Brigid was the widow of a shoemaker, James O’Grady, from Tipperary in Ireland. Her name was spelt the old way, and sometimes the more modern ‘Bridget’ through her life.

Brigid was in her thirties when James died, and she came to New Zealand on the Victory in 1884 as an assisted immigrant with her children, Bridget and James. On the outside of the trunk you can faintly read ‘Bgt O’Grady, Victory, Wanted on Voyage’. This means they kept the trunk with them for the long trip to New Zealand. Until recently, our family thought Bridget Junior had come alone to work as a servant.

The little family landed at Napier, lived at Woodville for about a year then moved south to Pahiatua where Brigid secured a 20-acre leasehold from her Majesty the Queen on a 999-year lease on the corner of what is now Pahiatua-Pongaroa and Middle Roads.

Their farm was in the Pahiatua Special Village Settlement run by the Government. The original people in the area were Ngāti Kahungunu and Rangitāne ki Te Tonga.

Brigid and her children began farming, and when her boy James grew a little older he secured his own 100-acre holding not far away at Mt Cerberus. We don’t know why, but by the late 1800s he was back at Pahiatua having traded back the Mt Cerberus holding. He then purchased the leasehold on 20 acres across Middle Rd from Brigid’s farm, so the two farms were worked together (the rule at the time was you could only have one 20-acre leasehold to your name and married men were preferred).

Brigid’s daughter Bridget married William Kelly from Portarlington, County Laoise, Ireland, in 1891 at St Bridget’s Church in Pahiatua and they all worked the farms together.

In 1903 James, who was witness at Bridget and William’s wedding, and whose name is scrawled on the bottom inside of the trunk, was violent towards his mother and sister, and his brother-in-law William reported his behaviour to the police. He was declared insane and spent the rest of his life in the asylum system, largely at Porirua. He looked after the pigs for the hospital. An embroidery with his name on it still lives in the family bible.

William died in 1920 and his niece Lizzie Kelly came from the family home in Portarlington to help on the farm. She stayed the rest of her life. She had a brother Jack who came to New Zealand in 1926 and another brother Mick, who settled at Petone. Jack and Mick had kids who stayed at the farm, but Bridget and William, and later Lizzie and Colin had no kids of their own.

Brigid Senior died in 1922 and Bridget Junior took over the running of the farm. She died in 1940, and Lizzie married Colin Dron from down the road, and they ran the farm together until she died; Colin was younger than her, and continued to run the farm until he too died about 20 years later. By this time the government had converted the leasehold and Colin owned the farm outright at the time of his death. The family loved cars, and Lizzie drove her Aunty around in great style, they even did a trip around the Central North Island with Colin and his mother Annie Dron. Colin also loved cars, and one of them has been done up and still lives in the district.

Another neighbouring family, the Vials, were close friends and helped Lizzie and Colin on the farm. The Vials eventually inherited it, and still live there today. The Vials were kind enough to keep the trunk and photos after Colin Dron had died and gave them to the Kelly family when they visited out of the blue – we are all very grateful to Graeme Vial and his wife for their welcome and kindness, and to Aunty Carole (one of the kids who stayed on the farm) and her niece Janine and daughter Paola for knocking on the door of the old farmhouse.

William and Brigid’s great grand nephews and nieces including Carole (Lizzie’s brothers’ children and grandchildren) spent their holidays on the farm and loved it, remembering Lizzie’s strong Irish accent, and the cream that came fresh from the cows. There were also pigs on the farm which were sometimes killed for food and sheep. There was a draught horse which helped with various tasks and chores, and Lizzie also drove the tractor as needed. There were possums in the macrocarpas and frogs over the road in ‘Jim’s Field’.

The nieces and nephews of Brigid and her kin and their children and grandchildren from the O’Greevy and Kelly families still visit the family grave at Mangatainoka where Brigid O’Grady, James O’Grady, and Wiliam O’Grady are buried (it’s a big Irish Catholic cross, hard to miss). Lizzie and Colin Dron lie not far away, and Annie is also in the same graveyard.

Thank you to Gilda McKnight and the Pahiatua Museum for becoming kaitiaki for our family story through this trunk.

Lizzie Dron when she first came to the Pahiatua Farm with Bridget Kelly (née O’Grady), 1920s.

Lizzie, Annie Dron and Bridget Kelly set out on an adventure, probably 1930s.

Lizzie (née Kelly) and Colin Dron in town, probably Palmerston North, 1940s (?).

By Emma-Jean Kelly – Lizzie’s great-niece, with thanks to Janine Hammer, Carole Raffinetti and John Kelly for comments.

If you knew our family at Pahiatua or have stories to share, please comment.

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.

Lizzie, Pam Kelly, Mike Kelly, Colin (1960/70s?)

Grandad Jack Kelly with Colin Dron outside the old shed

Lizzie holding Billy (now called Jack Kelly) and Jack (John) Kelly