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Elsie Hickmotts Brothers and Sisters
Thomas (Tom) Hickmott
Tom was the eldest and was born in 1868 in Southwark, London. He accompanied his parents on the Hannibal to New Zealand. As the eldest he assisted the family at Kaituna in establishing the family property. He later returned to Motueka to follow a trade in painting and paperhanging. In 1896, with his new bride, Lillian (nee Fowler), he returned to Collingwood, going into partnership with brother, George and Jack, in farming a property adjacent to their father.
In 1905 he sold his portion of the farm and he and his family moved to Takaka, Here he established a painting and paperhanging business. He also purchased a small property which included a three acre lake and sufficient grassed area to support eight or ten cows. This helped to supplement the income from his painting and paperhanging business.
At the commencement of WW1, Tom acquired a small fruit farm in Riwaka and moved the family there. In order to continue to support the family he also obtained employment with a local company. As his fortunes improved he acquired additional properties, which later was farmed by his eldest son Arthur.
Tom died in 1949, five years after his wife.
George Hickmott
George, the second son was also born in London and came out with his parents to New Zealand. He also was initially involved in the family farm but after his marriage to Helen Curnow, sold his share of the farming partnership and moved to the North Island and Wanganui in 1902. He purchased a property there at Aramoho and stocked it with a small herd of cows supplying fresh milk to the Wanganui Hospital. Later moving to Fielding, he purchased a carrying business consisting of two 5 horse teams and a brake cart. He became a local pioneer of motorized transport providing a cartage service between Sanson and Fielding and also the transportation of wool to the sales in Wellington.
George retired from business in Fielding and died in 1948, his wife dying three years later in 1951.
John Charles (Jack) Hickmott
Jack was the third child and the last born in England in Surrey 1875. He also farmed in partnership with his father and brothers in Collingwood. He left Collingwood temporarily for North Taranaki but soon returned to Collingwood to marry Alice Clear, a gold miner’s daughter in 1902. He bought out his brothers’ shares in the farm and expanded the dairy farming activities. This led to his close association with the establishment of the Collingwood Co-operative Dairy Company and his subsequent appointment as a director.
Jack also became involved in goods transport to gold miners in the back country and in the transport of wool, hides and meat to the wharf at Collingwood for transhipment. He was a keen rugby player, horseman and axe man, performing in local carnivals over the years. Jack died in 1965 outliving his wife who died in 1952.
William (Billy Hick) Hickmott
William was the first to be born in New Zealand in 1875. Realising the limitations of the Collingwood farm Billy Hick left Collingwood with his ‘horse, cash and clothes’ and crossed back over the Marble Mountains to Riwaka. He married Decima, the daughter of the Tutbury family in 1900 and acquired a property on Kaiteriteri Rd, which he lived on until his death in 1959, outliving Decima, who died in 1950. He developed this property to grow hops and raspberries and raising and breeding horses. He also contracted for roading in the Riwaka area including the construction of a road through Kaiteriteri to Sandy Bay. He was also a keen rugby supporter and became an outdoor bowler in later life. William died in 1959, nine years after his wife.
Alice Hickmott
Alice was the fifth child and the first girl born to George and Clarrisa, in 1878. She grew up in Riwaka before moving with the family to Collingwood. She married Jack Carter in 1876 who at the time was employed at grant’s Sawmill. After being married for seven years Jack had saved sufficient to purchase a property in the Kaituna River Valley which they continued to farm and live at until Jack died in 1948. After Jack died, Alice lived in a cottage beside her son Bob and his family. Alice was a keen gardener of both vegetables and flowers and often won prizes in local shows. Alice died five years after Jack in 1953.
Louisa Hickmott
Louisa, the sixth child and second daughter worked after leaving school as a housemaid in the homestead of an isolated sheep station near Farewell Spit and aging a little later as a housemaid and waitress at a private boarding house in Collingwood. It was in Collingwood that she married Albert Clear a brother of Alice the wife of Jack. For a while they farmed at Aorere, with Albert taking a keen interest in local affairs, Rugby racing, the A & P Association and school. Albert was a Mason and at one time Chairman of the Rockville Co-operative Dairy Company. Louisa and Albert had two children – Ena 1907 and Eric 1913.
In 1919 they moved to Te Kowhai, Waikato in the North Island where they continued their interest in local affairs until Albert’s death in 1932. After her son Eric’s marriage, Louisa went to live with her daughter and her husband Alec Mitchell on their farm at Koromatua. It was here that she spent the rest of her life dying in 1962.
Horace Hickmott
Horace the seventh child and a young man traveled north to Whangarei where he met a young Salvationist Lillian Parkes whom he married. They returned to Collingwood, where their only son Stanley was born. Shortly afterwards they moved across the Marble Mountains to Riwaka where with his younger brother Charlie they purchased a small acreage to take up hop farming. Between seasons he helped build house and general carpentry work. In 1918 he sold the hop garden and moved to Fielding for a year and then to Hastings to build houses and begin joinery and furniture manufacturing on a relatively large scale.
Horace became very successful and true to his Christian belief of sharing worldly deeds his benefactors included the building of an inter-denominational Sunday School and he donated the entrance gateway to Windsor Park.
Horace died in 1963 and was survived by his wife Lillian who lived another 26 years to the age of 103, dying in 1989.
Clarrisa (Clara) Hickmott
Clara, the eighth child was born in 1884. She married Joseph (Joe) Moore in 1903 and much to her mother’s concern, departed with her husband to seek their fortune in Tasmania. Prior to coming to Collingwood, Joseph had come from Tasmania and had worked in Otago on the construction of gold dredges. Joseph introduced the sport of competitive chopping at an athletic meeting in Bainham in the 1902-03 eras.
Clara and Joe pioneered a farm which was to become a dairy unit in the northern part of Tasmania in the district of Sprent.
Clara was described as ‘a staunch and upright person who demonstrated her belief in the highest principles of human endeavour’, not by adherence to any specific religion, but by demonstrating it in practical terms on a daily basis. Clara died in 1972, 33 years after her husband Joe.
Charles Hickmott
Charles, the last born in 1888, like other members of his family, had to make his way beyond the family farm at Kaituna. With his elder brother Horace, he purchased 15 acres in the Lower Kaituna and began to develop a dairy farm. However, in 1910 Horace headed to a hop garden in Riwaka so the property was leased and Charles followed his brother. Later he traveled to Palmerston North, going bush felling in nearby districts. IT was in Palmerston North that he met his first bride Ida Prince in 1912. Ida was another member of the Salvation Army, but was lost to Charles only five months after their marriage.age.
After a short time he returned to the south to help brothers Horace and William in their hop gardens and orchards. In 1917 he went back to the property he had owned with Horace and bought out his brother’s share.
In 1918 he married Rosina Fletcher at Te Rehunga, near Dannevirke and bought her back to the farm at Lower Kaituna. During the early years, Charles took up carpentry to keep the farm going. Over the years he gradually increased the size of the farm, later in partnership with his son Maurice. In 1942, Charles was once again saddened with the loss of his second wife Rosina dying at the age of 59. He continued farming with Maurice, with only occasional trip to other family members in New Zealand and to see his sister Clara in Tasmania. Charles died in 1962, twenty years after Rosina.