Beaumont Hall, is a lovely old rose brick Hall on a slight elevation and it shows up boldly on a very flat and level country and from its upper windows must command a distant view of the sea - My niece Mrs Lindsay Gordon and her husband called in to see it when they travelled that way on their way to visit the Don family, Lindsay Gordons relations in Norfolk - the Rev Alan Don Dean of Westminster being one of the family.

My father William Henry Blyth also visited it as a boy, going there with his father Mr William Edward Blyth, to visit their cousins Mrs Blyth and Miss Margaret Blyth, who were living there then - some of the male members of the Blyth family had sold their share of the estate and had gone to Tasmania where they had apple orchards.

Beaumont Hall belonged to my grandfather William Edward Blyth but he sold it to a Colonel Denyss, who married Miss Margaret Blyth - my fathers' sister Eva (afterwards Mrs Colonel E.C. Wise) being Bridesmaid at the wedding.

But after this digression I must return to our Great-grandfather -

John Blyth, in his early life was in the British Navy - we have now in the family his old mahogany midshipman's chest with his initials J.B. in brass on the cover.

In his later life he went to India where he worked with the East India Company. He married and had a large family namely - William Edward Blyth Deputy Commissioner of Lahore in the Punjab, India (our grandfather), George Blyth, Surveyor, Andrew Blyth who with his wife and family were massacred at Cawnpore in the Indian Mutiny - James Blyth and John Blyth and three daughters, Elizabeth, Sophia and Margaret, all three married - Sophia was a Mrs Ellison and had a large family, I can't remember the married names of the other two, but Margaret's husband was a major in the army.

William Edward Blyth Deputy Commissioner of Lahore, married Charlotte Matilda Chamberlain, daughter of Judge Chamberlain and his wife (who was a daughter of Judge Martin) and his brother George Blyth married Amelia Dorothy Martin Chamberlain younger sister of Charlotte Matilda Chamberlain.

Our Grandfather and Grandmother William Edward Blyth and his wife Charlotte Matilda, had a family of seven children, three sons and four daughters namely -
Emily Louisa Blyth (Mrs Major John Angelo)
Alice Blyth who died in infancy
William Henry Blyth (my father)
Eveline Agnes Blyth (Mrs Colonel Edward C. Wise)
Walter Blyth, aged three years, died from the sting of a hornet in his eye
Alice Madiline Blyth, also died in infancy
Herbert Arthur Chamberlain Hunter Blyth (who became an actor and took the stage name of Maurice Barrymore)

Their mother died suddenly and unexpectedly when Herbert was three weeks old. They had no idea that she was going to die and that afternoon William Henry (or Harry as he was called by his family) found in the garden a beautiful rosebud half opened and he picked it and took it to his sick mother and she was so pleased and said, "my sons first gift to his mother". The children were then taken for a walk and when they returned she was dead and was laid out under white muslin with candles at her head and feet and on her breast the beautiful rose.

After their mothers death the children were sent to their Aunt Amelia and Uncle George Blyth, where they remained until the baby Herbert was about two years old. They were not very happy with their Uncle and Aunt, as Uncle George was very strict and unkind at times. However one day their father sent his Bearer (or hand servant) Dunai to see how his children were and he arrived at an awkward moment and found young Harry standing on a form as a punishment for not having learned his lessons properly - he had been put there by his young Aunt Margaret, who was teaching them. Of course he was taken down in a hurry when the messenger from his father came. I don't know what the servant told his master but he evidently guesses that the children were not happy, for Grandfather very soon sent his Bearer back again with other servants and with instructions to take the children down to Agra, where he had made arrangements for them to go and live with Mr and Mrs Hunter, great friends of the family and where their elder sister Emily already lived. So the servants took the three little white children, Harry, Eva and Herbert, in a bullock cart for the long journey of hundreds of miles (for there were no trains in those days).

They travelled by night and rested in the coolest spot they could find in the daytime. The journey was not without incident, for one night baby Herbert awakened and playing about in the half light of the cart tumbled out of the back of it and was not missed for sometime and there was great consternation when they found him gone and they turned the cart and went back on their tracks - the wheel marks being well defined in the sand as they were crossing a desert at the time. They had to go some distance before they found him and there he was (in the bright moonlight) sitting on the sand playing happily with stones. Then later on he became ill and had convolutions and the servants were very alarmed and didn't know what to do, then Harry though only a small boy himself gave them directions telling them to put cold water on the child head and to bathe his feet in hot water (he had seen that done on a former occasion) they did so and he was soon better and Dunai was also able to purchase some medicines from an army doctor at some cantonments they came to and they had no further trouble.

