Firlawn House, Coromandel 1871

I have spent years doing research into my Husbands Family, when we moved here I had not looked so much at his French side but soon discovered his Ancestors come from this area....His family were extremely interesting, so just got hooked, whilst the blood relatives basically dont give a hoot...We never found were the money went though and there was a lot of wealth at one time. Husbands Grandfather lived in accommodation for the Work House in East London with 9 Children Wife by 1895
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More to follow as I read the latest on this old family house. Read that it was over 23 acres in size, had no idea it was that vast...I am thinking it will be mainly Photo's

Re: Firlawn House, Coromandel 1871

Unknown Building
Kapanga Rd
Coromandel
Photo Taken: 25 Jan 2015

This building looked to me like it might have been a church or maybe a school originally, it is closed but not yet derelict. In the front is a small concrete slab like it was a step leading to a door so it may have been altered at some stage. It sits right next door to the lovely old once grand home Firlawn House which was gutted by fire in 1992 and left to rot, at 575 Kapanga Rd, Coromandel.

POSTED BY COURTNEYCOTTON01@GMAIL.COM AT 5:54 PM 0 COMMENT

My Husband's Relative Born 1824 and Died 1897. Not sure what happened to the property exactly in the years up to the new owners..yet
can see the grounds were used just this year to raise money for Charity. Keltic Fairs that I now see the fairs started in 1990...so been going now for over 20 years, of at least yearly good deeds...
http://www.kelticfair.co.nz/index.php?s=1&page=history
just a page worth on the link above....

Re: Firlawn House, Coromandel 1871

Hello, I was interested in your connection to Firlawn house Coromandel.

Also your connection to beside it, the small church/lodge in your pictures of both Firlawn and the small Church.

it was the first Presbyterian Church and maybe the first church in Coromandel. It was a church for most of its life and became an 'Order of the Buffalo's Lodge' for twenty or thirty years up to the mid nineties, then got chopped to become a batch and the front hall double door removed, but has not been lived in as a residential home.

DeThiery or DeTheiry or DeTheirry, was a Frenchman who traded with the local Maori and serviced supplies and imports from sailing ships and whalers. He got the land surrounding that lodge and possible the land that Firlawn is on from the Maoris, then on-sold it. He was quite a big early land dealer and had close Maori contacts and did get the lands he desired and did make lots of money from dealing it and selling it

He must have connections with the french Governments strong intention to seize and conquer NZ and to Colonise New Zealand and he likely was quite a strongly political man for France in his day with great governance influences, perhaps your have letters and records of his busy lifestyle here.

Your history of your connection to French ancestors must be very interesting and I might suggest is very rare and largely unknown, except just he was well known and traded on Whanganui Island. We dont know his wife or children or living style, nor of his grand children and the great great great grand children, but there must be lots of them about.

Maori have their genealogy and the Europeans have their electoral rolls and land deals records but there isn't really very much about the old Coromandel European families, but of course there may be, and one asks where is it all, and that should be documented and recorded and researchable

Getting back to the French, they are very very rare and very little is known of them. they are very cultured and it would be important for you to detail the history of your famiiy's French ancestors in very fine detail. DeThierry (my spelling) was in his day a very famous man and was a big buyer of a lot of maori land. That small lodge was bought from him in about 1863 or 1867, it is a very small piece and is only seven metres and thirty one centimetres wide, or a few inches only beyond the size of its floor size boundary.

De Theirry must have graciously charmed the local Maori and played a great influence in their adopting the cultures of 'Fine Europe' with their own Maori culture, and especially supplied tools, pots, plates, knives, axes and iron and cloth and clothes and boots and garden tools and wood saws and seeds and glass and nails and blankets, and much more so that Maori life could get into overdrive and exceed the privations of before those many useful thing's made their lives so much more efficient and capable and successful and so pleasant.

There used to be extensive shipping and trading done by maori and what was the extent that DeTreirry supported that and was involved in it, and did it only extend to Australia.

Though Maori rave on about their original canoe visits from Hawaiiki etc, it seems they had sailing ships, so did they travel back home to their originating islands a lot, and was there a lot of immigration done by using Maori ships bringing Islanders from those islands by these then sailing ships bringing more Maoris to New Zealand and responsible for most of their demographic Maori arrivals numbers.

if they only concerned themselves with Australia one might think Maoris didn't have as grand a spiritual connection as they cliam they have with Hawaiiki, if they didn't go back to their roots and elder families left in the islands and keep those connections and returns live. What is the Sailing ship trade and trade between NZ and Australia and of the travels into their returns to their ancestral Islands. But that is their business and culture, but i wonder and is there some family records on those potentially huge demographic recorded realities, and many immigrations of recent due to their having ships, as one would expect bringing more or most Maori here around a hundred years ago.

kind regards
Trumper

Re: Firlawn House, Coromandel 1871

I am very interested in the early sailing ship and coastal history of Coromandel, since Cook.

Hello, I was interested in your connection to Firlawn house Coromandel.

Also your connection to beside it, the small church/lodge in your pictures of both Firlawn and the small Church.

