From Lancashire to the Unknown

The Holden story begins in the industrial heart of Lancashire, England. Jonathan Holden, born in Over Darwen in 1821, married Ann Leaver in 1846. Ann, born in nearby Livesey in 1824, supported Jonathan as he worked first as a weaver before training as a wheelwright and carpenter.

Driven by reasons lost to time, Jonathan decided to seek a new life on the other side of the world. In March 1856, he boarded the Sandford at Gravesend, London, alongside 92 other passengers. Arriving in Auckland in July 1856, Jonathan most likely headed straight for the Otago goldfields. It was probably there that he crossed paths with Ebenezer Harwood, an acquaintance from home.

Jonathan and Ebenezer then moved to Central Hawke’s Bay, earning a living by sawing and splitting tōtara for fence posts. Every spare penny Jonathan earned was sent back to England. Meanwhile, in Lancashire, Ann took in laundry to keep their children fed, waiting for the day they could be reunited.

Ann's Courageous Voyage

That day came in late 1858 when Jonathan and Ebenezer arranged passage for their families on the Kinnaird. For Ann, who had never stepped foot outside Manchester, the journey required immense courage. She and her five dependent children travelled across half of England by stagecoach and roofless, second-class train carriages before boarding the ship on 6 October 1858.

As steerage passengers, the Holdens endured the cheapest, most basic conditions available. When the Kinnaird finally dropped anchor in Wellington 126 days later—on 7 February 1859—the family disembarked with little more than a bag of flour and the few possessions they had carried from Lancashire.

Building a Life from Scratch

While his family was at sea, Jonathan was preparing for them. As a craftsman who understood that good timber grew on good land, he purchased a government plot at Springvale (Tikokino), home to some of the finest bush in New Zealand. Using the land's resources, he built a rough shack with tōtara slabs for walls and tōtara shingle for the roof.

To greet his family, Jonathan walked 200 miles from Tikokino to Wellington—a treacherous three-week trek through dense bush, unbridged rivers, and volatile territory. Knowing the family could never survive the return walk, he arranged for them to sail up the coast from Wellington to Napier. From there, they endured a grueling nine-to-ten-day journey by bullock dray up the Tukituki River to Tikokino.

When they arrived at the shack, the family was very poor and lacked basic necessities. They did not own a horse or a cow, and the farm produced practically nothing—there was no grass, no stock, and no implements. Isolated from society, they struggled with hardly a soul from the outside world to bring them news. Tree by tree, Jonathan single-handedly felled enough bush to create a clearing to grow potatoes.

Innovation was born of necessity. To clear more land, the Holdens captured wild piglets—a dangerous task—and snared slightly older pigs, which they tamed and tethered to plough the ground. The pigs were yarded by night, and during the day they were given a fresh patch of ground to root in. This cleared the land so they could plant grass, kūmara, and potatoes. They survived on wild pork and snared birds, while the children gathered seed heads around the district and threshed them to sow pasture.

The settlers shared resources, worked for one another, and occasionally bartered with local Māori. Life was unimaginably difficult compared to modern standards, with no supermarkets, no vehicles or bicycles, no hospitals, no clothing shops, and absolutely none of the items considered essential today.

Tragedy and Triumph

Just five years after his family arrived, tragedy struck. Jonathan was killed in a tree-felling accident.

Ann was left entirely alone in the isolated bush with eight surviving children. Their children included John (b. 1846), Timothy (b. 1848, died at birth), Thomas (b. 1849, died at 3 years old), Elizabeth (b. 1850), Alice (b. 1852), Thomas (b. 1853), Jonathan (b. 1855), Esther (b. 1860), Jane (b. 1861), and Nancy (b. 1863).

Ann possessed only five cleared acres of land, six cattle, no implements, no money, and no road access. The burden fell upon 17-year-old John, the eldest son. He took over the grueling work of cutting fence posts at Springvale and borrowed a little money to purchase Merino sheep. As his younger brothers, Thomas and Jonathan Jr., grew old enough, they joined him, finally bringing a steady income to the household.

