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The Man who Built the Old Oak, Mangonui - John McIntosh

John McIntosh left Skipness, Scotland in the early 1840s, setting sail for New Zealand. He landed in Auckland and is recorded as buying land in the Manukau area in 1842. He worked around the area for a few years with the Police Census showing that he lived in Shortland Street in 1845. Family tradition says that he helped to plant some of the trees in the Auckland Domain. He would walk up into the Waitakere Hills , and bring the young kauri trees on his back, to plant in the Domain.

No one knows why he decided to go north to the Whangaroa Harbour area. The exact date when John arrived at Whangaroa Harbour is unknown, but when he arrived he saw many possibilities in trading. Besides that, the place appealed to him. The harbour with its massive outcrops of rocks, and the majestic scenery made an impact on him as he entered the Heads for the first time.

As he sailed up past Peach Island he could still see traces of earlier Maori habitation there. Carrying on up to opposite the dome of St. Paul’s Rock, he could see a few houses nestling at the foot of it on the edge of the water. Across the harbour from there, the high hills behind the foreshore were covered in the tall kauri trees that the district was famous for. The point called Otawhiri, jutted out into the harbour, behind little Red Island, beyond which the ill fated "Boyd" lay buried in the mudflats. Parts of her were still visible at low tide, even after nearly forty years.

John decided to stay and settle there and started off at Otawhiri Point. There was a small Maori Pah on what was known as Oio Point which juts out from the main point of Otawhiri, but the population of this was declining and eventually faded out altogether after a few more years. Further up in Kuwaru Bay, were the buildings of the Catholic Mission Station, which had started in 1839. The Station comprised of four wooden buildings.... a church, a presbytery house, cook-house and a small school building.

Otawhiri Point was not developed at this time, and it seems that John may have been the one to do this. Just who he bought the land from has not been definitely established. There was a Mr. Gramma involved somewhere, or it may have been directly from the Maoris. Later, John also bought the block known as "Oio" which included the old Maori pah. John built his depot on the end of Otawhiri Point, and also put up a shanty to live in, under an old karaka tree. The local Maoris called him "Hone Karaka" as they couldn’t get their tongue around the "McIntosh"!

John had always had green fingers, and soon had a thriving garden going. In fact, he had such a good crop of onions one year, that he sent them up to Mangonui to sell.

When the Catholic Mission was abandoned in 1850, John moved into the Mission house. It was much larger than his little shanty, and more comfortable as well. In 1853, John heard that the schooner "Boyd" (named after the ill fated vessel burnt in 1809) was up for sale. She was a 35 ft. boat which had been used for trading up and down the coast. John bought her and traded with her himself, going down to Auckland and bringing back supplies for the settlers, as well as making frequent trips around to Mangonui.

In 1856, John bought 110 acres up the Iwitaua gully. The Iwitaua is a wide tidal estuary, running up into the hills to the right of the rocky outcrop known as Taratara Rock. Here were some of the finest kauri trees in the district, and John started cutting these trees out. The smaller ones he sold for spars to the incoming ships, and the larger ones were sold for timber to the merchants. But the best ones were carefully reserved for his own use.

It was also in 1856, that John’s father, Archibald McIntosh, came out to New Zealand. His death certificate stated that he had been in New Zealand for thirty years, so that made 1856 the year he arrived here. Other than that, not much is known about him.

In the 1857 Census, John was classed as a freeholder and a boat builder, so it was obvious that he was a very busy man.

For some time now, John had the feeling that it was time he was married and settled down. None of the local girls appealed to him and as he was forty by now he felt the need to settle down.

He had kept in touch now and again with his Scottish relations, and now he thought of them again, and the girls in the family. He was a man of means now, and could provide handsomely for a wife.

About the same time, he bought a block of land in the growing Mangonui township area of 220 acres (allotment 63) at ten pounds an acre. It sloped gently down to the shores of the upper Mangonui Harbour, and was a handsome spot for a house. Not only that, he had the timber ready from his block at Iwitaua. It was a simple matter to haul the logs down to the river, and float them out of the harbour and around the coast to Mangonui behind his boat. By this time , he felt that there was more future for him at Mangonui than to continue at Totara North.

