My Dad- writing things up

I have decided that one of the things that I need to do this year is 'write up' and check the information I have about my New Zealand family. I have started with my father, James Kevin Riordan (Jim). I have quite a lot of information about him as it happens, as he was a Railway worker, and went to the Middle East in WW2. Men tend to give rise to a more detailed paper trail than women.

This is my father with his mate Curly, somewhere at a camp in the desert in 1941.

 

 

 

 

Dad was born in 1917 in Omata, just outside New Plymouth, to Martin Riordan and Margaret Malone. At the time of his birth, the family was living on a dairy farm in Hurford Road. One of the things I would like to find out sometime is where exactly on Hurford Rd the family lived. I know it was somewhere not too far from the Royal Oak factory which his father Martin supplied. If I can find some old maps, I will hopefully be able to narrow the location down a bit.

Dad obtained Proficiency at primary school, and by 1938 was working with the Railways, firstly as a junior porter, and by 1955 he was a Guard. When men were sought for the War, he joined up serving in Railways Operating and Construction Companies, after entering Egypt in September 1940. In a chance meeting at a genealogy conference in the early 90s, I met a man who served in his unit, who told me Dad was much in demand in the canteen of an evening, where he sang Irish folk songs.

Dad moved to Waitara at some stage after his war service, where he was a guard. As a single man, he was boarding at the Masonic Hotel. It so happened that my mother, Katherine Lalor, was working there doing 'domestic duties', which I know included cooking. There was a courtship, and in 1956, my parents married, when my father was 39. Just under a year later, their first daughter was born, to be followed by three more in succeeding years.

From a moving company receipt, it was clear we moved into our Waitara home in July 1960. Dad clearly enjoyed being a husband and father, and making our house a home. (Back then, lower income people could still buy homes, through State Advances home mortgages.) I have many happy early childhood memories of Dad working hard around the property. He had a huge vegetable garden, planted fruit trees, and also numerous flower gardens. He had magic green fingers. He laid the concrete paths, dug drainage, and made a fence.

There was a day that I remembered walking down to the Railway Station with my Dad, to find the steam train was in its shed, with a wagon in front of it. I was only four at the time, but I still knew that wasn't 'normal'. I asked Dad why the wagon was there, and he told me it was so nobody could steal the train. I thought he was being silly! But it turns out that is exactly why the wagon was there. In the very early hours of 3 March 1962, shortly after my father had come home from work, he heard the locomotive AB.817 going past our house, when he knew it should have been in the loco shed. There was a chase with cars up to Big Jims Hill, but the train was by then returning to Waitara. Newspaper accounts appeared in various papers, and are all collected up in a file at Archives NZ, as are copies of 'official' documents. My father received a letter of commendation for his part in the incident. There was even an editorial in the Christchurch Star about the event on 10 March 1962.

Excerpt from editorial in Christchurch Star, 10 March 1962

 I have many idyllic memories of my early childhood. But in early June 1966, my childhood came crashing down, when Dad collapsed at work, and died not much later, of a sudden heart attack. I missed him acutely. 

Over the years, I have written various pieces about him, from the heart. The posters above are ones I prepared for the genealogy conference in the 90s in Palmerston North, when Anne Carian was organising the wall displays. The conference theme was 'Tracking the Lines' with Railways being one of the sub-themes.

Requiescat in Pace my dearly loved father.

 

 

Northern France- remembering two great-uncles

I have been granted some refreshment leave in 2020, and in May I plan to visit the places associated with two great-uncles who died in northern France during WW1. I have already visited their war graves- 20 years ago now, in 1998- and plan to revisit those. But since then I have also researched more about the battles both were involved in and hope to visit those areas.

My maternal great-uncle, John Francis Payn, was born in Kumara in 1895 to Francis Davis PAYN and Johanna SCETTRINI. (I have already blogged about him here and also here.) Through the Tourist Office of Cambrai I have managed to organise a tour to see the battleground area he fought in, near Crevecoeur-sur-l'Escaut. He was initially buried in the Masnières-Crevecoeur Rd Cemetery, and was later reburied at Flesquières Hill British Cemetery. I will visit both of those cemeteries as well.

He died on 3 October 1918, after he had been in France for more than a year. Everyone back home in New Zealand knew the war was coming to an end, and apparently my great-grandmother Johanna was devastated by his death.

I am nervous about driving in France on the other side of the road, and the tour covers the cost of a rental car as well as an English speaking guide who will drive me. It is expensive, but I will record what I discover for present and future generations of the family. It also means I won't end up hitch-hiking to visit the grave like I did 20 years ago!!

My paternal great-uncle, James Riordan, was born at Charing Cross in 1887 to Patrick RIORDAN and Mary BURKE. (My previous blog posts about him can be found here and here and here.) James Riordan was wounded when his unit was involved in the fighting at Flers-Courcelette in the Battle of the Somme. He then died a few weeks later from the wounds he received in action, and was buried at Etaples Military Cemetery, a huge cemetery south of Boulogne-sur-Mer, near where there were field hospitals.

The Cambrai Tourist Office told me I could contact the Albert Office de Tourisme to organise a tour to see the area near where he died, but I haven't had a reply from them. I might end up having to hire a car from Arras, but I notice the Albert tourist office also hires out bicycles, so perhaps I can organise to do that when I arrive. (Meanwhile I will make sure I am doing more cycling over the summer to get fitter before I depart!) I am not so worried about not having a tour organised in this area though, as the Ministry for Culture and Heritage have published a brilliant brochure and an App called Ngā Tapuwae that includes maps and audio guides for various trails on the Western Front. The 1916 Battle of the Somme is one of the areas this covers.

