In 2016 the University of Otago and Southern Archeology excavation took place to find out more about many of the unmarked graves in this graveyard, which was formally closed in 1971.

A report of this has now been published, and we have included a few highlights below for historical interest. At this stage, we have not attached the final report as there are a lot of intimate details and we want to respect the families and descendants of people who were interred there. 

A copy of the full report is held at Peter Mann House, please contact the Diocesan Registrar, Andrew Metcalfe, if you would like to view this. 

The Cemetery

St. John’s Cemetery is an historic Anglican cemetery (Archaeological site H45/56) that was formally established in 1860 (but was probably in informal use three years earlier), it has been disused since 1926, and was officially closed in 1971. At least 75 people are known to have been buried there, but only eight headstones and marked graves remain today. By the second decade of the 21st century the cemetery had been in a state of disrepair for many years, and a local community group, Tokomairiro Project 60 (TP60), was formed with the intention of restoring the graveyard. Their intentions were to repair the remaining headstones (which was completed with the help of the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust), to identify the extent of graves within the cemetery (as the existing post and wire fence does not follow the legal or actual boundaries of the original cemetery), and ultimately create a well-maintained lawn cemetery. The TP60 group contacted Dr Petchey and Professor Buckley to seek assistance in defining the actual cemetery and finding the ‘lost’ graves. The outcome of this collaboration was an opportunity to investigate an early farming community from archaeological and bioarchaeological perspectives.

Beginning the Study

After extensive public consultation, an archaeological authority (No. 2017/171) from Heritage New Zealand and a disinterment licence (No. 17-2016/17) from the Ministry of Health were obtained, and 6 the Anglican Church gave its permission. The archaeological excavation of part of the cemetery took place between 28 November and 16 December 2016. The excavation was preceded by a brief blessing by Bishop Kelvin Wright and whakawātea by Rachel Wesley (Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou Ngāi Tahu) on 27 November, and closed by a blessing by the local Vicar, Rev'd Vivienne Galletly, on 16 December. Each time a new burial was found (generally at the point where the top of the coffin was identified) Rev'd Galletly gave a brief service at the graveside. In cases where individuals were not exhumed (generally due to very poor bone preservation) Rev'd  Galletly gave a burial service prior to the grave being backfilled. The traditional Anglican burial service, as these people would have known it, was used.

The Research Questions

A current theme in New Zealand historical archaeology is the examination of identity, and how this is expressed in the archaeological record (Jones 2012; Petchey & Brosnahan 2016; Smith 2004, 2008). Recent work by historians has examined the British origins of many early settlers, and how they adapted to their new home (Andrews 2009; Holland 2013; Phillips & Hearn 2008; West 2017). New Zealand was often portrayed as offering opportunities for a healthier and more prosperous future than life in Britain (Phillips & Hearn 2008: 23-25; West 2017: 162), but was this the experience of the early settlers on the Tokomairiro Plain? Were those born and raised in New Zealand healthier than their immigrant parents? While historical research can answer some questions about the early settlers around Milton, historical records can be incomplete, misleading or simply incorrect (Campbell 2013: 2), and many aspects of the early settlers’ origins, health, diet and family associations are better able to be addressed through a combination of historical research, archaeological investigation and bioarchaeological analysis.

History of the Back Road Cemetery 

The Otago settlement, in the south of New Zealand’s South Island, was a joint venture between the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland and the New Zealand Company, which acquired 144,600 acres of land in coastal Otago from Ngāi Tahu in 1844. The intention was to establish a Wakefield class settlement, where the community would be divided into a land-owning capitalist class, and a wage-earning working class (Hocken 1898; Olssen 1984; Schrader 2016). Land in the settlement was divided into urban, suburban and rural property, with the intention that agriculture would develop in the hinterland. In this period New Zealand was promoted as a land of plenty to encourage families to settle and develop the growing colony, and one of the attractions of schemes such as the Otago settlement was the opportunity to own land. 

