his passage to New Zealand in 1847 [sic] it was refused him, although, upon learning that he had previously been in Otago, they did not hesitate to seek from him for their own purposes what information they could concerning the country, etc., which was then little known. Subsequently the passage was granted in the Blundell, one of the first ships.’

D.L. Poppelwell ‘The Church in New Zealand: Some Early Otago Church History’, New Zealand

Tablet, (25 November 1925).

12 National Archives New Zealand (hereafter NA) New Zealand Company Papers (hereafter NZC)

34/3, Blundell passenger list.

13 The passenger list gives Hugh Reid as Hugh 'Dalton'. He, John and Margaret were assisted passengers in the fore cabin. Charles, Charlotte and Donald Read [sic] had free passages in steerage.

John and Charles are listed as agricultural labourers. NA, NZC 34/3, Mary passenger list.

14 ‘Donald’s girl cousins … seeing him reading his book of songs, they pronounced all songs save psalms and hymns to be inventions of the devil, and so wrought upon his feelings that in marked fear of eternal damnation, he made a grudging burnt sacrifice of the precious companion of his lonely hours on

26 the hillside.’ E.N. Reid and Alfred Eccles, Donald Reid: pioneer, statesman, merchant, 1833-1919,

(Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1939), p18.

15 The Marist Archives in Wellington have an undated list of subscribers to build a Catholic chapel in

Dunedin. Internal evidence suggests that this dates from Fr Petitjean’s visitation in 1857. Dalton subscribed £2 to the cause. Both Dalton and his step-son Charles also signed the 1851 petition opposing Otago’s continuation as a ‘class settlement’. See below.

16 Biographical details from manuscript notes for the 1948 centennial history of the Taieri by Margaret

Shaw. Otago Settlers Museum, Dunedin, (hereafter OSM), Shaw Papers, AG 71.

17 She was conditionally baptized by Fr Petitjean in September 1857 a week after Duncan McLaughlan, she like him having ‘abjured Protestantism.’ CAD, French Register.

18 A fascinating letter from his first neighbour, an Irish Protestant named Andrew Todd, suggests he was more generous with his farm equipment than most. This letter also refers to the 'paper war' between the Free Church and Little Enemy over the funds from land sales devoted to religious purposes, and to the visit of a Catholic priest. Margaret Shaw and Edgar Farrant, The Taieri Plain: tales of the years that are gone, (Dunedin: Otago Centennial Historical Committee, 1949), p14.

19 This is obvious from the predominance of Poppelwell and McGregor family members as sponsors and witnesses at the weddings and baptisms celebrated during these visitations. CAD, French Register.

27

20 Poppelwell, New Zealand Tablet, (25 November 1925).

21 This was based on the names of a number of ex-whalers on the list: ‘Can even Mr Carnegie deny that it is signed by 15 or 16 runaway sailors - by a few persons who have been in trouble because of petty larcenies - and by every shagroon within the district? Indeed we were offered a reward if we could name a disreputable person between Waitangi River and Stewart's Island who had not signed it, and we were fairly at a loss to suggest one.’ , (15 Jan 1853). As a snapshot of the 'Little Enemy' the 1851 petition is a valuable indication of the broad and diverse alliance of dissidents collected under that sobriquet.

22 Other probable Catholics on the list - including some apostates - are: John Dalton; Lewis Longuet;

Charles Manuel; James Kelly; William Walsh; William Barry; James Boniface; Henry McHugh. This would have represented a significant representation of Otago Catholics in 1851.

23 Lively pre-election posturing by the ‘Little Enemy’ party involved both Poppelwell and McGregor,

Otago Witness, (9 July and 13 August 1853).

24 See Seán Brosnahan, ‘The Greening of Otago: Irish (Catholic) Immigration to Otago and Southland

1840-80’ in Norma Bethune [ed] Work ‘N’ Pastimes: 150 Years of pain and pleasure, labour and leisure: proceedings of the 1998 Conference of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, Dunedin 1998

(Dunedin: 1998 Conference Committee, 1998).

28

25 Scottish Catholic Archives (hereafter SCA), Blairs Register.

26 William Cargill, 27 December 1859. OP 3/1/6, National Archives, Wellington. Catherine's baby is not included in list of births aboard the Sevilla. Otago Colonist, (9 December 1859).

27 Foster, ‘William Bell Poppelwell’, p41.

28 ‘Although deprived of the assistance of a priest yet he has had the happiness of dying in the bosom of a christian family ... I hope that the vast Diocese of the south of Wellington shall not witness the expiration of 1860 without seeing the arrival of those shepherds so ardently longed for.’ Catholic

Archives Wellington (hereafter CAW), Viard letter, 9 February 1860.

29 This was sent to William Poppelwell's father at Berwick-upon-Tweed and was advanced by them as a debt against the future congregation. SCA , Poppelwell to Bishop James Kyle, 4 June 1860.

30 Ibid.

31 It is notable that Bishop Viard's first appeal to Bishop Kyle acknowledges the Scottish character of the Church in Otago. ‘I shall take it as a great favour if your Lordship can bring the business to a happy conclusion for your respected countrymen of Otago in New Zealand.’ SCA, Viard to Kyle, 25 July

1860.