It is easy enough to reach the cemetery James is buried in. I can catch a train to Etaples from Paris, then walk a few kilometres along the highway to the cemetery, so it will be a day trip.

So that's the plan... and time is racing along so my departure will be here before I know it!

ADDENDUM: In the process of researching more about my Payn family great-uncles and great-aunts, I discovered that Mum had a first cousin who died in WW2, Robert Clarence Fleming. He was the son of Hilda Selina Payn and Robert Fleming, of Christchurch. He died on 27 July, 1944, and is buried in the Florence War Cemetery. I have worked out I can take a day trip by train from Milan to Florence when I reach Italy, to visit his grave. I will be jetlagged, but I am sure I can still manage to go there, and show my respects.

From Commonwealth War Graves Commission website

My father- a railway worker

Recently I rejoined the Palmerston North Genealogy Group- which I had belonged to briefly in the early 1990s when I was first getting started with some genealogy research. When the newsletter editor recalled me helping make many 'leaves' for the display at the 1993 conference, I told her I'd also made a chart about my father as a railway worker, as the conference theme was "Tracking the Lines." Next minute I was asked if I would be willing to write something about that for the next newsletter. What I wrote has just been published in the latest newsletter- so I am taking the opportunity to put a copy of what I wrote here- with a few extra illustrations.

Charts I made about my father, a railway worker

James Kevin Riordan- Railway Worker
In the early 1990s I started doing my family genealogy, and joined the PN genealogy group. In May 1993 the group was hosting the NZSG conference, with the theme “Tracking the Lines”, that included Railways as a subject. My father, James Kevin RIORDAN, was a guard for New Zealand Railways based at Waitara while I was a young child, so this theme was of particular interest for me.

Members who had railway ancestors were asked to help with displays, and I made a large chart about my father as a railway worker.

Dad with Curly

My ‘reward’ for this was immediate: I was in the process of putting the chart on the wall when a man approached me and told me he was in my father’s unit in WW2. (He was in NZ Railways Construction and Operating Companies in Egypt.) He told me that my father was very much in demand in the canteen in the evenings with his glorious tenor voice, when he used to sing Irish folk songs.

Taranaki Herald account of the chase

I had an early childhood memory of a walk down to the Waitara railway yards with my father, and there was a wagon in front of the steam locomotive shed. I asked my father why it was there, and he told me it was so they couldn’t steal the train. I thought that answer was ‘silly’, but as a result of the NSZG conference, I was about to find out a whole lot more about the stolen train incident of 1962!


Mr Vern Ross, an assistant archivist for the NZ Railway and Locomotive Society, was one of the speakers at the conference. I spoke to him after his lecture, and then wrote afterwards to seek his help with finding out more about my father’s service in the railways. He generously replied with a listing of my father’s service record that he had been able to put together from their archives, as well as some newspaper accounts of the night-time chase after a stolen train in Waitara, on 3 March 1962.

Vern suggested that I should contact Mr Bruce Franklyn of NZ Rail to see if he could assist me with a copy of my father’s full service record, and he also was generous in his reply. He was able to tell me about a letter of commendation that Dad had received from the General Manager for his part in chasing the stolen train, and he gave me the title of the file in National Archives that this was now part of.

The file from National Archives proved to be fascinating. It held a copy of the letter of commendation my father received, as well as other newspaper accounts. It held a copy of the statement my father made, as well as a statement by the engine driver, and various reports about the incident by the chief mechanical engineer and the district traffic manager.

In the statement my father made he described how he ‘was awakened by the whistle of AB.817 which he knew should have been in the loco shed’ and then ‘saw it going over Cracroft Street crossing’. When the engine driver arrived at his home, he ‘realised the engine had been taken by some unauthorised person and rang the police station.’  After some cat and mouse chasing up Big Jim’s Hill, with the policeman in one car and the two railwaymen in another, the train was returned to the station yards in Waitara. My father ‘saw 4 men in the vicinity of the Loco Shed and gave chase but as they were young men I could not catch’. In another report it states that although my father was unable to catch the offenders, he recognised one as a former employee, and this identification helped the police catch the culprits.

There was even a humorous editorial in the Christchurch Star entitled ‘The Saga of Ab817’. It concluded: “Furtive fathers who run their sons’ model railways can regard such an exploit only with silent envy. Rarely can £20 worth of individual lawbreaking have proved so unorthodox or so satisfying. There can be only one conquest of Big Jim’s Hill with a purring Ab beneath the feet.”

6 July 2019
National Archives Reference [W2476, 20/1538 part 2]
Editorial - Christchurch Star 10(?) March 1962

Passing things on...

This year I have two main things I want to achieve with my family genealogy.

The first is to get a booklet together that 'introduces' the family story to our newer generations. At this stage I'm not yet half-way through what I want to share on the paternal side- words and pictures- but hopefully the booklet will be a Christmas present this year rather than next!

The second thing I want to do is to get going on some proper organisation of all my family photos- both recent and older and even photocopies I have of very old photos. If I can digitise them, hopefully they are more likely to last over time to reach somebody interested in more family research.

Dad, second from right

Yours truly and sister

Of course, I haven't stopped trying to follow up some new leads as well. One thing I really want to do is track down where exactly our Lalor family came from in Co Kilkenny. There is a really useful article in Papers Past that states that my great-grandfather, James Lalor, is a 'full cousin' to the famous Irish orator, Richard Lalor Shiel. I have found a 'pedigree' on the National Library of Ireland site that seems to relate to this exact family in 1855, and hope to get it 'looked up' soon- but it seems like the researchers in Dublin are currently overloaded with business. Maybe I will have to look it up myself on a visit. I suspect 'my' Lalor connection will be turn out to be just over the county border from the Templetuohy area- if I actually can break through this brick wall!