The first two ships carrying settlers, the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing, arrived in March and April 1848 respectively, with 97 and 247 emigrants aboard (Hocken 1898:94; Olssen 1984:33). Initial growth was slow, and in October 1848 the Rev. Thomas Burns recorded the population of Dunedin and the surrounding areas as 444 Europeans and 166 Māori (Hocken 1898:106). But Dunedin fortunes changed in 1861 when the first of the major Otago gold rushes occurred at Gabriel’s Gully, followed by the larger Dunstan Rush in 1862 (Olssen 1984; Salmon 1963). These events brought a massive influx of people and capital to Dunedin, and the population rose from 2262 in 1859 to 15,790 in 1864 (McDonald 1965:44, 51). 

The gold mining powered a commercial boom in the city and wider province, but it was the establishment of farming that was essential for the long-term viability of settlement. The fledgling city of Dunedin needed a productive hinterland to provide food, and the easily won gold soon ran out leaving the miners two options: move on or settle down.

The first settlers on the Tokomairiro Plain arrived there in 1850, by 1857 a flour mill was at work with a fledgling community growing up close by, and in 1860 this settlement was formally surveyed and named ‘Milton’ (Sumpter & Lewis 1949). Sumpter & Lewis (1949: 13) stated that most of the early settlers on the Tokomairiro were Scottish, but the English were always a notable presence in the early Otago settlement; tensions between the Presbyterian Scots and the Anglican English led to some of the latter being dubbed the ‘Little Enemy’ by the former (McDonald 1965: 19). The local Resident Magistrate in the Tokomairiro district was John Dewe, who owned land at what would later be known as Jones Bush. It was at his home that the first Church of England services in the district were held in the late 1850s (Fraser 1941: 3; Sumpter & Lewis 1949: 52), The local Anglican community was clearly of some size by this time, as Bishop Chitty-Harper of the Diocese of Christchurch (which at that time included a vast area, including Tokomairiro) visited in July 1858 and celebrated the Holy Communion to a congregation of 70 people, baptised three infants and confirmed six people (Fraser 1941: 3-4; Sumpter & Lewis 1949: 52). 

A priority for early communities was the establishment of Churches of various denominations, but equally necessary for obvious pragmatic reasons were burial grounds. Not only did disease cause many fatalities, but there were many other hazards of colonial life including drowning (often termed the ‘New Zealand death’ due to the high rates of death at stream and river crossings in particular), and accidents with stock (in particular horse falls and kicks) (Bruce Herald 13 July 1865, 19 February 1868, 27 January 1874; Ell and Ell 1995:159; Lake County Press 31 December 1885; Otago Witness 1 February 1894). At Tokomairiro John Dewe donated an acre of land (Part section 93 Block XI Tokomairiro) to the Anglican Church for a cemetery and chapel, this being the St. Johns Cemetery that is the subject of this report. The first known burials there were in 1857 (an un-named child of William Henning Mansford) and 1859 (Alex Dudgeon McDonald, aged 55) (Tokomairiro Burial Records, Department of Internal Affairs). The Deed records the formal land transfer for the token sum of ten shillings in 1860 and the chapel and cemetery were consecrated by Bishop Chitty-Harper on 9 March 1860 (Otago Deeds 4/491; Sumpter & Lewis 1949: 52). The first cadastral survey of the wider area had been carried out in 1847 by Drake and Watts, contract surveyors (S.O. 80), and this does not show the cemetery (as it pre-dates its use), but the cemetery 9 does appear on an 1880 plan (D.P. 259) which shows the 1 acre 8 perches (4248 sq.m.) ‘English Cemetery’ on Back Road, surrounded by a gorse fence (Figure 6). The only known plan of the cemetery (Figure 8) is undated and contains only seven names handwritten into plots: the identities of early burials are discussed further below. 