29

32 CAW, Viard to Poppelwell, 8 December 1861. Bishop Kyle's letter to Viard has not been located in

Wellington or Aberdeen. Lamont (also recorded as Lamond) did eventually emigrate, leaving the

Northern Vicariate in 1865 and later moving to Prince Edward Island in Canada. He died in Ontario in

1891. The only indication of why the proposal ultimately failed is found in manuscript notes by

Poppewell's son for a talk on early Otago Catholic history in 1925. This was based on his memories of documents and letters which had been destroyed in a fire in 1897. ‘Nothing came of this proposal probably (?) owing to some question as to whether a secular Priest could be introduced to a Marist

Diocese...’ Marist Archives Wellington, File No HD1 /171, ‘Some Early Otago Church History, a lecture by Mr D L Poppelwell’. Basil Howard’s unpublished history of the Dunedin Diocese contains additional references. He claimed that the negotiations over Lamont’s mission carried on until February

1863, much to Fr Moreau’s discomfort who grew tired of ‘the priest who was “always coming but never arriving”’. According to Howard, ‘These strange gaps cover the fact that growing weary of the situation, Lamond’s bishop had withdrawn permission. Lamond managed to transfer to another diocese where the bishop was more amenable.’ CAD, Basil Howard, unpublished manuscript.

33 Dugald Poppelwell recalled the ill feeling this caused when he and his Catholic school fellows were withdrawn from the public school at Milton. ‘This movement caused a good deal of feeling at the time and I can well remember that those of us who first attended the Catholic school had to practically fight our way into the public school at dinner time to recover our books and slates which we had left there.’

Hocken, MS-0977, Dugald Poppelwell, ‘Papers Relating to his Autobiography’, p8.

30

34 One of Neil McGregor's few recorded public statements was at a public meeting in Dunedin in 1856 over the Presbyterian 'capture' of the provincial school system. The Anglican W.C. Young proposed a non-denominational form of Christian instruction in the schools instead. McGregor ‘stated that he was of the Romish persuasion, wished to correct an erroneous view taken of the sect to which he belonged.

They read their Bibles as well as other Christians. The system proposed by Mr Young would not be objected to by Roman Catholics.’ Otago Witness (8 March 1856). Bishop Moran would have taken a dim view of such a statement after 1871.

35 William Poppelwell was not even accorded an obituary by Moran's Tablet newspaper on his death in

1883. It was left to his son Dugald to record his father's efforts in the early years with his lecture to be published by the Tablet in 1925.

36 Innes Review, (1989), p36.

37 This was the only one of the three Scottish Catholic Districts that was self-sufficient in priests at this time. It contained the traditional Catholic strongholds with long-established missions. Ibid.

38 OSM, DC-1966, Lamb/MacKay Papers, Letter, Jessie MacKay to her sister in Scotland, 16 April

1873.

39 OSM, DC-1966, Lamb/MacKay Papers, Letter, Jessie MacKay to her sister in Scotland, 2 October

1873.

31

40 Catholic Church in the Wakatipu. (Dunedin: Tablet Print, 1963), p 18.

41 Much was made during these celebrations of MacKay's Scottishness and noting such support for the

Irish identity of his parishioners. He was acclaimed as ‘the true Soagarth Aroon’ and presented with an

Illuminated Address in the form of a shamrock with views of Loch Leven and Loch Katrine in the lower leaves. Oamaru Mail, undated copy courtesy of Rosemary Lamb.

42 Sister Mary Augustine McCarthy, Star in the South: the centennial history of the New Zealand

Dominican Sisters, (Dunedin: St Dominic's Priory, 1970), p154. He was joint diocesan administrator with Fr Lynch.

43 During Verdon's episcopacy he was also given the title Monsignor. Ibid., p179.

44 As well as the three generations of the Mackay family there were numerous friends from Banffshire whose migratory experiences in New Zealand, Australia and America form a backdrop to the exchange of news between MacKay family members in Dunedin and Scotland. There is a sequence of five letters from 1873, one from 1884 and two from 1887. OSM, DC-1966, Lamb/MacKay Papers.

45 Ibid., Letter, Jessie MacKay to her sister in Scotland, 16 April 1873.

46 Scottish priests at this time were still generally referred to as ‘Mr’ rather than ‘Fr’.

32

47 As immediate family of a priest they would have enjoyed a special status with the other clergy so their experience may have been atypical.

48 Malcolm Prentis, ‘Scottish Roman Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Australia’, The Innes Review,

Volume 32, (1981), p 64. These Penola Highlanders are of some significance in Australian Catholic history.

49 Angus MacDonald died at Gore in 1916 survived by a family of seven. New Zealand Tablet, (5

October 1916).

50 Jennie Coleman, ‘Transmigration of the “Pior Mhor”: The Scottish Highland Piping Tradition in the

South island of New Zealand to 1940’, (PhD dissertation, University of Otago, 1996).

51 Reproduced in Herries Beattie, Pioneer Recollections, Second Series, (Gore: Gore Publishing Co.,

1911).

52 Paul Gardiner SJ Mary MacKillop: an Extraordinary Australian, (Newtown: David Ell Press, 1994), p411-12.

53 Ibid., p 13.

33

54 The southern part of the South Island became a separate province as Southland in 1861. ‘Otago’ is sometimes used here as a shorthand for the whole of the southern area.

55 New Zealand parliamentary papers record further lobbying on behalf of a second group from Kintail in 1873. Further research is required to determine the extent of this migration chain. It seems likely that there were family members in Southland before Finlay and Catherine arrived in 1859 and later additions may have continued into the 1880s. See Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives, D–

No 7, 1872, and D-1D, 1873 ‘Papers Relating to Immigrants Nominated by Mr. Finlay Murchison’.

56 William D. Stuart, The Satyrs of Southland, ([Invercargill: W.D. Stuart, 1982).

57 From Bishop Moran's remarks at the official opening of St Columkille's reported in Records of Early

Riverton and District, (Invercargill: , 1937) p103. Nokomai is quite some distance from Riverton and Cameron's generosity is a further indication of his role as patron to both Highland and Catholic causes in Southland.

34