The sea was colonial New Zealand’s highway which is why Timaru’s architecture and heritage goes hand in hand with our port. The story begins when George Rhodes used our headland to land stores and materials. He built Timaru’s first house in 1851, it only had three walls! This 20 foot hut stood by the beach (centre of these photos) to service his boat landing for his sheep farm at Levels. George Rhodes married Elizabeth Wood in 1854 at Lyttelton. She had come from England in 1850, on one of the first four ships. Later George and Elizabeth travelled across the plains from Lyttelton to Timaru with Sarah McQueen, a family friend, also from England. Elizabeth’s first child, died 1859 August 9, at Timaru, George William Wood, son of George Rhodes, Esqs, aged 4 years.
1890, Mrs Arthur Perry, mother by her first marriage of Mr. Rhodes, M.H R., and three brothers and a sister. Mrs. Geo. Rhodes came to Timaru in 1854 and was the second white woman in the district. She leaves also five children by her second marriage. The cause of Death was heart complaint. Learn more
He employed the Whaler Samuel Williams who came back to Timaru with his wife Anne and daughter Rebecca and just like that Timaru had it’s first permanent immigrant residents. Their child was the first European baby (William Williams) and was born in this house in 1856 and slept in a gin crate. A small lean-to was added to accommodate two bunks as Timaru’s first hotel. 1860, Nov. 16, at Timaru, Ann, the wife of Mr. Samuel Williams, of the Timaru Hotel died aged 35 years. The first Timaru Herald was published in his kitchen. Sam had the first publican’s license, and he was even the first to have his pub burn down because someone didn’t like the price charged for beer... bad call as the arsonist was sentenced to death! George and Elizabeth Rhodes moved to Levels, where their next house had four timber slab walls, a clay floor and a thatched roof. In 1855 some sheep were stolen from the Levels station, by James Mackenzie.
Learn more about their geniology here
About 1857 they say, George Rhodes gave the cottage to Sam Williams, an adventurous young American whaler, who had been given the good-natured nickname ‘Yankee Sam’. Sam was born around1817, his birthplace unknown. As an infant, he lived in Canada and later as a boy travelled to the United States. He is thought to have drifted to Australia with a number of other enterprising youths. By 1840 he left Australia to lead a whaling party out of the port of Sydney. Later Sam turned up at Island Bay, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, where he began whaling for the Rhodes brothers in 1848. In 1851, Sam left New Zealand, heading back to Australia again this time to the gold fields of Ballarat, where they say he married Anne Manry sometime around 1854. The goldfields didn’t hold much luck for Sam and he returned to New Zealand in 1856. Once more he took up employment with the Rhodes Brothers. This time he worked on Levels Station. Finally, he moved his family into the cottage on the beach in 1857. It was in this same year Archdeacon Henry William Harper remembered riding through South Canterbury on his first journey south from Christchurch. He recalled Sam and his family in a cottage near the beach. Archdeacon Harper could remember the old whaler showing him some of the remaining try-pots left abandoned on the beach. He wrote in his diary. “I spent a pleasant hour with Sam, listening to many colourful yarns of the old days”. Permanent settlers, aside from the large runholders, were slowly getting established in South Canterbury, exposing a need for accommodation in Timaru. Sam and his wife converted the little daub cottage into a general store and offered shelter to travellers. After the addition of a lean-to, the Provincial Government, in 1858 presented Sam with the first publican’s licence ever held in Timaru. Learn more
Henry Sewell on his journey south early in 1856, was one of many travellers to camp in this vacant cottage after the Rhodes family had moved out to Levels, a sheep station north-west of the Bay.
By 1873 the cottage had been demolished and 1876 two further bays had been added to the Timaru Landing Services building.
In 1839 the Sydney-based Weller brothers established a short-lived whaling station at Timaru. By the time Walter Mantell made this sketch, in 1848, the station was deserted. Mantell, Walter Baldock Durrant, 1820-1895 :MotuMotu, Timaru. Oct 20 Friday 1848.. Mantell, Walter Baldock Durrant 1820-1895 :[Sketchbook, no. 2] 1848. Ref: E-333-006. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
A cased coloured ambrotype portrait of Rebecca & William Williams, children of Samuel Williams, whaler, circa 1860 and Anne. William Williams was born in Timaru in 1856, after his father returned to New Zealand following a few years in Australia where he married and had their daughter, Rebecca. William is often credited as the first white child in the district, and a gin case was used as his cradle. South Canterbury Museum 3488
Photograph of the foot of George Street, Timaru, circa 1868. The building is pictured in the centre is a landing service building (either the Timaru Landing and Shipping Company or the George Street Landing Service), while Rhodes' original cottage is to the left. South Canterbury Museum 2000/210.095
Here you can see the boat launch at the foot of George Street, the Landings Service Building and beside, in the center the Rhodes cottage. Section from Hocken Snapshop hocken.recollect.co.nz/24023
First edition of the Timaru Herald from June II 1864 - Vol 1 No 1
Title: Sketch map to illustrate The early Canterbury runs.
