Conversations

There is much to be remembered. I spoke to Dad on a visit just before we both went to England for Brenda's wedding. I wanted to know a lot about how his father and mother was but our conversation was much more wide ranging, especially on relationships, both with his brother and first born.

The first thing that came up is the relationship with parents. He knew his mother was "going". His relationship with his mother was disappearing due to her illness.  There were conversations to discuss her health and it was decided that it was best that she'd be put in a home. Dementia is a horrid disease, he knew. Dad related how on his visits to Kingseat in Papakura to see Ma, he was too shaken to visit again. Ma just wasn't "there".

His father was an interesting man. Dad told me a story about how he sheared 330 sheep in a day and called his Dad to report it. His Dad didn't believe it but didn't come the next day to see it. My Dad didn't want to talk about it.

His father, my Pa, wasn't healthy. Tuberculosis had hurt him; he'd been a shearer but lost a lung, and then he was weak. Dad was busy and recollected the weekend of his death. His father came to Helensville for Friday and Saturday, after which he'd said, "You are rather busy," and chose to go home on the Sunday, after which he died. My Mum, Sue, told Dad of his death and the regret began ever after.

It was with her that the story becomes interesting. My father met her Papatoetoe where he spent time being educated. And he brought my Mum back to Waikawau Bay after marriage. Neither my father's mother or father accepted her though. My father found it difficult to deal with but it was hard to talk his parents around. My mother felt the chill from the start. She'd arrived in this unknown rural place, given natural creamy milk with her tea (which disgusted her) and her birthday wasn't recognized with her in-laws. My father admitted he didn't know the real reason for their resistance; I put it down to the rural/urban divide.

One family legacy is perhaps a tendency towards an Asberger's solipsism. Dad said as a child he was in his own world. horsing around in his own world. I could see some similarities with my uncles. I was in my own as well, listing snake types and writing about science. Adam, my father's second son, lives his own interior life by and large oblivious to the outside world. When others suggested to my father that Adam should be given drugs to regulate him my father refused with the awareness that both he and I came through the introversion to being successful individuals naturally. It reminded me of conversation with my friend, Edwin Liu, where we spoke about the natural condition of people not being medicalized. I don't know if I could be the kind of person I am now without the introversion of my early years.

The wedge between my father and my brother, according to my father, originates with my Uncle Ross's wife. This is quite consistent across my mother and father. The first incident was the death of my cousin, James, which Theresa/Trish attributed somehow to my parents. And then it was further torn by the will of Pa who said that his estate would be split according to the number of grandchildren, which after the death of James, was heavily favoured in the family of my father rather than his brother, Ross. Trish was seen to magnify these differences and Ross couldn't moderate the views of his wife.

 

Thomas Cuthbert Goudie

Thomas Cuthbert Goudie is the Goudie who came to New Zealand and the first for whom we have photographs. He is the first we have personality for: he was headstrong and imposing. 

He was born on 7 July 1840, the child of William Goudie and Margaret Brown in Maybole but by the age of five both of his parents had died. He was likely raised by his half-brother Andrew. His early life is unclear but he married Sarah Ann Cummings on 3 March 1863 and sailed to New Zealand on the War Spirit just three months later on 23 June 1863. He resided in Devonport for the 30 years until Sarah Ann died in 1893. There's no evidence that they had children and thus not much trace of the life they spent or whether they spent time in Coromandel before her death. According to his obituary in The Coromandel and Mercury Bay Gazette, "About thirty eight years ago (i.e. 1882) the late Mr Goudie together with his brother-in-law, Mr Inglis, came to Cabbage Bay and purchased the property from Mr Bletchinton, on which they commenced farming. Later, Mr Inglis retired and the deceased continued to work the property up till the time of his death." (I haven't found how a Mr Inglis was his brother-in-law as well.)

What is clear is that Sarah Ann was buried in Takapuna in 13 May 1893 and he married Sarah Bessie Bridle in 26 September 1893 in Coromandel. 

He died at the age of 80 years old. 

William Goudie (father of Thomas Cuthbert Goudie and Andrew Goudie)

We may never have a personal story of the immediate life of William Goudie, father of Thomas Cuthbert Goudie, but there is a lot we could make a story of. The tombstone at Old Maybole Cemetery reads rather mournfully. Almost all of his children died in childhood, his two wives perished before he did, and it is there at the cemetery they were all interred. It's often said that in modern times we cannot imagine the kind of attitudes towards death and grieving they had in the past. How do people go on? In this day in age, the death of one child is enough to sap any will for life.

