Northe / Northey History Part III

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Northe/Northey History Part III
John Northe was actually born John Northey. He passed over in Napier as John Northe on 7th January 1875 and Northe was shown on his headstone until after the earthquake of 1931 when the Northey branch of the family arranged for a replacement headstone reading Northey! His last will and testament dated 30th July 1873, was signed “John Northe”.
There are many stories as to why John changed his name. One is that he ran away to join the navy but the family caught up with him and brought him back home. So the next time he ran away, he enlisted with the army and he dropped the “Y” from Northey. Another story is that as he had a convict brother Samuel in Australia, to protect his true identity, John dropped the “Y” from his surname when he enlisted. So that the family would not miss out on any inheritance, Nancy and John Northe christened their first son John James Northey. In due course a family inheritance arrived at the family home in Napier in a chest from England but another son who at that time was living in the family home refused to accept the delivery because a sovereign duty was payable, so the chest was “returned unopened” to England! Nancy and John’s fourth son Hugh was also baptised with the Northey surname. The fifth son Josiah was baptised “North”. All of their other children were baptised Northe. To recap, three different surnames were used when Nancy and Johns ten children were baptised or the Official writing the surname down did not quite understand John’s Cornish accent. Many of the North/Northe/Northey family were in Napier at 10.47am on Tuesday 3rd February 1931 at the time of the devastating earthquake which was 7.9 on the Richter scale of magnitude and New Zealand’s greatest natural disaster. Napier was virtually razed and the Ahuriri lagoon, an arm of the sea that curled around Bluff Hill all but disappeared as 3600 hectares of land was thrust upwards. In all, 162 lives were lost in Napier. Earthquakes continued to rock Hawke’s Bay for ten days, many of them almost as severe as the first shock and the aftershocks lasted three months. John Northey (son of John James), and known as Jack, was a shipwright who was half way up a ladder on a ship that was in his drydock at Westshore when the quake started and he ended up 13 feet above on “new” ground because the lagoon emptied at the time of the quake. Jack’s wife Margaret was filling the coal bucket outside and had her head down. She thought that she had had a turn because she ended up on the concrete path and the coal bucket was yards away. Damage to Margaret and Jack’s house included the stove ending up in the middle of the kitchen and the brick chimney collapsing. They were fortunate that they still had water in their three galvanised rainwater tanks even though the house had been connected to the town water supply, not that broken town water supply pipes are of any use. It was three weeks before that Northey family spent another night in the house. Because of the fear of a tidal wave, Jack organised beds in lifeboats that were at the drydock awaiting repair. On the first morning when they awoke, Margaret noticed that as the timber lifeboats had been out of water and in the sun, their seams were no longer watertight and would have been useless if a tidal wave had arrived. The leaking lifeboats and how Jack had to hose them down, oakum them and tar over the seams, is still a family joke. Trixie, Margaret and Jack’s youngest daughter, was supposed to have her first day at Napier Technical College on 3rd February 1931 but something inside her said not to go. The Napier Technical College that had been built of brick and concrete was not standing that afternoon and many of Trixie’s friends were not around to tell the story. Ten pupils did not survive the earthquake. Northey Boating Shed
Because of the mass destruction north at Wairoa, where three people were killed, the women and children were evacuated from their homes and taken to Westshore. After Margaret fed them soup and girdle scones, the Northey men-folk ferried them across from their drydock to Port Ahuriri from where they were transported as refugees further south in the North Island. For several weeks after the earthquake, men patrolled the beach looking out for a tidal wave. Another important job was collecting and burying the millions of fish that had become stranded and died because the lagoon no longer existed. On the seventieth anniversary of the quake, Trixie said that she could still remember the stench of the dead fish and thought that may be why she has never been a great fish eater. She added that laughter and prayers such as, “Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today, that together, you and I can't handle,” were what got the family through the ordeal. Percy Northe (son of Robert), was in the hospital boardroom office on the ground floor of the Napier hospital Night Nurses’ Home when the shake started. Percy feared for his life. As he stood in a doorway for safety a colleague told him to run for his life. But he froze there until his ‘inner voice’ told him to get outside. Just as he got outside he was deafened by a thump and blinded by dust as the four-storey brick building became rubble. The only damage to Percy’s roughcast house at Havelock Road was a tell-tale dent on the plaster ceiling caused by a brick falling from the chimney. The tank that collected water from the roof was left standing, so with water from this supply, once a temporary latrine was erected Percy’s house was as “habitable” as any, but not used, for fear of another ‘big one’ so it was a case of camping on the lawn. Percy’s sister-in-law Ivy was one of 93 killed in Hastings. After Ivy’s funeral, Percy’s wife Lilly and daughter Valerie, a pre-schooler, left Hawke’s Bay for Wellington for several weeks, until things “settled down” and essential services were restored. While most women and children were away from the district, tradesmen from all around New Zealand arrived to rebuild Wairoa, Napier and Hastings. Meanwhile Percy was “in charge” of the “tent hospital” at Hastings. Napier now claims to be the Art Deco Capital of the World. Seventy plus years later Valerie still had two vivid memories of ‘the earthquake’. She remembers holding a marble faced powder bowl which survived the quake and saying to Mrs Doris Horsnell her neighbour, “look what they have done” and then dropping the powder bowl. Valerie could still ‘see’ the column of black smoke she saw when she looked in the direction of the town that was burning as chemicals in chemist shops exploded because Bunsen burners were alight – the smoke was something that her mother could never recall. Everyone has their own story/truth/reality. Lilly’s story/truth/reality was that she was so traumatised that she could not recall a thing. Apart from anything else Lilly had lost a sister and her husband had miraculously escaped from a building that was about to collapse. In the early 1950’s Percy compiled the Northe Family Tree which he updated until 1977 when his daughter Valerie Swailes took over. Click here for a copy of page 1 of “The Family Tree of John Northe and Nancy O’Donnel Compiled by, and presented with the compliments of:- R. P. Northe, 28 Havelock Road, Napier, New Zealand” The following are family photographs: Northe Residence 25 Main Street Napier

