Martha Calvert was born at York, England on 4 July 1841, to William Calvert (engine driver) and Jane Knowles. She was baptised at St Saviour’s Church on the 15th of the same month. She married Matthew Burton Grainger, blacksmith, at St Mary’s Bishophill Junior Church, York on 25 March 1860. They were living at 2 Paragon St, York when their first son Matthew was born in 1860, but at the 1861 census the family was living with Martha’s parents at Fishergate, York.
Despite Matthew’s respectable trade they decided to pursue a dream of owning land by joining the New Zealand Government scheme of subsidised passages and land grants. Matthew and Martha, their sons Matthew and William Henry along with nephew Thomas Grainger, left London on 23 July 1863 on the Brother’s Pride, later known as ‘the plague ship’. The ship arrived in Lyttelton on 10 Dec 1863 and was quarantined as a result of the 46 deaths from infectious diseases including typhus, scarlet fever and low fever during the voyage. Martha gave evidence at the Government Enquiry on 15 January 1864, including: 'I was ill onboard. The Doctor was attentive. I got everything I asked for. I never saw him the worse for liquor. There was no want of cleanliness to inconvenience.' Granddaughter Gladys Downs remembered Martha saying the English passengers exchanged their rations of oatmeal (for porridge) with the Scottish folk for the latter’s flour and raisins in order to make plum duff.
By 1866 the family was living on Shands Track at Broadfield outside Christchurch where Matthew traded as a blacksmith and grew corn and wheat on leased land. Martha gave birth to Mary Jane, Annie, Alice, Martha Elizabeth and Charles Edward at Broadfield between 1866 and 1876. The youngest daughter Nellie was born at Addington in 1880.
In 1878/79 the family moved to Brookside where Matthew opened a blacksmith’s shop behind their house on the corner of Boundary Creek Rd and Brookside Burnham Rd. Matthew was also postmaster at Brookside from November 1884, but Martha managed this side of the business as did her daughter-in-law Jessie subsequently.
It wasn’t until 1889 that a land grant became available at Te Kiri in Taranaki. Martha resisted the move north, because it would mean leaving behind all they had worked for in Canterbury and since her husband was in his fifties he was too old for the physical work required. She was no doubt warned of the harsh and muddy conditions by daughters Annie Oliver and Mary Jane Watson whose husbands were already breaking in the virgin bush. However the lure of the land was too much for Matthew: he was amazed by the size of the potatoes and onions being grown by the Olivers and Watsons. With his son Charles, he continued burn offs and developed the 118-acre dairy farm for about 40 cows from 1890 until his death in 1905 aged 67. Martha continued to live on the Te Kiri farm with Charles until his marriage in 1909, after which she mainly lived with daughter Alice and Robert Surrey at Awatuna.
Martha and her husband were active in school and Methodist church activities at Broadfield, Brookside and Te Kiri/Awatuna. Martha signed the same sheet of the suffrage petition at Opunake as daughters Alice Grainger and Annie Oliver. One of the grandsons (Allan Surrey) is reported to have had an amiable relationship with Martha when she lived with his family, but Charles’s son Matt wrote: '… Grandma was a most ‘difficult’ personality who never had a smile or a kind word for a small boy. I remember her only as always sharp, gruff, and somewhat sour.' 'I think she had been manufactured in Grandpa Grainger’s own smithy – with Grandpa hammering her out on his own anvil, using rough iron and a very large hammer! I have never met anyone quite like her.'
Martha Grainger died on 3 March 1918 at her daughter’s in Awatuna. She was buried at Opunake with her husband Matthew Burton Grainger and daughter Mary Jane Watson.
Contributed by Jeff Downs (great-great grandson) from primary sources, memoirs of Matthew Burton Grainger II, and research by Judy Hawkins and Jan Hollard.
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Martha and Matthew Burton Grainger
