The Story of William Coppell 1844-1913: Part 1 – The Captain

The Coppell family

In this blog, published in three parts, we piece together my ancestor William Coppell’s life with, and apart from, his wife Sarah and their children. We use birth, marriage and death registrations, newspapers, postal and business directories, electoral rolls, census records and government records to establish what William was doing.

In the second and third parts we will investigate the stories surrounding William and Sarah’s marriage and trace his movements as a bailiff and gum digger.

In this, the first part, we begin with William’s childhood in London as the son of a sea captain and his early years in New Zealand as a publican and Royal Cavalry Volunteer in Auckland and goldminer at Thames and family stories in family research.

I have touched on Sarah Coppell née Newdick’s childhood in my previous blogs about her mother Sarah Newdick née Mackey.

• To New-Ulster, from Ulster: Part I — Auckland Asylum

• To New-Ulster, from Ulster: Part II — Sarah Mackey’s journey to NZ

Family stories provide useful puzzle pieces

With so much information readily available at your local library, and research advice just an Ask a librarian request away, it is a great time to start researching your family history. Those stories you heard from your parents or grandparents long ago may be just the place to start.

Family stories often contain precious details that cannot be found in official documents or newspapers. Be aware though, sometimes the stories that are passed down to us are a little jumbled, or missing vital parts, like jigsaw pieces that have been put away in the wrong boxes. Uncovering a lie, or hidden information, can be equally revealing. Below is an example from my own family.

William Coppell ‘a look of nobility’

I have a copy of a letter written in 1938 by Daisy Gray, the granddaughter of Alice Pearson née Coppell, to her cousin George Pearson, who shared an interest in family history. Alice was the sister of William Coppell, my mother’s great grandfather.

Daisy wrote of Alice and her brothers John and William: ‘the old Coppells have a way about them no one could forget, as I remember Grandma, her two brothers, they were of such personality, proud, and carried such a look of nobility. Of course, that was their natural inheritance.’

This description breathes life into my picture of this ancestor in a way that electoral rolls and directories cannot. For me, Daisy’s words are invaluable.

My mother remembers her grandmother, Helen Hare née Coppell, speaking proudly of her father, William, being a Rear Admiral who died at sea during the Boxer Rebellion. This story seems to fit perfectly with the man described by Daisy Gray. It is, however, an example of a puzzle piece being placed in the wrong box, possibly born of a desire that William be erased from memory.

My mother’s discovery in later years, that Helen’s stories were all about her grandfather, Captain Edward Coppell, not her father, helped fuel her desire to uncover the true story of the Coppell family.

Other family stories about William Coppell

When my mother and I sought out others researching the Coppell family some 30 years ago, we discovered that, on the rare occasion William’s children mentioned him to their families, the stories they heard were very different.

One version of events was that William hastily married Sarah Newdick to prevent her being called as a witness after a hotel fire and that he later left Sarah and their children to start a second family. Another descendant doubts the second family story but did hear from her father that William had left the family when his mother, Violet, was very young.

A grandchild from another line also stated that William had ‘taken off’. He was very bitter, having perceived as a child that his father had to support his sisters and mother, and that he and his brothers were not taken in by family when their parents died.

Working with family stories

One problem with these family stories, as with any other, is that the people involved no longer have a voice with which to tell their side of the story. We owe it to them to look for every clue, leave our minds open and reserve judgment. Daisy’s lament, expressed in her letter to her cousin: ‘What a pity we have left it so late to unravel the history of our people’, is a sentiment commonly expressed by family historians.

Take heart, as there are many resources available now that Daisy’s generation did not have access to. Below is the information we have discovered about William Coppell using these tools.

‘He who sails on the wide sea, is a parishioner at Stepney’

William Coppell was born 29 October 1844 in Mile End Old Town, Middlesex, England, eighth and youngest child of Captain Edward Coppell and Margaret Clow Todd (Maggie). William was christened a month later at ‘The Church of the High Seas’, St Dunstan, Stepney, a church with a strong association with sailors and the sea. The Coppell family had been seafarers and shipwrights for over a century.

William’s father, Captain Edward Coppell, spent much of his time away at sea in the Merchant Service. This was the case at the time of the 1841 census, when Maggie is recorded as living in Martha Street, in the parish of St. George in the East (Stepney), with their three children, Edward, Margaret and John, and it was noted ‘Husband away at sea’. Martha Street was just north of the London Docks on the Thames.

