Subject: Allene, Elsie & Zoe
Date: 1918
Photographer: T G Palmer, Cameron St, Whangarei
Found: Trade Me
No surname was written on the back of this lovely photo of three girls that I found on Trade Me. Thankfully Allene is not such a common name & I had two hits straight away when I searched Papers Past on ‘Allene Whangarei’. One was a court case that ‘Allene Annie Pollock’ was mentioned (innocent party) and the other was this In Memoriam, it seemed like a good place to start.
I looked for grandma in the NZBDMs online and found that she was Alexandrina Stewart who married Samuel Watts Ruddell in Auckland in 1864. Alexandrina was one of the original Nova Scotian pioneers. Samuel was a policeman in Auckland before they left to move to the Whangarei area of Parakao. There they reared their family of nine sons & two daughters (that I found).
One of their sons, George Kenneth, born 1870 later married Annie Gough in 1899 and their eldest daughter was Allene Annie born either late 1899 or 1900. I’m not sure of the year because I haven’t found a birth registration for her yet. However, I found an newspaper article about her marriage which gave the names of her parents.
George Kenneth & Annie Ruddell had the following children:-
Kathleen Hilda 1901
Star 1902
Cecil 1903
George Kenneth 1906
Elsie 1905 d 1905 aged 6 mths
Hugh Ross 1908
Elsie Rose 1911
Zoe abt 1914
Zoe doesn't show up on the NZBDMs online yet but presuming about 1914 as she was 3 years younger than sister Elsie Rose. Allene was born & reared in Mangakahia & was the postmistress at Pakotai for many years before her marriage. On 14 Feb 1920 she married Alexander Thomas Pollock in the school room of Pakotai School with the wedding breakfast being at the home of her parents.
During the course of my research as usual I went out on a limb and looked into Allene’s mother’s line, the Goughs. Annie, born 1877, was the daughter of Thomas Gane Gough & Mariana Patira. Thomas Gane was born in Timberscombe in Somerset & arrived in NZ when he was 18 years old. He was born in 1857 the son of Joseph Gough & Priscilla Sheppard Smith. Thomas had two brothers, John James & Joseph Orlando William. According to one of the articles I found in the newspapers Joseph first went to America but later joined his brother in NZ, the other brother John stayed in England. Joseph never married & he died in mysterious circumstances although the inquest verdict was ‘death from gastro-enteritis’.
The Ruddells, Pollocks & Goughs seem to be fairly well known in the North as there were frequent articles on any number of them in the newspapers I looked at. So I’m sure someone connected to either Allene or her sisters Elsie & Zoe would love to have the photograph go home again. I didn’t find out who Peggy was so maybe a friend, cousin or even her Aunty Margaret, sister of Allene’s father.
I found some information from this RootsWeb page that has details from a book titled ‘Parua Bay 100 years and more by W R Vallance’, lots of interesting stuff there.
Also, this article written last year about the Parakao School, not sure if it’s the same school though.
References: Papers Past; NZBDM Online; ancestry.com
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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the RUDDELL or POLLOCK family please do contact me, I would love to pass this photo onto a family member. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.
Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz
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