Brain Watkins House Garden Party – A Special Milestone

 

Mr and Mrs B.C. Julian examining a family postcard album on the front steps of Brain Watkins House at the Tauranga Historical Society’s inaugural Garden Party in December 1979
Photograph by the Bay of Plenty Times photographer, published 3 Dec 1979
Courtesy of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo nzmec-33738

In November the Society hosted visitors to the Brain Watkins House and garden as part of the biennial Bay of Plenty Garden & Art Festival, the second time we have done this instead of our usual Garden Party. What members and visitors alike probably didn’t appreciate was that the occasion happened to be the 45^thanniversary, almost to the day, of our first Garden Party on 1 December 1979.

Willie Watkins and Elva Brain, c. August 1965
Photo Brain Watkins House Collection

The home of Elva Brain and Willie Watkins on the corner of Cameron Road and Elizabeth Street was left to the Society earlier that year as a bequest in Elva’s will and the garden party was an opportunity for members and guests to inspect the house and gardens which are still the Society’s home, and an important focus of our activities. More than 150 members and their guests attended, many in Victorian costumes, including then Mayor Eric Faulkner with his wife Connie, MP for Tauranga, Keith Allen, film and television actress Pat Evison, and visitors from historical societies in Hamilton, Whakatāne and Te Awamutu. We retain strong links with the Whakatāne & District Historical Society in our joint publication of the Historical Review, the Bay of Plenty Journal of History.

Wooden half hull model by Joseph Brain, Brain Watkins House Collection

Guests had an opportunity to view the rooms of the home containing not only the existing furnishings in a setting reminiscent of earlier decades, but also mementoes collected over a century. On display were old family photographs and documents, including Joseph Brain’s will, plans of his engineering projects around Tauranga, early photographs of the house, cups won at sailing regattas and even prizes won by Elva when a schoolgirl.

Elva Brain in the arms of her mother Kate, with her four older sisters, on the steps of their home, c. early 1890s
Carte de visite photograph, Brain Watkins House Collection

Elva was born in 1891 the house which her father Joseph Brain had built a decade earlier, and she lived in it for most of her life. She and her sister Bessie inherited the property when her mother died, and she became the sole owner after her sister died in 1957. The layout of the rooms and their contents have changed little since 1979, the Society choosing to preserve and maintain the look and feel of the early New Zealand home, with all its idiosyncrasies.

Brain Watkins House guides Leslie Goodliffe and Glennis Smith with the Brain family postcard album which featured in the 1979 Garden Party photo, 16 Feb 2025
Photo: Brett Payne

We also look after the more ephemeral contents of the house, such as the postcard album pictured in the photograph. Our conservation plan is currently being updated and our volunteer team not only show visitors around the house, but keep up an ongoing monitoring of the house’s condition. With the assistance of both the Tauranga Heritage Collection and the Tauranga Library’s Archives, the Society is in the process of conserving and digitising many of the house’s artifacts, and ensuring that they are cared for in the most appropriate physical and environmental conditions.

Three Young Teachers Confess

Side by side in Ada Brain’s Birthday Book, given to her on her 21^st birthday in 1895[1], are the Confessions of her sister Alice and one D W (David William) McNaughton.  Although Alice and David did not marry until 22 February 1910[2], “quiet[ly], at the residence of the bride’s parents,” the attraction between them is apparent from even a cursory reading of their responses to the leading questions put forward on pages 292 - 307[3] of Ada’s book. 

Alice esteems honesty above all other virtues; David opts for constancy.  Alice wants her ideal man to be “true hearted.”  David thinks he should be “lighthearted and true.”  Alice’s ideal woman is “loving to all” while David sees his ideal as “kind and loving.”  And while Alice proudly - and, or so I think, with her tongue in her cheek - puts herself forward as “the most beautiful thing in nature,” David, a few pages on, nominates “A. J. Brain” as his “favourite heroine.”  (His hero was “Bruce”, presumably Robert the Bruce.  And Alice was indeed pretty.  I have been unable to find any images of the young David McNaughton.)

