In 1884 the steam ship Doric departed London for New Zealand.  The SS Doric was a British ocean liner operated by White Star Line (the same company that launched the infamous Titanic) and was the ship’s second year of service.  The regular voyage took approximately 50 days and sailed via Cape Town.  Two of the migrant passengers on the ship were Mary Scanlan and her daughter Annie, from Dublin Ireland, and they disembarked at Bluff to start their new lives.  Mary Scanlan is my great great great grandmother.

Mary and Annie Scanlan both take up lease land in the Chatton district (Waikaka), as do two other settlers – John Francis Day and his younger brother William Henry Day.  The land that is advertised above, and leased by the Scanlan women and the Day brothers, was unfortunately not the pick of the bunch.  The best land around there was picked up at auction during the previous year.

On 14 April 1885 Annie Scanlan and John Day marry at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Invercargill and shortly afterwards they begin their family.  Mary Lily Day, the Waikaka Hotelkeeper who is referred to as one of the witnesses to the ceremony, is the sister of Annie Scanlan and wife of William Day (John’s brother).

In 1886 their first child (and our great grandmother) Catherine Mary Day is born.  Various documents during her life record her as sometimes going by the name Mary Catherine, and at other times Mary Kate, however, her final records in death record her as Catherine.  Her life and endeavours are covered in her own chapter with Thomas Woodhouse.  Over the next twenty years Annie and John have another six children – Francis (1887-1954), Andrew Thomas (1889-1916), Annie Margaret (1892-1958), Lily Mary(1893-1947), Doreen Veronica (1903-1967) and John (1906-1978).

Mary Scanlan passed away in 1890 at the age of 57 and is buried at the Waikaka Cemetery (Plot 42, Old Block 1).  She is buried with Maurice O’Rourke (her son-in-law), Mary Lily Day’s first husband.

Sadly as John Day got older he suffered from mental health issues and this led to his suicide in 1907.  He had travelled to the Shamrock Hotel, at Fairfax in Southland, and while there took his own life by cutting his throat.  He had been diagnosed as having melancholia – a manic-depressive mental condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and often hallucinations and delusions.

This would no doubt have been very hard for Annie as the family was still very young, especially Doreen who was only four and John who was not yet two years old.  She stays on the farm for at least the next 12 years and would have been supported on the land by her older sons Francis and Andrew, while the older girls Annie and Lily helped with the house duties and to raise Doreen and John.

John’s younger brother William passes away two years later in 1909, leaving his wife Mary as a widow and twenty year old son William Andrew Day.

During this time further tragedy befalls Annie when her third child and second oldest son Andrew is killed during WW1 in France. As part of the Otago Regiment he was fighting to take the village of Pozières (23 July – 3 September 1916), during the Battle of the Somme, when he received a compound fracture of the skull sustained in a bayonet charge.

He succumbed to his wounds several days later and his war grave is located at the Kensal Green Cemetery in London, Cemetery Reference: 213. N.Z. Plot. 13. https://www.nzwargraves.org.nz/casualties/andrew-thomas-day

Annie Day winds down the family’s Waikaka interests by 1920 and moves the younger members of the family (Lily, Doreen and John) to Dunedin.  For the next decade they live at 48 Young St in St Kilda Dunedin.

During this time both Lily (1924) and Doreen (1925) marry, although Doreen and her husband William Whitty remain at 48 Young St for the next five years before moving out, leaving just John at home with his mother.

In the 1931 Electoral Roll Annie Day and her son John (now 25) are listed as living in South Dunedin, at 41 Broughton St, just four houses away from Catherine and Thomas Woodhouse and their family (and Grandparents Frank and Emily Woodhouse lived at 57 Broughton St).  In 2018 industrial buildings dominate the street and only #41 remains.

Annie Day’s final years were spent living with her daughter Doreen Driver on their farm at Long Beach.  Catherine and Thomas were also living at Purakaunui at this time, therefore a separate chapter is required to describe Purakaunui further.

She passed away in 1943 and is buried at the Andersons Bay Cemetery, however, the burial records conflict slightly with the details on the headstone as to her exact date of passing and her age.