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...
I wanted to know what happened.
Working backwards from the death notice, his name surfaced again as part of the grocery firm Jenkins & Chandler, right in central Timaru. And then I found the fire.
The Timaru Herald of 4 June 1870 carries a long report of a destructive fire that began at the back of Jenkins & Chandler’s shop a little after eight o’clock in the evening. A police constable saw the smoke first. The fire brigade formed bucket lines from wells in Barnard Street and at McCaa’s bakery, but within minutes the flames had taken full hold of the grocers’ building. The entire structure, along with the adjoining block owned by Mr Cullmann, was lost.
Next to them, Mr Wadsworth, a bootmaker, lost everything and had no insurance. The last shop in the row — unoccupied — burned too. The article says almost nothing was saved from any of those buildings.
Across the road stood Bowker’s Dining Rooms, the roof catching fire three separate times. Volunteers threw wet blankets over the shingles to stop the spread. Only the direction of the wind saved that side of the street. The office of Ball & Turnbull — the same Turnbull family who later appeared as major creditors — was emptied in a panic. Their books, stock and papers were carried out into the night as they waited to see whether their building would ignite.
By the time the flames finally died down, the block was nothing but glowing beams and collapsed chimney stacks. And, as if the night needed more chaos, a second fire broke out at Mr Beldy’s tobacconist shop by the Bank of New Zealand, forcing onlookers to smash open the door to extinguish it.
This wasn’t a small fire. It was a turning point.
The following months show its fallout. In the Borough Council minutes, Jenkins & Chandler appealed for rate relief because their premises no longer existed. In August the legal notices recorded a deed of composition filed in the Supreme Court — the only way their creditors would accept partial repayment. And these weren’t minor debts. The names included Richard Turnbull and Robert Ross Taylor, major early Timaru merchants. The Supreme Court confirmed the deed in September 1870.
And then, barely a month later, Nathaniel Chandler died.
The timing is stark:
Fire in June.
Insolvency in August.
Court order in September.
Death on 22 October.
I can’t say what happened in his final days. There is no inquest report, no newspaper elaboration. All I know is that he was far from home, financially ruined, and without family in Timaru. With no money for a private burial, he was laid to rest in Row 0, the public ground.
But the story didn’t end with him.
ABOVE: 1870 photograph of what was then known as South Road, Timaru (present day Stafford Street) showing construction underway of Richard Turnbull’s Stone Store up the hill on the left. On the corner is Richard Turnbulls shop that was rebuilt in stone after the 1868 fire. – Alfred Charles Barker, Canterbury Museum ID 13/57.
While digging through cemetery records, I found another name: Jenkins, Henry John — interred 16 November 1877. Section: Free Ground. Row 0. Plot 19.
A Jenkins, buried in the same public section, seven years after the fire. And when you look back at the partnership, at the insolvency notices, at the names listed over and over again, it becomes difficult to see this as anything but connected. His business partner — the “Jenkins” in Jenkins & Chandler — appears to have ended his days in almost the same way: financially ruined, quietly buried, with no family able to step in.
Both men undone by the same fire.
Both pushed into insolvency.
Both unable to rebuild.
Both resting in Row 0.
Meanwhile, others affected that night — like Bowker, whose dining rooms nearly ignited, or the Turnbulls, whose office was emptied in haste — recovered, rebuilt, or even prospered. Bowker later became a land agent and gave the Bowker Arch that still stands on Otipua Road. Cullmann remained a landlord. Ball & Turnbull continued trading and grew in influence. Some rose again from the smoke. Others never did.
That, more than anything, is what Row 0 teaches me. These weren’t “paupers” in the way we imagine. They were people whose stories turned on a single event, a single loss, a single season of bad luck — people caught in the fragile reality of early settlement, where one fire could unravel an entire life.
Nathaniel Chandler has no headstone. Neither, it seems, does Jenkins. But their story sits there woven through the newspapers, the legal notices, the fire reports, and the cemetery maps, waiting patiently to be read. And now, at least, they are remembered — two men whose partnership burned down in a single night and whose names now lie together in Row 0.
This article explains the fire that destroyed his shop: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT18700607.2.13
DESTRUCTIVE FIRE IN TIMARU.
(From the Timaru Herald, June 4.)
A destructive fire broke out in Timaru on Wednesday night last at the shop of Messrs Jenkins and Chandler, grocers, by which it, and the small block of buildings adjoining, belonging to Mr Cullmann, were utterly destroyed. It appears that about 8 o’clock, or a few minutes after, a police constable saw smoke issuing from the back of Messrs Jenkins and Chandler’s premises, and at once gave the alarm of fire.
In a few minutes crowds of people assembled in the roadway opposite, and about 20 or 30 men of the Timaru Fire Brigade under the command of Mr Cliff, captain of the Brigade, were also quickly on the spot. Mr Cliff, having first sent his men round the town to procure as many buckets as possible, then disposed of them to the best advantage, forming one line to pass buckets from a well in Barnard Street, and another line to a well at McCaa’s, baker, a short distance down the street.
It was soon found that the utmost efforts of the brigade were unavailing to check the progress of the fire, as in a few minutes after it was discovered by the police constable it had taken a firm hold of Messrs Jenkins and Chandler’s premises, and it was seen that the whole block of buildings must be sacrificed.
22 Barnard Street, today
Survey Map 1874...
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18701029.2.7?end_date=31-12-1870&items_per_page=10&page=7&query=Chandler&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&start_date=01-01-1870&title=AMBPA%2CAG%2CASHH%2CEG%2CGLOBE%2CKAIST%2CLT%2CNCGAZ%2COO%2CCHP%2CSCANT%2CTS%2CSUNCH%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT18700607.2.13?end_date=31-12-1870&items_per_page=10&page=3&query=Chandler&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&start_date=01-01-1870&title=AMBPA%2CAG%2CASHH%2CEG%2CGLOBE%2CKAIST%2CLT%2CNCGAZ%2COO%2CCHP%2CSCANT%2CTS%2CSUNCH%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA#image-tab
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18700803.2.2.1?end_date=31-12-1870&items_per_page=10&page=5&query=Chandler&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&start_date=01-01-1870&title=AMBPA%2CAG%2CASHH%2CEG%2CGLOBE%2CKAIST%2CLT%2CNCGAZ%2COO%2CCHP%2CSCANT%2CTS%2CSUNCH%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA#image-tab
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18700910.2.23.4?end_date=31-12-1870&items_per_page=10&page=6&query=Chandler&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&start_date=01-01-1870&title=AMBPA%2CAG%2CASHH%2CEG%2CGLOBE%2CKAIST%2CLT%2CNCGAZ%2COO%2CCHP%2CSCANT%2CTS%2CSUNCH%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA#image-tab
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18700831.2.19.5?end_date=31-12-1870&items_per_page=10&page=6&query=Chandler&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&start_date=01-01-1870&title=AMBPA%2CAG%2CASHH%2CEG%2CGLOBE%2CKAIST%2CLT%2CNCGAZ%2COO%2CCHP%2CSCANT%2CTS%2CSUNCH%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA#image-tab
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP18700916.2.14?end_date=31-12-1870&items_per_page=10&page=6&query=Chandler&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&start_date=01-01-1870&title=AMBPA%2CAG%2CASHH%2CEG%2CGLOBE%2CKAIST%2CLT%2CNCGAZ%2COO%2CCHP%2CSCANT%2CTS%2CSUNCH%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA#image-tab