Blog: Row 0

Rest in Peace  Nathaniel Chandler. He died, aged 38 Years 22 Oct 1870 at 22 Barnard Street, Aged 38 Years son of late Fredric Chandler Esq of Stratford on Avon, Warwickshire -https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/timaru-herald/1870/10/26/2

Well this blog is about how I went on a hunt to learn about Nathaniel Chandler, who is buried in Row 0, aged just 38. And what I learned... The cemetery record gave me little more than his name and a date, so I turned to the newspapers, expecting perhaps a single line. Instead, the Timaru Herald of 26 October 1870 offered me a death notice: “Chandler, Nathaniel, aged 38, at 22 Barnard Street. Son of the late Frederic Chandler, Esq., of Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire.” He had a father with a title. He had come from a place full of history and English theatre and centuries of life. And yet here he was, in Timaru, alone, in the public ground...

When I first noticed the name John Blackmore listed in Row 0 at Timaru Cemetery, I expected to find at least a death notice to anchor him in the historical record. Instead, there was nothing. So I began looking in Papers Past, Timaru Cemetery registers.

I had a breakthrough in the hunt when I spied a public auction advertisement in the Timaru Herald on 9 February 1870. It read: “Re Blackmore’s Estate – To be sold by public auction… the lease and goodwill of the Otaio Accommodation House, with 150 acres, buildings, furniture, and stock-in-trade.” So I think this could confirm that John Blackmore had died before that date, and that he had been running the Otaio Accommodation House, a rural inn south of St Andrews. If this is the case, and that is the same person, then his estate required a trustee, and the auction listed a substantial amount of property, proving that perhaps he was not a destitute man.

So why was he buried in a public (pauper) grave? Well who knows... But I guess we could factor in that inthe early 1870s, this often happened not through poverty, but through circumstance. If a person died with no family or friends nearby, and no immediate cash available, the burial had to be carried out by the authorities. Estate funds could not be touched until after probate, which meant many perfectly respectable settlers ended up in public plots simply because there was no one available to arrange anything different.

In the end, what emerges is a very human story. John Blackmore was probably an early innkeeper on the Otaio, working and living in a remote district, and he died too suddenly for anyone to place a notice or purchase a plot. His grave in Row 0 may be unmarked, but thanks to a few lines in an 1870 newspaper, his life is no longer lost to the archives:

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18700209.2.15.2?end_date=31-12-1870

By Roselyn Fauth

Free Ground area at Timaru Cemetery. Photo Roselyn Fauth 2025 

When I walk through the older parts of the Timaru Cemetery, I often notice the quiet stretches of grass where no headstones stand. At first glance, it looks like empty space, but it isn’t. Beneath that earth rest hundreds of people who were buried in what was once called free ground. These were the sections reserved for those who could not afford a private plot or who were buried with the help of government assistance.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to learn more about who these people were. It is a deeply sensitive subject, one that touches on hardship, pride, and grief. Sometimes families who needed help felt shame and chose not to record or share the details of a burial. Others had no family or friends left to arrange it. Some were stillborn babies whose burials were quietly managed by hospitals. Whatever the circumstances, each of these people had a story, and together they form part of who we are today.

In November, we plan to unveil a monument at the Timaru Cemetery to honour those who rest in free ground and those who lie without a marker in the wider cemetery. In the past, if public funding was used for a burial, a headstone was not permitted unless the cost was later repaid. I suppose that was to ensure the help went only to those who truly needed it, but it also meant that many graves were left unmarked forever.

In one section of the cemetery there is a large open lawn. I often see people walking their dogs there, enjoying the space, and I realised that many may not know they are walking over more than seven hundred graves. This is the area once known as free ground. Throughout the rest of the cemetery, there are also small gaps between headstones where people rest without a marker to show who they were or that they are even there. These quiet spaces tell a story too, one that is easy to overlook unless you know where to look...

When the reserve for the cemetery was first set aside in the 1860s, burials were led by the local churches. Later, an Act of Parliament transferred responsibility for cemeteries to local councils, which oversaw their management and record keeping. The Timaru Cemetery as we know it today grew from those early church-led burial grounds into a community resting place for all, regardless of circumstance or faith.

