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Marsden again

Another local tale suggests that Marsden delivered an open-air sermon on the beach at Omana near Maraetai in 1820. This tale was handed down through several generations of the Couldrey family.^[5] Marsden’s own journals fail to mention the event. However, he did pass Maraetai by sea at the time, and it’s not impossible that he came ashore. This story may be mythical but is unprovably so.

Selwyn’s sermon

Quite possibly, folk memory has confused Marsden with Bishop Selwyn who not only preached at Maraetai but on 13 June 1842 delivered his first-ever sermon in the Maori language there.^[6]

Selwyn’s biographers, H.W. Tucker and John H. Evans, and his wife, have ascribed the occasion respectively to Auckland on 6 June 1842 and Paihia on 20 June 1842.^[7]

The story might therefore seem apocryphal. However Selwyn’s own words show that the bishop did not necessarily tell his wife everything. In a letter to his mother on 30 July 1842 Selwyn recounted that the previous month on his return to Auckland from the Firth of Thames he had been driven into Maraetai by bad weather. There he made what he called his “first essay in performing the Divine Service in the native language”.^[8]

European observers have generally praised Selwyn’s command of the Maori language. Edwin Fairburn, however, who was present at the Maraetai service, noted that the Maori congregation found Selwyn difficult to understand.^[9]

The first families

A number of localities preserve what could be called migration myths. These are generally stories wrapped around the arrival of the first (European) families in an area. Otahuhu provides an example.

On 15 May 1848 the barque Ann arrived in Auckland with settlers for the planned Fencible village of Otahuhu on board. Two versions of their subsequent adventures have been recorded. One version has it that the families were taken to Onehunga then were rowed across the Manukau Harbour to Otahuhu. The other, perhaps more romantic version, suggests the men were sent down the Great South Road to Otahuhu first, with the women and children coming afterwards in drays.^[10]

According to this version, the men urgently built a bridge across the nameless creek north of the town so that their women and children could enter the village dry-shod. There they waited for their families with a bottle of rum to hand. The bridge was then baptised Ann’s Bridge by the sergeant’s daughter who led the convoy.

This tale mingles the elements of two events. The Fencibles almost certainly came to Otahuhu via Onehunga. The Great South Road was little better than a track at the time, whereas there was a well-formed road to Onehunga, and clean sandy landing beaches to the west of Otahuhu.

A contemporary map drawn up in September 1849 shows it is unlikely that Ann’s Bridge was built much before that date.^[11] Nonetheless, the bridge may well have been named in fashion described. In 1927 the local newspaper published a description of its baptism, although without dating the event. The story was later ascribed to the year 1848 by an unknown hand.^[12]

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