Lonely grave rediscovered by family
CATHERINE GROENESTEIN
A woman who lies with her stillborn twins in a lonely grave on a coastal Taranaki farm is now being remembered and visited by her descendents, generations after her death.
Mary Catherine Rawson was just 44 when she died on March 15, 1859, after giving birth to the twins.
The Rawson family – Mary, her husband Thomas and their other children – lived on a farm at Tataramaika, 20km from New Plymouth, in those days a journey that was about a day’s ride.
‘‘It would have been her family delivering the babies ... Thomas was a doctor, but he was unable to save her,’’ great-greatgreat-great-great-grandson Simon Strombom said.
Mary and the babies were buried on the farm as there was no cemetery at that stage in Okato, their nearest town.
She was laid to rest beside a large tree ‘‘facing the coast and in sight of the house’’, which was atop a hill with commanding views of the mountain and the coast.
Her death was just months before the Taranaki land wars began, and trouble would already have been brewing, he said.
‘‘They had just formed the Taranaki Militia.’’
When the war between Europeans and Māori began in 1860, Thomas Rawson moved his household to New Plymouth.
Before fleeing the farm, they buried the family silver and other precious possessions, including Mary’s diary, but these were discovered and taken by Mā ori when they passed through.
Rawson did not return to the farm. He became surgeon-general for the Taranaki Militia and also worked at the Gables colonial hospital in New Plymouth.
‘‘Years later, when Thomas was working at the Gables, an old Mā ori man came in and gave him back Mary’s diary,’’ Strombom said.
Thomas remarried, to one of Reverend John Whiteley’s daughters, and he is buried at Te Henui Cemetery.
In the 164 years since Mary’s death, the tree beside her grave has vanished and the family home is also long gone, leaving just her lonely grave in a cow paddock.
‘‘There wouldn’t be too many farms that have a random grave on them,’’ he said.
Strombom, who lives in Wellington but grew up in New Plymouth, heard the story as a teenager from his great-uncle David Rawson, MBE. ‘‘I liked the part about the diary, it showed the respect Thomas was held in, for them to keep it for years. He had a lot of interaction with iwi around health matters.’’
Rawson, a keen historian, went to great lengths to find Mary’s unmarked grave and in the late 1980s had a headstone made for her, then carried the heavy stone several hundred metres uphill from SH45 to where she lay.
‘‘David came with a diviner, and they found her, he spent quite a bit of time working out where she was buried. Then he humped the headstone up on his back,’’ he said.
Rawson was a veteran of WWII, having fought with the 27th Machine Gun Battalion through the battles of El Alamein in Egypt and Monte Casino in Italy, and had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.
In later life he wrote two books about Taranaki Maunga, one about the development of search and rescues in Taranaki, and the other called Tales of the Mountain.
He was also Strombom’s inspiration to join the army, and he went on to serve in Afghanistan in 2008 and received a Distinguished Service medal.
In 2018, he founded the New Zealand Remembrance Army, which restores military graves in cemeteries around the country, and brings recognition to long forgotten service personnel, by telling their stories.
He was chuffed to uncover and share a story from his own family.
Strombom was contacted last year by farm owner Richard Goodin, who got in touch after he recognised his name in a story in the Taranaki Daily News.
‘‘To go back to the family farm, where it all started was quite amazing, it’s a cool thing,’’ he said. ‘‘I knew about the grave. I’d tried to track it down but I didn’t know how to get access. When he rang me out of the blue, I knew who he was. He’s been more than generous allowing the family to visit.’’
At King’s Birthday Weekend, Strombom took his daughter, Emma Hamlett-Strombom, 11, to visit Mary’s grave.
He will be returning again later this year with a plaque to add to the headstone, in remembrance of the stillborn Rawson twins.
Goodin said he was surprised when he discovered Mary’s headstone hidden in the grass, after he had bought the farm, 32 years ago.
‘‘It’s an honour and a privilege to have Mary as my neighbour, so I have to treat her with respect. The headstone had nothing to protect it, so I put the rails around it because I didn’t want the cows walking on her,’’ he said.
‘‘Quite a few of the family have been to see her now.’’