I have been learning about some of these people, the quiet ones whose names are written only in the old cemetery ledgers. One of them is Emma Jane Watts, a young mother from Kent, England.

If you have been following our blogs, you'll know we have been on a deep dive into the history of the Free Ground burials at Timaru Cemetery. I thought I might try and learn about some of them.. here is the progress.. maybe you would like to join this history hunt?

These are 222 people are listed in order of burial date. I haven't included the names of the still born babies.

By Roselyn Fauth

As we prepare to unveil the new monument honouring those who lie in the Free Ground and in unmarked graves in the wider Timaru Cemetery,  I have been curious about who some of the people are who rest there. I pulled up the Timaru District Council website, searched for those in Row 0, and put their burials into chronological order. They have no physical markers. No families noted. Just names, ages, and dates online whose burials were assisted by the government.

These were the men and women who fell through the cracks in those early years — the ones with no money, no relatives nearby, or no one willing or able to pay for a burial. Then, out of curiosity, I typed each of their names into Papers Past. I would like to share what I found in Papers Past, about Cornelius O’Connor, buried on 14 July 1863, Row 0, Free Ground, Timaru Cemetery.

He is is one of the earliest recorded government-assisted burials in Timaru, along with: George Miller, 30, buried 27 February 1863, William Peters, 37, buried 18 April 1863, Cornelius Connor, 30, buried 14 July 1863, Joseph Ashe Day, 49, buried 21 July 1863, John Hammond, 47, buried 19 September 1863.

I expected just a death notice, but I found a full Supreme Court murder trial, a night of terror at an accommodation house on the road to Washdyke, and the voices of ordinary people caught in a moment that none of them could undo — all preserved in the pages of the Press and Lyttelton Times.

These men lived hard, itinerant lives in a young settlement. Their deaths passed with little ceremony. Telling O’Connor’s story today restores the dignity of a life that might otherwise remain only a line in a ledger.

His story — which begins in a wooden hotel on a winter’s night — is one of the earliest recorded "row 0" deaths in Timaru to require government assistance for burial. I think it reveals far more about early South Canterbury than a name on a map ever could... I a hunt for history at my local cemetery is more than the interesting headstones, its the un marked humps and hollows too.

This is his story, pieced together entirely from newspaper reports.

By Roselyn Fauth

I’m so grateful to everyone who has supported the new monument for those who rest in Free Ground and unmarked graves. A few people have sent in information about people who rest there, and the story of Flora Mullin is really interesting... How did she come to rest in an unmarked grave? The answer led me from privilege to poverty, from printing presses to pauper’s ground — and from the marble glow of Timaru’s Basilica to a bare patch of earth with no name.

The six lower windows in the nave of this church were donated by the late Michael Mullin as a memorial to himself and his wife Mary Mullin. Pray for them. Michael Mullin was a land agent, a farmer and a hotelier. The six lower windows, made by James Watson & Son, Youghhal, Ireland c. 1939, in the nave of Sacred Heart Basilica, Timaru were donated by the late Michael Mullin as a memorial to himself and his wife Mary Mullin. Michael Mullin and his first wife Mary Sullivan are buried at the Timaru Cemetery and his second wife Flora in the free ground. There are 20 more stained glass windows that were donated. https://scant.scgenealogy.nz/sacred_heart.htm

If her husband could afford to give these windows, how did Flora end up not being able to afford her own grave?

Well, to work that out I had to do a bit of a history hunt, and make a timeline. So here is my deep dive into a woman who is listed in row 0, the pauper grave section — also known as Free Ground — at the Timaru Cemetery. An area for people who needed the assistance of the government to inter them to the ground, with the deal that they couldn’t erect a headstone.

It started with a comment on one of my Facebook posts. Someone kindly shared information about Flora as an example of a person who rests there. There was a fantastic link to research done by genealogists on the history of stained glass windows and the Roman Catholic Basilica on Craigie Avenue in Timaru.

But that wasn’t Flora’s world....

By Roselyn Fauth

My dad, Geoff Cloake, helped me on this history hunt. Turns out that the sixth person ever buried in the Free Ground at Timaru was a man whose life had shaped our maritime history in ways few people today realise: Duncan Cameron, coxswain of the Alexandra Lifeboat.