When the 1851 census was taken, Maggie and children were living at 2 Salisbury Street, in the parish of Limehouse, and Edward was again at sea. William’s two eldest sisters, Alice (23) and Margaret (16), worked as ornamental braiders. William (6) and his siblings John Josiah (12) and Mary (8) were school pupils. One sister, Elizabeth, had died as an infant in 1832. The two eldest brothers, James and Edward, had left home. William’s maternal grandmother, Alice Todd, a widow, was living with them but she died of asthma, aged 88, in November 1851. William’s paternal grandparents, in Liverpool, both died two years later.

Finding the real Captain in newspaper archives

A search of the Library’s Papers Past website shows that as early as June 1845 the name Coppell was recorded in a New Zealand newspaper when the Wellington Independent quoted a report from the Cape Shipping and Mercantile Gazette stating that Captain Coppell of the Brunswick had left Ichaboe island, Namibia. At that time Ichaboe Island was the scene of a rush to quarry and bag valuable guano for sale as fertiliser and the Brunswick was among about one hundred ships taking the guano away.

Searches of the British Newspaper Archive and the National Library of Australia’s Trove website found that Captain Coppell sailed to many countries, including India, Yemen, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. In 1850, as captain of the Woodbridge, he transported sheep and cattle from Newcastle in Australia to Port Cooper (Lyttelton Harbour) in New Zealand for the Deans brothers.

On his return to England the Captain encouraged his son, Edward John, a nautical blacksmith, to change his plan of emigrating to South Africa and bring his wife and children to New Zealand instead.

The family emigrated aboard the Duke of Portland, arriving in Lyttelton on 21 October 1852. They settled in Heathcote Valley, their house marking the end of the Bridle Path, the steep track used by early European settlers as a route between the port and the new settlements on the northern side of the Port Hills. The house, known as Coppell’s Cottage, was the first unofficial post office for the area.

The fortunes of the Coppell family changed dramatically in the year 1860. First, on 15 May, Mary, aged 17, died suddenly. With the coroner recording that the cause of her death was 'heart disease brought on by slap on face from mother', the loss must have been even more difficult to bear. Then, only a few weeks later, on 22 July, Captain Edward Coppell died of bronchitis on board his ship, the Matilda Atheling, aged 55.

The Matilda Atheling was at anchor with other ships in the Bay of Oden, Talien (Dalien) Whan Bay, on the southeast side of the Liaodong Peninsula in northeast China. Talien Whan was the rendezvous point for the British fleet for the 1860 assault on China during the Second Opium War.

Alice had followed in her mother’s footsteps and married a sea captain, George Pearson, who was often away. In the 1850s, Captain George Pearson had regularly plied the seas between London and New Zealand, transporting passengers and goods on the Cashmere, a packet ship operated by H H Willis and Co.

In 1860, Captain Pearson retired from the sea. He sailed once more to New Zealand, this time as a passenger on board the Zealandia, with the intention of retiring here. He arrived in Auckland in February 1861 and prepared for his family’s arrival.

The 1861 English census shows William, aged 16, recorded as an ‘engineer (mariner)’, living with his mother, Maggie, who described herself as a ‘house proprietor’, at 53 Canton Street, Limehouse. Also living in the house was Maggie’s daughter Alice Pearson and her two children, Margaret and Mary. Maggie’s 16 year old niece, Alice Martin, who had spent most of her childhood in a boarding school while her parents were in India, worked in the house in return for her board. Maggie’s description of her occupation as house proprietor may indicate that she took in paying guests.

Passenger lists show the move to New Zealand

Alice and her children, together with Maggie and William Coppell and Alice Martin, joined George Pearson in New Zealand, arriving in Auckland on Saturday 8 February 1862 on board the SS Avalanche, a journey taking 114 days. A passenger list was published on 11 February and the Daily Southern Cross gave this account of the voyage on 7 March:

The ‘Avalanche’, Captain Stott, arrived on Friday evening, coming to an anchor at the North Head, and fetching Auckland on Saturday. She left the Downs on the 14th October; had baffling winds until getting off the coast of Portugal; sighted Madeira on the 27th October, and Palma on the 29th; passed Trinidad on the 24th November, and then shaped a course for Tristan D'Achuna [Tristan da Cunha], but found it impossible to fetch it through prevalent foggy weather; put in for fresh supplies to the Cape of Good Hope; sailed again on the 21st December; met with a succession of west winds from the Crozets, till round Tasmania, and since then had nothing but tiresome calms and light winds […] The 'Avalanche' arrived in a clean and creditable condition.

