If you have ever visited the the old Levels Cottage near Pleasant Point, when you peaked inside you might have seen a small sleeping loft reached by steps. I wondered who slept here. Heritage accounts usually begin with the runholder George Rhodes and his young wife Elizabeth. But it seems another person climbed those steps each night. Her name was Sarah Macqueen. She had travelled south from Purau with the Rhodes party in 1854 and was there to help Elizabeth. She may have been only twelve or thirteen. So who was Sarah, what did “help” mean, and can one line in a newspaper lead us back to the girl herself?
I began this history hunt with the ladder
The Levels Cottage is small. Two rooms. Slab walls. Clay floor. A thatched roof. Inside, a timber partition separates the bedroom from the room that served as kitchen, dining room and sitting room. Then there is the loft...
Heritage New Zealand’s description says that the platform above the bedroom was where “Sarah McQueen or her successor” slept. It identifies Sarah as the Rhodes household’s servant and places her in the cottage with George and Elizabeth Rhodes during its brief occupation as their home.
That phrase, “or her successor”, caught my attention. A building detail had preserved evidence of a worker. But who was she?
A name appears in a 1944 newspaper
The clearest account I found appeared in the Timaru Herald on 9 October 1944, ninety years after the events it described.
According to the article, George and Elizabeth Rhodes left Purau a few weeks after their May 1854 marriage. They were accompanied by several men and “a girl named Sarah Macqueen”. The party first went to the Rhodes homestead near the Timaru shoreline, then moved inland to The Levels.
Later in the article, a recollection is attributed to Elizabeth. Standing in the cottage, she reportedly pointed to the loft and explained, “I brought a girl to help me.” Sarah climbed the steps at night and slept above the bedroom.
This is useful evidence, but it is not contemporary evidence.
Elizabeth died in 1890. The article does not explain when her words were recorded, who recorded them or whether they had passed through family memory before publication. The article also contains the language and assumptions of settler commemoration in the 1940s. It calls land “unexplored”, treats colonial occupation as uncomplicated progress and repeats claims about racial “firsts” that require much more care today.
So I could not simply lift Sarah from that article and declare the search complete.
I needed another source that placed a Sarah McQueen at Purau before 1854.
The Purau list
That second clue came from James Hay’s Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury.
Hay compiled a list of families living around Banks Peninsula during the 1840s. Among them were:
Archibald McQueen, Mrs McQueen, Sarah, Hugh and Mary.
Hay said Archibald had gone to Purau as a shepherd for the Greenwood brothers before taking up land in what became McQueen’s Valley.
This does not prove that their daughter Sarah was the girl who travelled with Elizabeth Rhodes.
It does, however, put a girl of the right name in precisely the right place and social network. The Rhodes brothers purchased Purau from the Greenwoods in 1847, and later family research says Archibald McQueen worked for both families.
At this point, the identification became plausible.
Sarah Macqueen of the Rhodes party was probably the daughter of Archibald McQueen and Catherine Cameron.
But “probably” still matters.
A birth date that could not be true
Family-history websites commonly identify the girl as Marion Sarah McQueen, born in Wellington on 9 November 1840.
There was a problem.
Her presumed parents, Archibald McQueen and Catherine Cameron, were still at sea.
Passenger research places both aboard the Blenheim, which sailed from Greenock in August 1840. The National Library records the ship’s arrival at Wellington on 27 December 1840, more than six weeks after Sarah’s supposed Wellington birth.
The date could not be right.
A compiled McQueen family history instead gives Marion, known as Sarah, a birth year of 1841. That fits the immigration chronology and Hay’s list of the McQueen children at Purau. It remains secondary evidence, but it is more credible than the impossible November 1840 date.
If this identification is correct, Sarah was probably about twelve or thirteen when she travelled south in 1854.
An existing WuHoo page gives her age as sixteen. I have not found the original evidence for that number, and it should not be retained as fact.
A side quest to the Isle of Skye
Sarah’s probable parents add another layer to the story.
Archibald McQueen and Catherine Cameron came from Bracadale on the Isle of Skye. Passenger lists described Archibald as a 21-year-old labourer and Catherine as a 17-year-old housemaid. They travelled on the same ship, although the lists did not present them as a married couple. Scottish parish research suggests they had married shortly before sailing.
Catherine’s occupation is worth noticing.
She arrived in New Zealand recorded as a housemaid. Fourteen years later, her probable daughter appears in another household as “a girl” brought to help a recently married woman.
That does not prove Sarah was formally employed as a domestic servant. We have no wage book, agreement or letter explaining the arrangement. It may have been paid employment, a placement organised between connected families or something described differently by those involved.
What it does show is how much young women’s migration and work could be organised around household labour.
Domestic servants formed a significant part of nineteenth-century female migration to New Zealand. Most households employing help had one general servant, whose responsibilities could extend well beyond cleaning. The work might include washing, childcare, tending poultry, sewing, gardening, shopping or milking. Hours were often long and workers usually lived in their employers’ homes.
That is the wider pattern... It is not a list of tasks we can automatically assign to Sarah.
What did “help” mean at The Levels?
This is where it would be easy to make the story sound more complete than it is.
