James DOWD : Short Biography

James Dowd was born in Keash, Sligo about 1832; He drowned in the Waipawa River in New Zealand on July 10, 1868, aged 36.

He had come to New Zealand with the 65th Regiment to help the British during the New Zealand Land Wars.

Service number 2718 Private James Dowd enlisted at Chatham in the 65th Regiment (from Canada) on 23rd July, 1849; he set sail from Deptford and arrrived in Sydney on 26 December 1849 with units of the 58th and 65th Regiments. It was a convict ship, the Adelaide. he then departed Sydney on 16 January 1850 on HMS Havannah, arriving Wellington Feb 1, 1850.

He met Catherine Farrel from Dublin in Wellington, NZ, and they married there, at St Mary's (Catholic) Cathedral, on May 21, 1856. Their firstborn Ellen arrived on 8 March, 1857.

By 1859, James was despatched to Napier, where there was trouble with the Maori, and their second child , Mary Louisa, was born there in 1859. Then came Annie (1860), Elizabeth (1862) Andrew Mathew (1863), an unnamed girl who died at birth (1865) and then William Henry (James Dowd) Bennett, who was born November 10, 1867, when his mother sadly died in childbirth,and he was adopted by the midwife, Mrs Bennett.

From 1860, when James took his discharge from the Army and went to take up the piece of land he had been promised by Queen Victoria (it is said he drowned in 1868 crossing the Waipawa River to go and register the claim in Napier), he was working as a shepherd at Edenham Sheep Station near Waipawa.By 1867 he had moved to the town of Waipawa, and was working as a labourer. When James died in 1868, the remaining 5 children were handed to Father Reignier, the local Catholic Priest, to 'look after' as they had no relatives in NZ, nor was there any welfare system at that time. A sad end for James and his children.

Despite that, Ellen's grandson, (later Sir) Thaddeus McCarthy, became a renowned Judge in NZ, head of the Court of Appeal and a Privy Councillor.