A Rare Case of Reconciliation and Improbable Outcomes

Sophia Smallman's case from 1880 begins with many familiar notes of desertion, exile, and disappointment.* Sophia and Joseph Harris Smallman were married in England in 1862; he was a mining agent and engineer. In 1864, he left for New Zealand, promising to come back and bring her and their baby son Herbert out to join him as soon as his business was established. Joseph wrote to Sophia "by every mail" dutifully for six years, always postponing the date of their arrival. In December 1870, he wrote to say he was extremely ill and sent her his will, including his interest in a gold mine. However, then the letters stopped entirely.


Sophia was understandably concerned about the fate of her husband, and wrote to the Agent General in New Zealand in 1875, asking for an investigation, only to discover that, according to the government, her husband was indeed alive and well and simply not communicating with her. In January 1878, he wrote her suddenly to tell her he was coming home to England - but then failed to arrive. In October 1878, she wrote her cousin in New Zealand, a Mrs. Griffiths, to ask her to investigate what was going on, and got news back that her husband was living with a "half-caste woman, the daughter of a Maric chieftain" and had three children. Sophia wrote to the new address, reproaching Joseph with this information, and got back no reply except for a nasty letter to her cousin rebuking her for spreading gossip. As a consequence, Sophia filed for separation and the legal protection of her earnings, mostly an inheritance she expected from a relative, and was granted it by the court. She and her son moved in with her mother in order to find shelter.


But what was going on all this time in New Zealand? Well, shockingly enough, Joseph did in fact find gold in 1867 - the Golden Crown mine, to be precise. However, after several initial unsuccessful attempts, by the time he did successfully locate his claim he had "…held his share up to a short time before the great find but had made it over on some kind of agreement to another man, only to find, when the mine became valuable that the other person had registered the share in his own name by virtue of the agreement and destroyed the document itself, of which he held the only copy.” The Golden Crown Mine ultimately produced about $14 million in gold, at an extremely conservative estimate.


So Joseph kept looking for more gold, aided apparently by good relationships with the Maori who owned many of the promising sites. In 1868 Joseph indeed entered into a marriage (by Maori ceremony) with a woman named Harete Te Whakaawa Guilding, the daughter of William Nicholls of England and Hira Te Whakaawa of Matakana Island, who was herself indeed the eldest sister of the chieftain Te Moananui of the Ngaiterangi tribe (or Ngati Tauaiti according to another account.) He described himself at this point as a "Pakeha Maori," or white/adopted-in Maori, and had at least 4 children with Harete, also called Harriet or Charlotte or Margaret Smallman in some documents, one of whom grew up to be a New Zealand legislator. They lived on Harete's land, some hundreds of acres, some of which became known as 'Smallman's Point." In 1881 he was accused but acquitted of a murder. He continued life as a relatively prosperous farmer and mining surveyor.


But then comes the surprise ending. Sometime around 1885, for unknown reasons, Joseph left Harete, their four children (and a 5th born to Harete in 1886, with an "unknown father" listed), and went back to England to reunite with Sophia and Herbert (now 22 years old and working as a steel tube manufacturer in his own right.) Sophia appears to have taken him back fairly quickly, for reasons unknown in the legal or government record. In 1891 they were living together again and he was working as a mining engineer. In 1901 they were living with their prosperous and successful son, though by 1911 they were apart at the time of the census, perhaps for work commitments. Meanwhile, Harete Smallman died in 1912, at the age of 68, back in New Zealand, having never remarried. Joseph died at the age of 85, "with his son in attendance," and Sophia the following year, in 1926, at 85, listing herself as having been married for 63 years. Apparently the 20 years of separation, some of it legal, was simply omitted from the record. Sophia left the equivalent of around $275,000 to her son. When Herbert died in 1939, he left the modern equivalent of $6.6 million. The two separate Smallman families, in England and New Zealand, both prospered and have many descendants, who do not, however, seem to be in any modern contact with each other. The couple is buried in a joint grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/153476031#view-photo=129801479