The family brought 11 cases, two chests and five packages with them on the Avalanche. A letter, written by an unidentified family member before Daisy Gray’s death in 1939, states that Daisy had ‘a marvellous collection of oil paintings of the Coppells. I saw it once when I lived over in Auckland – you could not see the walls – a very large room and every inch of it covered with family portraits.’

These paintings, now lost, were likely among their belongings. Maggie Coppell’s brother, Robert Clow Todd, who had lived in London before emigrating to Canada in the 1830s, was a successful artist and some of his early works could have come to New Zealand with the family.

A passenger list of the SS Portland, published in the Daily Southern Cross shows that William’s brother John Josiah followed his family to Auckland, arriving on 22 July 1863. Married sister Margaret Hart remained in London with her husband and children.

William’s brother, Captain James Coppell, continued to live in London with his young family but his work on passenger ships brought him to New Zealand regularly. When his ship the Accrington arrived in Lyttelton in 1863 he alerted his brother Edward by placing a notice in the Lyttelton Times:

EDWARD COPPELL. If this should meet the eye of Edward Coppell, his brother would be glad to hear of him. James Coppell, ship Accrington, Lyttelton. Sept. 26, 1863.

Running the Naval Hotel, Karangahape Road

In March 1862, George Pearson took possession of the Naval Hotel in Auckland and became a publican. According to Heritage New Zealand ‘the Georgian-style timber public house was the first licensed premises to be established on Karangahape Road’. While the Pearson’s ran their hotel, advertisements published in the Daily Southern Cross in December 1863 and February 1864 show that Maggie also offered accommodation in her house in Upper Queen Street.

In May 1864 George Pearson suffered an injury to his eye, as reported by the New Zealander on 2 June 1864:

Mr. Pearson was removing some lemonade bottles at the bar, when two of them rolled together and burst; and a bit of glass from one of them struck him in the right eye. The injury received was so great, that no hope of Mr. Pearson recovering the sight of the eye was entertained.

The Pearsons remained hopeful for the future and they invested in renovations to the Naval Hotel, where they offered accommodation for families and single gentlemen. George Pearson did not fully recover from his injury, however, and on 4 April 1866, after almost two years of illness, he died at the Naval Hotel, aged 55 years.

Alice, with help from 21-year-old William, continued to run the Hotel. The Auckland Provincial Government Gazette of 14 July 1866 records that William had been granted a publican’s licence for the Naval Hotel. According to Heritage New Zealand, by then ‘the Naval Hotel was just one of several licensed premises on the thoroughfare’ and the business, like many in Auckland, was in a dire financial state.

On 18 April, the Daily Southern Cross noted that a petition to the Insolvency Court regarding Alice Pearson and William Coppell had been made with the consent of ‘James Oldham, merchant, and John Coppell, engineer, creditors to the extent of not less than £100.’

The liabilities, which arose from depression in trade, amounted to just over £1,636, while the assets were valued at £2,096. The Court granted sequestration of the estate to the Sherriff’s bailiff. Judge Moore ‘hoped the learned counsel had no more application of a similar nature to make. They were, he was sorry to say, but too common in Auckland at the present time.’

The bailiff lost no time, the Daily Southern Cross advertising that the whole stock of the Naval Hotel ‘consisting of Wines, Spirits, Beer, Furniture and the usual Requisites of an Hotel’ would be sold by auction the next morning. Then, on 2 July 1867 the New Zealand Herald advertised the auction of the Naval Hotel itself. The hotel was sold and, on 10 July, an order discharging William and Alice from bankruptcy was granted.

William joins the Royal Cavalry Volunteers

Between 1866 and 1870 the Imperial Regiments, which had been charged with the duty of protecting British interests in New Zealand since 1840, withdrew and local militia, supported by volunteer forces, were bolstered. Any man, including Māori, could join the Volunteer Corps. In April 1866 William enlisted in the Auckland division of the Royal Cavalry Volunteers with the rank of private.

In return for fulfilling his duties as a volunteer, which included attending drills as required, William received payment of £3 from the annual capitation grant, records of which are held at Archives New Zealand. On 22 March 1867 the Auckland Cavalry Volunteers and Naval Volunteer Corps gathered to compete for prize money at the rifle range at Port Chevalier. William earned £3 for his efforts that day.