Why did they wait so long before their quiet wedding?  Perhaps the clue is in David’s answer to the question, “At what age should a man marry?” – “at 25 if he can support a wife” (he was twenty-five at the time.)  Alice, eighteen, thought the age should be “28”, but also stipulated the ability to support a wife.  And she gave herself six years to assume the responsibilities of the married state: a woman should marry at “24 if she’s got enough sense.”  Even at eighteen she was sensible, disavowing “love at first sight” until eight months had passed.  David, more impatient, required six.

Both were teachers.  Alice, whose career evidently ceased upon her marriage, rose to become headmistress of Greerton School.

Greerton School, 1900. Teacher, Miss Alice J. Brain
Collection of Brain Watkins House. Image courtesy of Pae Korokī Ref. 04-565

We will leave her there.  Mother of five children, her firstborn’s birthday 1911[4], she disappears into domesticity and her husband’s steady rise in his teaching career.  David achieved early glory in 1892[5] by passing the examination for the Junior Civil Service examination, coached by a Mr Murphy of the Tauranga High School.  That same year, spending the winter playing rugby[6], he worked as probationary pupil teacher at Tauranga’s No.2 School, also known as the Harington Street School, where Mabel Blick and Esther Brain were senior students.  Both made entries in Ada’s book.

Teaching was as tough a profession in those days as it is now.  Emphasis on professional development (as modern terminology has it) was critical to advancement.  David was promoted in 1894 at the Harington Street School[7], and also that year sat an examination in which half the candidates failed.  He garnered 585 points[8] out of a possible 1100, (I suspect this means he scraped through with a margin of 35) and (locally) was outdone by two women, Miss Elliott, a colleague at his same school, and Miss Louisa Wilson from Katikati.  He may not have been on top of his game for the exam.  He was reported as having been ill in the spring of 1894, which occasioned a delay in Miss Elliott’s transfer to Whakatane and the consequent possibility of his meeting with the eligible Miss Brain[9] (eligible to be a replacement teacher, I hasten to say.)

The rest is, as others say, history.  Two years after their closely paralleled confessions, David was transferred to Opotiki[10] and, shortly afterwards, as headmaster in Waihi[11].  Carrying his certificate at level D[12], he moved from Waihi to the city as first assistant master at Chapel Street School, Auckland, in 1903[13].  And in 1904 he passed his first year exam in manual training in woodwork[14].  This seems to have provided an impetus to his career and his ability to support a wife: he passed five Class C teaching subjects in 1906[15], and came “visiting relatives” in Tauranga.  His confessed fondness for the piano showed up at a 1908 concert in Ramarama[16], where he was one of the two accompanists.  Two years later he married Alice.

My other player in Ada’s parlour game, Frederick Koller, seems to have been a racier character than thoughtful, methodical David.  His far less earnest responses[17] as a 21-year-old may, however, indicate that there was no second game going on in his life at the time. To twenty-first century minds he seems a bit unreconstructed: his “greatest earthly happiness” was to “lie on my back and smoke with a nice girl to brush away the flies”.  His ideal woman was “a true woman” (emphasis his) and he considered “a lovely woman (unpainted)” to be “the most beautiful thing in nature”.

Nonetheless, Fred sounds like fun, and he was bright.  Mr Murphy’s coaching secured him tenth place among the candidates examined by the Auckland Education Board in 1893.  He loved to perform.  He got a safe 687 points[18] in his 1895 Board of Education exam and was mentioned for his part in a farce[19] in aid of a Church of England vicarage in Ellerslie. His game was cricket, not rugby[20] and his daughter Dulcie was fast on her five-year-old feet.[21]

For despite his misgivings about young women - “D- Fool (as a rule)” (he confessed to the same opinion about “the young man of the period”) Fred got married in 1901[22].  Frances Colebrook, born in Gisborne in 1873, was a little older than he, although she outlived him by fifteen years.  Neither he nor she met the criteria he offered in Ada’s book.  “At what age should a man (and, next, a woman) marry?”  he was asked.  “Depends on circumstances,” he stated firmly. For a man: 30 years old.  The woman: 25.  He was 27, she, much the same age.  So much for the truth of the confessional.

