An auctioneer's hammer said to have been used in the Dunedin firm of McLandress, Hepburn and Co is the subject of today's story.
Alexander McLandress arrived in Dunedin in the early days of the gold rushes, trading briefly as A. McLandress and Co. before teaming up with William Hepburn to form McLandress, Hepburn and Co.
McLandress had come from Australia, where in the late 1850s he had been the first chairman of the municipality of Maryborough in Victoria.
One Saturday in the autumn of 1865, McLandress, a lieutenant in the Otago Light Horse, set off to test-ride a horse he was considering purchasing.
He rode up to Halfway Bush to watch a ploughing match. The horse did not meet with his approval so for the ride back he swapped it for a friend's horse.
Part-way home, the horse lost its footing and left McLandress lying unconscious on the road with a great gash on his forehead.
At 2am the following morning, the 37-year-old was pronounced dead.
His funeral on May 8 was conducted with military honours.
A couple of days later, his pregnant widow Louisa went into labour but the child was stillborn.
Another well known and respected person associated with McLandress, Hepburn and Co was cashier and accountant Robert "Snuffy'' Rutherford, who in 1877 became the first mayor of Caversham.
In 1870, friends at the auction room, whom "Snuffy'' regularly supplied with pinches of snuff, presented him with a silver snuffbox inscribed "To a regular snuffer, R. Rutherford, by the surrounding irregulars''.
Following the death of co-founder William Hepburn in 1887, McLandress, Hepburn and Co disappeared.
The hammer, however, was passed down through succeeding firms James A. Park and Co and Park, Reynolds and Co before being donated to the museum in 1942.
- Peter Read is a curator at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.