The cottage had a clay floor and an open fireplace. The station was some distance from established shops, formed roads and regular services. Household work would have been physically demanding.
But I cannot tell you which meals Sarah cooked, whether she fetched water, how washing was organised or whether she cared for children. The Rhodes’ first child was born after the move to The Levels, but the evidence does not establish how long Sarah remained or whether she was still there at that point.
The word we have is help.
It came through an account attributed to Elizabeth, the employer and household mistress. We do not have Sarah’s description of the arrangement.
That imbalance is important. Employers left family papers, property records and descendants who wrote histories. Young household workers were much less likely to leave records preserved under their own names.
Even the sleeping arrangements show that difference. George and Elizabeth had the bedroom. Sarah climbed to a platform above it.
That does not tell us what she felt about her position. It does tell us where she fitted within the physical hierarchy of the house.
This was not an empty journey
The 1944 newspaper described the South Canterbury landscape through the eyes of European pastoral settlement, using words such as “trackless” and “unexplored”.
Those words are misleading.
Sarah’s journey began and ended within the takiwā of Ngāi Tahu. Near Purau, Koukourarata was the largest Māori settlement in Canterbury in the mid-nineteenth century, with a population of about 400. It was a major centre of Ngāi Tahu activity.
In South Canterbury, Arowhenua was, and remains, the principal Māori kāinga of the district. The rivers, wetlands, coast and inland routes were known, named, travelled and sustained through generations of whakapapa and mahinga kai.
The Levels pastoral enterprise also followed the Crown’s 1848 Canterbury purchase from Ngāi Tahu. Reserves and boundaries were agreed during that process, but many reserves were subsequently reduced or ignored, and parts of the purchase remained disputed.
This does not make Sarah personally responsible for the colonial system in which she worked. She appears to have been a young person in a labouring immigrant family, not a landowner.
But we should not recover one overlooked Pākehā woman by repeating a version of history in which mana whenua disappear.
A review by Te Rūnanga o Arowhenua would strengthen the final wording before publication. This research does not imply that consultation has already occurred.
Was Sarah really Marion Sarah McQueen Hart?
The evidence now forms a persuasive chain:
a 1944 family-based account names Sarah Macqueen as the girl who travelled from Purau with the Rhodes party;
James Hay independently records Sarah McQueen as a child of the Purau shepherd Archibald McQueen;
passenger and family research connects Archibald and Catherine McQueen with Purau and the Rhodes network;
compiled family records identify their eldest daughter as Marion, known as Sarah, born about 1841.
The pieces fit.
What is missing is a record that explicitly says:
Marion Sarah McQueen, daughter of Archibald and Catherine, was the Sarah who went to The Levels.
Without that bridge, the identification remains probable rather than confirmed.
Family compilations say Marion Sarah McQueen married John William Hart in 1860 and died in Christchurch in October 1907. A cemetery memorial records a Sarah Hart dying in 1907 and buried with John Hart at Belfast Cemetery, but user-created genealogy and memorial pages are not enough to settle the identity by themselves.
The official marriage and death registrations should be obtained and compared with the McQueen family before those later life details are published without qualification. New Zealand’s historical BDM service allows the relevant records to be searched and ordered, while also warning that older records may contain inconsistencies or use unexpected names.
For now, the responsible heading is:
Sarah Macqueen, probably Marion Sarah McQueen, later Hart
Not a certainty disguised as a full name.
What changed because Sarah helped?
Sarah did not own The Levels. She did not control its pastoral business or acquire its land.
Her contribution was within the household that supported the station.
Elizabeth brought her because help was needed. That is the clearest evidence of Sarah’s impact. Her presence shared some part of the work required to feed, clean, organise and maintain an isolated home.
We cannot quantify that contribution or separate it task by task. We can recognise that the household was not sustained by the runholder and his wife alone.
The cottage’s heritage listing now names Sarah, which is valuable. Yet the building is still primarily framed through its owners, its architecture and its place in pastoral development. Sarah’s story asks us to use the same building differently.
The loft is not merely an architectural feature.
It is evidence that another worker lived there.
What searching for Sarah taught me
I began this search expecting to find the name of the woman who travelled with Elizabeth Rhodes. I found the name quite quickly. The harder part was learning not to rush past it.
A neat version of the story would give Sarah an exact birth date, call her a sixteen-year-old servant, marry her to John Hart and follow her confidently to a Christchurch grave. Most of those details can be found online. Put together, they look convincing.
One of them was impossible.
Her supposed parents had not even reached Wellington on the day she was said to have been born there. That small contradiction changed the whole search. It reminded me that repeated information is not necessarily verified information. A family tree can be useful. Ten family trees repeating it do not make it a primary source.
Sarah also taught me to look more closely at buildings. Her labour did not leave a separate structure. It left a sleeping place above somebody else’s bedroom. The evidence was not a grand room, a plaque or a title deed. It was a ladder.
And she taught me that finding one overlooked woman should widen the story, not close it.
Who were the men who travelled in the same party? Who replaced Sarah in the loft? How many other young workers supported South Canterbury’s early stations without being named at all? What relationships existed between these households and the mana whenua communities whose presence settler histories reduced to background detail?
