When Dominic Harris arrived in Port Chalmers in 1863 with his wife and four children on a cattle boat from Gippsland, Victoria, his family’s origins were markedly different from those of the province’s Scots pioneers.
Dominic was born in 1830 in Lubec, Maine. His Irish parents had immigrated from Roscommon in their homeland in 1818, settling on the shore of the Lubec Narrows, at the entrance to Passamaquoddy Bay, near the border with Canada.
Dominic became a seaman while still in his teens, before heading for San Francisco in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush. With him was a friend from Lubec, delightfully named Captain Ebenezer McDuffie.
In 1850 the 163-tonne brigantine, Casilda, was advertised for sale in the Daily Alta. They bought it, rounded up a crew of eight and one paying passenger, a Mr Barff, and headed for Australia, where the next gold rush was under way.
Obviously McDuffie or some of his crew had navigational skills and perhaps prior knowledge of the Pacific. They sailed Casilda to Huahine in the Society Islands, filled it with oranges packed by Tahitians, and made for Melbourne, arriving in May, 1852.
They sold the ship and the oranges and bought horses and wagons to start carting to the goldfields in Castlemaine, Bendigo and the Ovens (the area around Beechworth in north-eastern Victoria). They paid up to £180 for each horse, a small fortune, and the two enterprising Americans prospered, netting about £200 each trip.
Winifred was born in 1834 in Hobart, Tasmania. Her Irish mother, Catherine Cavanagh, had arrived the previous year as a free settler on the ship Eliza, and married John Connor. The extended families moved to Sydney, then Melbourne, where Winifred’s uncle, James Cavanagh, ran an infamous pub, the Brian Boru - the first of several pubs to feature in the Harris annals.
Dominic married Winifred Connor at St Francis’ Church, Melbourne, in July, 1852. They lived in Melbourne for a time, then moved to Gippsland, where Dominic and some mates struck payable gold.
Former seaman Dominic worked his passage on the barque Oregon en route to Port Chalmers, accompanied by his wife and children, arriving at Port Chalmers on August 6, 1863.
Dominic went back to his maritime roots, becoming a waterman, ferrying passengers and cargoes from ship to shore at Port Chalmers. He later ballasted ships with a partner, Alexander McKenzie, from a quarry near Tayler Point.
Their way in Otago was paved to some extent by Winifred’s younger brother, John Connor, a master printer trained in Melbourne. John had briefly joined Gabriel’s rush and worked a claim in 1862, but decided on the greater stability offered by work at his trade. He began a long association of the extended family with printing and publishing in Dunedin.
Connor was employed by John Dick in the office of the Colonist newspaper from mid-1863; then as an overseer with "Willie" Mills and John Hopcraft in a firm that morphed into Mills, Dick and Company, which printed several early newspapers. Among other titles, Connor helped produce the Guardian and "drew the first copy of the Evening Star" — presumably a proof — from the press.
In the early 1870s, with two associates, he formed the printing firm Woodfield, Jolly and Connor with an office in the Octagon, where, from 1873, the New Zealand Tablet was printed.
Connor was manager, and Thomas Bracken (author of the New Zealand national anthem) worked as a canvasser and journalist. They worked with the Catholic Bishop Moran to establish The Tablet as a voice for Catholics in Dunedin, as they did not think they were getting a fair go from the daily newspapers, particularly the Otago Daily Times. In fact there was an ongoing and often heated war of printed words between local parish priest, Father Cleary and ODT columnist Civis over sectarian matters. The antipathy towards the ODT was widely shared by the Catholic community, the Harris extended family included.
This attitude was no doubt reinforced by the fact that a number of family members gained employment at The Tablet, or were in some way connected to it.
Alfred Harris, second son of Dominic and Winifred, and Connor’s nephew, was appointed foreman printer; son, also John Connor, was on the payroll; and various family members were employed as hand typographers, much to the annoyance of the printers’ union, which felt the jobs should go to union members.
There is a double irony in all this. From the 1960s on, several Harris family descendants, three and four generations away from the old family prejudices, were employed in the editorial and other sections of the Otago Daily Times; one or two being prominent in the Journalists’ Union.
To take the narrative back a few steps: in 1865, the Harris family resided in Te Ngaru, Lower Harbour, and in 1868, with Alexander McKenzie, took up a Crown grant of 50 acres stretching from the shore up to the Heyward Point Rd above Aramoana.
The Harrises cleared the land and farmed there for 40 years, building a solid stone house, which still stands as part of a modern residence.
One daughter raised there, Catherine, married James J. Marlow, in 1889, who was active in public life as mayor of St Kilda and deputy mayor of Dunedin, and in a host of other roles, including a directorship of The Tablet.
Their family of 10 children was the foundation of the largest branch of Harris descendants. Included in the early generations were priests and nuns, and later many others who have made positive contributions to the Otago and wider New Zealand community. Among the better known are the Boock family: former New Zealand cricketer, Stephen Boock, journalist/writer and publicist Richard Boock and author and television writer/producer Paula Boock.
The eldest Harris daughter, Elizabeth, also married a mayor: John Le Fevre, at one time mayor of Hampden, Otago; and the youngest, Helena, married David Le Fevre, in later life a stock buyer for a Canterbury freezing works.
David and Helena’s son followed his forebears by becoming a printer, and was president — unopposed for 25 years — of the Canterbury-Westland Printers’ Union, and a national vice-president of the NZ Union.
Alfred Harris, the Connors and Thomas Bracken were involved in the formation of the Otago Irish Rifles volunteer unit in the 1880s, Alfred being a colour sergeant.
The Harris/Connor family launched into pub ownership in a big way when they severed their connection with the Tablet in the 1890s. They had held licences for the Globe and the Maitland Hotels for short periods as early as 1877, but in 1899 the farm at Heyward Point was mortgaged and they bought two of Dunedin’s leading hotels, the City and the Criterion, diagonally opposite one another at the intersection of Princes St and Moray Pl.
They also bought Mountney’s Commercial Hotel in Cromwell, and Alfred Harris operated the Caledonian in Alexandra and later the Empire in Waimate (known as the cyclists’ hotel, perhaps because Alfred had been captain of the Otago Cycling Club).
John Harris, Alfred’s brother, owned the Princess Hotel in Invercargill briefly, and was the licensee of the Oriental in Dunedin for about eight years at the beginning of the 20th century, and John Connor had a pub in Riverton.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of Harris descendants are spread throughout Otago and wider afield, in occupations that a semi-literate American seaman would know little about: teacher, journalist, HR manager, public service executive, IT specialist, communications and public relations specialist, adventure tourism operator, lawyer, project manager, supermarket owner, insurance broker; and other callings he might well recognise.
Seven generations or more separate today’s family members from him and Winifred, and many have different surnames.
While a lot of them may not even know the solid and salubrious foundations from which they originated, it’s interesting that some still write for publication, frequent the odd tavern, or travel extensively in search of new experiences.
• Tony Harris is a retired journalist.