According to the Daily Southern Cross:

The Naval Volunteers carried off the three first prizes, leaving two to the cavalry. […] Mssrs. Udy and Cappell made a tie at the close of the firing, and on the tie being shot off, Mr. Cappell was declared the winner, and obtained the 4th prize, Mr. Udy getting the 5th.

On 25 September William again won prize money in a competition of the Royal Cavalry Volunteers at Port Chevalier, shooting carbines at 100, 200, and 300 yards. The Daily Southern Cross reported the following day:

The other successful competitor was private Coppell, who made some very good firing, and finished with a score of 29 points and hits. Private Thompson was the next best on the score, Coppell only having defeated him by one point. In the two first ranges, Thompson had the lead of Coppell, but the latter managed to score a bull's-eye in the last range, which placed him one ahead of his opponent.

Although the volunteers had to be prepared to travel anywhere in New Zealand to fight at any time during their service, William’s corps was not called upon to do this.

The Capitation Rolls show that William took the role seriously, attending 22 parades in the year ending 30 June 1867, the second highest total amongst the privates. He signed up again for the 1867-1868 year and attended 15 parades, a similar number to that achieved by the other privates.

The goldrush at Thames

Less than a month after the Naval Hotel was sold, William heard news that an agreement had been reached between the Crown and Māori, allowing a new gold field to open at Kauaeranga / Thames. The goldrush began on 1 August 1867, when about 250 prospectors left Auckland for the new goldfield. William and the other prospectors brought tents with them to sleep in until raupo huts and wooden buildings could be made.

The flat land was mainly swamp and there was just one store catering to the needs of European traders where they could buy supplies. To protect places where Māori lived, grew food and buried their dead, the miners were restricted to an agreed area and a £1 licence fee paid by the miners was passed on to the Māori landowners.

On 21 August William bought a Miner’s Right on the Karaka Field, the 73rd to be issued at Thames, and joined eight other men on an alluvial mine called the British Claim.

Many more miners arrived and buildings sprang up quickly to form the new towns of Shortland and Grahamstown on land leased by Māori, from which would grow the township of Thames.

William’s brother John purchased a mining licence in November. Alfred, Richard and John Newdick, brothers of William’s future wife, Sarah Newdick, were there in the early days too, with Alfred pegging out the successful Long Drive and All Nations Claims on the Kurunui Hill.

The British Claim, Karaka Flat

On 28 August, William Coppell registered his absence from his claim so that he and William Sutton, whom he was working with, could obtain tools and timber from Auckland. From 30 August, they placed advertisements in the Daily Southern Cross and New Zealand Herald seeking funds for the British Claim:

BRITISH CLAIM, KARAKA FLAT. The above Claim having now sunk their shaft 37 feet deep, and not having found a bottom, and it being at the present time not safe to work without slabbing, a Public Meeting was called on the Karaka Field, Captain Butt being in the chair, when it was resolved that a Subscription List should be at once opened to help the prospectors of the above Claim to bottom the shaft, and so show what the Karaka Flat is worth. Two of the prospectors, having come up to Auckland, will be happy to convey to any individual any information he may require on the above subject, and they also ask the Auckland public for pecuniary assistance, to enable them to slab the shaft and find what the bottom is really worth. Subscriptions will be received at the Herald Office. August 28, 1867. Wm. Cappell, William Sutton.

On 3 September the Daily Southern Cross special correspondent published a letter claiming that: ‘There was no resolution proposed to assist the slabbing of the British, and these men have had no authority whatever from the committee to ask for subscriptions. It is to be regretted that they have deceived the public, as a really serviceable undertaking may suffer in consequence’.

Also published was a notice, signed by the chairman of the storekeepers' committee and the chairman of the diggers' committee, supporting the assertion that the men had not been given authority to collect money or supplies for the cause. On the same day, the two men delivered the money they had received to the New Zealand Herald office and, as was usual, a list of the subscribers was duly published.

Angry that their actions were cast in such a way, the pair published a letter in the Herald, on 4 September, to ‘refute and repel the base and calumnious insinuations which have been made against us, and which have no foundation whatever’.

They asserted that ‘the only sums that have been received by us in connection with the Thames diggings have been collected by the undersigned, W. Sutton, on account of the British Claim alone […] The money received amounts to £4 17s, which has been paid over to Mr. W. C. Wilson, to be forwarded to Capt. Butt, and for which we hold Mr. Wilson's receipt.’