He leased his land and business at Otawhiri Point, and moved to Mangonui. Here he managed the Donnybrook Hotel for Thomas Flavell, while overseeing the erection of his handsome building right on the foreshore. The main road ran around the foreshore of the harbour here, and all the traffic of the settlement went right past his front door. He could foresee a great future here, when the road improved, and he could have a genteel clientele for a hotel here. He didn’t want the rough and ready type of place that the other hotel was.

There were unlimited possibilities here, he wrote home to his Uncle Alexander Chalmers. Not only that, if life in the north didn’t appeal to him, Auckland town was far from primitive, and should suit the family admirably !

So the Chalmers family decided to emigrate, lock stock and barrel, to the new colony , under the sponsorship of their energetic nephew. John would have met the Chalmers family in Auckland when they arrived in 1861. It had been about twenty years since he had left the "auld country", and last seen them. His mind was set on the eldest girl.... after all, she would be nearest to his age, although still considerably younger. But something went wrong there. Whatever the reason, she had changed her mind by the time the family arrived in Auckland. But there was a happy ending to the story, as Jean (or Jane as she was always known), stepped into her sister’s place, and accepted John. They were married at the Chalmers’ residence on December 5th 1861. John was now 41, and Jane just 23. She would have been only a tiny wee girl when John left Scotland.

Jane settled into life in the small settlement of Mangonui fairly quickly, and nearly a year later on 7th November 1862, gave birth to their first child, a boy who they named John Archibald. It was also in 1862, that John applied for his first liquor license, which was granted on July 21st. This went greatly against Jane’s grain. She had strict principles, she said, and besides, she couldn’t stand the noise and the smell of the patrons as they drank their grog in the bar below. However, nothing deterred John from this side of the business, and he continued to renew the license annually. Jane was a staunch Presbyterian, while John didn’t seem to have any convictions one way or another.

Nearly two years after the birth of John Archibald, Christina followed , but died at birth much to Jane’s grief. She was determined that nothing was going to go wrong next time, and so she made sure that she was in Auckland for the birth of her third child. Andrew Crawford was born on 28th November 1865.

It was also around 1865, that John opened the premises as a boarding house. This did not please Jane much, as with one youngster, and another one on the way, as well as possibly her father-in-law in the house, she felt she had enough to do ! She wanted a place of their own, away from the business of the pub.

The McIntosh family continued to increase. Jane had arrived on July 16th 1867, but she was a poorly baby, and didn’t survive long . So once again, the grieving parents laid a wee body to rest. James Chalmers arrived the following year in December 1868. So they had three children now, with John Archibald being six years of age.

John agreed rather reluctantly to build a new place for the family. It was a substantial house, a one storey home, with a basement at the back. The workmanship and quality of the timber are still seen today, in the good state of preservation that it is in. John named the new house "Ferintosh" after a family property in Scotland. Once again his green fingers came to the fore, and he planted a large orchard behind the house, mainly of citrus fruit trees which flourished. John was fascinated by these trees, as coming from the cold climate of Scotland, nothing like that grew there.

Jane was more settled now, and enjoyed her new home. Mary was born in April 1871, after a gap of over two years, but it was another still-born birth. Some time during this same year, Christina took ill and also died, aged seven. Jane mourned her two dead children, and then found that she was pregnant again. Robert was born in June 1872, but didn’t survive long. He died six weeks later on July 20th 1872. This left their family being John Archibald aged nearly ten, Andrew coming up seven, and James (or Jim as he was called) nearly four.

Grandfather Archibald was into his eighties by now, but was still hale and hearty.

John had not forgotten his business interests at Otawhiri Point during this time. He still owned the property there, although it was leased out with the store still running.

In 1870 John heard that the Catholic property next to his block at Otawhiri was up for sale, so he bought it, thus making the three blocks into one property, which it has remained to this day.

