Wuhoo Timaru - Find Free Fun! - What does the Rhodes Cottage plaque leave out?

Beverley House

On the east wall of Timaru’s Landing Services Building is a plaque marking the site of Rhodes Cottage. It points to one of the town’s earliest European homes, but it leaves an obvious question hanging in the air: who actually lived there? One of its first occupants was Elizabeth Wood, a young woman who arrived in South Canterbury in 1854 and later lived at The Levels, Linwood and Beverley. Her story is not really about being “first” or “second”. It is about the work required to turn rough buildings into homes and a scattered settlement into a community.

If you are standing beside Timaru’s Landing Services Building, look towards the east wall. There you will find a plaque for Rhodes Cottage.

It is the sort of small historical marker that can be easily missed. You might read it, picture a rough cottage beside the open beach, and continue walking.

But the name raises a question. Who lived in Rhodes Cottage?

More particularly, who was the woman living there at a time when Timaru had no harbour, no formed town centre and few of the buildings we now use to orient ourselves?

Her name was Elizabeth Wood. Or Elizabeth Rhodes. Or, later, Elizabeth Perry. And, as so often happens when researching women’s history, finding her means following several names through records that were mostly created to document the men, properties and businesses around her.

The search begins with a marriage

The clearest starting point is Lyttelton.

On 31 May 1854, Elizabeth Wood married pastoralist George Rhodes. She was probably about nineteen, although her precise birth date and place have not yet been confirmed. George and his brothers had already established a large sheep run at The Levels. Soon after the marriage, George brought Elizabeth south to his base near Timaru’s landing place. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography places them in the small cottage near the beach before they moved inland to The Levels.

That cottage stood close to the shoreline, near the place now occupied by the Landing Services Building. This was before the later harbour works altered Timaru’s coast. Goods and passengers came ashore through an exposed landing place where the sea could be dangerous and unpredictable.

The plaque therefore marks more than an old building site. It marks one of the places where Elizabeth began making a life in South Canterbury.

But what did that life involve? This is where the records become less helpful.

The buildings survive more clearly than the work

At The Levels, George and Elizabeth occupied a small two-roomed house. The early building, or a structure associated with it, survives on private land. It had timber slab walls lined with cob, a clay floor and a roof thatched with tussock or raupō. One room served as a bedroom. The other combined the functions of kitchen, dining room and sitting room.

There was also a raised sleeping platform for household help. That small detail changes the story.

It tells us Elizabeth was not the only person working within the household. Someone else cooked, cleaned, carried, washed, cared or helped keep the place functioning. Their name has not yet been found.

This is one of the traps in local history. We can identify the landholder because land generated deeds, leases, court cases and business records. We can identify the building because it survived. Yet the everyday work inside it often disappeared almost as soon as it was done.

Meals were eaten. Clothes were washed. Children were cared for. Visitors were received. Supplies were counted and stretched. Fires were kept going.

Then the evidence vanished. No diary written by Elizabeth has yet been located. We cannot confidently divide the work between her, her family and the unnamed household worker. Nor should we invent a daily routine because it sounds plausible.

What we can say is that a pastoral station did not operate through sheep and land alone. Someone had to make life possible there.

Was Elizabeth really the “second European woman” in South Canterbury?

This is where the history hunt becomes more complicated. Elizabeth has often been described as the second European woman to enter South Canterbury.

The claim seems to come from her 1890 obituary in the Timaru Herald. Even that account was cautious. It said she was, “we believe”, the second European woman in the district, after Margaret Hornbrook at Seadown.

The newspaper was passing on a local understanding more than thirty years after Elizabeth arrived. It was not presenting a complete list of every European woman who had travelled through, worked in or lived in South Canterbury.

The phrase also creates a wider problem... Kāti Huirapa women had lived in, travelled through, cared for and maintained relationships with this landscape for generations. Calling any European woman the “first” or “second woman” in the district would erase that history entirely.

It may also overlook European women who appeared only briefly in surviving records, or who were described simply as wives, daughters, servants or members of a travelling party.

So what can we say?

Elizabeth was among the earliest documented European women to establish a household in colonial South Canterbury.

That is still significant. It is also more accurate than turning history into a race.

The obituary offers a glimpse of Elizabeth herself

When Elizabeth died in 1890, the Timaru Herald remembered more than her connection to the Rhodes family.

It recalled the hospitality provided at The Levels, including treats for local schoolchildren. It also said that she took an active part in the social work of the Church of England and was known for her generosity and hospitality.