References

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[1] Earlier blogs about the Ada’s book can be found at https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2020/05/ and https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2021/06/

[2] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19100223.2.6

[3] The source for the quotations in this essay is the Birthday Book itself, held in the Brain Watkins House Museum Collection.

[4] Actually, 29 March 1911. 

[5] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18920314.2.5

[6] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18920831.2.5

[7] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18940131.2.4

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18940723.2.4

[9] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18941012.2.21

[10] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18970122.2.3

[11] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18970623.2.4

[12] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18970303.2.4

[13] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19030422.2.75

[14] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19041026.2.7

[15] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19060224.2.9

[16] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19080403.2.126

[17] At pages 474-484 of the Birthday Book

[18] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH18950717.2.6

[19] Literally: its title was  “Area Belle”https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TO18950928.2.73

[20] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH18960421.2.7

[21] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19100311.2.115

[22] I found him at http://www.red1st.com/axholme/getperson.php

Ada's Birthday Book and the New History Curriculum

“Youth challenging norms” is one of the challenging sub-headings of the Royal Society of NZ/Te Apārangi’s critique [1] of the new history curriculum proposed for release into Aotearoa New Zealand’s schools next year [2].

At page 19 of its report, the panel of experts [3] comments:

The idea of youth ‘challenging social norms’ is a prominent part of the outcomes to the end of Year 10, but does not connect with any other aspects of the curriculum. Young people taking an active role in political activity is something almost completely limited to the period after World War II, and mostly from the beginning of the 1960s. A rare example from an earlier period is the involvement of the Te Aute students (who became known as the Young Maori Party) in promoting health reforms. Through behaviour, some groups, such as those described as larrikins, did challenge social norms, but for every larrikin there were many, many more enthusiastic attendees of Sunday schools. To look at the way young people debated and chose roles that challenged expectations for young men and young women can only be appreciated if we understand what these norms were in the first place. To do this, students would need to consider what it was like to be a young person and how this changed over time. This would have been a more appropriate topic in itself. ^[17]

^[17] Chris Brickell is just one of a number of historians who has written very productively about the history of ‘young people’ and youth culture across New Zealand history. For example: Chris Brickell, Teenagers: The rise of youth culture in New Zealand. Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2017.

In this group of pupils and teachers at Tauranga School [4] are three of the 16 contributors to Ada’s book and the brother of a fourth:  he is N McNaughton, third from left in the back row.  The girls are: Mabel Blick, second from left in the middle row; Ada herself, fourth from left in the same row; and, at the front, second from left, Alice Brain. The date is uncertain but, I would contend, at the earlier end of the range offered (1892-1896). [Editor's Note: Stewart Bros. operated a studio in Tauranga from 1890-1892]

In this blog I suggest that the Tauranga Historical Society is in possession of an excellent primary source of the ‘norms’ of likely attendees – I cannot verify their enthusiasm – of Sunday schools.  Three daughters of Wesleyan Joseph Brain, and thirteen of their friends and beaux, are represented in amusing variety in Ada Brain’s twenty-first birthday [5] present, a volume that records not only the birthdays of her acquaintances but also a series of “Confessions” where they disclose, with a truthfulness that cannot be taken for granted, matters ranging across who their heroes and heroines are, what the ideal man and woman is like, their favourite companion animal and their most admired statesman.  I have described some aspects of this volume in earlier blogs.  It is gratifying now to put Ada’s Birthday and Confessions Book forward as – potentially – a local resource whose importance might sit alongside the Mazengarb report of 1954 [6].