Date: 1930
Physical Description: 1 map : black and white ; 49 x 77 cm, on sheet 57 x 84 cm.
Scale etc: Scale [ca. 1:380,160]. 1 in. to 6 miles.
Notes: Copied from: The early Canterbury runs. First series / by L.G.D. Acland. Auckland, N.Z. : Whitcombe and Tombs, 1930.
File Reference: CCLMaps 490414
First edition of the Timaru Herald. It was printed in a small room, a detached kitchen in the George Street cottage on a hand press. It was printed once a week. At the time there was a "rough and ready" settlement of about 150 houses and 1000 people paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/THD19140611.2.64.10
-Timaru 1859-2009, Celebrating 150 years. Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 12/09/2024, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/3330
"In the kitchen of a cottage in lower George Street, on June 11, 1864, The Timaru Herald was born. A respectable eight pages that cost sixpence (£1.1s for an annual subscription, payable in advance), the newspaper was to be produced every Saturday. In the first edition, the proprietor wrote of his hopes for the newspaper and what benefits he believed it would bring to the fledgling district. "The local newspaper," he wrote, "is the great agent for writing the history of the age and disseminating it amongst the people. It educates people by making education necessary to them. It is the guardian of liberty and of law, because both liberty and law can exist only where the acts of public functionaries are subject to publicity. Of the part which the newspaper press takes in guiding the public mind in its political and social movements, we say nothing; for that is rather accidental to the newspaper than an essential to it, especially to the local papers of remote districts. But as the organ and voice of the people, expressing their wants and urging their claims, the local journal is of the greatest use to the public. In starting The Timaru Herald, it is the intention of the proprietors to keep this mainly in view."
Situated in the midst of an immense district almost wholly unsettled, and with resources very partially developed, our primary task will be to keep the wants and claims of the district perpetually before the public and the Government. But it is not only in the leading articles of a newspaper that the public mind is reflected. The editor may mistake or misstate public feelings. As a corrective to such error, our columns shall be freely open to correspondents of all opinions, provided only that the language in which their opinions are couched is such as to cast no discredit on the journal which is the medium of publication."
When it was two years old, The Herald became a bi-weekly paper of four pages, and its price was reduced from sixpence to threepence. There were some further enlargements of sheet size and changes of format in the next few years, until The Herald attained the stature and prestige of daily production on New Year's Day, 1878. It was then priced at twopence, and there was a weekly supplement.
While the first edition was created in Sam Williams' kitchen, it is likely it was no more than a makeshift arrangement, for the press and the few cases of type were soon transferred to a building in another part of George St. The office then moved to Stafford St, next to the present site of Bar Xcel. There, plant and premises were wiped out in the Great Fire of December 7, 1868. Some cases of type were removed before the gale-driven flames took the printing shop, but little of value was salvaged. The hand press was damaged, yet an edition carrying a full report of the fire was printed after a break in publication of only two days. The Herald office was rebuilt in brick and stone.
The Sophia St office was built in 1884-85, but was transformed by subsequent changes, and The Herald moved to its present Bank Street offices in 1984."
In 1851 George Rhodes and his brothers William and Robert established the Levels, South Canterbury’s first pastoral run. George and his wife Elizabeth (seen here) built and lived in this two-roomed, 9- by 3-metre cottage. It had slab walls, a thatched roof, and a clay floor. The cottage was restored in 1951 and now stands on a private historic reserve. George and Elizabeth Rhodes with one of their children outside the Levels cottage, circa 1860. The couple moved into the cottage after living in another cottage in Timaru for a few months after the Rhodes brothers secured the lease of the Levels. The Levels cottage had a clay floor, timber slab walls and a thatched roof, but the couple only lived in the cottage for a short time before newer homes were built in 1856 and 1862. South Canterbury Museum 1923