Mary Stanley

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Original information:
Mary Stanley (1830-1901) boarded the Randolph as a 19-year-old bride.

Her new husband, John (1817-1891) was 33. They came from Worcestershire, from a property called Broadway. After four years they bought land in Harewood Road, where they kept dairy cows and started a nursery. John had cuttings of apple trees brought from England. The Stanleys introduced the cox’s orange apple into Canterbury.

The Stanley family had a reunion in 1950. At that time they put out a small book entitled John Stanley’s Letters to Broadway. In 1992 this was extended into Letters from Broadway to Harewood. The letters written from New Zealand are a wonderful source of information on wages, work and living conditions in Lyttelton in the 1850s.