Tauanga City Libraries

The Missionaries: 1860 - 1949

Archdeacon Brown and his second wife, Christina 1860-1887

In February 1860 the 56 year old Brown remarried. His second wife was Christina Johnston, originally from Aberdeen, who was living with her brother in Wellington. Although the work of the mission was still continuing, everything was about to change. In 1863 war came to the Waikato, and soon involved Tauranga Maori. In 1864, imperial troops arrived, camping on CMS land, and taking over the recently completed mission institute building, intended as an agricultural college, as their commissariat.

Brown was torn between loyalty to the Maori people to whom he had dedicated his life and his natural bonds with his fellow countrymen. Maori left their sea shore settlements and began strengthening and building pa in the hinterland. The Durham and Monmouth regiments arrived and constructed redoubts in and around Te Papa.

A gate in the southern boundary fence of the mission land allowed travellers access to a traditional Maori track down the Te Papa peninsula. A pa was built near this gate, and the ensuing battle which took place on 21 April 1864, has become known as the battle of Gate Pa. The story is told below. For Brown the consequences were tragic. He was called on to bury not only his well loved Maori converts, but also his new English friends, including all but one of the officers who had dined with him at the mission house on the eve of the battle.

The battle of Te Ranga in May reversed the situation, with the British troops victorious. For Brown, however, and for the Tauranga Maori, life had changed for ever. Soldier settlers were given land previously occupied by Maori. The mission land was surrounded by land confiscated by the government. Maori were forced to abandon ancestral land, and inevitably the work of the mission declined.

In 1873 Brown and Christina purchased the mission house and 6.8 hectares of land surrounding it from the CMS. They renamed their private home The Elms, after the trees growing on the property. The CMS was gradually removing its support of the New Zealand mission. Although Brown continued to preach to those of his converts who remained, he also undertook parochial duties for the Europeans living in the township of Tauranga until an Anglican vicar was appointed in 1873.

Brown died in 1884 at the age of 81, and was buried in the mission cemetery. Christina survived him by only three years. Perhaps surprisingly the property was left not to Celia, but to Christina's family.

Alice Maxwell 1887-1949

After the death in Australia in 1865 of her husband, a Presbyterian minister, Christina's sister, Euphemia Maxwell, brought her young family of two boys and two girls to her brother in Wellington. One of the daughters, Alice, often spent holidays at The Elms, which she grew to love. Christina left the property to Alice as life tenant on condition that her mother and sister Edith moved to The Elms with her. Although the strong-minded Euphemia was reluctant to leave the comparative civilisation of the capital, the three women took up residence in Tauranga in 1887, bringing with them the grand piano which now graces the music room.

Survival was not easy for the three women, and money was always tight. Nevertheless their responsibility for the preservation of the mission station was never forgotten. In 1913, land was subdivided and sold for housing in order to effect necessary repairs to the property, leaving just one hectare around the remaining buildings of the mission house, library, coach house, kitchen block and outbuildings.

After Euphemia's death in 1919, Alice began to open the house and its gardens to interested visitors. The nature of the garden changed, with New Zealand trees and shrubs alongside Brown's original English plantings.

When Alice died in 1949 she had spent 62 years caring for The Elms and sharing her knowledge of the history of the mission station which she had learned from Archdeacon Brown himself.