My research hasn't fully found Sarah yet. Maybe there is a book, or diaries or family history that has been written that will one day go under my nose. But for me, she is no longer simply “the girl” now.
We know her name was recorded as Sarah Macqueen. We can place a Sarah McQueen at Purau. We have a probable family and a possible later life. We also know exactly where the evidence stops.
That is not a failed biography.
It is an honest history hunt.
Timeline
1840: Confirmed family context
Archibald McQueen and Catherine Cameron travel from Scotland aboard the Blenheim, arriving at Wellington on 27 December 1840. Passenger lists describe Archibald as a labourer and Catherine as a housemaid.
c.1841: Probable
Marion McQueen, apparently known as Sarah, is probably born in New Zealand. The exact date and place have not been confirmed.
1844–1847: Reported family movement
The McQueens reportedly move from Wellington to Canterbury. Archibald works first for the Greenwood brothers and later for the Rhodes brothers.
1840s: Well supported
James Hay records Archibald and Mrs McQueen with children Sarah, Hugh and Mary at Purau.
1854: Well supported, but retrospectively recorded
A girl named Sarah Macqueen travels from Purau with George and Elizabeth Rhodes and several men. The party stays near the Timaru shoreline before moving to The Levels.
c.1854–1856: Well supported
Sarah helps within the Rhodes household and sleeps in the loft above the bedroom at Levels Cottage. Her exact duties and length of residence are unknown.
1860: Probable, not conclusively linked
Marion Sarah McQueen reportedly marries John William Hart. The official registration still needs to be examined.
October 1907: Probable, not conclusively linked
Sarah Hart reportedly dies in Christchurch and is buried at Belfast Cemetery. Sources disagree over whether she died on 15 or 17 October. The official death registration and cemetery record need to be checked.
1937
Airini Woodhouse publishes George Rhodes of the Levels and His Brothers. Heritage New Zealand cites this family history as a source for the cottage, its loft and Sarah’s presence there.
9 October 1944
The Timaru Herald publishes “Old Levels Homestead”, naming Sarah Macqueen and recounting Elizabeth’s reported memory of the girl who slept in the loft.
1946 onwards
Levels Cottage is transferred to the South Canterbury Historical Society, later repaired and partially reconstructed. It is now a Category 1 historic place on a private reserve with no general public access.
Sources and what they support
Timaru Herald, “Old Levels Homestead”, 9 October 1944
Names Sarah Macqueen as part of the party leaving Purau with George and Elizabeth Rhodes. It also attributes to Elizabeth the recollection that she brought a girl to help and that the girl slept in the loft. This was published ninety years after the journey, and the original source of Elizabeth’s words is not identified.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD19441009.2.54
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Levels Cottage, List No. 4906
Supports the cottage’s construction, layout, loft, association with Sarah McQueen, restoration history, Category 1 status and private access. Its account relies partly on Airini Woodhouse’s 1937 family history.
https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/4906/Levels-Cottage
James Hay, Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury, chapter 6
Independently places Archibald and Mrs McQueen and their children Sarah, Hugh and Mary at Purau during the 1840s. It identifies Archibald as a shepherd. This is retrospective local history, first published in the early twentieth century.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Reminiscences_of_Earliest_Canterbury/Chapter_6
National Library of New Zealand, Blenheim ship records
Confirms that the Blenheim voyage ran from August to 27 December 1840 and therefore disproves the claimed Wellington birth date of 9 November 1840.
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22351994
Blenheim175, McQueen and Cameron passenger research
Transcribes passenger-list details for Archibald McQueen and Catherine Cameron and brings together Scottish parish, newspaper and family-tree research. It identifies Marion, known as Sarah, as their probable daughter, born in 1841 and later married to John Hart. This is a useful compiled source, not a substitute for the original civil registrations.
https://blenheim175.wordpress.com/tag/niven/
Te Ara, “Servants in the 19th century”
Provides national context for domestic service, female migration, live-in work and the range of duties performed by general servants. It does not establish Sarah’s personal tasks or conditions.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/household-services/page-1
Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Koukourarata
Supports the statement that Koukourarata was the largest Māori settlement in Canterbury in the mid-nineteenth century and a principal centre of Ngāi Tahu activity.
https://ngaitahu.iwi.nz/ngai-tahu/papatipu-runanga/koukourarata/
Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Arowhenua
Supports the identification of Arowhenua as the principal Māori kāinga of South Canterbury.
https://ngaitahu.iwi.nz/ngai-tahu/papatipu-runanga/arowhenua/
Te Ara, “Land purchased from Ngāi Tahu”
Provides context for the 1848 Canterbury purchase and the subsequent reduction, neglect or dispute of reserves and boundaries.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/map/10316/land-purchased-from-ngai-tahu
New Zealand Births, Deaths and Marriages Historical Records
Official portal through which the proposed 1860 marriage and 1907 death records can be searched and ordered.
https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Find a Grave, Sarah Hart
Provides a lead for the later Sarah Hart’s death and Belfast Cemetery burial. It is user-contributed and should not be treated as conclusive proof of identity.