At last one evening they arrived at the outskirts of Agra and they called in at a country house to get some milk for the baby. Here a party was being held and they could hear music and could see ladies and gentlemen dancing in the brightly lighted rooms - but all came out presently to see the little English children who had travelled all those hundreds of miles and begged that they would stay the night there; but Dunai, who felt his responsibilities, was in a hurry to deliver his charges safely to their destination and to place them in the care of Mr and Mrs Hunter at Agra.

They were very happy with the Hunters, Mr Hunter was a very genial man and very fond of a joke, and kind hearted and Mrs Hunter was kind and motherly and they had no family of their own and they took the Blyth children to their hearts.

The Lawrence's, Sir Henry Lawrence and his brothers were friends of their father and one of them called in one day to see the children and to report to their father how they were, and he took them on his knee and made much of them and years later too, one of them came to see Harry, in London, where he was then going to school, and took him shopping and when they came to a sweet shop, he asked him what he would like? and Harry said at once, he would like some - and he mentioned the name in Hindustani of 'Turkish Delight' and Mr Lawrence laughed and got him some. It was a sweetmeat he knew very well having lived in India himself, where it was a favourite sweet.

Another man who came to the Hunters in Agra was one whose religion had evidently made him slightly 'mental' for he thought that Jesus Christ had said to him "that if he loved Him, he would burn all his fingers off to the 1st or 2nd joint and for the love of Christ, he burnt each off in the candle". When the Blyth children saw him, his fingers were just stumps on each hand and to amuse the children, he used to waggle the stumps and say "Dance thumbacky dance, dance fore-one dance, dance middle-one dance, dance ring-one dance, dance little-one dance, dance my merry men all in a row". He was a very nice old man and they all liked the poor old dear.

W.H. Blyth went to a boy's school in Agra and next to it, with a high wall separating the two, was a 'girls school'. A young master in the Boys school named Sam was in love with a girl pupil in the Girls school, her name was Henrietta Hodges, and her father was a Colonel Hodges. One day Sam, hearing that Mrs Hunter was calling on the Headmistress of the school and that Harry and his sisters were going with her entrusted a letter to Harry, to give to Henrietta - but alas, Henrietta was not for Sam - her father was tutor to a young Indian Prince, the Prince of Kaputala, and he too had seen Henrietta and had fallen in love with her, so when later, the Mutiny of India broke out, the young Prince said to Henrietta "that if she married him, he and his followers would help the British and incidentally her father (who had returned to his Regiment) but if she wouldn't marry him then he would join the mutineers".

So Henrietta married him and became the Princess of Kaputala and helped the English.

Henrietta had married him on the understanding that she was to be the only wife, but as time went on she had no son, but only two daughters, his people murmured and wished him to take another wife. So Henrietta left his Palace and taking her two daughters with her, she went to live in England.

But all this happened after William Henry Blyth had left India and was told to him by friends.

One of my fathers, W.H. Blyth, happiest memories in India was of a visit he and his sisters and brother, and the Hunters, and some other friends paid to that wonderful 'dream in marble' as it is so often called, the Taj Mahal, and he often described to me the wonderful lace-like screens in carved marble around the tombs, and in the walls of the temple, the inlaid flowers of precious stones and the fairy like domes and minerettes of the temple. They saw it by day and also by night in the brilliant moonlight, when it looked ethereal, and one of their friends, a girl with a lovely voice, sang a beautiful song beneath the dome, and her voice rose higher and higher and filled the dome and sounded like the voice of an angel. It was music one could never forget.

Then some of their happy young friends danced in the moonlight, on the terrace around the Taj Mahal. All were happy and light-hearted.

There were two schoolgirl friends of his sisters with their party, their names were Caroline and Catherine King-Kirk and they often spent their holidays with the Blyth girls - they afterwards were two of the victims of the Cawnpore massacre during the Indian Mutiny!

When he was thirteen years old William Henry Blyth left India to go to school in England, his father going down to Calcutta with him to see him safely on board his ship, and on their way as they were passing Cawnpore, they met a young King-Kirk the brother of Caroline and Catherine and he told them that his two sisters had both married - one had married a Mr Kirkpatrick - that was just three months before the Mutiny broke out. When that happened these poor people were trying to escape down the river from Cawnpore and the natives (Sepoys) began firing at them from the riverbanks. Mr Kirkpatrick stood up to try and shield his wife and he was the first man shot.

