Coates Joseph Gordon Matatoke Northland Nz 1878 1899

edmondsalllan - Hello - The Coates brothers, Edward and Thomas, who sailed into the Waitemata Harbour on 19 October 1866 aboard the Winterthur, came from a long-established Herefordshire gentry family. As younger sons of a large family they would not inherit land, but in New Zealand their brother-in-law George Washington Charters had a friend, Francis Hull, who was prepared to buy land which they could farm. On arrival in Auckland the brothers went north. After investigation they found the Unuwhao block of 2,500 acres on the Hukatere peninsula, jutting south into the Kaipara Harbour. Hull bought 2,420 acres of this land on behalf of Charters on 8 June 1867 from its Maori owners for £950, and Edward and Thomas became tenant farmers. In June 1871 they acquired grazing and other rights to a further 10,410 acres.

Thomas Coates married in 1873, then moved east to Kaiwaka in 1886. Edward remained at Hukatere and appeared to be a man of substance. He was soon a justice of the peace and the first president of the North Kaipara Agriculture Association. On 16 May 1877 he married Eleanor Kathleen Aickin. Of Irish birth, she had come to Auckland with her parents in 1859 aboard the Mermaid. Eleanor was well educated, and had attended an exclusive ladies' college in Remuera for several years.

Edward and Eleanor Coates took up residence at a house, Ruatuna, built by Edward on the Hukatere block. On 3 February 1878 their eldest son, Joseph Gordon Coates, was born. There were two further sons, Rodney and William, and four daughters, Eva, Ella, Ada and Nina. Gordon grew into a tall (six-foot), handsome, broad-chested man with auburn hair. He learned to ride a horse when very young – indeed, since there were few roads, horses and the punt on the river were their main means of transport. He rounded up cattle that ran wild down the peninsula, could handle a gun by the time he was a teenager, and loved shooting pheasants, ducks and wild pigs. An early riding accident left him with a swagger to his walk, and a horse's kick disfiguring his upper lip caused him to wear a moustache for the rest of his life.

Coates received several years' schooling at the small Matakohe School. He was no scholar, although governesses and his mother gave him polish. Eleanor read widely, had a good command of English and ensured that her children's biblical studies were never overlooked. Surviving recordings of his speeches reveal an educated voice with clipped, well-formed vowels, but all his life he had a taste for the vernacular. By the time he was 10, he and Rodney would often ride four miles to the Sunday Anglican church services in Matakohe. His family were natural leaders in the small, isolated Northland society of the 1890s.

In 1899 Charters gifted the freehold of the Unuwhao block to the Coates family. In the meantime they had difficulty securing badly needed loans for development. Gordon, who was then running the farm with Rodney because of their father's manic depression, learned the importance of freehold, which he was to uphold for the rest of his life. Great way to develope a settlement for the family Till we meet again - Regards - edmondsallan