Agnes Thacker – “one of the best”
For a time, Agnes Thacker had the distinction of being the first child born in Christchurch to pilgrims from the First Four Ships. Born at ‘The Bricks’, where her father had a wharf, she was the eldest child and only daughter of Essy Joynt and John Thacker.
A newspaper man from Ireland, Thacker brought out printing machinery and set up the Christchurch Guardian. Its brief four-month existence ended when the “lack of adequate support” forced Thacker to “try his luck at the diggings” in Australia. On his return, the family moved to a house on Cashel street built with timber salvaged from shipwrecks.
After a varied career as a publisher, trader, and steamer operator, Thacker moved his family to Okains Bay, where they took up farming and saw-milling. He built the first wharf and operated cargo and passenger vessels.
Educated in Christchurch, Agnes returned to Okains Bay to manage the family’s large dairy. “In those days, the forest covered the peninsula, and pit sawyers worked by hand. Food was brought in a whaleboat from Lyttelton, and the means of communication by land was through bush tracks.”
When she was 12, her father took on the mail contract. Narrow tracks made riding difficult, so Agnes carried the mail on foot between Okains Bay and Akaroa. Before starting, and again on her return, she milked up to 25 cows. She kept her father’s accounts and managed the purchase of stores for their shop. At 17, she was left in charge of a large staff of men at the family sawmill.
As the eldest child, she was second mother to the family. Kind and hospitable-natured, Agnes “took a deep interest in the poor and needy and never sent a man away without a meal”. She was quiet and only spoke when she had something worth telling.
In 1904, Agnes travelled abroad, visiting America, the UK, and Europe. “She visited many of the notable parks to see the trees, and on her return, she declared that the big trees of the Old Country did not compare with the totara trees in the original forest on the Peninsula.”