William also wrote his own letter to the editor of the Daily Southern Cross, giving a personal explanation:

As a party holding, as I have, a respectable position in this city for the last seven years, and having through the columns of the Herald been most infamously vilified, I trust, with your usual readiness to give every one an opportunity of setting themselves right with the public, you will kindly give insertion to these few lines in your next impression. I am one of nine forming the party owning what is called the "British Claim", at Karaka flats, Thames. In conjunction with my mates I worked on that claim for upwards of a month, and out of my own pocket advanced £15 for provisions, not one penny of which money has up to the present writing been returned. I received a protection order for 14 days with respect to that claim. William Sutton, one of the present claimholders, informed me that he was empowered to collect subscriptions for the slabbing of the shaft we were making; and believing as I did that my name, added to his own, in the advertisement, which appeared in your journal, would have a certain weight in obtaining increased subscriptions, I consented to its being so added. Sir, out of the whole of the moneys so collected not one farthing passed through my hands, my sole reason for appending my name to the advertisement being a belief on my part that I was benefiting the other claim-holders. As my character has been so vilely assailed by the correspondent of the Herald, I have made arrangements, in the event of his not making an ample apology through your and your contemporary's columns, to bring an action for libel against him. In the meantime I leave you and your readers to decide whether I have not met with most cruel treatment for merely endeavouring to carry out the views of all those who are sincerely desirous that the goldfields at the Thames should be fully developed.— W. COPPELL. Auckland, September 4, 1867.

On 7 September the unnamed special correspondent replied with the back-handed apology:

I see that I am threatened with an action for libel! Do Messrs. Sutton and Coppell recollect the apology made by the actor who said something very disrespectful of a nobleman once? He said, "His remark was true, and he was sorry for it." So am I. The correct thing has now been done; Mr. Messenger, junior, has brought down and paid over to the treasurer here, the funds handed over to Mr. W. C. Wilson, by Messrs. Sutton and Coppell, and I can now compliment those gentlemen on their public spirit, and say how sorry I am that ever for a moment there should have been a shadow of difference between us to interrupt that high respect and kindly regard which we have ever had for each other.

Although much money and effort were poured into the British Claim, no payable gold was found and the alluvial claim was abandoned, the investors losing all their money. In the South Island goldrushes much of the gold was alluvial and could be found on the surface but the early Thames miners were bitterly disappointed to find that this was not the case here.

By chance, Sarah’s brother, Alfred Newdick, while climbing the hill above his Long Drive Claim, discovered some gold on the surface but this was unusual. The Thames prospectors soon discovered that gold was usually only found by tunnelling into the hills with a pick and shovel to access the gold-bearing quartz reefs. It was hard and dangerous work and the effort, as in William’s case, did not always pay off.

Captain’s son

Though from a family of sea captains, nautical blacksmiths and engineers, William forged his own path, choosing to join the Auckland Cavalry Volunteers when the Naval Volunteers might have been the obvious option, and becoming a publican and a goldminer in his early twenties.

His letters to the newspaper show a self-confidence that agrees with Daisy Gray’s description but William’s story is one of a man who did not meet expectations as a father and husband.

My great-grandmother Helen’s stories of her father were all about a grandfather she never met but of whom she was proud. Helen was born the same year as Daisy Gray but their views on William were very different: one chose silence, while the other effused pride.

Every story, whether it was told 60 years ago or yesterday, is shaped by the beliefs and experiences of both the teller and the hearer and, inevitably, will be altered again with each retelling.

Read the next two parts of this blog as well as other blogs written about the Coppell family.

Selected sources

Ship voyages / immigration to New Zealand

• Archives New Zealand Passenger Lists, Family Search

• Papers Past

• British Newspaper Archive

• Trove

Gold mining at Thames

• Thames Miners Right Registers — Archives NZ

• Goldrush Online (including Goldminer’s Database) by Kae Lewis

• The amazing Thames: the story of the town and the famous goldfield from which it grew by John Grainger (Wellington: Reed, 1951)

• Frontier New Zealand: the search for Eldorado, (1800-1920) by Duncan Mackay (Auckland: HarperCollins, 1992)

• First Year on the Thames Goldfield by Meghan Hawkes

• Goldrush to the Thames: New Zealand 1867 to 1869 by Kae Lewis (Thames: Parawai Press, 2017)

Volunteer Forces

Capitation Rolls of Volunteer Forces 1860-1911, Archives New Zealand