A leap back in time

This photo of the settlement of Rakauroa was taken from The New Zealand Graphic and Ladies’ Journal, January 17, 1912.

This year is Leap Year and today, February 29, is Leap Day — a time seen as both lucky and unlucky, and with the possibility of romance.

Newspapers from Gisborne’s past reveal people’s fascination with the four-year adjustment to the calendar.

Others saw it as a chance to win the extra large prizes of the Leap Year lotteries that were popular 80 to 100 years ago.

Leap Year was also a chance for women to be more “forward” — granting them the social freedom to make a marriage proposal.

Back then it was not considered seemly and proper for women to propose marriage. Society still considered that a man’s job.

Looking back through the local newspapers through the online facility of Papers Past, one can find some quirky stories about Leap Year all those years ago.

Some of the stories concern persons who might be termed “gold diggers”.

One of the best concerns a Gisborne man, at the age of 97, who received proposals of marriage from a number of women.

The first part of the story is revealed in the April 9 issue of the Poverty Bay Herald in 1936.

Isaiah McSaveney, a long-time resident at Rakauroa, had his life story told in The Herald in a March issue and indicated he was about to leave for a new life in Australia.

His story was reprinted in a Taranaki paper and a woman there wrote to him, the letter arriving on April 8.

The lady asked Mr McSaveney why he was leaving, having done so well in New Zealand.

“Would he not rather marry and settle down with a kind little wife?”

The woman stated it had been her wish to meet a man from 65 to 95 years of age with a view to marriage . . . on the condition that she receive half of whatever he had of “money, property, land, shares and the like”.

The letter writer suggested to Mr McSaveney that the “happy couple” could buy a small island, make their home “up north” and when the home was built, take a trip to England and Ireland.

The Herald said the woman described herself as “a Protestant, happy, refined, sober, honest and of kind and bright disposition”.

Although 50 years younger than Mr McSaveney (then a 97-year old retired farmer) the woman said she was sure she could make him an ideal wife.

She wrote that “no man can live without a woman, and although he had done so for 97 years, he would be all the better if he marries”.

The woman said she wanted to be married “straight away” and as this was Leap Year, she was “quite within her rights”.

The letter reveals the woman had many opportunities to marry when she was younger, but let them slip by and she was now “seeing the mistake of it all”.

In conclusion, she said “if he accepts her, he will do so with the knowledge that he will be making the best little woman happy, and make life easier for her than it has ever been in the past”.

The Herald relates that “as Mr McSaveney cannot read nor write, the letter was read out to him by a friend”.

Says the newspaper: “He does not take the matter seriously and still intends to make his trip to Adelaide.”

Months went by, then on December 28, 1936, the Poverty Bay Herald told the next chapter in the story — Mr McSaveney had married.

The news was wired to Gisborne that a wedding ceremony had taken place “at a private house” in New Plymouth on Christmas Eve.

The 97-year-old bridegroom married 61-year-old Mrs Ada Mira Farquhar, who apparently had been married twice before.

Mr McSaveney was described as “a well-preserved man, and might easily pass for 75”.

The Herald’s news item said that since his life story was published in the Herald, Mr McSaveney had had many proposals of marriage, especially as the story had circulated widely throughout New Zealand and Australia, and “Leap Year had been a source of worry to him”.

He said he did not know any of the women and thought it “too risky to reply” although he  “had been prepared to make a move when the right woman came along”.

Mr McSaveney and his wife returned to Gisborne on a visit in January 1940.

They had travelled about Australia since their marriage, but returned to New Zealand intending to visit New Plymouth, spend a few weeks in Gisborne and then travel on toTauranga before returning to Australia.

The couple planned to celebrate Isaiah’s 100th birthday on March 20 in New Zealand.

In recounting his life story, the paper said Mr McSaveney had two stations at Rakauroa, properties in Hawke’s Bay and had amassed “a fairly large sum of money” in gold mining in Australia and New Guinea.

He was born in Northern Ireland around 1840 and came to New Zealand as a boy of eight years.

One presumes he came out with family but these details are not known.

At an early age he started work at two shillings a week, travelling around New Zealand over the next few years and working at various jobs such as driving cattle on the West Coast.

That is where he started gold fossicking.

He and seven other fortune-seeking men formed a group and after a year each man had 500 pounds in bank credit — a decent sum for the times.

The average wage in New Zealand in 1880 was around three pounds a week but labouring jobs could be as paid as poorly as just four to six shillings a day.

Then they heard of gold being struck at Ballarat and Bendigo in Australia, and decided to seek their fortunes there.

They made good claims in the gold fields, each man ending up with the amazing sum of 52 thousand pounds in the bank after three years.

However, the group had bad luck putting money into claims at Kimberley, and ended up tossing a coin to decide whether they would seek gold in Madagascar or New Guinea.

New Guinea won the toss but after three years’ hard living, toil and disease, they went their separate ways, splitting with 20 thousand pounds each.

In 1884, Mr McSaveney travelled back to New Zealand, bought a 600-acre section at Rakauroa and began setting up for sheep farming.

His next step was to buy an adjoining property after clearing it of bush.

Becoming restless, he sold up in the early 1900s and went back to Australia, but at some point returned to Gisborne and acquired 323 acres at Ngatapa in 1918.

Once more he left for Australia but again returned to Gisborne in 1930 and took back the Rakauroa properties during the Depression.

The urge to move struck again in the year of his marriage — 1936.

Frustratingly, there are no details on how he met his wife in New Plymouth.

But it was reported Mr McSaveney finally sold up his Gisborne interests in 1936 and returned to Australia and Adelaide, where it is presumed the couple finally settled.

After such an eventful life, filled with hard work and travel, Mr McSaveney finally lay down to rest at the ripe old age of 104.

The news of the old adventurer’s passing was printed in The Gisborne Herald on July 14, 1944.

Did Isaiah McSaveney have any “recipe” for his longevity?

Landing in Sydney in January 1940, after yet another trip back to New Zealand, he told reporters the recipe was “hard work”.

“We are living on the money I made (out of gold mining and farming) and have enough to see us both out.

“I’m a heavy smoker but have never had intoxicating drinks. The youth of today live too high. Life is not simple enough.”

Asked by the reporters why he preferred to travel rather than come back to New Zealand, which he regarded as “home”, Mr McSaveney replied with a chuckle: “So the police can’t find me.”

Research was done through the National Library’s Papers Past website — natlib.govt.nz/collections/a-z/papers-past