As with the milk bar gangs of the mid-twentieth century, there is almost no direct evidence of political activism in the ‘confessions’ of Ada’s friends made fifty years earlier.  But there are indications of political attitudes.  Lest this essay be cribbed by some earnest Year-Tenner of the future, I do no more than present a few examples of responses that, with further research and careful attention to context, in my view show some threads of

a huge story of human experience, and of formative ideas that emerge from the political, industrial, and social revolutions from the late eighteenth century onwards – events that continue to shape the modern world (where ‘modern’ is taken to characterise the long span from the c.1780s into the late twentieth century, a period that is the context for Māori–European interaction). [7]

For instance, there is the young fellow (Mr F R Koller) who, aged 21, found the peculiarity he was most able to tolerate to be “an intense hatred of wrong” and who thought immorality to be the most detestable vice.  He went on to be a head teacher [8] at Wade, later Silverdale, School.  It is to be hoped that his ardent spirit inspired his pupils and colleagues. 

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

Alice Brain, 18 years old at the time, claimed, possibly mischievously,  “Te Kuiti” to be her favourite hero “in fiction” and the “D. of Wellington” and Florence Nightingale to be her historical hero and heroine.  All names rather well known for challenging established ideas.

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

Then there is the enigmatic HineMoa, who would be seventy years old at her next birthday, but who evidently was part of a youthful social circle and whose “opinion of the girl of the period” was, well:  “Perfection”.  A senior woman affirming younger ones: the green shoots of feminism two years after women in New Zealand achieved the vote.

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

“History can hurt”, the Royal Society report goes on to say.  I acknowledge that some of the light-hearted responses recorded in Ada’s book may cause pain to relatives and descendants of those who made their “Confessions” without any thought that later research might expose them to cool assessment and the judgment of hindsight.  For me, unconnected with any of them, Ada’s book offers invaluable insights into a tiny slice of Tauranga society cheerfully playing a parlour game.  In my view, for that alone, it has an intrinsic value for young students of history.  If they then care to follow some of the threads of meaning offered by the youth of yesteryears, they may find, in the admittedly unreliable responses, a real sense of excitement and a trace of the power of ideas.  

References

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[1] https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Aotearoa-New-Zealand-histories-response-to-draft-curriculum-May-2021-digital.pdf

[2] https://ssol.tki.org.nz/Have-your-say-on-Aotearoa-New-Zealand-s-histories-draft-curriculum-content

[3] Professor Charlotte Macdonald FRSNZ, Professor Michael Belgrave (co-convenors), Sir Tipene O’Regan CRSNZ, Emerita Professor Barbara Brookes, Associate Professor Damon Salesa FRSNZ, Sean Mallon, Emerita Professor Manying Ip FRSNZ, Dr Vincent O’Malley, Professor Jim McAloon, Dr Arini Loader (until June 2020), and Kahu Hotere.  Their report was independently reviewed by Emeritus Professor Atholl Anderson FRSNZ, Emeritus Professor Margaret Tennant FRSNZ, and Professor Tony Ballantyne FRSNZ.

[4] Tauranga City Libraries image 04-327. https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/29335

[5] 26 February 1895

[6] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-mazengarb-report-on-juvenile-moral-delinquency-is-released

[7] https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Aotearoa-New-Zealand-histories-response-to-draft-curriculum-May-2021-digital.pdf, p.15

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19091216.2.88

 

Teasey’s Building & Garage

Following my theme of ghost names on buildings that no longer refer to the current occupants I draw your attention to Teasey’s Building No. 34 and Teasey’s Garage No 32 on the east side of Devonport Road.

William Teasey, early 1900s
Cabinet card portrait by Charles A. Winn of Remuera, Auckland
Brain Watkins House Collection

William Thomas Teasey arrived in New Zealand as a young man with the purpose of working for his uncle Mr J Wright in his draper’s shop on The Strand. Teasey left Caledon in County Tyrone in the area from which many of George Vesey Stewart’s Katikati settlers originated. In 1899 Teasey was able to buy a drapery business from Thomas Stuart and he married in that year Ada Brain the eldest daughter of Joseph D Brain, boat builder of Tauranga. The couple had two sons Harry and Wilson. The shop was located in The Arcade on the corner of Wharf Street and The Strand. Meanwhile Mr Wright continued with his business the "Temple of Fashion" on The Strand.