At Calcutta Mr E.W. Blyth put his son under the care of a Mr and Mrs Frazer, who with their son, were also going to England. The two boys, near of an age were nice companions for each other and at Cape Town they thoroughly enjoyed themselves among the luscious grapes and other fruit.

The voyage by 'sailing ship' took three months and when they arrived in England they were met with the appalling news of the Indian Mutiny. Many of their fellow passengers were army officers going home to England on furlough and they poor things had to return at once to India to rejoin their regiments.

In London William Henry Blyth first went to Islington High school and later to the Blackheath Proprietary school, where late on his brother Herbert joined him.

They lived with a Mrs Valentine, an old friend of the family and the two boys shared one bedroom. Herbert a lively and loveable boy amused his brother at times, he was very fond of his bed and usually lay in bed until the last minute before the dressing bell went, in spite of his brother urging him to get up and on one occasion just as the bell went, he hopped out of bed, slipped into his clothes, dipped his face into a basin of water, gave his hair one brush, dropped on his knee and said "Same as yesterday" and dashed out and was fastening his collar as he slid down the banister and landed at the breakfast room door, where he was put through a catechism by Mrs Valentine. "Herbert, have you washed your face? Yes. Have you brushed your hair? Yes! Have you said your prayers? Yes!" and his brother didn't give him away.

In India genial and kind Mr Hunter died and some years later Mr W.E. Blyth married his widow and she proved a very kind and loving stepmother to his children - keeping the family together in after years when they had married and scattered by writing to them and keeping them in touch with each other till she died.

When W.H. Blyth had completed his education, his father came to England on furlough and arranged to take him for a trip to New Zealand of which he had heard great things and his Tutor Mr H Selwyn, hearing he was going to New Zealand, gave him a letter of introduction to his cousin Bishop Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand - but unfortunately the Bishop was leaving Wellington, New Zealand, just as W.H. Blyth landed in Auckland, so they never met and we still have the letter of introduction in which Mr Selwyn says "Mr Blyth is a very estimable young man".

They came to New Zealand in the sailing ship 'African' and when they saw their first sight of New Zealand it was of the Three Kings Islands off the North of New Zealand and a fellow passenger made a sketch of the Islands and gave it to W.H. Blyth in August 1862 and we have it still. After staying in Auckland a short time father and son came North by coastal steamer, either the Rowena or Ivanhoe (I'm not sure which) and stayed with the Rev Duffus and his family at Mangonui, from there they purchased a Maori guide Purn, by name, a brother of the Chief Nobel Firaakarean of the Rarowa tribe at Kaitaia and he took them to the Kaitaia Mission Station, to the home of Mr and Mrs William Gilbert Puckey.

It was pouring with rain and they were wet and cold and it was a cheering sight that met their eyes, for the curtains had not been drawn and the warm glow of both firelight and lamplight streamed out and it was a happy family scene they saw of the elderly couple and their handsome family of girls and boys around them.

They received a kindly welcome from the hospitable missionary and his family and here it was that my father and mother met for the first time, William Henry Blyth and Margarita Jane Puckey. Mr W.E. Blyth was a fine tall man, very genial and a thorough English Gentleman and his young son was very handsome and just nineteen years of age and Margarita was a sweet and pretty girl of eighteen.

The Blyths stayed for several days with the Puckeys and they were mutually charmed with each other, then they went on their way. They intended to walk through the country via Hokianga and down the Island to Whangarei and Purn their Maori guide then took them over the shoulder of the Maun_______ Range, a mountain range of about 2000 feet and through dense bush, as there were no roads and only slight tracks at that time and down to Mangamuka and so to Hokianga. On the P__ Hills before the got to the bush, young Mr Blyth lost a valuable jewel a beautiful topaz that came out of its setting in a ring he was wearing, of course they couldn't find it and its probably there to this day. They finally reached Whangarei and Mr W.E. Blyth was charmed with the country he called it the "Britain of the South" and he determined to come and live in New Zealand. He also said "it was the duty of every young Englishman if he hadn't joined one of the Services, Army or Navy, to come to the colonies and help develop them". And he bought land for himself and his two sons at Paranui in the Oruru Parish, Mangonui County, New Zealand.

He left his son at Whangarei with a Mr Richardson to learn farming and he returned to India to settle up his affairs, he went by way of Tasmania and called on his Blyth cousins there and then went on to India.