At this stage the parish did not yet have a vicar, but it was felt that a Parsonage and glebe (a piece of land that was provided for a clergyman to provide support and income) would be essential to attract one. In 1869 Bishop Chitty-Harper purchased a 26 acre block of land (part of Section 86 Block X Tokomairiro Dictrict) on the opposite side of Back Road from the cemetery from James Crane for £250 (Otago Deeds 29/232) (ownership later passed to the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board in 1885). John Dewe was again instrumental in raising funds for the erection of a house on this land; in 1859 the Church of England Parsonage Fund, Tokomairiro was raising money for this purpose (Otago Witness 26 February 1859). The missing element was still a minister, and money was also raised to pay for the passage from England for the Reverend R.L. Standford, late Junior Curate at St. Michael’s, Coventry, who arrived in Milton in November 1864 (Fraser 1941: 5). His new home was a two storey weatherboard house set well back from the road on the 26 acre glebe: the only known photographs of the house show it after additions were made in 1869, by which time it was a two storey timber weatherboard building with six windows and a veranda to the front (Figure 7). The St. Johns Parish Burial Register records that John Dewe officiated at most interments up until late 1864, and the first burial ceremony performed by the Rev. Standford was on Christmas Day 1864, the month after he arrived in Milton (Burial Register, entry no. 20, Caroline Webb)

However, at the same time at the Church of England cemetery was established a public cemetery was also opened nearby at Fairfax (Cemetery Reserves Ordinance 1864), and only a few years later the Anglican chapel became redundant after the Otago gold rushes of the early 1860s drew the road traffic away from Back Road and along the more direct route through Milton. By the time the Rev. Standford, arrived in 1864 the parishioners were already planning to build a new church in the township. 

After issues with site suitability (the first site selected would have required expensive foundations) and costs (the first design selected through a competition was too expensive to build) a new brick church was erected in the township in 1866, with John Dewe laying the foundation stone in January that year (Fraser 1941: 7; Sumpter & Lewis 1949: 52). The exact fate of the old Back Road chapel is difficult to determine: it was probably sold for removal from the cemetery site, and later destroyed by fire. Fraser (1941: 16) stated: ‘according to the minute book of the Vestry it was sold to Mr. Hare for £7 in 1883, the old harmonium being brought to Milton for Sunday School use. It was later destroyed by fire.’ Another source states that it was removed to Clarendon in about 1868 (Findlay et al 2015). The use of the old St. John’s Cemetery had also declined, and by 1898 the cemetery trust was requesting that it be closed. According to the St John’s Parish Burial Register only five burials were undertaken after 1900. The last known burial was of John Moore in 1926, and the cemetery ground fell into disrepair and the boundaries were lost. The cemetery was formally closed in 1971 and the control and management was vested to the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board. 

The area of marked graves was fenced off (although as the archaeological investigations would prove, unmarked graves were present over a wider area), and the balance of the land was leased to a local farmer, who built a hayshed where the chapel had stood. Distance from Milton also determined the fate of the old Parsonage. By the 1870s it had become clear that it was too far away from the town and the new church, and the Vicar (by then the Rev. Richard Coffey) moved into Milton: one account states that he simply refused to live in the old Parsonage. The old house was rented out, the income being used to offset the Vicar’s accommodation expenses (Fraser 1941: 14; Mackintosh 1966: 8). A new Vicarage was designed by Rev. Geoffrey Fynnes Clinton and built beside the St. John’s Church in Milton in 1886 (Fraser 1941: 18; Mackintosh 1966: 9), which continued to be used for its intended purpose until the retirement of the Rev. Vivienne Galletly in 2017, and it was sold in 2019. By 1966 the old Parsonage was described as derelict (Mackintosh 1966: 4), and it was later demolished and a new farmhouse built just beside where the old house had stood.

Study Conclusions 

The excavations at St. John’s Church of England Cemetery in 2016 investigated the remains of 27 individuals, most of who probably died in the 1870s. Over half were infants and children, a terrifying death rate amongst the young by modern standards. Amongst the adults appalling oral hygiene was almost ubiquitous, with tooth loss, caries and periodontal disease rife.