Ann Northe who married Robert Somerville 23 February 1872	Benjamin Bayly Johnson who married Elizabeth Northe 26 July 1866

Eleanor Northe who married Samuel Evinson 1 September 1862	Elizabeth Northe who married Benjamin Bayly Johnson 26 July 1866

Hugh Frederick Northey who married Christina McKay 1875	Jane Scott who married John James Northey 1862

John James Northey and his 5th child John born 24 November 1870. John James & Jane Northey’s first child, John James, was born in 1863 and died aged 13 months	John Northey (born 24 November 1870) who married Margaret McConnel

Nancy Northe 1869	Percy North (who complied The Family Tree)

Mary Ann Alice Earl Summers, known as Polly who married Robert Northe 9 November 1876	Robert Northe who married Polly Summers 9 November 1876

Robert Somerville who married Ann Northe 23 February 1872	Samuel Evinson who married Eleanor Sarah Northe 1 September 1862

Thomas Taylor who married Maria Mary Northe 18 February 1859	William Henry Northe who married Elizabeth Craig 30 May 1868
	Val Swailes who took over updating the Family Tree from her father R P Northe
This version of the Northe/Northey history was compiled by Bayly Tanner (great great grandson of John & Nancy Northe and father of Mark Tanner) with help from Val Swailes (great granddaughter of John & Nancy Northe) and Lawrence Northe(great greatgrandson of John & Nancy Northe on his Northe side and great, great, greatgrandson of John & Nancy Northe on his Northey side). Lawrence collected many of these photographs as a teenager. Email copies of this Northe/Northey history are available from Any corrections, additional photographs and further information to incorporate into future editions of this family history will be appreciated.
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