Then a Bank in India dissolved and closed down and he lost a lot of money, as did many others, and he had to keep on with his work then for more years.

Meantime young Mr Blyth was learning farming in Whangarei, he made many friends and was very popular with them all, then Miss Margarita Puckey came to Whangarei to visit her Aunt and Uncle Mr and Mrs Gilbert Muir and their family, she was very pretty and was called by her cousins "The Queen of the North". Then the young people all had very pleasant times with parties and picnics and riding parties. After one such party, they all sang as they rode home in the moonlight "Fair shines the moon tonight", the girls all sang very sweetly, they all had good voices and so had the men and it sounded lovely and it was ever after a favourite song of Mr Blyths.

Shortly afterwards he came north to Oruru in the Mangonui Country and went on to a farm owned by the Hunt family to continue with the lessons in farming, then when he considered he had learnt all they could teach him, he went onto his own land which he called Blythsdale at the suggestion of his sister Mrs Angelo.

Later on he became engaged to Miss Margarita Puckey and they were married at the Kaitaia church by her Uncle, the Rev Joseph Matthews, on the 19th of December 1866. They lived at Blythsdale for some years and then they moved to Wharncliffe which his father had bought from Mrs Hunt and her family for his son Herbert, he also bought Hikuranga Hill (an extinct volcano) from the Maoris. The Maoris stipulated that the payment for it must be in gold, 'golden sovereigns', so Mr Blyth sent to England to his father, who sent the money (through arrangements with the Banks) out to his son and the Maoris who had any claim to Hikuranga Hill were all called together at Taipa. Then the hats of all the claimants were placed on the ground in a row and the bag of gold was given to the chief to parcel out to them. Then the chief places a sovereign into his own hat and then one into the next mans hat, then another again into his own and another into the next mans hat and so on all down the row of hats and when someone expostulated saying he was getting double what the others were the Maoris said "no! it was quite right, as he was the chief and besides, he was doing the work", so all were satisfied.

Mr Blyth farmed there for some years, but there were no markets for his produce and there were no roads, but only a water worn track over a high broken range and he finally began teaching school at Oruru and rode backwards and forwards over the range to school and back, but it was a wearing life and a lonely one for his wife and three little ones, Eva Val and baby Mary, while he was away, so he took them all to live in Oruru and let the farm to settlers for grazing. After some years we left Oruru for the Russell school which was offered to him. I Caroline Blyth was the baby then and the fourth child, when we went to live in Russell. When I was two years old my brother Edward, or Teddy as we called him, was born and some years later another sister Annie and later still Minnie, the youngest - my parents then had seven children - we had all left Russell by then and lived first at Waihaha up the Waihaha Inlet and then later at Tangiteroria on the Northern Wairoa.

My father had taught school for twenty years and came back to the farm when his eldest son Valentine was grown up and his eldest daughter Evelyn Matilda was about to be married. She married Alan Leslie Allan of Hawkes Bay and they were married in the church at Mangonui on 30th Aug 1893.

In the meantime his brother Herbert Blyth had become an actor instead of the lawyer his father wished him to be. He took the stage name of Maurice Barrymore and in America married Miss Georgina Drew, she was an actress and her mother Mrs Drew also an actress, was called the American 'Queen of Tragedy' and her two brothers John Drew and Sidney Drew were also successful actors.

Herbert Blyth and his wife Georgina or Georgie as she was usually called had three children Lionel Herbert Blyth, Ethel Georgie Blyth and John Blyth or Jack as the family always called him. When they too went on the stage they took their fathers stage name of Barrymore and called themselves Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore and John Barrymore - They too have become famous.

Our grandfather William Edward Blyth never came back to New Zealand as he had intended, the extra years in India had undermined his health and he went to England to consult one of the most eminent doctors of that time, Sir M____ McKenzie, but the doctors could not cure him and he died (still in his fifties) of Brights Disease. Poor dear, he fully intended coming out to New Zealand again and had sent his heavy luggage out and most of it had to be sent back again to England.

Herbert Blyth (Maurice Barrymore) was not only an actor, but also a Playwright, and at the height of his career, he leased the Haymarket Theatre in London for eight years. And his sisters Mrs J. Angelo and Mrs E.C. Wace have told how he sometimes invited them to see him act and how proud they were of their brother.

John Barrymore too caused a sensation in England with his acting of Hamlet.