Harry and Wilson Teasey
Large format studio portrait by unidentified photographer
Brain Watkins House Collection

William Teasey widened his range of goods from drapery and a “good selection of Irish linen goods from Belfast” to bicycles in 1908 as interest in them gained popularity in Tauranga. He took part in cricket, the Methodist Church activities, shooting and the Acclimatisation Society, the Chamber of Commerce, he was secretary of the Tauranga Domain Board and became a J.P. He prospered and in 1911 William and Ada Teasey took a trip with their two young sons to visit “the old country.” From 1921 advertisements were appearing in the paper for Maxwell & Teasey land agents and although Maxwell’s name eventually disappeared from advertising Teasey continued to follow this occupation. Teasey’s drapery business moved to premises on the west side of Devonport Road opposite where he was to build his own building.

Teasey's Garage, Devonport Road, Tauranga, Estd. 1932
Tauranga City Libraries Image Ref. 15-223
Copyright Rodney Giddens CC BY-NC 4.0

Tauranga expanded and consolidated its commercial centre in the 1930s as the population grew to 3000. Teasey’s Building is a good example of commercial Art Deco style featuring the stepped façade with chevron details, raised plaster lettering and a rectangular patterned band along the top of the parapet. Wilson Teasey’s garage from 1932 predates the retail building which William T Teasey built in 1939 on the site of his small brick office from which he had operated as a land agent for some years. When the building was first built it provided retail premises on the ground floor, offices upstairs including a room for a piano teacher, with some accommodation at the rear of the first floor. The Tauranga Rowing Club began with meetings in a shed at the back of Teasey’s building before they moved to more appropriate premises on the water’s edge.

Recently the building has been strengthened to meet earthquake requirements.

References

Matthews & Matthews Architects, Tauranga CDB Heritage Study 2007 (for TCC)
Bay of Plenty Times

Photographs
Brain Watkins collection, Tauranga City Library Pae Koroki

Brain Behind the Boats and the Bridges

Joseph Denham Brain
Loose print from Album (BWH2004-0958), Brain-Watkins House Collection

In 1844 Joseph Denham Brain was born into a family of shipwrights on the Isle of Wight. He sailed to New Zealand, married Kate, sister of Auckland shipwright William Bishop, and came to Tauranga in 1881, taking over the shipyard of Mr Charles Wood on the northern end of the Strand. He constructed not only his own home but that of his eldest daughter Ada and built for himself three coastal boats, the Ventnor, Vectus and Dream. He also owned two whaleboats, the Esther and Tarawera. The General Gordon was another boat built by this man.

Brain's boatyard, c1900
Tauranga City Library Collection. Ref. 99-751

A quick read of Papers Past could lead one to believe that he was actually more of a bridge and wharf builder. In the BOP Times he was recorded as the contractor for at least 6 bridges: the Waetou and Atuaroa No.1 bridges on the Te Puke road, the Tarawera Bridge on the Rotorua-Te Teko route, the Waitekohe Bridge near Katikati (1882), the Kopurerua Bridge in Judea (1886) and the Wairoa Bridge at Bethlehem (1892). He tendered unsuccessfully for a couple more bridges and even tried to win the contract to construct the first bathing enclosure off Tunks Point (First Ave) in 1885. He later built the Ruahihi Bridge, the Hairini Bridge (1897) and the Omanawa Bridge (1906). He certainly knew how to build the much needed bridges for this district.

Bridge in Kaimai area built by Joseph Brain, c1900
Tauranga City Library Collection. Ref. 02-064

It is also recorded that he was responsible for the concrete seawall on the Strand and the Horseshoe Wharf at Mount Maunganui in 1913, as part of the East Coast rail project. Other structures he was responsible for were Tauranga’s first fire station and bell tower in Durham Street in 1911, a 250 ft tramway on Motiti Island for loading cattle, and his last, the Memorial Gates opposite the present courthouse in 1921, only 3 years prior to his death at 80.