These are useful clues because they describe actions rather than simply relationships.

Elizabeth did not acquire The Levels herself. She did not establish the Rhodes pastoral partnership. Those were business activities associated with George and his brothers.

Her contribution appears in the social and domestic infrastructure around that enterprise.

Hospitality could be practical work in a sparsely settled district. Homes and stations provided places where people could eat, rest, exchange news and maintain relationships. Community life depended on those connections.

Elizabeth’s impact was not measured in acres.

It was present in whether people were fed, received and connected.

Widowhood changed the shape of her life

George Rhodes died from typhoid fever at Purau on 18 June 1864.

Elizabeth was left with young children. She also had financial and family resources that separated her experience from that of many widows, but widowhood still brought a major change in responsibility and circumstances.

Earlier WuHoo research connects Elizabeth and her children with Linwood House in Timaru after George’s death.

Linwood stood on or near the site of the present Timaru District Council complex. The exact location needs further checking because surviving descriptions are not entirely consistent.

This gives Elizabeth’s story another local doorway.

A person could stand near the council offices, then walk towards the Landing Services Building, and unknowingly pass between two places connected with her life.

In February 1867, Elizabeth married Timaru barrister Arthur Perry at St Mary’s Church.

The intention-to-marry record described her as a 31-year-old widow who had lived in Timaru for two years. This supports a birth date around 1835 or 1836, although the Timaru cemetery record later gave her age as 59.

The disagreement has not yet been resolved. Until an original baptism or death registration is checked, c.1835 remains the safest date to use.

Elizabeth and Arthur Perry later lived at Beverley, at the northern entrance to Timaru.

By then, the rough landing place she had known in 1854 was developing into a town. Streets, churches, businesses and public institutions had appeared. The landscape around her had changed dramatically during her adult life.

What changed because Elizabeth was here?

This is the central WuHoo question.

What became possible, continued or improved because Elizabeth contributed her time, care and labour?

The surviving evidence does not allow us to claim that she transformed South Canterbury through a single dramatic action.

Her contribution was cumulative.

She helped sustain some of the district’s earliest documented European households.

She raised children through movement, isolation, bereavement and remarriage.

She helped create hospitality and social connection around The Levels and later in Timaru.

She contributed to Anglican community work.

She was part of the practical human network that allowed colonial settlement to continue.

This does not mean we should romanticise that settlement. The growth of pastoral farming took place within the rohe of Kāti Huirapa and was part of a much larger process of colonisation, land acquisition and environmental change.

Nor should we make Elizabeth carry the whole story of women’s domestic labour. The unidentified household worker at The Levels reminds us that other women may have been doing much of the same work without leaving even a surname.

Elizabeth is visible partly because she married two prominent men.

The history hunt should therefore not end when we find her.

It should make us ask who else is missing.

Returning to the plaque

Elizabeth died in Timaru on 10 July 1890 and was buried in Timaru Cemetery two days later.

Her life can be traced through several familiar places: the shoreline cottage, The Levels, Linwood, Beverley, St Mary’s Church and the cemetery.

Yet the place that first caught my attention was the smallest of them.

A plaque on a wall.

The plaque gives us the name of a cottage. The records give us the names of landowners and husbands. The surviving hut gives us its dimensions and materials.

Elizabeth’s story asks us to look beyond all three.

A house is not made only from timber, clay and thatch.

It is made through repeated work. Food prepared. Children cared for. Visitors welcomed. Relationships maintained. Tasks completed and then forgotten.

So next time you pass the Landing Services Building, pause at the east wall.

Read the plaque.

Then ask the question it does not answer.

Who made the cottage a home?

Elizabeth Wood was one of them.

And she was almost certainly not the only one.

Timeline

c.1835
Elizabeth Wood is born. Her exact birth date and place remain unconfirmed.

31 May 1854
Marries George Rhodes at Lyttelton.

1854
Moves south with George and lives near the Timaru landing place.

c.1855
Moves inland to the early house at The Levels.

1855–1864
Raises a family and helps sustain the Levels household and its social connections.

18 June 1864
George Rhodes dies from typhoid fever at Purau.

1864–1867
Elizabeth lives in Timaru and is associated with Linwood House.

12 February 1867
Marries barrister Arthur Perry at St Mary’s Church, Timaru.

Later years
Lives at Beverley and contributes to Anglican social work and local hospitality.

10 July 1890
Dies in Timaru.

12 July 1890
Buried at Timaru Cemetery.

What does the Rhodes Cottage plaque leave out?