As the district slowly populated, a school opened in 1866. The younger Holden children walked three miles (nearly five kilometres) through thick bush to attend. To keep them safe, the older brothers scarfed marks into the trees so the little ones wouldn’t lose their way. By 1870, the farm was thriving enough for John to strike out on his own, leaving the second son, Thomas, in charge.

The Defiant Matriarch

The 1860s brought the threat of the New Zealand Wars to Hawke’s Bay. Settlers built fortified blockhouses, and families fled to them whenever the warning bugle sounded. Ann Holden, however, refused to run. Even when John wrote to urge caution, and friendly local Māori warned that a raid was imminent, Ann stood her ground, declaring: “If I’m to be killed, at least let it be in my own home.”

Her defiance was backed by the family's exceptionally good relations with local Māori. John spoke the language perfectly, kept his ear to the ground for rumours, and could reason with local hapū. On one terrifying occasion, a war party approached the Holden cottage. Ann hid her children in large trunks, piled clothing over them, and pushed the trunks under the bed. She then walked out alone to greet the warriors. Using the Māori language she had learned, she spoke with them calmly and persuaded them to leave her home untouched, saving her family while neighbouring settlements suffered devastating raids.

Expanding the Dynasty

In 1879, John married Keita Ruta, the daughter of Ngāti Upokoiri (of Waiohiki) Chief Wi Te Ota and Ruta Te Wharehaehae. Chief Wi Te Ota had signed the Cook Strait (Henry Williams) sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and Ruta was the sister of Rōpiha Te Takou, the principal chief of Pōrangahau. John and Keita had two children: John (b. 1880) and Ruth (b. 1882).

According to family lore, decades later, Ruth’s son Ralph (known as Para) and Thomas’s daughter Lorna—who were first cousins—became a "bit too friendly," prompting the family to step in and prevent the relationship from developing further.

John was seldom at home, spending most of his time in the saddle looking for new opportunities. While visiting Makotuku, he recognised that the heavily forested block was just as promising as Springvale. He alerted his brother Thomas, and together they bought the land. Makotuku remains in the Holden family to this day.

John’s next venture, a few years later, was a joint venture with Thomas in Gisborne. The area they chose spanned 7,000 acres—much of it heavy bush—located relatively close to the town of Gisborne. Acquired section by section, the massive 2,830-hectare property ran from the Waimata River to Pouawa and was named Rimuroa. John lived on the property to organise the bush felling, pasture sowing, and the construction of whares and a woolshed. In the early days, sheep had to be taken to Turihaua for shearing.

Thomas married Lizzie Susan Collison on 22 May 1895. Lizzie was the daughter of Edward Dalby Collison (originally from Leicestershire) and Sarah (née Carver) Collison, a servant from East Leake in Nottinghamshire. Edward worked as a carter and initially settled in Tikokino, but the family moved to Havelock North around the time of the Maori wars of 1866, where Lizzie was born on 22 November 1867.

It is said that Thomas elected to move to Rimuroa in Gisborne partly due to a clash of religious denominations, as the Collisons were Methodists (non-conformists). Thomas and Susan had six children: Dalby Jonathan (1896), Rena Collison (who tragically died of scarlet fever at age four on 31 December 1902), Mervyn Lester "Pat" (1900), Lorna Mavis (1902), Hilson Thomas (1904), and Ronald Fraser (1906). Thomas settled at Rimuroa to raise his family, though he retained his interests in Tikokino.

Thomas became a prominent and highly respected figure in the region, dedicating much of his life to public service. He served on the Pouawa Road Board, the Cook County Council, the Cook Hospital Board, the Gisborne Harbour Board, and the East Coast Rabbit Board.

Susan Holden passed away on 11 July 1939 and was laid to rest in the Havelock North Cemetery. Two years later, on 14 November 1941, Thomas passed away and was returned to the family home to be buried at Springvale. Together, through unfathomable hardship and sheer determination, the family transformed the dense New Zealand bush into a thriving, multi-generational legacy.