It was the first Presbyterian Church and maybe the first church in Coromandel. It was a church for most of its life and became an 'Order of the Buffalo's Lodge' for twenty or thirty years up to the mid nineties, then got chopped to become a batch and the front hall double door removed, but has not been lived in as a residential home.

DeThiery or DeTheiry or DeTheirry, was a Frenchman who traded with the local Maori and serviced supplies and imports from sailing ships and whalers. He got the land surrounding that lodge and possible the land that Firlawn is on from the Maoris, then on-sold it. He was quite a big early land dealer and had close Maori contacts and did get the lands he desired and did make lots of money from dealing it and selling it.

He must have connections with the french Governments strong intention to seize and conquer NZ and to Colonise New Zealand and he likely was quite a strongly political man for France in his day with great governance influences, perhaps your have letters and records of his busy lifestyle here.

Your history of your connection to French ancestors must be very interesting and I might suggest is very rare and largely unknown, except just he was well known and traded on Whanganui Island. We dont know his wife or children or living style, nor of his grand children and the great great great grand children, but there must be lots of them about.

Maori have their genealogy and the Europeans have their electoral rolls and land deals records but there isn't really very much about the old Coromandel European families, but of course there may be, and one asks where is it all, and that should be documented and recorded and researchable and interesting.

Getting back to the French, they are very very rare and very little is known of them. they are very cultured and it would be important for you to detail the history of your family's French ancestors in very fine detail. DeThierry (my spelling) was in his day a very famous man and was a big buyer of a lot of Maori land. That small lodge was bought from him in about 1863 or 1867, it is a very small piece and is only seven metres and thirty one centimetres wide, or a few inches only beyond the size of its floor size boundary.

De Theirry must have graciously charmed the local Maori and played a great influence in their adopting the cultures of 'Fine Europe' with their own Maori culture, and especially supplied tools, pots, plates, knives, axes and iron and cloth and clothes and boots and garden tools and wood saws and seeds and glass and nails and blankets, and much more so that Maori life could get into overdrive and exceed the privations of before those many useful thing's made their lives so much more efficient and capable and successful and so pleasant.

There used to be extensive shipping and trading done by Maori and what was the extent that DeTreirry supported that and was involved in it, and did it only extend to Australia.

Though Maori rave on about their original canoe visits from Hawaiiki etc, it seems they had sailing ships, so did they travel back home to their originating islands a lot, and was there a lot of immigration done by using Maori ships bringing Islanders from those islands by these then sailing ships bringing more Maoris to New Zealand and responsible for most of their demographic Maori arrivals numbers.

Did Maori only concern themselves with trading to Australia ? One might think Maoris didn't have as grand a spiritual connection as they claim they have with Hawaiiki, if they had the trading ships wouldnt they and did they go back to their ancestral roots and visit their elders and families left in the islands of Hawaii and keep those connections and visits and returns alive, one would think they hadn't bothered to care to do so but there seems no record that they did, so why not. Nor is there in the last 150 to 100 years any reference to such Maori return visits nor of Maori continuing to travel and immigrate to Aotearoa. The general Maori story of Hawaiiki is a mythical place, but if it were real it would still be inhabited with Maori being those who stayed and never left it. Surely not all the Hawaiiki residents travelled by canoe and left no one at home in Hawaiiki. What is the number of visiting Maori owned ships and ability of Sailing shipping trade and return trade between NZ and Hawaiiki, as well as to Australia and of the travels into their returning to their ancestral Islands. But that fails to be in their history, nor in demographic records. Maori culture, but i wonder and is there some family records on those potentially huge demographic recorded shipping realities, that should show the contacts with Hawaiiki, and the many immigrations of the recent two centuries due to their having ships, as one would expect bringing more or most Maori here around two hundred years ago, as was very easy to do and would be at least a highly probable second wave of arrivals, to supplement the original canoes of the couple of centuries before that. Might there have been Aborigine and Moriori that contributed to the midden occupancy datings as well as a few dozen canoes from Hawaiiki. Also there seems no demographic of why Hawaiiki peoples weren't also Maori arrivals in Fiji as getting there on their way south.

Of note the Chinese were in the pacific in 1420 and did visit this Aotearoa and left things and made maps to prove they had got here. Perhaps after the hundred or so earlier canoe maoris had arrived. The Chinese were here soon after, but well before most of the Maoris, if the Maori sailing ships were reconnecting with Hawaiiki and fetching over more Maori and even fetching over most of the Maori people from Hawaiiki in their easy to travel copies of the European sailing ships about 1820 to 1850. Also how many whaler ships collected Maoris from Hawaiiki on their way south, and gave them a ride to here soon after 1800 and be arriving while the Europeans were arriving as well. Why would the Maori only have come from Hawaiiki, and not from the many other northern Pacific islands, and south America, and Indonesia and India and Africa and Asia, as fetched by whaling ships as crew to the south waling waters and those crew staying here to become settled immigrant Maoris where the fishing was abundant and the European seeds and fruits and south American seeds and fruits and Kumera and Asian seeds and fruits were all becoming very abundant.


Trumper