From what we can read, he was born in 1786, possibly to Henry Goudie and Mary nee Muir. He married Helen Pollock (Or Hellen Bollock) in 1813 at the age of 25 and had a daughter Jane (circa 1818-1824), a son, John (circa 1820-1829) and another son also called John (circa 1823-1824), then Henry in circa 1822. But as apparent on the tombstone, Jane and the younger John died on the same day, 22 May 1824, without any record of of how it happened. Robert would have been born around this time. In 1827, Andrew Goudie was born: He was the only child of Helen Pollock who survived to adulthood. In 1829, Helen Goudie was born but then the older John and Henry died during the same period in successive months. Helen then died three years later. Mary(1834-1852) was born two years after that, just one year before her mother, Helen Goudie nee Pollock died age 43. William Goudie then married once more, to Margaret Brown (1803-1841). Robert died in 1840 just a few months before Thomas Cuthbert Goudie was born. Mary Brown died the following year, and finally in 1845, William Goudie also passed away, leaving Mary Goudie (11 years old), Andrew Goudie (18 years old) and Thomas Cuthbert (5 years old) without parents.

He is the first person we have in the Goudie lineage with a lot of detailed documentation from a birth record, a will (a bonanza of information) and census records. From the last census, 1841, we know he was a grocer. Mary Goudie wasn't living with them. (She died later at the age of 16.)

The fact that he did die in 1845 is well documented in his will. His will fleshes out a lot of his life. He had land, a sister, Margaret (married Leckie), and even an illegitimate son, William who was living in Glasgow at the time. 

Unclear areas: The tombstone leaves the problem of the William Goudie mentioned at the bottom of the tombstone at the date of 2 October 1888, age 79. This cannot be the same William as there are other birth-dates recorded and it would have meant William married Helen Pollock at an unfeasibly young age. The date and age means that this William Goudie was born circa 1803. (This could plausibly be the illegitimate son if conceived when our William was a teenager but would seem unlikely.)

Another area was noticed by Peggy Goudie: At the point she was researching, the will was unknown. She had noted: "Papa (i.e. Thomas Cuthbert Goudie) has a walking stick which has an inscription on: 'Presented to Wm. Goudie, treasurer of the Carrick Reform Association, 1857.'" She also records a marriage certificate with 1863, and a third wife mentioned elsewhere: Elizabeth Cuthbert Muir. (I cannot find information on the Carrick Reform Association, but for background, Carrick was a district in Scotland that later became South Ayrshire. The main reorganisation of Carrick into Ayrshire, was in 1889 with the Local Government (Scotland) Act. I don't know if there is any connection between this kind of reform, or something more moralistic.)

I can only assume that there is a separate William Goudie who played a role in the early life of Thomas Cuthbert Goudie. 

Laying down a narrative

This is the first post in an attempt to lay down the narrative for the family tree that led to the children of Warren Andrew Goudie, especially focussing on the Goudie line, but also exploring, the McNarey and Hipkins lines. (The Denize and Holt lines are well documented.) In 2009 I laid down the skeleton of the family tree in https://www.myheritage.com/site-family-tree-72392601/goudie-beyond. Family trees though interesting are bare bones and denies the muscle and ligaments that pull and tug the history of how we became. It also fails to see the personalities that give the body of our history the character it has.

Blogs, like my personal blog, are usually thoughts laid down through time. This blog I intend to be different. Each blog will be a topic that can be edited and added to at any time. Visitors are welcome to add comments to or correct the existing content. I intend there to be as many contributors as are willing to contribute. All entries will be tagged with the relevant family name, individual name and any historical or geographical linking titles. I hope over time descendents of our earliest ancestors, should they Google our ancestors names and find this site, correspond with me and hopefully add a blog to patch in part of the story. All entries are open to editing. If my half-siblings in time would like to add their Layson stories, even this entry can be broadened.

The photo above is my favourite from my initial effort at genealogy. It shows the children of my great-grandfather, Thomas Cuthbert Goudie, all born after his 53rd birthday, in Coromandel, New Zealand. The smallest one in the middle is my grandfather, Andrew Joseph Goudie, born when his father was 67. This really shows the generational warping of time in my branch of the family: Thomas Cuthbert himself was the youngest son of his father, born when William Goudie of Maybole was 54, with only one other older half-sibling, Andrew Goudie. My father was the youngest, born when his father was 39. My half-siblings, Hayley and Hannah, in turn were born when our father was 61. That means at its longest, from the presumed birth of William Goudie to the birth of his great-great-grandchildren is the mere matter of 223 years, averaging almost 56 years per generation!

There are remnants of the stories of how these came to be and I hope they can be recorded.

Thank you for visiting.