The women of the clan Kelly, O’Grady and Dron

Lizzie Dron, née Kelly, portrait by her nephew John Eamon Kelly

I didn’t know many stories about my Pahiatua family, but I had been told my Great Great Uncle William Kelly had the first section which became the family farm. When I went to Archives NZ and looked at the block files for Mangahao XVIII, Special Village Settlement Sections 62 and 63 I learned this wasn’t true.

The first clan member to purchase a leasehold was Brigid O’Grady, and that story is told elsewhere in this blog https://kellyogradydronfamilyhistory.com/ogrady-dron-and-kelly-clan-pahiatua-special-village-settlement-sections-62-and-63/. Brigid had a daughter called Bridget and a son called James. They came to New Zealand in 1884, and Brigid started the process of purchasing a leasehold in 1888.

In 1891 her daughter Bridget married our Great Great Uncle William Kelly. We are yet to work out when or how he came to New Zealand from County Laoise, Ireland, but they were married in St Brigid’s Church, Pahiatua.

Presumably they lived on the farm with Brigid and James, who purchased the leasehold on the section over the road in 1899 but by 1903 was in the asylum, and again, that story is told elsewhere https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=FL86498823 .

William died in the early 1920s, and Brigid O’Grady in 1922. Bridget Kelly carried on running the farm, but her husband William’s niece Elizabeth Mary Kelly came out from County Laoise to help. This was interesting timing as it was 1923, the end of the Irish Civil War. Lizzie hadn’t lived on a farm so far as we know ; she’d been raised by her parents who owned a bakery on Chapel St in Portarlington, County Laoise. But she appears to have adapted pretty well to farm life as you can see here, with a cow and her aunt by marriage Bridget Kelly.

Lizzie Kelly, a cow, Bridget Kelly holding the bucket.

We have photos from pretty early on showing the Dron family from Section 23 along the road and round the corner in the Pahiatua Special Village Settlement.

Lizzie Kelly, Annie Dron and Bridget Kelly in front of a car, looking like they are dressed up to go to town.

Actually, it turns out they were on an epic road trip around the North Island. When Lizzie came to live on the farm after her uncle William died, Bridget decided she wanted Lizzie to learn to drive. She asked the local car dealer to teach her, and intimated that if he did, she would buy a car from him. However he then saw the women driving round town in a car purchased elsewhere, so the car dealer took Bridget to court. She got off without a charge because there was no written contract according to Papers Past ‘Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3164, 3 April 1924, Page 5’.

The Dron family were of Norwegian stock, again referred to elsewhere on this blog. They only had 10 acres; a considerably smaller amount of farm than the Kelly/O’Gradys who had by the 1920s consolidated sections 62 and 63, so they had nearly 40 acres. The family ran dairy cows, and had pigs to feed the skim milk to.

When Bridget Kelly died in the early 1940s her obituary in the local paper was pretty epic:

Obituary Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 198, 22 August 1940, Page 4

MRS. BRIGID KELLY, OF MANGATAINOKA Mrs. Brigid Agnes Kelly, a well known resident of the Mangatainoka district, who passed away recently at the age of 68 years, was born at Tipperary, Ireland, in 1872, being a daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. O’Grady. At the age of 13 years she left for New Zealand with her mother, her father having died. They arrived at Napier in 1885. From Napier, Mrs. O ’Grady and her daughter went on to Waipawa where they stayed for a short time before taking up their residence at Maharahara. In 1886 they removed to the Pahiatua district. Six years later the deceased lady was married to Mr. William Kelly and they took up farming at Mangatainoka where the late Mrs. Kelly had remained until her death. She was immensely popular throughout the district, being of a kindly and charitable disposition. Besides being associated with the Women’s Institute movement at Mangatainoka, Mrs. Kelly was actively interested in anything connected with the good of the Pahiatua district. During the last war she received from the Red Cross Society a medallion for her sterling work. Her husband predeceased her twenty years ago and there was no family. Messrs. Michael Kelly (Wellington) and John Kelly (Frankton Junction) are nephews, while Miss Elizabeth Kelly (Mangatainoka) is a niece. At the funeral a large number of friends and relatives gathered to pay their last respects. The Requiem Mass in the morning and the service at the graveside were conducted by Rev. Father Cashman The pall-bearers were Messrs. Michael and John Kelly, both nephews of the deceased, Colin Dron, A. Pilkington, W. Tuohy, T. Murphy and C. Lett.

But it turned out that she hadn’t actually resolved ownership for her mother Brigid O’Grady’s property upon her death (it’s a bit confusing with their similar names, but Brigid is the one who died in 1922) and so it all had to be done for both of them at the time of Bridget’s death.

Those pall-bearers Michael and John Kelly (the author’s grandfather, whom we all called Jack) had to work out how to keep Lizzie on the farm, as Bridget had not passed it to her, as everyone expected. Despite the above obituary saying ‘there was no family’, that simply meant Bridget and William didn’t have kids. Bridget did leave money for her brother, unmentioned in the obituary, who was still in the asylum, and William and her own nieces and nephews. Lizzie and her mate from round the corner Colin Dron then decided to marry, and she was able to purchase the leaseholds for the farm. So that meant for the third generation of the family, the women were on the leasehold of the land. Colin was the final family member to live on the farm as he outlasted Lizzie by about twenty years, and in the 1980s he was able to convert the leasehold to freehold at last.

Colin Dron above, and Lizzie above him.

There are so many beautiful images of the families on the farms. The author’s grandmother Jean is in some photos sitting on the back of horse carts, and sometimes she’s on a motorbike! There’s Lizzie on the tractor, and taking a photo…it all looks so relaxed and joyous. The McGreevy and Kelly families visited often, and Colin and Lizzie took photos. We haven’t identified everyone yet, but we hope to when we visit Pahiatua Museum in April 2025 and catch up with some of the people who knew Colin and Lizzie.