Examination of teeth also revealed multiple occurrences of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) in every individual except one, indicating that all (except that one) suffered periods of metabolic stress in childhood from illness and/or hunger. This applied whether the individual had grown up in Britain (or Europe) or in Milton. Death from tuberculosis; the ‘sputum-stained handkerchiefs of the tubercular middle classes’ (Schama 2002); was still common as many of these first generation of settlers had unknowingly brought the dormant infection with them, only for it to take a grip on its victims in their new home. Not only did the settlers’ health reflect their origins, but they also brought their funeral traditions with them; the St John’s Cemetery burials are consistent with other European settler burials of the same period elsewhere in New Zealand and in the Anglo world. The same coffin motifs and decorations could be found in London and Milton (and those found in Milton had almost certainly been manufactured in Birmingham). And the settlers had also imported their mechanisms for survival in a challenging and uncertain world; in particular the friendly societies with their ceremonies, social events and insurance against a pauper’s burial. 

Therefore at first glance is appears that the answer to the question of whether the people’s lives were ‘better’ in the colony than back in Britain or Europe is that there had been no improvement. The archaeological and bioarchaeological study of this Victorian-era population suggests that the colonial society transported their biosocial landscape on immigration and little changed for these initial colonists (Buckley et al. 2020). But this does not necessarily account for the new world that they were creating for their children and grandchildren. 

As Holland (2013) has explored, it took time for the new settlers to learn about their new home. The promises of a better life that had attracted many to the colonies (Figure 1) were not to be immediately realised for many; the mild mid-latitude climate and rich soils were not quite as promised, and it took time to carve farms out of virgin bush, tussock-covered hills or flax-covered swamp. The first generation of yeoman settlers had to acquire land, break it in, develop their farms and build up their herds. While they were doing so life was not going to be easy, and medical science was only on the verge of new discoveries (notably the emergence of germ theory) that could save the lives of them and their children. 

But some things were improving. William Toogood, the son of an agricultural labourer who could probably have never owned land in Britain owned a ½ acre and cottage that would have provided him and his children with shelter and food. His early death from tuberculosis in 1873 left his family in desperate circumstances, but by 1877 his widow had paid off the debt owing on the property. All of the burials in the cemetery conformed with the funerary traditions of the time: there were no obvious ‘paupers burials’ found. While it could be argued that this is evidence of people feeling under social pressure to conform and spend money on expensive funerals (the point of the Funeral Reform Movement), it can also be argued that everyone in the community was at least afforded a decent burial. Certainly at ‘home’ in London and other large cities in this period the dead were buried in overfull cemeteries, often with multiple coffins in a single grave, and with a high likelihood that they would be disturbed by new grave excavations within a year or two. In the new New Zealand cemeteries the dead were afforded more dignity. Overall the excavations at St. John’s Cemetery investigated a first generation settler population that was of predominantly (but not exclusively) British origin, with the children and infants all born in New Zealand. 

While the overall health and wellbeing of this population was still reminiscent of its British/European origins, it was on the cusp of improvements that would take decades to be fully 126 realised, but were slowly appearing. The role of the friendly societies would slowly develop until they were made almost instantly redundant by the passing of the Social Security Act of 1938, and medical science in the twentieth century would advance in leaps and bounds to improve all aspects of health. A nationwide infant mortality rate of 126 per 1000 live births in 1876 would permanently drop to below 100 by 1883, and would decline to 51 in 1920, 28 in 1950 and 6 in 2000 (https://teara.govt.nz/en/graph/30308/new-zealand-infant-mortality-rate-1862-2017). The people from St. John’s Cemetery that have been discussed here had laid the foundations for a better life for their descendants, although arguably it was their grandchildren and great grandchildren rather than their children who experienced this

Thanks to: 

• Peter Petchey, Southern Archaeology Ltd.
• Hallie Buckley, University of Otago
• Jane Batcheller, University of Alberta
• Rebecca Kinaston, University of Otago
• Charlotte King, University of Otago
• Rod Wallace, Auckland