It should be noted that no one had questioned any of these news items or their finer details.
The first hint of something perhaps being not quite right was in the statement the old man could neither read nor write (despite his many supposed achievements) and that he had to get a friend to read his correspondence to him.
The friend is never named and the Poverty Bay Herald did not reveal whether its reporter had personally seen the Leap Year marriage proposal.
Nor is there any trace in the paper’s records of Mr McSaveney’s earlier life story, which was supposed to have attracted the attention of the woman who made the proposal.
This story is said to have circulated widely in both New Zealand and Australian newspapers, leading to at least seven or eight further proposals.
The Poverty Bay Herald says Mr McSaveney did not reply to any of the letters — how could he, he could not write —- but reports he was “quite amused” by them.
Another point is that no one appears to have queried Isaiah McSaveney’s age, or asked for any form of proof.
Of course, this was in the pre-internet age when checking this sort of yarn would have been difficult, if not impossible.
In those first stories, we hear of his arrival in New Zealand at the claimed age of eight, but while one says he landed with his family at New Plymouth, another indicates they arrived at Lyttelton. The date of arrival, however, is not mentioned.
Working backwards from Mr McSaveney’s various statements later, this should have been around 1848.
The first of the McSaveney stories in the Poverty Bay Herald says the family came from Portadown, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland.
A search of geneaological records reveals a John McSaveney of Portadown (born 1830, died 1908) who married Margaret Parks in 1854 and had eight children — one of whom, born in 1857, was named Isaiah.
He had two sisters and five brothers, and obviously could not have arrived in New Zealand before he was born.
A search for McSaveneys living in either Taranaki or Canterbury shows there were McSaveneys living in Christchurch in the 1880’s. There is even a McSeveney Street and Corner.
Note the different spelling. There were five or six variations of the name, including McSevny, McSephney, and McSavan.
Part of the problem in doing internet searches is the human element. People often mistype or misspell, and the different spellings of names certainly makes things difficult.
It appears the family became well-established in the Canterbury region. Some of Isaiah’s brothers also appeared in court records.
From the family’s arrival in New Zealand through until Isaiah’s infamous marriage proposal of 1936, the story of his life appears to be full of drama, but pinning down the precise dates is frustratingly difficult.
It is told Mr McSaveney started off as a young boy employed in general farm work on the Canterbury Plains.
He was earning two shillings a week driving cattle from Rakaia in Canterbury over to the West Coast, until he and seven of his mates had a fallout with their employer.
The story goes he and the other men learned to fossick for gold on the West Coast, and after a while each had 500 pounds in credit in the bank.
The Poverty Bay Herald says the group decided to seek fortune in the goldfields of Australia and chartered a boat (unnamed) to Melbourne.
The paper said the crossing took 59 days.
Gold mining took them to Ballarat, Bendigo, Western Australia, Kimberley and Calgoorlie, then the toss of a coin saw them go to New Guinea, where they toiled for three years some 300 miles from the coast.
These Australian gold rushes took place from the 1850s through the 1870s and many thousands of people from all over the world travelled there to try their luck.
For McSaveney’s group, disease, starvation, tough conditions in New Guinea and the death of one the men finally saw the group split up — the newspaper saying they separated “with 20 thousand pounds apiece”.
That amount of money would be the equivalent of hundred of thousands in today’s dollars. It would seem all the toil and travail had made them rich men.
We next pick up mention of his doings in the Christchurch Press in June 1884.
Auctioneers H. Matson announce “Isaiah MSaveney leaves Canterbury for the wilds of Manitoba (Canada). Clearing sale.”
The sale covered a number of properties, stock and horses, some 60 tons of potatoes, farm machinery and many other items.
Nine-and-a-half years later the auctioneers are holding another sale for Mr McSaveney (“now resident in the North Island”).
This time he is selling off some four acres in Papanui, Christchurch, “planted in clover, and showing a good crop of seed”. The date - January 1894.
In 1944 the Gisborne Herald reported Mr McSaveney had arrived in the Gisborne district “42 years ago”, making that date 1902.
That is when he apparently bought his first 600 acres at Rakauroa.
He bought an adjacent block, then in 1918, a block at Ngatapa, and had land interests in Hawke’s Bay.
But it seems he had a restless spirit and was constantly travelling around and between New Zealand and Australia.
Along the way it appears he was acquiring business interests, more land and property in a variety of locations, which further throws in doubt his claim of being unable to read or write.
He had sold out of Rakauroa some time before the Depression, but took control of the properties back again when those tough times hit the district.
He was back in Australia after his marriage in 1936, and settled at Adelaide.
On a 1940 visit to Gisborne, Isaiah said he and his wife intended to celebrate his 100th birthday while in New Zealand. They had been to New Plymouth and after a few weeks planned to travel to Tauranga.
On his return to Australia, he was met by newspaper reporters at Sydney, eager for more details of the old man’s life.
He claimed to be more than 100 years old, said he had been “three times around the world” and “proposed to continue travelling”.
He said he had been born in Northern Ireland and “went to New Zealand 90 years ago”, which would have made his birthday 1850.
When his death was reported in June1944, the newspapers reported his “reputed age as 104.”
The genealogical records put his age at 87, with his birthdate as 1857.
I found the old man had been laid to rest in the Mitchum General Cemetery — Mitchum City, a southern suburb of Adelaide.
One set of records gives his birthdate as 1839 and lists his age as“104-105”.
But the last word must surely go to those chiselled in his headstone — presumably on the instructions of his much younger wife.
The small, simply decorated headstone reads —
In loving memory of Isiah McSaveney, late of Gisborne, NZ.
Died 29th June 1944
Aged 91 years.
So it would seem Isiah (not Isaiah) enjoyed “stringing” people along, and once the Leap Year story took root, he couldn’t resist “watering” it a little.
The man’s life would seem to be the better tale.