When John and Jane moved into their new house, John decided to lease the hotel (it was still called the Mangonui Hotel at this stage) to John Frear from the Oruaiti valley. This left John free to concentrate on his farm which he proceeded to develop, and the large orchard and garden which he planted out at the back of his house.

There is no information about the family at all in the next few years, except the birthdates of the rest of the family as they came along. Roderick McArthur was born on March 19th 1874, and Arthur arrived in 1875; he too, didn’t survive long, and another wee grave joined the others. In 1877, Florence Campbell was born and on 16th September 1879, Douglas McCheyne completed the family.

In 1875 John Frear handed in his resignation as lessee of the hotel, saying that his sister Emma and her husband Henry Littleproud were coming back from Auckland and would be willing to take it over. This is what happened, and they continued with the lease for a number of years.

There were six surviving children in the family as they grew up, with Grandfather Archibald still being very much a member of the family, and very alert in his mind. He didn’t like the idea that he needed sticks to get around even though he was 93. John had turned sixty this year, and was starting to feel a few aches and pains in his bones, but nothing to slow him down.

There was an attic in John’s new house, and he stored all sorts of things up in there. He even had a coffin stored there that he had built !

During the winter of 1880 there had been a considerable amount of rain fall. By the time August arrived, the rivers were swollen again with yet another downpour. It didn’t take much extra rain to top up the Oruaiti River that flowed into the Mangonui Harbour into a flood. On the last day of the month, John Archibald had to go over to the valley, across the river for some reason. Jane was worried as she watched him go, and as time went by without him returning, their worst fears were realised.

When the horse turned up later riderless, a search party went out, but when the old timers saw the state of the river at the crossing place, they shook their heads. "He could never have made it", they said as searched fruitlessly up and down the banks. And so it proved to be. Whatever happened, no-one ever knew for sure, but a week later as Joe Penney was fishing off the end of the Mangonui Wharf, he saw something floating by in the water. He raised the alarm, and the police pulled young John Archibald’s body out of the harbour.

It was a dreadful shock to the whole district, and it was with a heavy heart that John crawled up into the attic and brought down the coffin that he had stored there. The coroner’s official report stated that it was a case of accidental death by drowning at the Wharetana Crossing of the Oruaiti River on 30th August 1880.

John’s business affairs in regard to his property at Otawhiri Point was anything but straightforward. There had been a bit of mishandling and the tenant had disappeared leaving another man he had "sold" it to in a real dilemma. It was the last thing John wanted to hear. He didn’t want to be bothered with the business over there, and he hadn’t received his full payment either.

By 1886 old Archibald was getting more frail all the time with him being well into his nineties. As the years had passed, the family joke was always "when Grandfather reaches 100!" He was getting more dependent on his sticks now, and eventually had to use crutches to get around at all. But he was a determined old man, and didn’t give in until he had to. He finally died on the 18th September 1886, just six months short of his 100th birthday. The family laid him to rest in the Mangonui Churchyard beside his grandson John Archibald.

There were more changes just round the corner for the McIntosh family in Mangonui. John finally sold the Mangonui Hotel....... Mr. John Bray bought it, and then built the present Mangonui Hotel further round the foreshore near the courthouse and Post Office. He transferred the liquor license and the name to the new building, and it was then that the Old Oak received its name. The oak tree outside the building had grown to a considerable size by now, and was well over 100 years old when it finally died. A young oak tree was planted to replace it in the late 1980s, and is flourishing at the present time. The Old Oak continued as a boarding house for quite some years, sometimes with a liquor license, and sometimes without.....during the 1990s it was run as a Backpacker’s Hostel, and it’s condition and history were a particular feature of the place.

It was 1907 now, and John was failing.... he was 86, and he knew he wouldn’t reach the grand old age of his father, and neither he did. He died on 1st February 1907, and was buried in the same plot as his father and son at the Mangonui churchyard. Jane put "Ferintosh" (the Mangonui home) where she had spent so many happy years on the market. Charles Harris bought it, and it remained in his family for many years. It is in remarkably good condition today, a credit to the workmanship of John McIntosh, and the maintenance the subsequent owners have given it.