The years shortly after his arrival in Tauranga must have been tough as he applied to have his section, Lot 147, assessed at a lower valuation in 1881 and asked for the annual rent for his portion of the foreshore to be reduced from 3 pounds to 5 shillings. He certainly did his civic duty, serving on the school board (1891), the Borough Council (1893), the Mount Domain Board (1894) and was nominated for the mayoralty in 1895. Brain was integral part of this town’s growth, a successful and much respected man, passing away in 1924 leaving an estate of seven thousand pounds.   

Sources
Papers Past — BOP Times 1881-1924
Historical Review  May 2003
Pae Koroki

Esther Brain – a personality on display

It’s natural that, having received her red-and-gilt Birthday and Confessions Book for her 21st birthday, Ada Brain immediately turned to her family to make entries in it. It’s also not hard to imagine the amusement on offer from matching them to the precepts offered for their own birthday. Ada was enjoined to "be not weary in well-doing," to "wait to be guided," and that "blood is thicker than water."

Thus prompted, she turned to her sister Esther to be the first (after Ada herself) to make some disclosures. Maybe Ada also considered that she could reassure Alice by way of the fourth precept: "Esther," she might have said, "You can confide in me. Have I ever deceived you?"

 

And Esther, a spirited member of a spirited sisterhood, might have retorted, "Happy is he that has a hobby..." but might also, stretching Addison’s point, have conceded that her place in the book was an opportunity both to be honest and to do some good by not taking the game too seriously.

Esther, born on 6 May 1878, was sixteen when she wrote her answers, in a round schoolgirl’s hand with a few spelling mistakes and lots of slang.  Her ideal man has "Whips of go" and the ideal woman, "Tons of cheek." She loves music, natural history and dancing, and in her young life her greatest misery is toothache. As a good Methodist, she deplores "Boosing" and her choice of gum-chewing as a tolerable peculiarity ranks alongside her sister Alice’s choice (kissing). Esther’s satirical attitude to nearly everything is epitomized by her choice of "Princess  Ida" as the opera she most admires – this Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration is entirely concerned with the war between the sexes and the eponymous princess starts the show as the sort of over-earnest, top-lofty woman who would never stoop to "cheek."

The reference to "Tea-bags" for Esther’s favourite fictional hero is mystifying. Tea-bags, received history has it, are an American invention, and a twentieth-century one at that [1]. Rose-anne as a heroine of a nineteenth-century novel has also so far eluded me. Esther’s playfulness, however, is evident in her choice of Charles (Karl) Voss as her favourite composer. He was a successful German virtuoso pianist and music educator, whose works enjoyed some mid-century popularity, in particular, one supposes, because he had no qualms about converting them into media that would enable them to be played mechanically. It’s more than possible that Esther, whose preferred (and amusingly vulgar) instrument was the Jew’s harp, opted for Voss because his music was readily available by way of a pianola roll.

Esther’s confession shows her to be a clear-minded and candid girl on the brink of womanhood. She seems to want some sort of balance between the sexes, and some maturity too: neither men nor women should get married until they are ready for it [2]. But falling in love at first sight is possible "where there is tin." [3] She’s comical as well as cynical about falling in love – "Rather," she says – "only seven times," which seems unduly enthusiastic unless you admit the irony she displays throughout a catechism whose responses could easily subside into the merely conventional.

Young Esther Brain seems, in short, to have been a lot of fun.  Is it fanciful to suggest that her lighthearted answers came from the fire of green wood?

Fancy aside, we are privileged to have some evidence of her sidelong views of life by way of her older sister’s cherished record. Second sister Alice Brain’s contribution offers another, somewhat more serious, slant, a subject for later consideration. Taken together, however, all three "confessions" provide a glimpse of the interior lives of the elder Brain girls when they were blithe, and bonny, and possessed of a light touch, even for portentous questions.

References
[1] https://redrosetea.com/pages/tea-history carries a typical description of the US’s contribution to tea-drinking culture
[2] She is open about the basics of hormonal changes: facial hair growth for men, menstruation for women
[3] i.e. money